Chapter 42 #2
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Rook says, almost sounding conversational.
“You’re going to stop lying in my face. You’re going to stop pretending you didn’t hand my queen’s brother to the Syndicate and call it cleanup.
And you’re going to tell me exactly who you’re selling to and why you thought you could do it without my blessing. ”
Everything after that happens fast. One of Damien’s men reaches under his jacket, but Wraith is already moving to intercept.
I don’t even see him draw. He just isn’t beside me anymore, and then he is on that man like a wall falling off its foundation, slamming him back into the glass so hard the wall fractures.
It screams, spider webbing a fraction. The other two at the table lurch for weapons.
Ash is quick, a command already in my ear. “Ember, down.”
I drop instantly. The first shot cracks the air, and I know it isn’t ours.
The sound punches through the conference room, high and violent, ricocheting off glass and polished surfaces. Someone yells. Someone else swears. Heat sears past my shoulder with a hiss that feels too close.
I’m on the floor, heart hammering so hard it hurts, one knee down, hand on my gun the way Ash drilled me, eyes up and already searching for my target.
Rook hasn’t moved like a normal person moves.
He’s moved like water. One second he’s four feet from Damien, and then somehow they’re chest to chest, Damien’s back slammed against a wall, Rook’s forearm across his throat.
Calm gone. Politeness gone. King, fully unsheathed.
“Call them off,” Rook says quietly. Not raised, or shouted. Deadly.
Damien’s lips pull back over his teeth. “You have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
“Wrong,” Rook says. “I know exactly what I’m stepping into. I just don’t scare easy.”
Another shot. Closer this time. That one is Wraith. Controlled. Center mass. The man he pinned goes limp, sliding into the floor.
Something like panic flares in the eyes of the last one.
Good.
I rise halfway. My stance is ugly, off-balance, adrenaline-hot, but Ash’s training holds true. Gun up, muzzle clean, and wrist steady. The last man at the table clocks me. He makes a snap decision — the wrong one.
He swings his aim toward me, and I don’t think. I fire.
The kick jolts up my arm. My ears ring. The shot lands — not lethal, but enough. He drops hard, weapon skittering across the table.
I’m shaking. Not from fear, but adrenaline.
“Ember,” Ash’s voice snaps in my ear. “Status.”
“I’m fine,” I say. My voice sounds steady. That’s a miracle.
There’s shouting now in the hallway. Footsteps scurrying down the hall. Someone yelling to lock the floor down. Syndicate muscle responding. Clearly… We’re out of time.
Rook leans in, voice low and lethal. “Last chance, Damien.”
Damien laughs. Actually laughs. “You think this city is yours,” he breathes. “You arrogant little criminals. You really believe this city still belongs to you?”
Rook’s expression doesn’t change. “It does now.”
He slams Damien’s head into the wall — once, a controlled attack that isn’t enough to knock him out. Just enough to send a message. Then his eyes cut to Wraith. “We’re done. Get her out. Now.”
Wraith doesn’t argue. He’s already moving toward me, hand catching my arm, hauling me up with an ease that shouldn’t feel gentle but does. “On me,” he growls.
I stumble once, get my feet back under me, run with him. The hallway is absolute chaos.
Saint’s voice crackles in my ear now, low and sharp. “You’ve got Syndicate heavies coming up the stairwell. East side. I’ve got the fire door propped on the west. Move.”
We move, Wraith keeping his body between me and the corridor, forcing people to bounce off him when they try to push through. Ash peels out of a side alcove like he’s been part of the wall the whole time, sliding in behind us, covering our backs with clinical calm.
We hit the service corridor, and fluorescents buzz overhead. The smell of dust, stale air and cleaning chemicals assaulting our senses.
“Left,” Saint says.
We go left.
Doors slam open somewhere behind us, followed by more shouting. Boots hitting tile in rhythm. They’re not shooting, not yet. Too public. Too noisy. Too many witnesses on other floors if the sound carries.
Good.
We hit a metal door and Saint’s there, propping it with his shoulder, one hand already outstretched like this is nothing more than walking me into brunch. “Little lamb,” he murmurs. “Right on time.”
