Chapter 4
Rook
The crowd parts around her like the tide around a rock.
From my seat above the floor, I watch through the dim gold haze of the VIP mezzanine.
Below, strobe lights cut through the smoke, painting the club in rhythm—black, gold, red.
The Riders move along the perimeter, shadows in motion.
Wraith’s the only one visible, guiding her forward with the careful precision of a handler who knows his creature could bite.
And she does look like something wild.
Smaller than I expected, but nothing about her reads fragile.
There’s a stiffness in her spine, the kind that comes from too many years waiting for the next blow.
Red hair tangled from struggle, blood blooming at the corner of her mouth from where she probably split her lip on a hit.
Her wrists are free. Good. I told Wraith not to bind her again.
I want to see how she moves.
The music’s pulse rolls through the floorboards under my boots, and for a moment, it feels like the whole building breathes with her heartbeat.
I hadn’t believed the photos could get her right—too flat, too still.
They didn’t show the fight. They didn’t show the spark that makes even fear look defiant.
Ash murmurs beside me, voice just loud enough to cut through the bass. “You’re staring.”
I don’t look away. “Observation.”
Vale snorts from his post at the bar rail. “You mean hunger.”
Saint’s already shaking his head. “She’s not a piece of art, Rook.”
“No,” I say softly. “Art doesn’t bleed when it’s touched.”
They fall silent at that, and I keep my eyes on her.
Ember Calloway. The sister of Owen Calloway, courier and traitor, executed three years ago after selling our shipment routes to the Russians.
I remember the file—the grainy photo, the address, the blood on the cobblestones.
I remember the way the city smelled that night, copper and rain.
But I never saw her up close. Only the intel reports, the monitor feeds, her murals scattered across East London—bright, furious things painted over crumbling walls like graffiti prayers.
And now she’s here, standing under my lights, alive and dangerous for reasons no one has yet managed to quantify.
Wraith stops a few feet from the table. Ember doesn’t bow. She doesn’t flinch. She meets my gaze through the smoke, and for a heartbeat, everything in the room stills.
She knows. Not who I am—but what kind of man sits surrounded by masks while she stands unarmed. Her jaw tightens. Defiance, threaded through fear.
“Miss Calloway,” I say at last. My voice carries, calm, deliberate. “You’ve had quite a week.”
“Kidnapping usually ruins my sleep schedule,” she replies.
Vale chuckles under his breath. Saint doesn’t. Ash glances at me, waiting for my reaction.
I smile. It’s a small thing, sharp at the edges. “You’re bold.”
“You’re criminals.”
“Accurate,” I say. “But that’s not what interests me.”
She crosses her arms. “Then what does?”
“Why you were in my vault.”
“I was looking for answers.”
“About your brother?”
Her mouth hardens. “You know damn well about my brother.”
“I know what the reports say,” I correct, leaning forward. “What I don’t know is why, three years later, his sister decided to crawl through my operations like a ghost chasing bones.”
She doesn’t answer, and that silence tells me more than any confession could. She’s not reckless—she’s desperate. Desperation always has a reason.
Wraith shifts behind her, silent as shadow. She senses it, doesn’t turn. Her pulse jumps in her throat. I track the motion without meaning to.
“Where is it?” I ask.
Her brow furrows. “Where’s what?”
“The drive you took.”
“I didn’t take anything,” she argues, defiance glittering in her pale blue eyes.
Lie. Too smooth to be her first.
I rise from my chair, and the table seems to shrink between us. The lights catch on the gold filigree of my mask as I descend the steps to the main floor. The crowd below keeps dancing, unaware that a different kind of rhythm rules the room now.
When I stop in front of her, she lifts her chin. She doesn’t step back.
Up close, she smells like paint thinner and rain. The pulse under her jaw is frantic. And still—she doesn’t break.
“Lying to me is dangerous,” I say quietly.
“So is murdering innocent men.”
The words hit harder than she intends. For the first time in a long while, something shifts in my chest—an echo, faint and inconvenient.
Wraith tenses at my side. Ash watches from above, ready to intercept. I don’t give the order.
Instead, I reach up and touch the edge of my mask, tracing the seam. “You think you know what we are,” I murmur. “But you only ever saw the blood. Never the reason.”
Her eyes flash. “There’s no reason good enough.”
“Maybe not.”
Silence stretches. Beneath it, the city hums. I feel it under my skin—the same pull that’s haunted me since I saw her face on that camera feed. The problem with ghosts is that they don’t stay buried.
She isn’t supposed to make me curious.
She isn’t supposed to make me feel anything.
And yet…
“Take her to the townhouse,” I tell Wraith at last, forcing the words steady. “Put her in the west room. She stays there until I say otherwise.”
Her voice follows me as I turn away. “You can lock me up all you want. It won’t change what you did.”
I pause halfway up the steps and glance back, just once.
“No,” I say. “But it might teach you what it costs to chase ghosts.”
The rain’s turned to sleet by the time I reach my office. The windows blur the London skyline into streaks of gold and gray; every light looks like it’s bleeding.
I unfasten the mask and set it on the desk. The room exhales around me—quiet, heavy. The bass from the club filters up through the floor, distant, like a heartbeat that isn’t mine.
I should be working. There’s paperwork, ledgers, and a dozen shipments still waiting for clearance before dawn. Instead, I find myself replaying her voice.
You can lock me up all you want. It won’t change what you did.
She said it like a fact, not a threat.
And that’s the part that won’t leave me alone.
I’ve spent three years knowing—knowing—that Owen Calloway was guilty. We had the proof, for fuck’s sake. Coded messages, the intercepted calls, the drive Ash decrypted himself.
Traitor.
He sold us to the Russians, cost me three good men, and nearly collapsed the entire transport chain through the Baltic corridor.
But when I saw her tonight—when I heard that absolute certainty in her voice—it felt… wrong.
Ember Calloway shouldn’t have been capable of lying that cleanly. Not while her pulse was racing, not while her eyes were wide enough for me to see the tremor behind them. She believed every word she said.
Ash would call that manipulation. Vale would probably call it performance. Saint would argue that it’s grief.
I call it… inconvenient.
I pour a measure of whiskey, watch it catch the light. The glass trembles faintly in my hand, and I hate the way it reminds me of her hands when Wraith pushed her through the door—steady, defiant, blood still drying on her knuckles.
Owen’s file sits in the drawer to my left. I pull it out, thumb through the pages, and stop on the photograph—grainy, rain-soaked, body facedown near the pier. Ember’s name is scrawled in the margin in my own handwriting: Next of Kin – Untouched.
I’d written that note myself. A mercy at the time.
Mercy feels like a joke now.
I close the file, but the image lingers. Her face under the club lights, the way she met my stare without blinking—like she was daring me to see what I’d missed. I set the glass down and reach for the comm beside the desk. “Wraith.”
Static. Then his voice, low and steady. “Sir.”
“She’s secure?”
“Yes. At the townhouse. Locked room. Window barred.”
“Good. Keep the others out. No one talks to her until I say.”
A pause, then his reluctant voice filters through the line. “Understood.”
I almost end the call there. Almost.
“Wraith,” I add, quieter. “Did she say anything?”
He hesitates, which isn’t like him. “Just asked if we buried her brother.”
The silence stretches between us.
“And what did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” he says.
I kill the line.
The whiskey’s gone warm. I drain it anyway and stare at the skyline until the city’s lights smear into nothing but shadow and guilt.
For the first time in years, I find myself wondering if the truth I built my empire on was ever real.
And that thought, more than any bullet or blade, feels dangerous.