Chapter 36 – Silas - Cut Loose
Lydia is watching me the way people watch wild animals, with equal parts fascination and calculation.
One wrong twitch and she’ll bolt, or bite.
I can’t decide which one I want more. I wonder if there’s anything she could do at this point that could make me want her less.
I wouldn’t bet on it. Everything about her drives me fucking crazy.
Obsession is right.
I tighten my grip on her wrists around my waist, feel the bones shifting under my hands. “Say something,” I tell her. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, like gravel dragged across asphalt.
She tilts her chin, eyes cutting into me. “What do you want me to say? Congratulations? You’ve gone from being owned by the Bureau to being owned by nothing. That’s not freedom, Silas. That’s suicide with a slower clock.”
The sting lands, but I don’t let go. “Then I’ll run the clock down my way.”
Her laugh is sharp, brittle, bouncing off plaster. “And you expect me to stand beside you while you bleed out?”
“I expect you to stop pretending you don’t at least want to.”
That silences her. For once. Her jaw works, tight, like she wants to spit something brutal, but the words stick. Her pulse hammers against my thumbs where I’m holding her.
“You think throwing away your badge proves something,” she says finally, voice lower, throat tight. “It doesn’t. You’re still a man who came here to hunt. That’s the only reason our paths ever crossed.”
I lean down until my forehead presses into hers, until she can’t look anywhere but at me. “That was the mission,” I admit. “But the mission’s dead. You’re what’s left. AlI I’ve got now. All I want.”
Her breath snags—small, sharp, the kind of sound she’ll deny making later.
I let go of her wrists, but she doesn’t pull them back. They stay against me, her palms flat on my skin, nails pressing into my sides. Testing. Waiting for me to slip.
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she whispers, repeating it like a prayer.
I grin, bare teeth, sharp as knives. “Then belong to nothing. With me.”
Her eyes flash, and for a second, I think she’ll hit me. Instead, she tears her hands away, clutching the towel around herself like armor. She turns her back on me, walking toward the bed, her shoulders stiff.
It should feel like rejection. It doesn’t. It feels like victory, just because she didn’t leave this time.
I watch her crawl onto the mattress, dripping onto the sheets already ruined with sweat and come, and lie down on her side, facing the cracked wall. She doesn’t say another word.
But she doesn’t tell me to leave, either.
I grab the towel off my hips, scrub it through my hair once, then throw it aside. My body aches from the fight, from the sex, from the admission I just made. But the ache feels good. Clean.
I slip into the bed behind her, fitting my body to hers the way I had hours ago. My arm hooks over her waist again, possessive, heavy, mine.
This time she doesn’t flinch.
She breathes out, slow, controlled, but I feel the tremor that runs through her.
And I smile into her wet hair, because that’s all the answer I need.
The morning doesn’t creep in. It slams. Light carves through the blinds in crooked stripes, cutting across the room like prison bars. Lydia stirs in my arms, then pulls herself free, leaving the imprint of her body against mine like she branded me in heat.
She doesn’t look at me as she slips off the bed. She wraps herself in yesterday’s clothes, smooths her hair with her fingers, reclaims her armor one layer at a time. By the time she’s at the door, she’s Lydia again—the fixer, the razor, not the woman who moaned into my mouth under scalding water.
She leaves without a word.
I sit up, grab my jeans, and follow.
The safehouse is restless. Jax sits at the table nursing a cup of coffee like it might save his life, eyes still hollow from the night before. Elias is on the phone again, pacing like a caged predator, every step sharp, decisive. His voice cuts in and out—names, orders, threats.
And Mara is at the counter with her sleeves rolled up, stirring sugar into her tea like this is just another, run-of-the-mill morning and we’re just a happy little family.
But I can’t miss the care with which her eyes track Lydia the second she walks in.
There’s something quiet about her gaze, the kind of stillness that makes men underestimate her.
I know better than to do that. Elias Voss wouldn’t fall in love with a woman with a paper-spine.
There is more to Mara than meets the eye.
As if to prove it, when Elias turns his back to bark into the phone, Mara moves. She catches Lydia by the wrist, a soft catch compared to the way I did it, but it roots Lydia just the same. She leans in, her voice pitched low.
