Chapter 47 #2
“You told me he had higher clearances than me and Owen,” she continues.
“You said he’d been embedded for years and if I accused him of misconduct, it would ‘compromise delicate operations and international relationships.’ You told me if I made a formal complaint it would reflect poorly on Owen’s judgment and cost him his in, he’d lose his cover and they’d burn him, and well then where would we be? ”
She smiles again. It is the most vicious thing I’ve ever seen on a human face. I fucking love it.
“You told me to be a good girl and shut my mouth,” she says.
Something inside me snaps clean. I don’t even feel the movement. One heartbeat I’m standing beside Ash, calm, measured, watching. The next heartbeat I’m across the room, and my hand is in Damien’s hair, and I’m yanking his head back so hard his neck strains.
He chokes on a curse. I lean in close. Close enough to smell him — sweat, fear, that sour bureaucrat cologne they all wear, the kind that tries to say “respectable” and just reeks of control.
“You covered for him,” I say softly. It’s not a question.
Damien bares his teeth. “I did my job.”
“Your job,” I repeat quietly. My voice is calm. Calm in that way that means people start praying.
“I had an asset in protection,” Damien spits.
“You think I’m going to blow an operation over some girl crying because a man touched her knee?
You think that’s higher priority than four years of placement?
Than our access? Than the—the Syndicate lines we were embedding in?
You think we give a fuck if some little feral foster rat gets her pride bruised—”
That’s when Vale laughs, cruel and delighted. “Oh,” he purrs, eyes bright like a knife. “He said that out loud.”
Saint exhales very softly, like a man coming to the end of his patience with absolution. “Rook,” he murmurs. “May I break a bone?”
“Not yet,” I say, still very calm.
Wraith is breathing like he’s one second away from tearing free of his skin. Ash is no longer blank. His face is something I haven’t seen before — grief, fury, possession, guilt, calculation — layered into something sharp enough to cut.
Ember? She hasn’t moved. She’s still standing in front of Damien. Arms loose at her sides. Bare feet planted on concrete. Her chin is tilted like a queen watching a man beg.
Her eyes have gone cold. Whatever softness she still had when we walked in here — whatever part of her that still wanted explanation, apology, context — is gone.
Damien’s still talking. He can’t help himself.
Weak men like him love the sound of their own rationalization.
“You think I’m a monster?” he hisses. “I kept you in the program. I kept you both paid. I kept you fed. Where the fuck do you think you two would’ve been without me?
On the street? Back in some piss-stained foster flat with no heat and no door lock?
You should be on your knees thanking me for giving you any kind of life at all, you little—”
My hand tightens in his hair. He chokes off with a wince. “Shh,” I murmur. “Now you listen.”
His jaw flexes, eyes spitting hatred. I lower my voice. “You sent men to my house,” I say. “You sent men to my gate. You sent them for her.”
He tries to smirk, and falls miserably short. “And?”
“And you thought,” I continue, still soft, “that was power.”
I smile, and he swallows.
“You don’t understand the room you’re in,” I say. “You don’t understand what’s happened in the last four weeks. You don’t understand what she is to us now. You don’t understand that you have already died. This, right now, is just us deciding how slow.”
Color drains from his face, and Ember leans in.
She bends at the waist, slowly, until her mouth is right at his ear. She doesn’t touch him. She doesn’t give him the dignity of flinching away. Her voice is quiet enough I almost don’t catch it. “I was seventeen,” she whispers.
Ash inhales like someone just drove a blade through him. Wraith’s eyes go black. Saint whispers, “God have mercy,” and for once I’m not certain he’s being sarcastic. Vale mutters something ugly in Spanish under his breath and cracks his knuckles, slow and eager.
Ember straightens. Her eyes shine. Not wet. Bright. Alive. Burning.
“When Owen died,” she says, voice steady, “I told myself it was because he pushed too hard. Because he took a risk. Because maybe the people he worked for weren’t careful enough.
Because maybe that was the cost. I told myself you were still the one who could fix it.
I told myself you were the one who could clear his name.
I told myself you wouldn’t let him go down dirty. ”
She smiles. It’s a broken, beautiful, lethal thing.
“And then you sat there,” she says, “and you said the word ‘leverage’ like that’s all I’ve ever been. And then the boys came back today with your blood under their fingernails. And now you’re here. With me.”
Her chin lifts.
“So I want to be very clear before we start,” she says. “This isn’t about intel anymore. This isn’t about Syndicate. This isn’t about any bloody operation. This is about me. And you. And what you did. And what you let happen.”
Damien swallows, and opens his mouth to say something. I don’t let him get that far.
“From this moment,” I say, still calm, still soft, “you will answer whatever she asks you. You will not insult her. You will not raise your voice to her. You will not attempt to redirect. You will not attempt to contextualize. You will not use the words ‘dramatic,’ ‘hysterical,’ ