Chapter 9
Rook
London’s still wet when I come back.
Not raining. Just… wet. The kind of cold that clings to the air and pavement like something alive. The kind that crawls under leather and into bone. The kind that smells like exhaust, old stone, metal, and threat.
I should’ve had blood by now.
Answers, at the very least.
Instead I have nothing but a dead lead, a room full of men in the East End who suddenly couldn’t remember ever meeting Owen Calloway, and a tidy reminder from a Syndicate lieutenant that I am not the only monster in this city who knows how to play polite when we’re indoors.
When I left this morning, I was sure. Walk into Poplar, put a hand on a throat, shake something loose. I expected names, cash routes, confirmation. I expected something I could turn into a blade.
Instead, I got lies delivered clean. Blank eyes. Shrugs. Casual indifference. “Never heard of him.” “We don’t do business with kids.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Which is funny, because three years ago those same men were practically tripping over themselves to buy from us. Men like that don’t just forget a contact at our level. They’re pretending. Pretending, or someone higher than them told them to shut the fuck up.
Either answer is a problem. Either answer means Owen was never just Owen.
And that means Ember Calloway isn’t just a mouthy inconvenience I signed paper for.
That’s what makes my jaw tight by the time I unlock the front door of the townhouse and step inside. Not the cold trail. Or the fucking insult.
Her.
I can feel her here.
It’s ridiculous, but there it is. The house has her in it now. She’s soaked into it already — in the way the air smells, in the way the silence sits. The place doesn’t feel like it used to. It doesn’t hum like men sitting on control. It thrums now. Awake in a different way.
The door closes behind me with a clean, solid click. I slide the lock back into place out of reflex. No outside threat is getting in without our say-so. I am, inconveniently, no longer convinced that’s the problem I should be paying attention to.
“Boss.”
Wraith’s voice drifts from the sitting room off the hall. He’s in the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms folded over his chest. His shirt’s changed. Showered. Fresh ink peeking from his collar. He looks like a wall that decided to grow a heartbeat.
“Report,” I say.
“Nothing moving on the perimeter. Ash is still running backdoor ping sweeps on that warehouse camera you pulled. Saint’s in his head about it. Mateo fed her breakfast and attitude.”
My eyes flick up at that. “And she?”
“Back in her room.” Wraith’s mouth kicks a fraction. Humor, buried deep. “Pissed.”
Good. If she were quiet, I’d be worried. Quiet means planning. Or… It means cracking.
Pissed means she’s still burning. Fire is easier to read than silence. And I can’t afford for her to be anything other than readable.
“She behave?” I ask.
He huffs softly. “Define behave.”
I almost smile. Almost. “Any problems?”
“No,” he says. “Contract’s signed. She ate. She’s upright. And—” He pauses, watching my face in that way that says he’s choosing what to give me, what to keep. “She didn’t fold.”
I shouldn’t like that. It’s a problem that I like that. Ignoring the way pride unfurls in my chest, I nod. “Understood,” I say. “Get some rest.”
He snorts quiet. “You first.”
I don’t answer that. We both know I won’t.
I leave him in the doorway and take the stairs up.
I don’t walk quickly. I don’t have to.
This is my house. My space. And yet…. Every step is a little harder than it should be.
Her door is still modified, with the interior thumbturn removed, exterior keyed, surveillance set to feed to Ash’s line and mine. Layered security — physical, procedural, psychological. “You’re in a pretty cage, pet. Remember who holds the key,” I whisper aloud.
I open the door without knocking. I don’t let myself pause to think about why that feels necessary.
She doesn’t sit like something caged. Ember’s by the window. Not at the bed, not curled into a tight little self-pity knot, not asleep.
At the window.
For some reason, this bothers me. I don’t have a reason. Not really, just an inkling deep inside my gut.
The curtains are open halfway, and pale London light spills in, washing her skin in cool gray.
She’s standing with her arms crossed under her chest, one hip leaned against the sill, her weight on one leg like she’s been there long enough to settle.
Her hair’s still down, but it’s wilder now.
The curls are unruly, frizzed and loose, catching that soft light where the copper goes almost gold at the edges.
Her mouth is still a little swollen. Her eyes are colder than last night.
And she’s angry. Not feral, or flailing thank God. I don’t have the strength for it, but somehow this is worse.
No. Cold angry. Clean angry. That kind is more dangerous.
She looks at me like she’d scratch my face and then dare me to bleed on her.
“Back so soon?” Ember asks coolly. “What happened? Did London refuse to kneel for you today?”
