Chapter 17
Ash
The city does not give up its secrets easily, and Rook is not a patient man. I’ve been searching the old feeds of before. Before we captured Ember. Before everything started going to complete shit.
London is a labyrinth built on bones and reinvention, every street layered over another, every brick holding three histories and a lie. People think surveillance makes it transparent. They are wrong. It only makes it louder. More cluttered. More arrogant.
And arrogance is where people make mistakes.
I sit in the glow of twenty-four screens, the feeds breathing and shifting in soft, predatory rhythm, the city flickering like a living organism under glass. Traffic veins pulse red and white. Crowds swell and disperse. Rain slicks the pavement until everything reflects like a wound.
Saint stands behind me, quiet as a held prayer, arms folded, eyes moving over the data with the patience of a man who knows obsession when he sees it.
“She’s not on any of them,” he says.
“No,” I reply. “She’s not.”
That is not the problem. We know when she accessed the warehouse. We know when she took the drive. We know when she disappeared. What we do not know is what she did in the space between those two points, and that space is where people reveal who they really are.
I pull up the footage again.
Ember Calloway, red hair a defiance in the rain, jacket too thin for the weather, eyes too sharp for her age. She moves through Shoreditch like she belongs to it, like the streets owe her something. She does not rush. She does not hesitate. She does not look like someone panicking.
She looks like someone executing.
“Pause,” I murmur. The frame freezes. She is mid-step, body angled slightly left, gaze flicking up. “Enhance.” The system obeys, pixels tightening, detail sharpening until I can see the tension in her jaw, the way her shoulders square.
She is scanning. Not for threats, but for infrastructure.
Saint shifts. “She’s not looking at people.”
“No,” I agree. “She’s looking at the city, searching for something specific.”
I bring up layered feeds. Municipal cameras. Private storefront systems. Obsolete grids. I overlay her path with maintenance maps, infrastructure records, areas the city no longer bothers to document because no one believes anything old still works.
“She’s not going home,” Saint says.
“No,” I say. “She’s not stupid.”
She cuts down an alley that doesn’t register on modern GPS. A relic corridor. Brick choked with ivy and old posters and rain. The camera coverage stutters there, frame rate dipping, the feed degrading.
I lean in, anticipation coiling through my gut like a viper ready to strike. Her pace slows. Not enough to draw attention. Just enough to let me know the pause was deliberate.
Her hand disappears briefly from view.
Saint inhales. “There.”
“Not yet.”
She steps forward, looking over her shoulders once. Another pace, and another pause. Then, another followed by the slightest shift in posture. A micro turn of the shoulder. Her arm lifts, and the movement is shielded by her body, the angle, and the city’s own blind spots.
I isolate the frame. Enhance, then stabilize. A rusted junction box, half-swallowed by brick and neglect, flickers into clarity at the edge of the screen.
Her fingers brush it. Not linger. Not fumble. Brush—like she’s done this before.
The drive never appears. There is no obvious placement. No clumsy concealment. Just a woman moving and a box existing and then she is gone, swallowed by rain and pedestrians and noise.
Saint exhales slowly. “You think she hid it there.”
“I think she planned to,” I say.
He tilts his head. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s worse.”
Because planning implies foresight. And foresight implies experience.
I pull up infrastructure records. The box is not in any current maintenance database. It is not flagged. It is not monitored. It is forgotten.
A dead node—the best kind.
“She didn’t improvise,” I murmur. “She selected a hiding spot knowing what she was doing before going into danger.”
Saint’s mouth curves faintly. “And you don’t like that.”
“I don’t like variables or loose ends we can’t control.”
He pushes off the wall. “So we check it.”
“Yes.”
“Now?” He asks.
“Yes.”
We move without ceremony. No announcement. No briefing. No permission. The house is quiet in that predatory way that means everyone is somewhere else breaking something. I grab my jacket, my gloves, my helmet. Saint does the same, fluid and unbothered.
