Chapter 33 – Silas - Blood Debt #2
Lydia sets her glass down and walks toward the door without a word. She doesn’t ask if she’s coming. She doesn’t need to. Elias glances at her once, his mouth pressed into a hard line, then looks at me.
“You’re driving,” he says.
I nod, grabbing the keys from the counter. The pistol at my hip feels heavier than usual, not from the weight of steel, but from what we’re walking into. Drazen knows what Mara means to Elias. Going after her isn't a strategy, it's a provocation.
We file out, the night air slamming into us like it knows what’s coming. Elias strides ahead, eyes like gun barrels fixed forward, and Jax stumbles to keep pace.
Lydia slides into the passenger seat as I swing behind the wheel, her arm brushing mine—not by accident. She unlocks the console, taps in the coordinates to the safehouse with quick, precise strokes, then angles the screen toward me. “Follow this,” she says, as if I’d dare go anywhere else.
I fire the engine. Tires spit gravel as we tear out of the alley, headlights carving through the dark. The city is alive now, neon signs buzzing, alleys crawling with shadows, the hum of people who have no idea a war is about to ignite.
Elias sits behind me, one hand gripping his gun, the other pressing his phone against his ear again.
His voice is a blade cutting through static.
“Status?” A pause, then: “Good. Stay on her until I arrive. If they breach, you shoot until nothing’s left.
” He ends the call, leans back, Tension ripples through him,
Jax shifts nervously beside him. “What if they—”
“They won’t,” Elias cuts him off. “Not while she’s breathing.”
No one argues.
The silence in the car is a different kind of loud.
I can feel Lydia’s stare burning into the side of my face.
When I glance at her, she doesn’t look away.
Her expression is unreadable, but her hand drifts to the knife strapped against her thigh, fingers resting on the hilt like it’s the only anchor she trusts.
She says nothing, but I hear her anyway. She’s ready to kill for this. Not for Elias. Not even for Mara. For herself. For survival.
The speedometer climbs. The city narrows around us: buildings leaning in, windows flashing past. My hands are steady on the wheel, but inside, something twists.
I’ve walked into hundreds of fires under the Bureau’s leash.
None of them felt like this. None of them felt like the ground shifting under my feet, pulling me toward her whether I wanted it or not.
Elias leans forward, voice low, guttural. “When we get there, don’t hesitate. You see Drazen’s men, you drop them. I don’t care how many. I don’t care how fast. If Mara bleeds, so do you.”
The words hang in the air. A promise. A threat. Both at once.
The street opens ahead, the turnoff toward the safehouse looming. My grip tightens on the wheel. I catch Lydia’s reflection in the side window, her eyes alight with something dangerous—fear, desire, anticipation. Maybe all three.
We’re almost there. And if Drazen’s already inside, we’re about to find out who survives the night.
The safehouse is lit up like a crime scene before we even pull onto the street. Shattered glass glitters across the pavement, alarms wail into the night, and the front gate sags under the weight of bullets already lodged in its steel.
“Fuck,” Jax mutters.
Elias doesn’t curse. He doesn’t even blink. He shoves his door open before the car stops rolling, gun in hand, eyes locked on the wreckage.
“Go,” he snaps, and I don’t waste time asking if he means all of us.
We spill into the street. The biting sting of cordite and smoke slaps me in the face, carried on the wind. Muzzle flashes blink from the shadows. There are men stationed behind cars, crouched along the fence, moving with the desperate chaos of mercenaries who don’t know what they’re walking into.
Lydia draws her pistol with her right hand, knife on the left, she crouches low beside me, eyes scanning the angles faster than I can. She points once, quick and precise, toward the second-floor windows. “Two on the east side.”
I see them a second later—shapes framed in the glow, rifles glinting. She’s sharper than I want to admit.
“Take the left,” I mutter, raising my pistol.
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Our shots crack almost at the same time, glass shattering as both figures collapse into the room behind them.
Elias is already moving. He doesn’t fight like other men—he doesn’t duck or cower, he advances.
His stride cuts straight down the center of the street, bullets sparking around him, his gun barking like thunder.
He drops one, two, three men before they can blink.
He looks untouchable, like violence itself has stepped into a body just to clear a path to Mara.
Jax trails after him, firing wild, ducking low, a boy trying to imitate a wolf.
Another figure lunges from the shadows near the gate. Before I can pivot, Lydia’s blade flashes, cutting clean across the man’s throat. He collapses at her feet, hands clawing at a wound that doesn’t stop spilling.
She doesn’t look at him. She looks at me, lips curved in something dangerous. “Keep up.”
I almost laugh, almost tell her she has no idea how much I’ve been waiting to hear her say that. Instead, I reload, push forward, and match her pace.
The front door hangs open, splintered by a battering ram.
The thunder of gunfire isn’t all Drazen’s.