“My disobedience,” I murmur, loving the way she fights me even now.
Her jaw tightens at that. That’s why I keep using it. It lands every time, and I thoroughly enjoy pissing her off.
“I’m not yours,” she says.
“That sounds like hope,” I say softly. “Not a statement.”
Her nostrils flare. I step fully inside and let the door fall shut behind me. I don’t lock it. She probably notices that. I mean for her to.
She’s close enough now to read more.
Her cheeks are still pink high up near her eyes. Not embarrassment-pink. Heat-pink. Her breathing’s a touch shallow. Not panicked — no. Want. The aftermath of it. Her pupils are still just slightly too wide.
My attention flicks to her mouth. It’s parted, just a little. Something clicks in my brain, like a puzzle piece sliding into place.
Memory comes flooding back of the conversation with Wraith. Mateo. That explains the color riding her cheekbones. The way her shoulders are set like she’s still vibrating under her skin. The tightness in her thighs. Vale has a serious talent for winding nerves up and leaving them ringing.
The thought makes something low in my chest flare. Not jealousy. I don’t do jealousy.
Possession.
That, I do.
I school my face back to impassive and nod at the window. “You’re not going to get that open. In case you were planning to jump, I’d rather you didn’t splatter yourself across the pavement just to make a point.”
She scoffs. “That wasn’t my plan.”
“Mm,” I say. “No. You’re smarter than that.”
Her eyes narrow, brow furrowing slightly at my words. “Was that a compliment?”
“It was an observation,” I say, ignoring the way my chest twists. “Don’t get sentimental.”
She pushes off the sill, turning to face me fully.
She’s barefoot. Fuck. Somehow that shouldn’t matter.
But it does. It matters. Barefoot in my house.
Bare legs. My soap on her skin. My sheets on her last night.
My contract signed with her name directly under mine.
That small, feral body in a space that has only ever held men who kill and sleep and leave.
It is suddenly, acutely, too easy to picture her here again. In this room, underneath me, screaming my name in pleasure. Still angry. But not at me. At herself for giving in.
“Where’d you go?” she asks. Her tone is flat, but there’s something under it. Not exactly concern. Curiosity with teeth. “Your little lapdog said you were ‘hunting.’”
“Wraith is not my lapdog,” I say, letting loose of a small chuckle.
Her mouth curves, a defiant smirk sliding into place that has my palm twitching. “He listens to you like one.”
“He listens,” I say quietly, “because he understands what happens if he doesn’t.”
Her gaze holds mine. “Do I get to find out what happens if I don’t?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “Eventually.”
Her throat moves, a hard swallow that I can tell cost her. “Where’d you go?” she repeats, softer now.
I study her. Her shoulders are still squared, but there’s a fine tremor in her fingers. She’s masking it by folding her arms. “You want honesty or comfort?” I finally ask.
Her chin tips, a brow arching in question. “You’re offering… what? Comfort now?”
“No,” I say. “But I’ve noticed you pretend you want it when the truth is going to hurt.”
That lands. She flinches like I hit her with it. Good. She needs to know I see her.
“Honesty,” she says after a beat.
“Poplar,” I answer. “Syndicate boys who used to run hands on the docks three years ago.”
Her face barely changes, but I see it — the flick of recognition. Owen ran down by the docks. She knows that. She’s mapped his last days over and over in her head until they’re practically carved into her skin.
“And?” she asks.
“And they all forgot he ever existed,” I say.
That earns me a sharp, humorless almost-laugh. “People usually forget dead men eventually. You’d be surprised.”
“No,” I say. “Not like that. Not natural forgetting. Scripted.” Her brows pull in, and I see it the minute it hits her.
That there’s a possibility that someone higher up is pulling strings.
She buries it quickly. “I walked into a room of men who used to crawl for our money,” I tell her softly, “and for the first time in three years, they wouldn’t even make eye contact. You know why that happens?”
“Because they’re scared of you?” she fires back, but her chin wavers ever so slightly.
“No,” I say, and let my voice drop. “Because they’re scared of someone else more.”
She doesn’t answer this time. She’s still thinking, and another surge of pride flushes through me. Thinking means she’s still fighting.
Good girl.
“Who?” she asks finally, quiet.
“I don’t know yet,” I say.
And that sentence — the fact that I am saying that sentence — irritates me so badly I have to clench my jaw to keep from putting my fist through the wardrobe. Because I don’t know. Because that’s not fucking normal, not in the slightest. I always know.