Chapter 42
Ember
Mission day tastes like metal.
Even before we leave the manor, I can feel it — that low, electric static under the skin, the one that says we’re past threat and into inevitability. This isn’t practice anymore. There’s no more “if.” There’s only “when.”
The house moves like a machine.
Saint’s up first. He’s in black today instead of his usual tailored decadence, sleeves rolled, throat bare.
He lays out the last of the comms on the kitchen island like sacraments — earpieces, backup batteries, slimline radios with no markings.
He’s quiet, calm, and efficient. He murmurs final logistics to Rook in low tones like confession.
Wraith is all hands and motion. He checks gear, checks angles, checks lines of sight, checks me.
Constant, constant, constant. Tightening my holster strap one more notch.
Fastening a small blade to the inside of my boot with a strip of matte tape.
Adjusting the fall of my jacket so the gun doesn’t print.
He doesn’t tell me to stay close. He doesn’t have to. His eyes say it for him.
Mateo is pacing like he’s already bored of the plan and itching for the part where he gets to make someone scream. He’s the only one smiling. That smile is fucking feral.
Ash is on his tablet, last-minute camera pulls, rerouting feeds that shouldn’t be rerouted and looping footage that shouldn’t be looped.
He looks like he hasn’t blinked in half an hour.
When I pass him, he doesn’t look up, just reaches out and ghosts two fingers at my hip — the exact spot my mic patch sits under my jaw controls.
Test. Live. He exhales when he hears me through his wrist.
Rook doesn’t hover.
He stands at the head of it all in a charcoal coat and black shirt, hands in his pockets, gaze ice-steady. Calm like command. He’s watching all of us. He’s watching me.
“Remember the rules,” he says, voice low enough that I have to lean in to hear it. “You don’t improvise. You don’t negotiate. You don’t try to be clever. You let me handle Damien unless I tell you otherwise. You listen to Ash. You stay on Wraith’s line of sight. If anything goes wrong—”
“I run,” I say.
His mouth curves, but only a fraction. “Good girl.”
Heat pulls low in my stomach, sharp and immediate. I hate that he does that to me in front of everyone. That’s a lie… I love that he does that to me in front of them.
We load into two cars, because cars mean inconspicuousness.
Saint takes point in one with Vale. Caelum, Wraith, Ash, and me in the other. It’s raining — London gray, steady and fine, not dramatic, the kind that turns the streets slick and reflective. Canary Wharf rises ahead of us in cold glass and clean money.
I know the cover story for this area. I’ve run recon in this part of the city before, just not like this. Not with them. Not with the understanding that if I’m recognized this time, it’s truly over.
The building is corporate on paper. Quiet lobby. Polished floors. Clean lines. High ceilings with minimalist industrial lighting. It smells like expensive toner and coffee and false normalcy.
Another Syndicate shell.
You learn to spot them like you learn to spot cops in plain clothes.
There’s always something that doesn’t match.
Here, it’s the way two guys by the elevators wear suits that fit but shoes that don’t — hard soles, reinforced.
The way the woman at reception smiles too brightly at us and too tensely at everyone else.
The way the cameras don’t sweep like they should.
They sit. Meaning someone else is watching them manually.
The earpiece in my right ear murmurs once. Ash’s voice, “You’re clear. Two on lobby. One in the hall behind reception. That third one’s got a tell — favors his left leg. He’ll be slow if it goes bad.”
Wraith’s hand ghosts the small of my back like a brand. “With me.”
I don’t know if anyone not looking would notice we’re moving as a unit. Rook takes lead with the comfortable arrogance of someone who belongs in any room he decides belongs to him. Wraith shades me half a step behind and to the side, broad body a shield without looking like a shield.
I keep my chin up, my stride even. I keep my face calm. You’re supposed to look like you expect to be where you are. The most dangerous thing in a room like this is the person who looks like they’re waiting to be challenged.
We take the lift up three floors. The doors open to a hallway lined in glass offices. Frosted partitions. Conference rooms. More quiet than it should be. Ash murmurs in my ear, “We’re good. Damien’s already here.”
My heart kicks in my chest. Rook doesn’t look back, but he says, casually, “Smile, Red.”
I lift my chin, and we walk into the conference room like we’re late to a meeting. Damien is there.
Time does something strange.
He looks almost exactly the same. That’s the worst part.
Same salt-and-steel hair, clipped close.
Same tailored suit — navy, perfect, forgettable if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
Same mouth. Same careful eyes that never gave too much away in debriefs, just enough to keep you loyal.
