18. Killian
KILLIAN
Pain drags me back to consciousness. I can taste copper on my tongue. Blood. Mine or someone else’s, I don’t fucking know. My head throbs where something connected during the blast, but that pain is background noise compared to the fucking gut-punch realization that Ellie is gone.
Gone.
The word loops in my head. Gone. Gone. Fucking gone. Getting louder every time.
I force my eyes open. My eyelashes are stuck together with something wet, probably blood. The world spins, all smoke and orange flame, chunks of white drywall raining down through the haze like ash.
I push myself to my knees, chunks of plaster and splintered wood falling from my shoulders.
The back of Ellie's house has been obliterated, leaving nothing but a skeletal frame and smoldering debris. Fire eats through what’s left of the living room wall, casting everything in a hellish orange glow.
The air is thick with gunpowder, blood, and charred wood. What’s left of her home turning to ash.
When I finally stand, the world tilts dangerously. I steady myself against a half-collapsed doorframe, my fingers digging into the wood hard enough to drive splinters under my nails. I don't feel it. I can’t feel anything except that she’s not here.
My eyes search the devastation for survivors, for her, even as my rational mind knows they've taken her.
I saw the motherfuckers carry her unconscious body through the smoke, heard her name spoken into a comm unit that promised a fate worse than death.
I lunged for her, bullets tearing into the wall beside my head, before the sharp sting in my chest took my legs from under me.
The tranquilizer worked faster than the explosion that finally separated us.
I’ve failed her.
The ache in my chest is replaced by nothing but rage. Pure. Fucking. Rage. The kind I lived and breathed before Ellie. The only fuel my system ever needed.
Fuck that.
My hands are shaking, and the world spins, but I don’t care. Blood runs into my left eye. I can taste smoke and drywall dust every time I breathe. None of it registers beyond white noise.
They took her.
I’m getting her back.
I’m going to kill every single bastard who touched her. The surrounding chaos sharpens into focus. Every sound, every scent, every detail. I clear my mind, narrowing my focus to a single point: finding her.
That’s all that matters.
Movement to my left. My hand reaches for the gun that’s not there anymore, but I’m already spinning, ready to kill with my bare hands if I have to.
Gabriel limps through the wreckage, one arm pressed tight against his ribs.
Blood soaks through his tactical shirt. The stain spreading, reaching for his belt.
He’s been with me long enough to know when shit’s gone sideways, and right now he’s looking at me like he’s working out how close I am to losing it completely.
Close, Gabe. Really fucking close.
“You alive?” My throat feels like I swallowed broken glass.
“I'll live.” Gabe catches a support beam to stop himself from falling. “Some fucker shot at me. You look like you went through a wood chipper.”
“Fuck you.” I wipe blood from my forehead. I don’t know if it’s mine and don’t care enough to check. “Where are Jackson and Kai?”
“Jackson’s out back. He found where they had carried her through the ravine. Tire tracks everywhere.” His expression darkens. “Kai’s in the back of the house. Found seven of them, but they’re all dead.”
“Search the crawlspaces,” I say, heading for the trauma kit. “If anything is still breathing in this house, I want it alive long enough to talk.”
Gabe follows, his boots crunching on broken subfloor.
“Killian. We’re going to get her back. Every one of us is on this until she’s home.”
“I’m not here to talk, Gabe. I’m here to kill every motherfucker Julian Ross sent. Starting with the first one we find alive.”
I tear open the cabinets, shoving aside her meticulously organized rows of pasta to get to the trauma kit. I pull out a tube of surgical wound glue and run a thick bead of it over the gash on my forehead. It burns like acid, but I don’t give a shit.
Focus. Patch Gabe. Find Ellie.
I turn to assess Gabe's wound. The gash runs along his right side, messy but missing the vitals. I clean it and tape it tight. He winces, but doesn't complain, while my mind starts mapping Julian's preferred methods for moving hostages.
Because that's what Ellie is to them now. A hostage. A high-value asset. He won't just hide her; he'll bury her in a logistical loop designed to make her disappear before the sun comes up.
We descend into the basement, where the concrete has been blasted by a specialist demolition charge. A gaping hole reveals a drainage tunnel that leads straight out to the ravine. Evidence that whoever did this had engineering expertise, proper equipment, and time. Lots of time.