“Not now,” Wraith snarls, ushering me through. Saint laughs under his breath, follows, lets the door fall shut behind all of us.
We hit the stairs. Cold concrete. Emergency lighting. The sound of our footsteps ricocheting tight in the shaft. By the time we hit ground level, my lungs are on fire. My legs are trembling, pulse is still too high to count.
We spill out into a side exit, into cold air and fine rain and the reek of city — wet stone, petrol, metal.
The cars are already there. Vale’s in the driver’s seat of the first, one hand casually draped over the wheel, like he’s just been out for a smoke and not acting as our exfil.
He grins when he sees me. “There she is.”
Wraith practically shoves me into the backseat and climbs in after me, crowding me into his chest, using his body to cover mine as if anyone’s still aiming. Saint slides in the passenger side after him. The door slams. Tires scream.
We’re gone. The whole thing — from walking into that conference room to peeling off the curb — can’t have been more than eight minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.
No one talks for the first fifteen blocks.
I can hear my own breathing loud in my ears.
I can feel Wraith’s heart hammering against my back like he’s still running.
Saint’s on the phone, calm and clinical, letting Rook know we’re out, confirming routes, rerouting us twice just in case anyone tailed.
Vale is humming under his breath, completely unbothered, like adrenaline is his favorite drug and he’s riding the high.
I stare down at my hands, and they’re shaking.There’s a smear of someone else’s blood on my knuckle. I don’t know whose or even how it got there.
I curl my fingers into fists until the tremor stops.
We reach the manor, and enter through the main security gate, heading up the long drive. The kind of quiet you only get when money is old enough to stop announcing itself.
The second the car stops, and Wraith is out and hauling me with him. Saint is already on comms. Vale kills the engine and whistles low, pleased. “Well,” he says, stretching his arms over his head like a cat. “That escalated.”
Wraith doesn’t laugh, and we’re ushered inside.
The manor feels… different. Not like this morning, this is heavier. This is fallout.
Rook is already there when we step into the main hall, jacket off, sleeves rolled, hands braced on the edge of a console table like he needed something solid to touch.
His knuckles are scraped. There’s a smear of blood on his collar that isn’t his, and something dark in his eyes I’ve never seen before.
Rook in aftermath is colder than Rook in motion. That should scare me more than it does.
His gaze finds me first, and it’s like being hit.
He moves in quick, scanning — hands at my jaw, my shoulders, my ribs, my arms — cataloguing injuries, checking for blood, for pain-responses. When his hand brushes the spot under my jacket where the gun sits, he exhales. Something in him eases. “You’re not hit,” he says.
“I’m fine,” I answer.
Wraith lets out a low sound. “She nearly—”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, sharper this time tho both ignore me.
Rook’s gaze flicks to Wraith. “Report.”
“Three hostiles in the room, two more on approach,” Wraith says. “One neutralized. Two down with nonlethal. Syndicate presence on the floor. They didn’t fire in the corridor.”
Saint steps in, rolling his shoulders. “I looped the cameras. If anyone pulls footage, they’ll see us come in and leave. No show.”
Ash enters a beat after, calm but wired.
He doesn’t go for me first. He goes for Rook.
That says a lot about the situation. “Damien’s face when he saw her?
” he says, voice clipped. “Not shock, or even grief. It was fucking triage. He was already calculating how to either recover her or erase her. You were right.”
Rook’s jaw ticks. “And Owen?”
My throat tightens. Wraith answers, voice rough. “He said Owen sold Syndicate intel and got himself clipped.”
Saint lets out a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Blasphemy.”
“It’s cover,” Ash says. “He’s using Owen as the fall guy for his own trade. He’s moving something he shouldn’t be able to move, and he’s doing it through Syndicate muscle. Now, we’ve let him know we see it.”
“So he’ll panic,” Vale says, strolling in like he didn’t just joyride our getaway car through Canary Wharf traffic. He sounds overly pleased with himself. “And when men like Damien panic, they get sloppy. And when they get sloppy—”
“They make mistakes,” I finish.