He’s sitting at the head of the table with three men I don’t recognize, all of them letting him have the center of gravity.
He doesn’t see me at first.
He glances up — first at Rook, then at Wraith, then at the door behind us like he’s counting bodies.
Then at me. He freezes. It’s the smallest thing. A fraction of a second. A half-blink, really. But I see it.
Shock. Followed instantly — instantly — by calculation.
Not grief. Not relief. Not oh, thank God. Not where have you been.
He goes straight to “how did she break my asset chain and how do I fix it.”
My stomach goes cold. There it fucking is. There’s the answer we came for. Rook sets a hand on the back of one of the empty chairs and leans, casual, a picture of polite interest. “Damien.”
Damien recovers so smoothly that anyone who didn’t watch that flicker would miss it. He smiles. Stands. Extends a hand. “Caelum,” he says. Warm. Pleasant. A tone I’ve heard him use in briefing rooms, in alleys, in morgues. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“You,” Rook says mildly, taking his hand, “and your recent… associations.”
Translation? We know you’re working with Syndicate money under NATO cover like a coward.
Damien’s gaze flicks over Rook’s shoulder to me again. “And who,” he says, voice barely shifting, “is this delicious morsel?”
Bile climbs hot in my throat, threatening to ruin everything. Four weeks I was listed inactive. No contact. Nothing in the system. Cleared off the board. It wasn’t a miss. It wasn’t oversight. He wrote me out.
He wrote me out and didn’t even flinch at seeing me alive.
My mouth moves before I can help it, everything turning to shit when I go off script. “Funny,” I say lightly, “thought you’d remember me, considering you signed off on my last job.”
Every man at that table looks at me. Wraith’s growl is a low rumble that only I hear, his hand is suddenly and lightly, at my hip. Not stopping me, even if I can feel the frustration rolling off him in waves, but anchoring me.
Rook doesn’t move. Damien blinks once. “I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Don’t,” I say, smile sharp and polite. “You’re not stupid. Don’t insult me like I am.”
Rook’s head tilts, just barely. I can feel it off him like heat. He’s letting me run. Carefully. He’s listening for what Damien does next.
Damien exhales a soft laugh. If I didn’t know him, I’d think it was fond. “Always did have a bite, didn’t you,” he says. His eyes slide to Rook. “She’s… Spirited. Where did you find her?”
There’s something metallic at the edge of my tongue. Rage. It tastes like pennies.
He’s pretending I was never his. Because if I was never his, he was never responsible for me. Because if I was never his, Owen was never his. Because if we were never his, he never burned us.
I feel my nails dig into my own palm so hard I’ll probably bruise.
“Question for you,” Caelum says pleasantly, like this is a social call. “Where did you last see Owen Calloway?”
The room shifts, nervous energy flooding the space. Wraith goes still beside me. Ash’s voice is silent in my ear. Even the ones at the table — Damien’s three — lean in, so faintly it wouldn’t read as interest if you weren’t watching for tells. I am.
Damien doesn’t answer right away.
Good, I think distantly. Bleed.
He lifts a brow instead. “Why are we asking about ghosts?”
“Humor me,” Rook says.
Damien smiles. Shrugs. “Last I heard, he got himself in over his head in a Syndicate run near Southwark. Sloppy stuff. Took money from the wrong hand, or sold the wrong intel. Got himself clipped. Tragic, really. Waste of a decent kid.”
White noise. That’s all I hear for a beat. White. Empty. Because that’s it. That’s the lie he’s been feeding. That’s the story he sold to cover his own trail.
Owen—sloppy. Owen—dirty. Owen just got himself killed because he crossed the wrong man.
Not Owen—loyal and embedded. Not Owen—burned.
My chest is steady, but my hands are not. Wraith feels it. His thumb presses once into my hip, slow and deliberate. It’s a reminder to breathe. I do.
My voice comes out almost calm. “You set him up.”
Damien’s gaze slides lazily back to me like I’m background noise. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
That does it. The room changes on a frequency you can’t describe, only feel.
Rook straightens, just a fraction, but it looks like he’s ready to throw a punch.
Wraith’s hand leaves my hip. Ash’s voice in my ear, soft and precise as he gives instructions.
“Three hostiles at the table, two guns visible, one under the jacket of the one on Damien’s left.
I’ve got eyes on the hallway. You’ve got thirty seconds of calm, tops. ”
Rook smiles like a knife. “Let’s skip polite, shall we?”
Damien’s smile doesn’t move. “By all means.”