Elias’s men are already here. I catch them through the chaos—two crouched behind the ruined front gate, returning fire with practiced precision, another dragging a wounded merc out of the street and finishing him with a clean shot to the head.
These aren’t mercenaries hired by the highest bidder; they’re Elias’s, bound by the kind of loyalty men only give to someone they both fear and worship.
One of them nods once as we pass, no words wasted. They know who we’re here for. They know who Elias will kill them for if they fail.
We rush inside, boots crunching over broken glass. The interior is chaos. Furniture overturned, blood smeared across the walls, bodies already cooling in the hall… The air is thick, humid with gunfire and fear.
Lydia moves at my side like she’s tethered to me, covering blind spots, finishing the strikes I start. We don’t talk. We don’t plan. We move as if we’ve rehearsed this in another life, the choreography baked into our very bones.
From upstairs, a scream cuts through the air. Mara.
Elias’s head snaps up. The storm inside him breaks. He charges the staircase, firing at anything that moves. Men drop like paper targets, their weapons skittering across the floor. Jax follows, panting, eyes wide.
I grab Lydia’s wrist, tugging her forward. “We don’t let him get there alone.”
She doesn’t resist.
Together, we take the stairs two at a time, bullets whining past us, boots pounding against wood soaked with someone else’s blood.
We’re going to reach her, or we’re going to die trying.
Two of Elias’s men are inside, bleeding out on the floor near the threshold.
They gave us a short nod when they saw Elias, recognition evident on their worn-out faces.
Their presence is a brutal reminder: Elias didn’t just send muscle ahead to hold ground; he sent men to hold down the front until he could reach her.
It buys Mara seconds, maybe more, but seconds matter. Seconds are the difference between a scream that ends in silence and a scream that Elias can answer with bullets.
Three men circle Mara, who’s pressed against the wall, clutching a broken lamp like it’s a weapon worth anything. Her hair is tangled, her blouse torn, her eyes wide with sheer terror.
Elias doesn’t pause. He fires once, twice, three times. The men drop like flies, their spurting blood painting the carpet crimson. The echoes haven’t even died before he’s on her, shoving the gun back into his holster and pulling her against him.
“Mara,” he says, voice breaking in a way I’ve never heard. His hands move over her shoulders, her face, checking for wounds, holding her like he could fuse her body to his just by force of will. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
She’s trembling, clutching at him like he’s the only solid thing in a collapsing world. A lone lighthouse in this shitstorm. Tears streak down her face, but she nods, choking on sobs that won’t stop.
Elias lowers his mouth to Mara’s hair, murmuring words too quiet for us to hear, his hand fisted against the small of her back.
She shakes, but she nods, nods again, letting his strength wrap around her like armor.
He doesn’t notice us anymore. His world has narrowed to the space between her heartbeat and his.
For a moment, the battle disappears.
It’s just Elias and her, a storm wrapped around its center, nothing else able to touch them.
One of Elias’s men, already shot, staggers against the far wall. He lifts his weapon weakly, but Elias ignores him—his attention is only on Mara. Loyalty kept the man alive long enough to see his boss reach her. Nothing else matters.
I glance at Lydia. She’s frozen, her knife still gripped in her hand, her chest heaving. Her eyes aren’t on the bodies littering the floor. They’re on Elias, on the way his rage has melted into raw, savage devotion. On what he’s showing without meaning to: a devotion so raw it borders on madness.
And I see it—the flicker in her gaze. Curiosity. Unease. Maybe envy.
Because this is what devotion looks like when it’s stripped down to bone: a man who would gut the world just to keep one woman breathing.
She feels it. I know she does. And she hates herself for it.
I see her falter. Just slightly. Enough for me to know she’s imagining what it feels like to be held like that—protected not because it’s practical, but because it’s ruinous, because it makes a man like Elias tear through the world barehanded.
Elias pulls Mara closer, burying his face against her hair. His voice is low, harsh, meant only for her. “I’ll never let them touch you again. Not while I breathe.”
Lydia turns her head, catches me as my gaze flicks back to her. And it’s a mistake.
I close the distance in three strides. My hand fists in her collar, dragging her forward until our mouths collide. It isn’t a kiss. It’s teeth, rage, the taste of blood and gunpowder. She gasps against me, not from surprise but from the way her body betrays her.
Her knife slips from her fingers, clattering against the floor. Her hands seize my jacket instead, yanking me closer, refusing to let me be the only one taking.
She tears her lips free long enough to hiss against my mouth, “You’ll destroy me.”
I press harder, teeth grazing her bottom lip. My voice is a growl against her skin. “That’s the point.”
It’s desperate, feral, nothing soft about it. The kiss isn’t a comfort. It’s a war we’ve both been waiting to lose.
When we finally break apart, her eyes are blazing, her chest heaving, her pulse hammering so hard I can feel it against my own.
Even in this hell, when she smiles at me, she looks like a goddamn angel.