Chapter 31 #2
Ellsworth looked completely unruffled. Not a hair out of place. His suit—because, of course, he'd worn a suit under his jacket—still looked pressed. The only indication he'd been working was the slight sheen on his forehead and the pistol in his hand.
"He's not here," I said, frustration bleeding into my voice despite my best efforts to stay professional.
"Perhaps," Ellsworth replied, measured. "But there's one area we haven't checked yet."
He nodded toward the far end of the floor. A reinforced door. The only door in the entire building that looked recently installed. New lock. New hinges. Heavy steel frame that would stop anything short of a battering ram.
The kind of door you installed when you wanted privacy. When you wanted to feel safe.
When you had something to hide.
We approached in unison, movements synchronized without needing discussion. Years of operating in teams had taught both of us the same tactical vocabulary that transcended words.
I stacked up on the right. Ellsworth took the left.
I counted down with my fingers. Three. Two. One.
We breached together.
The door wasn't locked—overconfidence or laziness, probably both—and we flowed through like water, pistols up, scanning for threats.
Two men inside. Both armed with holstered handguns. Both reaching when we entered.
Both dead before their fingers touched metal.
Four shots in less than two seconds, the suppressed reports overlapping like drumbeats. Ellsworth was only a split second behind my shots, his accuracy just as precise.
And there, on a worn leather sofa in the center of the room, was Merrick.
A woman knelt between his legs, the wet sounds obscene in the sudden silence left by gunfire.
Merrick's eyes met mine over her shoulder.
They went cold. Flat. Empty of anything resembling humanity.
It was the same look he'd had when we were kids. The same look he'd worn when he was about to do something that would leave scars. The look of someone who genuinely enjoyed causing pain.
He pushed the woman away roughly, not even looking at her as she stumbled and fell. He stood, pulling up his pants with deliberate slowness.
"Connor fucking Ward," he said, zipping up like we'd just run into each other at a bar. "You have no idea what you're doing."
"Yes," I said, my voice steady despite the rage building in my chest like pressure behind a dam. "I very much do."
He laughed, the sound echoing off concrete.
"The old gang got bigger, brother. A lot bigger than you remember. They're going to come after you with everything they've got. You and your half-wit friends who thought they could just walk away."
He stepped closer, hands spread wide like he was being reasonable. Like we were negotiating instead of standing in a room with two fresh corpses cooling on the floor.
"You can either come along, reintegrate like good little soldiers, or get an early burial. Your choice. But those are the only two options on the table."
"That's not going to happen," I said.
The emotions were getting the best of me. I could feel it happening—the careful control I'd spent years building, the professional detachment that had kept me alive through dozens of operations, starting to crack like ice under weight.
I was a professional. A SEAL. The tip of the goddamn spear. I'd operated in conditions that would break most men. Had done things that still woke me up some nights.
But seeing Merrick—the one who'd tormented me, who'd held a loaded gun to my head when we were sixteen and laughed while I shook, who'd made every day at St. Paul's its own special hell—sent everything cascading back decades.
I felt like that kid again. Small. Powerless. Afraid.
I shook it off. Forced the training to override the trauma. Compartmentalized like I'd been taught.
But it lingered.
God, it lingered like smoke in my lungs.
"You took everything from me," I said, and my voice came out rougher than I intended. "And I'm going to find every last motherfucker in your organization and do what I should've done before. Put them in the ground where they belong."
Merrick's smile widened, showing teeth. "You don't have the balls."
I shot him in the shoulder.
The suppressed round made a soft cough. Merrick grunted with the impact, stumbling back, clutching his arm as blood immediately started seeping between his fingers.
The girl in the corner—I'd almost forgotten she was there—stifled a scream, her hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide with terror.
"Ellsworth," I said calmly, not taking my eyes off Merrick. "Take her."
The butler moved immediately, holstering his weapon and approaching the terrified woman with gentle firmness. I could hear him speaking in low, soothing French, coaxing her toward the door with words I couldn't quite make out over the roaring that had started in my ears.
The door closed behind them.
And then it was just me and Merrick.
Fucking Merrick.
He had his hand pressed to his shoulder, blood dripping onto concrete in thick drops that looked black in the dim light. But he was still smiling. Still playing whatever game he thought he was winning.
"You say we took everything from you," he said, voice tight with pain but laced with something darker. Something that sounded like satisfaction. "But you have no idea, do you?"
Ice slid down my spine.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
He laughed again, quieter this time but somehow worse. More genuine. The laugh of someone who knew they'd already won something I didn't understand yet.
"Spit it out," I said, raising the pistol again and aiming at his other shoulder, "or I'm putting another round in you."
"I was the one who set your parents' building on fire," Merrick said.
The world stopped.
Everything stopped.
"What?"
"Your mom and dad," he continued, and his smile widened at whatever he saw in my face.
"That 'tragic accident.' The faulty wiring story everyone believed.
I did it. Poured the gasoline myself in the stairwells where it would spread fastest. Lit the match and watched it catch.
Watched the whole thing burn from across the street.
Pretty sure that was your mommy screaming. "
Horror exploded through me like a grenade going off in my chest, shrapnel tearing through everything I thought I knew.
"It wasn't fast," Merrick added, his voice almost gentle now. Almost kind. "They tried to get out. I could hear them screaming from where I stood. But by then the exits were already engulfed. So they went back inside. And then the whole thing came down."
He tilted his head, studying my face like I was an art piece in a gallery.
"The look on your face right now," he whispered. "That's exactly what I've always wanted to see."
I didn't remember deciding to move.
Didn't remember crossing the distance between us.
One moment, I was standing by the door, trying to process words that couldn't possibly be true. The next, I was standing over him, the pistol bucking in my hand, rounds punching through flesh and bone and cartilage, each shot obliterating a little more of the face that had haunted me for decades.
The magazine emptied.
Click. Click. Click.
I kept pulling the trigger, anyway, the mechanical sound barely registering over the ringing in my ears.
Merrick's body lay sprawled on the concrete, limbs at unnatural angles, blood pooling dark and thick beneath what was left of his head.
He was very dead.