Chapter 2
Killian
It’s past midnight on a Friday, and I’m alone with someone else’s motorcycle. That’s about as close to peace as I get.
The Ironworks is lit by industrial pendants that throw hard shadows across exposed brick, and the tools hanging on the far wall are arranged with the kind of precision that would make a military inspector proud — which is the point.
The MV Agusta sits on the lift in front of me, a custom exhaust job for a client who pays enough not to ask questions.
Sparks shower off the weld like a small apocalypse, sizzling out on the concrete below.
I keep the arc steady. One twitch and the bead’s ruined, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that patience is the difference between clean work and work you have to redo.
The heat radiates up through my arms, mixing with the smell of burnt metal and motor oil, and the sweat pooling under my jacket is something I’ve long since stopped noticing.
I kill the torch, flip the visor up, and check the bead. Clean. No gaps, no undercut. I run my thumb along it and give myself one quiet moment of satisfaction before moving on.
This is the only time the noise stops. When it’s just me and the metal and the work, the rest of it — the exit routes I can’t stop mapping, the threat assessments running on a loop in the background like software I never asked to install — all of it goes quiet.
Just the torch and the weld and the simple question of whether the bead is clean.
My phone buzzes on the workbench. I wipe my hands and check the screen. Unknown number, but I know exactly who it is. The compound. 1AM. —S
Silas only summons in person when it’s a job. My body doesn’t react — no spike, no clench, nothing. Twenty years of conditioning took care of that particular reflex a long time ago. I kill the lights on the Agusta’s section and start cleaning up.
Before I leave, I open Instagram. My one secret vice, the only thing Silas doesn’t know about — or if he does, he hasn’t found it useful enough to take away yet. @smoke_and_glass commented on your post.
The corner of my mouth moves — the closest thing to a smile I’ve had in weeks.
I click on her profile for what has to be the hundredth time — those gray eyes in the photo staring back at me like she can see through the screen.
I scroll through the feed I already know by heart, the captions I’ve spent too long reading between the lines of.
She isn’t trying to be mysterious. She’s trying to tell someone the truth without saying it out loud.
I know that trick. I invented it.
I screenshot the comment and save it to the folder. The one I made for her. The one I’d rather take a bullet than let anyone find on my phone.
Don’t reply yet. You’re already too close to this one.
I lock the phone, lock the shop, and throw a leg over the matte black Ducati. The engine catches on the first kick, and I pull out into the dark.
The city lights thin out fast once I hit the highway north.
Pine trees crowd in on both sides, the air shifting from industrial to something sharp and clean, and the Monster’s engine is the only sound for miles.
My thighs grip the tank on the curves, body low, eyes reading the road the way they read every room I walk into — exits, sight lines, what’s behind me.
I can’t turn it off. Silas made sure of that.
The faster I go, the louder it gets — not thoughts, more like flashes.
A hand closing around my collar, fingers crushing my jaw.
I’ll teach you to be what people fear. I was ten.
I open the throttle wider. My first kill at fourteen — the sound of it and how quieter it was.
I go faster. When am I going to get my freedom?
I asked him that at twenty. He gave me three days in the Box. No food, no water, no light.
I ease off the throttle when the compound appears through the trees. Concrete, floodlights and armed guards who know better than to make eye contact with me. Silas’s Mercedes is in the garage. He’s waiting.
One more job. Maybe this is the one that gets me out.
I’ve been telling myself that for a decade.
His office smells like cigars and whiskey — it always smells like cigars and whiskey. Mounted animal heads line the walls, glass eyes catching the lamplight, and I’ve never worked out whether he keeps them as trophies or warnings. Probably both.
Silas is behind the oak desk, gray hair cut close, posture rigid the way it’s always been.
He doesn’t greet me. He never does. He just gestures at the chair with one finger and my body sits, because that’s what it does in this room — sits when told, stands when told, twenty years of that particular wiring running deeper than anything I’ve managed to build on top of it.
He slides a manila folder across the desk. “Malachi Vane. You’ve heard of him.”
I nod. Billionaire. Owns half the city’s medical infrastructure. The kind of man who has a charity named after him and a body count no one will ever audit.
Silas leans back and swirls his whiskey.
“I want him liquidated. Slowly.” He takes a sip, letting the word settle the way he always lets things settle — like he enjoys the weight of them.
“Drain his accounts first. Then take his daughter — ransom fifty million in crypto, offshore. Kill Vane at the exchange.”
“Timeline?”
“Five days for ransom. Clean execution.”
I take the folder and open it. Financial records, surveillance photos, property layouts — the standard package. I flip through the first few pages and then I stop.
Ivy Vane. 22. Biomedical Illustration degree. Only child.
I stare at the photograph. Heart-shaped face. Dark mahogany hair. Grey eyes — those gray eyes.
It’s her. It’s Smoke. It’s @smoke_and_glass.
The hand holding the photo tightens. Barely — just enough that I have to consciously lock every muscle in my arm to make sure Silas doesn’t catch it.
Her captions start moving through my head, every single one rearranging itself into something that makes a sick, perfect kind of sense.
She wasn’t performing. She wasn’t trying to be interesting.
She’s been trapped, and every caption was a scream dressed up in poetry because screaming was the one thing she couldn’t afford to do out loud.
And I’ve been screenshotting them. Saving them. Collecting them like a man who doesn’t know yet what he’s building evidence of.
“Grab her Friday night,” Silas continues, sounding bored in the way that means he’s already decided everything and is simply informing me. “She’ll be easy. Probably screams at shadows.”
She doesn’t scream at shadows. She studies them.
“Any questions?”
“No. I’ll handle it.”
Silas’s eyes narrow for just a moment — that old reflex, looking for cracks in me the way he’s always looked for cracks. I give him nothing. I’ve been giving him nothing since I was old enough to understand that showing him anything real was the same as handing him a weapon.
“The girl is disposable. I want Vane to feel every second of his empire crumbling, even in death.”
I nod, stand, and walk to the door. I’ll take the job. I’ll grab her. I’ll get the money. But I’m not killing her.
The file sits tucked inside my jacket, her photo pressed against my ribs, and I can feel it there the whole walk to the bike — like a burn that hasn’t broken the skin yet.
My hands are shaking when I pull on my gloves. That hasn’t happened in years. I look at them for a second, then squeeze the grips until my knuckles go white and the tremor stops.
I kick the Monster to life and tear out through the compound’s gates, putting as much distance as the engine will give me between myself and that concrete box.
The road is empty out here — just me, the dark and the smell of pine.
I should be planning. Surveillance routes, entry points, extraction timelines.
That’s what the job requires. Instead, I’m thinking about a girl with gray eyes who asked if my bike could outrun a crisis, and what it means that I saved the comment before I’d even replied to it.
I pull over. The engine ticks into silence and the sky above the trees is nothing but stars, no city glow to dull them out here.
I take out my phone, open her comment and type the reply. I hit send before I can think too hard about it, and then I just sit there with the phone in my hand, looking at her profile picture, at those gray eyes that don’t know I just put my name on a contract with hers.
Silas wants her dead. I want her free, and I’m not naive enough to pretend that makes me the good option — I’m still the man who’s going to steal her and dress it up as a rescue. But she’s not dying. That much I’ve already decided.
I pocket the phone, start the engine, and take the long way home because I’m not ready for the silence of the Ironworks yet.
The Monster screams under me as I open the throttle, the cold air burning through my jacket, the road glistening with mist in the headlight.
I lean forward and let the front wheel lift off the asphalt — holding the wheelie long and steady, nothing beneath me but speed and balance and road disappearing into the dark.