“Men like him don’t give without taking,” Mara says. Her tone isn’t cruel. It’s caution, a warning folded into tenderness. “Make sure you can live with the bargain before you pay the cost.”
Lydia doesn’t jerk away, but I see the flare in her eyes. Anger, yes. But something else too—fear, the kind she doesn’t let anyone see.
She tilts her head, voice edged with venom to cover the sting. “Appreciate the sermon, Mara. Maybe save it for Elias. He’s the one who’d burn the city down if you bled.”
The words land harder than she means them to. Mara flinches, just a twitch, but she covers it with a sip of her tea. Her gaze doesn’t waver, though. “Maybe that’s the point. Burning is easy. Living with the ashes… that’s harder.”
I watch all of it from across the room, unseen but listening, and something sharp twists in me. Because Mara isn’t wrong. She’s telling Lydia what I already know: I’ve cut every leash, and now the only tether I’ve got is her.
And she hates herself for wanting to hold it.
Elias slams the phone down, dragging all eyes back to him. His expression is carved from ice. “Enough chatter. Drazen’s leverage sits at Petrov. Tonight, we will take it. Drazen wants me out of this, that’s why he went after Mara, he doesn’t know he has made it even more personal to me now.”
The table falls silent. Lydia slips free of Mara’s hand, crossing her arms tight across her chest, her immaculate mask firmly back in place.
But I saw the crack. And Mara saw it too.
No one speaks. Not Jax, not Mara, not Lydia. And definitely not me.
Elias’s gaze cuts to Jax. “You’ll handle the entry. Drive us in, keep the exit clear. You choke, you’re left behind.”
The kid nods fast, too fast, his throat bobbing. Elias doesn’t care if he’s scared; he cares if he can obey.
Then Elias’s eyes shift to me. Hard, measuring, like he knows I’ve got more ghosts chasing me than bullets. “You’re with Lydia,” he says flatly. “Inside. She knows the layout, the players. You don’t miss, you don’t hesitate, and if Drazen’s men touch her, you don’t breathe until they’re dead.”
The command is simple. Brutal. And it lands like a fucking gift. Because Elias might not trust me, but he just tethered me to her in the one way that matters: survival.
I glance at Lydia, waiting for her to flinch at the pairing.
She doesn’t. She leans closer to the map instead, tracing a line along the drawn corridors with one painted nail.
“His men patrol in rotations of six. If he’s expecting us, they’ll double it.
The vault will be reinforced, and if we don’t cut power fast, the backup servers will ghost the files. We’ll need to torch it completely.”
Her voice is calm. Calculated. Like she’s discussing dinner plans, not arson.
Elias nods once. “Torch it. Torch everything. No records. No cages left.”
The silence that follows is heavy, final.
Then Elias gathers the map, folds it, tucks it under his arm. “Tonight,” he says, his voice slicing clean through the air. “We end Drazen’s leash. Rest, reload, sharpen whatever edge you’ve got left. Because when we walk into Petrov, we don’t walk out until it’s over.”
He turns, Mara moving with him, her hand brushing his arm, grounding him. They disappear down the hall, leaving the rest of us in the dim light of the safehouse.
Jax busies himself with checking his weapon, though his hands shake with every magazine he loads.
Lydia doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t have to. I can feel her—the weight of her defiance, the heat of her unease, the pulse of something sharp and dangerous binding us tighter with every second.
I lean back against the wall, watching her, letting the promise settle in my chest like a fuse waiting for fire.
No Bureau. No leash. No masks. Just this.
Her.
And Petrov Station.
The hours drag but don’t settle. The safehouse hums like a wire stretched too tight, each of us vibrating with what we’re holding inside.
Jax cleans his gun three times over, muttering under his breath like the weapon might listen better than any of us. He’s young, too young for this weight, but Elias is right—either the boy learns to carry it or he breaks.
Mara stays close to Elias, her presence quieter than the rest of us, but I notice how he moves with her always within arm’s reach. His storm doesn’t settle, but it circles her like she’s the eye at its center.
Lydia is a different kind of storm. She sits at the table, dismantling a pistol piece by piece, laying it out in perfect order.
Her hands don’t shake, her gaze doesn’t wander.
She’s colder than any of us, the kind of calm that makes me want to rip it apart just to see what she looks like when the mask cracks again.