The garage opens like a mouth, and the Ducatis wait. Black. Lethal. Beautiful in a way only expensive violence ever is.
Saint mounts his with a reverent touch. I swing onto mine, the engine coming alive beneath me, a purr that sinks into my bones. The bikes do not roar. They growl. Controlled. Contained. Dangerous.
We peel into the night, rain slashing sideways, the city opening before us like a challenge. London blurs into light and shadow and wet asphalt, the streets gleaming like oil-slick bone.
Saint rides like a confession — smooth, precise, inevitable. I ride like a problem.
The alley is exactly as it was on the feed. Narrow. Forgettable. Old enough that the city has stopped caring.
We dismount in unison, boots crunching against gravel and slapping against wet ground. The rain has a way of making everything smell like metal and secrets. The junction box waits. Rust streaked, and paint blistered. A relic in its own right.
Saint watches the street while I crouch, fingers testing the edges, the hinge, the screws. The metal complains softly as I open it.
Inside is darkness, dust, and a small, black drive tucked into the back seam like a secret the city never meant to keep.
I still at the exact moment Saint stills. The rain seems to pause. Then I smile slow and sharp.
“She hasn’t moved it,” Saint murmurs.
“No,” I say. “Because she can’t.”
Because she never expected to be taken, and she assumed she had time.
But she underestimated us.
I lift the drive, the plastic cool against my glove, the weight insignificant for something that just altered the shape of several lives.
Saint’s eyes flick to it, then back to me. “Rook’s going to lose his mind.”
“Yes,” I agree. “He is.”
We close the box, erase our presence, remount the bikes. The engines snarl back to life, echoing off brick and rain and rot.
As we pull away, the alley swallowing its own secrets again, I feel it — that low, unwelcome curl of interest in my gut.
Not admiration. Not yet. But something equally dangerous all the same.
“She hid it well,” Saint says over the comm.
“Yes,” I reply. “She did.”
And that’s the problem. Because clever girls get noticed, and noticed girls get hunted.
And now that we have her leverage, the next step is inevitable.
“Let’s go home,” I murmur, leaning into the curve as the city blurs. “We have a ghost to collect.”
Saint
The city loosens its grip reluctantly.
London never likes giving anything back — not secrets, not bodies, not absolution. Even as we tear through the streets on black steel and intention, the rain still claws at us, the fog still tries to blind us, the night still pretends we belong to it.
We do.
That’s the problem.
The gates of the townhouse part at our approach, iron and shadow and obedience. The engines cut. Silence rushes in, heavy and immediate, like the world inhaling after violence.
Ash is already dismounting, efficient, precise, his attention fixed inward. He doesn’t look at the house—doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t need to. The weight in his jacket says everything.
We move inside without ceremony. No greetings, or wasted breath.
The corridors are dim, lit low and gold, the kind of light meant to soothe and deceive. It does neither. The house hums around us — quiet machinery, old money, older sins. I can feel it in the walls, in the floors, in the very bones of the place.
Rook is in the study. He stands at the window, back to us, hands clasped behind him, the city bleeding light through the glass like an open vein. He doesn’t turn when we enter. He doesn’t have to. “You found it,” he says.
Not a question, a statement. Like he already knows the answer and approves. Ash closes the door behind us, and the room is cocooned in silence.
I step forward, slow, deliberate, and place the drive on the desk. It looks obscene there — small, unassuming, capable of ruin. Rook’s gaze drops to it, sharp and immediate, like a predator clocking movement.
“Where?” he asks.
“Shoreditch,” Ash replies. “Infrastructure dead zone. Old junction box. She selected it.”
Rook’s mouth tightens. “Of course she did.”
I watch him closely. The calculation. The restraint. The way something dangerous coils just beneath his composure.
“She hasn’t moved it,” I add. “Which means she didn’t expect to be interrupted.”