Rook looks at me. Not like I’m fragile. Or like I almost got shot. Not even like I’m his. He looks at me like… I’m sitting at his side again at that table, equal weight. “You see it, then,” he says quietly.
“I saw it in his face the second he looked at me,” I say.
“He didn’t react like a handler who thought an asset was dead.
He reacted like a man whose liability just walked back into the room.
He didn’t mourn Owen. He repurposed him.
That means Owen really wasn’t sloppy. Owen was fucking clean.
” I swallow. My voice doesn’t break. That feels like victory and loss in the same breath.
“He set my brother up—sold him out. And now he’s selling something even bigger, and he’s been using Syndicate muscle to do it under everyone’s nose. Hiding it, even from you.”
Silence—deafening silence. Ash exhales slowly, like he’s been holding that in his lungs this whole drive. Wraith’s hand tightens on my hip. Saint mutters, “Little lamb,” too soft to call it pity. It sounds like a vow.
Mateo whistles a low note that’s almost admiration. “Well then,” he says. “That’s treason.”
Rook’s eyes never leave mine. “It is.” Something shifts in his face then. The cold slides back. The rage stays. “Listen,” he says, voice even. “Everyone listen.”
The room quiets.
“This is the point where we stop pretending this is contained,” he says. “Damien knows we’re onto him. He’s already going to ground. He’ll pull strings. He’ll move money. He’ll call in favors. He’ll hire muscle that doesn’t care who bleeds. And he will come for her first.”
The room pulses in warning. No one argues. Rook turns his head slightly, gaze cutting to each of them in turn. “Saint,” he says. “We lock down the manor in layers. I don’t want a ghost getting onto these grounds without us knowing.”
Saint nods once. “Consider it done.”
“Vale,” Rook says. “We start applying pressure. Syndicate first. Nothing loud yet. Just enough so they feel watched. I want rumors in their ranks by midnight that the Riders are done letting people eat out of our mouth.”
Mateo’s grin is pure sin. “With absolute pleasure King.”
“Wraith,” Rook says. “You don’t leave her.”
Wraith gives a single, blunt nod. “Obviously.”
“Ash,” Rook continues. “You’re on Damien. I want every connection. Every fucking shell company he’s touched. Every goddamned offshore ghost he’s winked at. Every contract he’s whispered over. I want his map by morning. Do I make myself clear?”
Ash simply says, “Yes.”
“And me?” I ask.
Rook’s gaze snaps back to mine like a tether. “You,” he says softly, “are not leverage anymore. You’re motive.”
Something cracks in my chest. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until I hear it.
He steps in, and lifts his hand to my face, brushing his thumb along my jaw.
It’s slow, possessive, devoted. “You asked for the keys,” he murmurs.
“Now you have them. This is your war as much as it is ours.”
My throat feels tight. “And if I say I want him dead?”
Wraith rumbles low. “Then we put him in the ground.”
“And if I say I want him ruined first?” I whisper. “Stripped… Exposed… Alone… Scared... Begging.”
Vale lets out a soft, delighted sound. “God, I love her.”
Saint murmurs, almost smiling, “Mercy dressed as cruelty. Fitting.”
Ash’s eyes flick between me and Rook, sharp and hungry with thought. “That buys us time,” he says. “We use him before we end him.”
Rook’s thumb drifts to the corner of my mouth. “Then that’s what we’ll do, my disobedience.”
We’ve crossed a line we don’t get to uncross. They all know it. I know it.
We’re not circling anymore. Or posturing. We’re not waiting to see who moves first.
We walked into Damien’s den and looked him in the eye and said we see you.
And now the city is going to answer.
I should be afraid, and maybe I am a little.
But standing there in the middle of a room full of dangerous men who have already killed in my name and will again, with Rook’s hand at my jaw, Wraith’s heat at my back, Ash’s eyes guarding, Saint already rewriting the perimeter in his head, and Vale humming like he’s about to compose someone’s funeral—
I don’t feel hunted.
I feel crowned.