Chapter Eleven
THE SCAR ALONG my jaw pulled when I shifted it, a tight, familiar stretch that settled in with the rain like it always did, as if the weather remembered what had been done to me even when I didn’t allow myself to linger on it, and I stood at the window with one hand braced against the frame, working the stiffness loose while my reflection stared back from the glass, faint, warped by the darkness outside, but clear enough to remind me of what was left.
Mystic had done his job well. Just not well enough, because I was still breathing. Barely, for a time, something close to it, something that passed for living if you didn’t look too closely, but I had always been hard to kill, and that had been his mistake.
I exhaled slowly and let my jaw settle, the ache fading into something manageable, something known, because pain like this didn’t matter anymore, not the kind that could be measured, not the kind that faded if you gave it time, it was the other kind that stayed, the kind that didn’t leave no matter how deep you buried it.
Behind me, the room sat in controlled silence, ordered in a way that didn’t belong to men like me, where noise and movement were usually constant, where chaos lived just beneath the surface, and yet up here there was none of that, just stillness, just space, just enough quiet to let memory in whether I wanted it or not.
That night never left.
It lived in pieces, the weight of dirt, the pain, the sound of everything collapsing around me, and Jacob’s face above it all, pale and uncertain as he stared down at me like he didn’t know whether he was looking at a man or something already gone.
“Jesus Christ… you’re still breathing.”
I should have been dead before he ever got close enough to say it.
Instead, he dragged me out.
Not out of loyalty, men like Jacob didn’t understand loyalty, but out of instinct, out of that quiet, selfish calculation that told him I might be worth something if I survived, that dragging me out of that grave might buy him favor, protection, a place he hadn’t earned.
Rats didn’t act without reason.
My hand tightened slightly against the window frame as the memory settled in, not loud anymore, not immediate, just something that sat beneath the surface like it had always been there, waiting.
That was the moment everything shifted. Not when Mystic left me in the dirt. Not when the clubhouse burned.
When I woke up somewhere I didn’t belong and didn’t want to be, staring up at white ceilings and clean walls, breathing air that didn’t smell like smoke or blood, surrounded by machines that hummed instead of roared, and men who didn’t ask questions because they were paid not to.
And Gabrial.
Standing at the foot of the bed, watching me like he’d already decided what I was worth before I ever opened my eyes. “You can’t die yet. You still owe me.”
I hadn’t answered him.
For weeks, I hadn’t answered anyone, because there was nothing left to say after what I’d done, after the order I’d given, after the fire I’d set in motion with nothing more than a word.
Burn it. Burn it all. Make sure nothing survives. Including her.
For a while, I didn’t fight death, I let it come if it wanted to, let the pain take what it needed, because I had already taken everything that mattered from myself, but death didn’t come, and eventually I stopped waiting for it, stopped caring whether it ever did.
What replaced it wasn’t regret.
It was purpose.
Revenge had a way of keeping a man alive when nothing else could.
Healing took time, and time was something I had always known how to use, something I had never rushed, because patience had never been a weakness of mine, it was the thing that let me survive when others didn’t.
I pushed away from the window and moved across the room, slow and deliberate, the stiffness still there but buried deeper now, not a limitation, not something that slowed me down, just a reminder of what it had taken to get back here.
Because I had gotten back.
Gabrial was gone, his empire fractured like they always were in the end, men like him believing they were untouchable right up until the moment they weren’t, and with him gone there was nothing left tying me to that bed, to that debt, to anything that had held me in place.
I was back where I belonged, with the Fire Dragons, or what was left of them after everything that had burned and scattered and thinned out into something weaker than it should’ve been, men gone, loyalty stretched thin, nothing left of what had once stood solid except ash and memory, and still I put it back together anyway, piece by piece, quiet and deliberate, without drawing attention to it, because that was how I did everything, controlled, measured, without waste, until the club breathed again the same way I did, not clean, not whole, but alive.
Not everything came back with it.
Some things stayed in that fire.
My gaze drifted back to the window, to the reflection that never quite sat right, and I didn’t need to say her name for it to be there, sitting just beneath the surface where it always was, in the silence, in the space between thoughts, in that moment before sleep when control slipped enough for it to rise whether I allowed it or not.
Zeynep. Dead because of me.
My jaw tightened, the scar pulling harder as it came back, not the pain, but the certainty I’d had when I gave it, when I decided how it would end, because if I couldn’t have her, no one would.
I let it rise just long enough to feel the edge of it again before forcing it back where it belonged, because guilt didn’t change anything, didn’t undo what had been done, didn’t bring anything back, and I had no use for anything that didn’t serve a purpose.
They had taken her from me, left me in the dirt, walked away like it ended something, like it was done.
It wasn’t.
It just delayed it.
I picked up my phone, scrolling through messages, movements, information already in place, pieces set on a board long before anyone realized they were part of it, names and patterns and small details that most people would overlook.
One of them held my attention longer than the rest—Evie—not because she mattered, but because she was where I needed her to be, a small piece already in place, something that could be moved when necessary without complication.
I didn’t think about her beyond that.
There was no reason to.
She was a means, and that was all I required her to be.
A soft knock sounded at the door, pulling my attention just enough, and I didn’t look up from the screen as I reached for the knife resting beside it, the blade sliding easily into my hand as I tested the edge with my thumb, not enough to cut, just enough to feel how sharp it was, before setting it back down in the exact place it had been.
“Yeah.”
Ruby stepped inside, soft where everything else in my world was not, her smile careful, like she already understood more than she wanted to admit about the kind of room she had just walked into.
“Drago,” she said quietly, moving toward me.
My eyes lifted, moving over her without effort, taking in the details she thought mattered, the ones she thought would be enough, and the disappointment settled in the same place it always did.
In the right light, for a second… no. Not even close. No one would ever replace Zeynep.
“You have news?” I asked, letting her come close enough to touch me, because sometimes it was easier not to stop it than to deal with what came after.
“Yeah,” she said, wrapping her arms around me like she belonged there. “Gatsby took Evie to the clubhouse last night.”
“And?” I unwrapped her hands without force, just enough to remind her where she stood, and moved toward the bed.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I haven’t talked to her yet.”
I glanced back at her, the look enough on its own. “Then why the fuck are you here?”
She faltered, searching for something to give me. “I… wanted to see you.”
I picked up my phone again, pulling up the picture without thinking—Zeynep sitting on my bike, sunlight catching in her hair, looking like something that had never belonged in a world like mine in the first place.
For a moment, it hit warm. Then it settled into something colder. Something useful. Ruby shifted behind me, waiting, always waiting for something I was never going to give her. I set the phone down.
“Fine,” I said, my voice low, controlled, already gone from the moment before it could touch anything real. “Get the fuck over here.”
She moved quickly. She always did. And for a few minutes, I let the lie exist.