Elias finally gathers us at dusk. The light outside is blood-orange, sliding into shadows that stretch long across the floorboards. He spreads the map again, the paper already creased from his grip, and his voice slices through the room.
“I called for more men,” he says. “Ones I trust. They’ll run perimeter and hold our exit routes. If things go south, and they might, we won’t be boxed in. If Drazen throws more bodies at us, we’ll have the muscle to cut through.”
He looks at each of us in turn, his gaze a weight heavier than any gun he could carry. “Inside is ours. Outside is theirs. Don’t mistake which fight belongs to who.”
Jax nods too fast, clutching his gun like a lifeline. Mara folds her arms, her expression unreadable, though I see the flicker in her eyes when she glances at him. Lydia just smirks faintly, tapping one nail against the barrel of her pistol.
And me? I don’t nod. I don’t smirk. I just hold Elias’s gaze until he moves on, because I don’t follow men like him. I follow one thing only, and she’s sitting across the table, her eyes cutting toward me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
By the time the last light drains from the sky, the safehouse feels stripped bare, everything that mattered reduced to weapons and willpower. Clips stacked. Knives strapped to boots. Elias’s voice still echoing through the walls: tonight, we end Drazen’s leash.
The air tastes of gun oil and tension.
Elias moves first, pushing the door wide. Mara follows, a hand brushing his back as though she’s tethered to him, and maybe she is. I hear Jax mutter under his breath when he sees her, confusion heavy in his tone. “She’s coming?”
Elias doesn’t break stride. “She doesn’t leave my sight again.” The words are steel, flat and final. “If Drazen wants her as leverage, he won’t find her undefended.”
Mara says nothing, but her hand curls tighter against his arm.
Lydia steps past me, close enough that her arm grazes mine, her perfume mingling with the tang of oil and leather. Her smirk is there again, cruel and sharp, aimed only at me. “Don’t choke, Agent. I’d hate to waste my time cleaning up your corpse.”
I grin, teeth bared. “If I fall, sweetheart, I’m making sure you’re under me when I do.”
Her laugh is low, mocking, but she doesn’t deny it.
Outside, Jax slides behind the wheel, stiff as a corpse propped up in the driver’s seat. His hands grip the steering wheel like he’s afraid it might buck him off.
Elias claims the front passenger seat, his posture rigid, a gun resting across his thigh.
He doesn’t look at anyone when he shuts the door, but his hand brushes Mara’s arm as she climbs into the backseat, sitting directly behind Elias, a small tether, a promise that he won’t let her out of his reach again.
Jax adjusts his grip on the wheel, knuckles pale, the kid’s jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grind from here.
I slide into the back beside Lydia. She sits between Mara and I; knife balanced on her thigh, her gaze fixed forward like the horizon’s already bleeding. Mara’s pistol sits across her lap, her eyes flicking once to Elias in the mirror before she looks down.
The car feels too small, too full of weapons and silence, every body in it carrying its own brand of tension.
The engine coughs once, then growls to life. Gravel spits under the tires as we pull onto the road.
Headlights sweep across the block behind us, one pair, then another, then two more.
Shapes of men inside shadowed cars, silhouettes I don’t need introductions for.
Elias’s reinforcements. They don’t honk, don’t signal, don’t draw attention, they just fall into formation behind us, a wolf pack trailing their alpha.
No one in our car speaks. Elias stares dead ahead, a loaded gun across his lap, his free hand brushing Mara’s wrist every few seconds like he’s checking she’s still there.
Jax sits rigid in the driver’s seat, his breathing too fast, the kind of rhythm men get when they’re not sure if they’ll live to see the next sunrise.
Lydia sits so close her thigh presses against mine, though she doesn’t acknowledge it. Her gaze never wavers from the road. Her hand rests loose on her knife hilt, casual but ready, like she could slit throats between turns without breaking pace.
The city stretches out ahead of us—alleys narrowing, bridges looming, streets glowing faint in patches of neon. The hum of nightlife carries on as if no one else knows the war riding through its veins tonight.
And me? I sit still, pulse steady, mind sharper than it’s ever been.
No Bureau. No leash. No safety net.
All that’s left is this car, this night, this woman beside me, and the fire waiting for us at Petrov Station.