His eyes flick to mine. “Meaning?”
“She thought she had time,” I say. “Which means she didn’t plan to run. She planned to come back.”
The room stills.
Not dramatically. Not theatrically. But in that subtle, lethal way that happens when the truth lands.
Rook exhales once, slow, controlled, then turns from the window. He doesn’t touch the drive. He doesn’t reach for it. He studies it like it might bite. “How clean?” he asks.
Ash answers without hesitation. “Untouched. No markers. No secondary tags. She hid it like someone who knows how to vanish.”
Rook nods once. Then — and this is where the night fractures — he steps back. Physically, and deliberately away from the drive. “Put it back,” he says.
Ash blinks. I freeze.
“Put it back,” Rook repeats, voice calm, absolute. “Exactly where you found it. No disturbance. No trace.”
Ash’s head tilts, just slightly. “I don’t understand. We have the drive. We could end this now.”
“Yes,” Rook agrees. “We could.”
The silence stretches, thick with implication.
“Then why aren’t we?” I ask quietly.
Rook’s gaze lifts to mine. Striking blue. Glacial. Too knowing.
“Because,” he says, “if she thinks it’s safe, she will lead us to everything else.”
Ash’s jaw tightens. “You’re baiting her.”
“I’m respecting her,” Rook replies. “There’s a difference.”
I study him then, really study him, and I see it — not mercy, not weakness, but interest. The dangerous kind. The kind that grows teeth.
“She outplayed Ivan,” I murmur. “Outmaneuvered a Syndicate runner with nothing but instinct and nerve. You don’t want the drive. You want the mind behind it.”
Rook doesn’t deny it. “She didn’t sell it,” he says. “Didn’t leak it. Didn’t barter. She hid it.”
“Which means she doesn’t trust anyone,” Ash says.
Rook’s mouth curves faintly. “Smart girl.”
The words hang there between us. Not fond, or cruel. Appreciative.
I feel something shift in my chest, subtle and unwelcome. “You don’t want the others to know,” I say.
Rook’s gaze snaps to me. “No,” he agrees. “I don’t.”
Ash’s eyes narrow. “Vale will want blood.”
“Yes,” he says cooly.
“Wraith will want answers,” Ash counters.
“Yes.”
“And if good ol’ Saint and Ash disappear into the night without a word, they’ll know something’s off,” I add.
Rook steps closer, his presence filling the space like gravity. “Let them.”
I hold his gaze. “You’re playing a dangerous long game.”
“I always do,” he answers with a smirk.
There it is—the King. Calculation, and the crown beneath the mask.
“She’s already in motion,” he continues. “Whether she knows it or not. If we take this, she changes. If we leave it, she stays exactly who she is.”
Ash folds his arms. “And who is that?”
Rook’s eyes flick back to the drive. “A problem.” Then to the window, like even he can’t quite decide what she’ll be. “A potential.”
The word settles heavy in my chest. “You’re going to pretend we never found it,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And if she retrieves it?” Ash asks.
Rook’s smile is slow. Unpleasant. Beautiful in its precision. “Then she walks straight into my arms.”
Ash exhales through his nose. “You enjoy this way too much.”
Rook does not answer, which is answer enough. I step back, nodding once. “We’ll return it.”
“Good,” Rook says. “Quietly. And you won’t tell the others.”
Ash hesitates. Just a fraction. Then he says, “They won’t like this.”
Rook meets his gaze. “I don’t lead by popularity.”
There is a pause where we all look at one another, testing where loyalty lies. Then I smile. Soft. Dangerous. Devout. “Of course you don’t.”
We turn to leave. When we stop at the door, Rook speaks again. “Saint.”
I turn and glance at him. He looks at me, expression inscrutinable. “Watch her.”
I incline my head. “Always.”
Because now I understand. This is not a hunt. It’s a courtship.
And Ember Calloway has no idea the throne is already being built around her.