Chapter 6 #2
She flinches. That one hits, and it hurts me just as much as it does her.
Her breathing starts coming faster. She’s angry, yes, but this isn’t just rage anymore. This is grief with edges. This is her body realizing it’s bracing for an answer she cannot unhear.
I lower my voice. Slow it. Not to soothe. To cut clean.
“Owen didn’t die because he ‘knew too much,’ Ember,” I say.
“He died because he sold the kind of information that gets crews executed. He died because money mattered more than loyalty in a moment where I could not afford betrayal. He died because the people he sold to were never going to let him live long enough to enjoy what he’d earned.
He made himself a liability to everyone. To us. To them. To you.”
Her mouth opens, closes. She shakes her head. “No. No, you’re twisting it. Someone set him up.”
“Maybe,” I allow.
That freezes her.
Her eyes snap to mine. “What?”
“Maybe someone did feed him an angle,” I say. “Maybe someone told him it was clean. Maybe someone told him it was low-level intel, nothing explosive, nothing that would get anyone killed. Maybe someone carved him into a middleman so they never had to get their own hands dirty.”
Her voice drops to a whisper. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
That’s true. It irritates me that it’s true.
“I know who he met,” I continue. “I know where the payments went. I know what got leaked. I know where my men bled. I know when Owen disappeared. I know when his body turned up. I know which of mine found him first.”
Her eyes narrow. “Which of yours?”
I hold her gaze. “Not relevant.”
I’m not dropping a name. She doesn’t get that. Not yet. I will not hand her a thread she can tie to a throat. They are loyal to me. I keep what’s loyal.
But I watch her latch onto the gap like a blade.
“So someone you sent out,” she says slowly, voice sharpening again, “some loyal hound of yours put a bullet in my brother, dropped him like trash, and all you’ve got to say is, ‘he made himself a liability’?”
“He made himself a liability,” I say evenly, “and then he ran.”
“Ran?”
“Disappeared,” I clarify. “Went to ground. Stopped answering. Stopped showing up. You don’t get to vanish from me, Ember. Not after you sell me out. He knew that. He tried anyway.”
“That sounds like survival instinct, not guilt,” she spits.
“It sounds like fear,” I argue. “And fear is guilt’s shadow.”
Her face twists, mouth pinching in annoyance. “God, you are insufferable.”
“And you,” I say, letting my gaze drag briefly—deliberately—over the length of her bare legs, the hem of her shirt, back to her mouth, “are very lucky I find that interesting.”
Her breath stutters, pupils blown wide, not just with anger now, and the scent of it hits my bloodstream like a match to oil. She’s furious with me. She hates me. She’s also responding to me. She doesn’t want to. She can’t help it. It’s all there, painted across her body in real time.
My disobedience.
I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees now, voice softening into something that tends to make grown men forget they like breathing.
“Listen very carefully,” I tell her. “You think this is about vengeance. It’s not.
You think this is about you walking into one of my vault sites and poking around and me getting offended.
It’s not that either. This is about the fact that you stumbled onto something that can still hurt me.
You broke into my world and touched evidence I was not finished burying.
You wandered into a dead zone with cameras and left with someone else’s blood under your nails.
You kept a copy of something you should’ve never seen. ”
Her jaw tightens. She tries not to look guilty.
“There it is,” I say quietly. “Good girl.”
“I didn’t take anything,” she whispers.
“Lie to anyone else,” I remind her. “Never to me.”
Her stare flickers.
“Where is it?” I ask.
Her defiance comes back like a shield slamming into place. “Even if I had something—and I’m not saying I do—why would I hand it to you? So you can make it disappear like you made him disappear? So you can rewrite whatever’s left of him into your version of events and call that truth?”
“Because,” I say, completely calm, “that drive can get you killed faster than I can.”
Her throat works.
“And because,” I continue, lowering my voice until it’s almost intimate, “if you hand it to me, I will keep you alive. You have my word.”
She lets out a low, bitter laugh. “Your word? I don’t even know your name.”
I smile, slow. “Caelum.”
Her expression flickers, like she didn’t expect that. “My name,” I say. “You wanted it. Now you have it. My men call me Rook. You will call me Caelum when you’re being good. You will call me Rook when you’re trying to make me angry.”
“I’m never calling you anything,” she says through her teeth.
“You already are,” I murmur. “Every time you look at me like that.”
Her pulse kicks in her throat. I watch it. I let her see me watching.
Then I lean back again, because I can feel the tension in her muscles coiling, and I want her steady. I want her thinking.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “You’re going to stay in this room.
You’re going to eat. You’re going to sleep.
You’re not going to be touched unless you force my hand.
You are not a prisoner. You are an investment, and I take good care of my investments.