Gabriel reaches into the wreckage. His fingers come away bloody as he fishes out a matte-black device from the gap. It’s a military-grade jammer, scorched and still humming with residual heat. He turns it over in his hand, his thumb tracing the serial number etched into the casing.
“This wasn’t some half-assed grab job.”
“Ross has been recruiting ex-military psychos for cells like this for years,” I reply, kicking a piece of rubble with my boot. “Pays better than any private contract and doesn’t give a shit how many war crimes you’ve racked up.”
“Still doesn’t explain how they found the drainage tunnels. We swept this entire place. Those access points were sealed tighter than a nun's—”
“They didn’t need our access points,” I cut him off, the realization fully forming. “They made their own entrance. They’ve been digging in from outside the property line like moles for weeks, Gabe. Just waiting for the signal.”
I crouch beside the hole, running my fingers along the clean-cut edges of the concrete.
Ross taught me this. The breach, the exactitude, the timing, everything.
He used to say breaking a body was effective, but breaking a mind was art.
I didn't understand what he meant back then.
Now, with Ellie wherever he's taken her, I understand exactly.
Julian doesn't just want her for leverage. He's going to dismantle her until she becomes something he can use.
Jackson appears at the service entrance, his boots and tactical gear caked in mud from the ravine.
He tosses a bloody tactical patch onto the concrete.
It’s a matte-black circle, the edges frayed where he ripped it from a dead man’s shoulder.
Stitched in metallic silver thread, the words arch over and under the center: Sine at the top, Fine at the bottom.
Anchoring the space between them is the infinity loop, the same mark branded into my chest. Without End.
It’s a promise that once you're caught in their cycle, you never truly leave it.
"Found their exit point. Half a mile west, in the ravine. Tire tracks everywhere. Split into different vehicles."
"But you found something?" I see a gleam in his eye.
A vicious grin splits his face. "Caught one of their little bitches limping back to the extraction point. Kid’s a mess, but he’s alive. Kai has him in the office now, having a friendly chat with him.”
"Let's see how friendly we can get."
We find them in what remains of Ellie’s office.
Kai is standing over the operative, cleaning a blade with a rag.
The Order kid is zip-tied to a chair, his left leg bound in a crude tourniquet.
He’s young, maybe early-twenties, if that.
Dead eyes. The kind of zealot Julian likes to recruit, brave enough to follow orders, stupid enough to die for them.
Kai is the only one among us who has never worked for the Order.
Raised by the Moretti family, an old-school mob family that’s controlled the East Coast ports for three generations.
He was built for their world way before I met him on a job in Brooklyn.
Our territories crossed at the worst possible time.
The Order and the Moretti’s both wanted the same head on a platter.
It went sideways, bad enough to leave me with a bullet three inches from my heart.
He spent the night pulling the fragments out at a backstreet clinic.
That kind of blood makes brothers out of enemies.
“He’s not talking,” Kai says without looking up. "Claims he’s just muscle."
I approach slowly, watching the operative's eyes track my movement. He knows who I am. Good. That will save time.
"You know who I am," I say, my voice eerily calm even to my own ears. "You know what I've done for the Order. And what I've done to people who've crossed me."
"You're nothing now, Blackthorn," the kid spits. "You’re just a cautionary tale for the new recruits. The legend who thought he got away."
I let the silence stretch until the kid starts to shift in the chair. Then I move. I pull up a chair and sit close. Close enough to see the sweat on his upper lip.
This is the part Ellie can never see. I lock the door on the man she thinks I'm becoming and reach into Kai's toolkit for the needle-nose pliers.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” My voice is conversational. “For each honest answer, I’ll make this quick. For each lie...”
I let the sentence hang. He fills in the rest.
The kid spits at my feet. "Fuck you."
I nod. Then, without warning, I slide the pliers over his pinky finger, catching the joint. Then, I ram them home and twist.
The crunch of bone giving way is followed by the sickening slide of the joint rotating in the socket. I feel the resistance of the tendons before they snap and give, the entire finger turning at an unholy angle it was never meant to hold.
He doesn't scream at first. The shock is too much. He gasps, his back arching off the chair, his eyes rolling until only the whites show. He sags, gasping for air, his face deathly grey.
I release the torque but keep the pliers locked on the shattered joint.
"Where is she?"
"I don't—"