You stay breathing until I’ve decided what parts of Owen’s mess are still burning under my floors.
If you cooperate, you will walk out of this house alive. ”
She laughs once, a sharp, humorless sound. “And if I don’t?”
My gaze holds hers. “Then,” I say softly, “I stop protecting you from the people who want you more than I do.”
Her anger falters. Confusion slips in around the edges. “People who—what are you talking about?”
“There are men,” I say, “who would take you apart piece by piece for the chance to prove I can bleed. There are factions of Cartel who would buy you. There are Russians who would carve my routes out of you while you scream. I’m the safest option you have, Ember.”
Her voice drops to a whisper. “You expect me to believe that.”
“Yes,” I say simply. “Because it’s true.”
Her throat works again. She looks at me like she wants to spit in my face and also like she can’t decide if I’ve just told her her first real piece of safety in years.
Owen. Russians. Fear.
She’s replaying it. She’s building her own map of his last days. She’s seeing the version of him I’ve just laid out and putting it against the version she loved. She’s trying to make them fit. They never will.
Grief never does.
I watch her sit with that and I feel, for one dangerous, unwelcome second, the echo of something I don’t allow anymore.
Regret.
I kill it before it can become a problem.
“You’re lying,” she says at last, voice frayed, eyes bright. “You have to be. Owen wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have sold you to anyone. He wouldn’t have risked—” Her voice cracks. “He wouldn’t have risked me.”
That last line lands like a blade and stays there.
I say nothing. Because that’s the only part of this I can’t swear against.
Maybe he didn’t think it would touch her. Or he thought he could handle it himself. Maybe he thought he’d walk away with cash and live long enough to drag her out of whatever hole they’d been surviving in.
Maybe… maybe not.
“I am sure of his guilt,” I tell her, and it sounds almost steady. “I watched men die to prove it.”
She lifts her head, gaze still defiant. “And I am sure of his innocence.”
We just stare at each other across that line. That’s the moment I understand the shape of where this is going.
Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But soon.
Because I’ve built an empire on certainty. On facts. On proof.
And this girl just sat on my bed, in my house, looked me in the eye, and told me she believes I’m wrong. Not that I’m cruel. Not that I’m a monster. Not that I’m unforgivable.
Wrong.
It irritates me more than it should. It intrigues me even more. It makes a thread of heat curl low in my spine in a way that has nothing to do with anger.
“My disobedience,” I say quietly, almost to myself.
Her eyes flicker. “Don’t call me that.”
“I just did.”
“Don’t—”
“Ember.” Her mouth snaps shut. I let her name sit between us for a beat. I like the way it tastes in my mouth. Rich. Defiant. A little sweet. “Sleep,” I tell her.
“I’m not tired.”
“Sleep anyway,” I say. My voice drops, that quiet authority that makes people obey before they realize they’ve decided to.
“You’ll think clearer when you wake. You’ll tell me where the drive is.
And tomorrow, when you’ve calmed down, we’ll talk about what you think you know about Owen.
You’ll give me your version. I’ll give you mine. We’ll see which one burns cleaner.”
She glares at me. “Get out of my room.”
It almost makes me laugh. “Your room?”
“It is right now.”
I nod once, slow. “That,” I murmur, “is the first true thing you’ve said to me tonight.”
I stand. She watches every inch of movement like a cornered animal—tracking, waiting for the hit that doesn’t come. I don’t touch her. I don’t threaten. I don’t tell her she belongs to me, even if some dark, selfish part of me wants to.
That would be too easy. Too blunt. Too soon.
I go to the door, unlock it, then pause and glance back over my shoulder. “One more thing,” I say.
She doesn’t answer. She’s staring at me like she wants to claw my eyes out and kiss me in the same breath. She doesn’t know that yet.
“If you try the window,” I say softly, “you’ll break your legs on the fall. If you try the hall, Wraith will put you back in bed. If you scream, no one will come. If you hide anything sharp, I’ll find it.”
Her chin lifts. “And if I kill you in your sleep?”
My mouth curves. “You won’t,” I tell her, and let her watch my eyes when I say it. Let her see the absolute certainty there. “You don’t want me dead.”
She laughs, disbelieving. “You’re delusional.”
“Mm,” I say. “We’ll revisit this discussion when you’ve had some proper rest.”
I open the door. Step into the hall. Close it softly behind me. For a long moment I just stand there, hand still on the panel, jaw tight. Her voice echoes in my skull.
He wouldn’t have risked me.
Something about that line slides under my armor and sits there, persistent and unwelcome.
I exhale through my nose, controlled. I am sure of Owen’s guilt.
I am.
So why the hell does it feel less certain now than it did an hour ago?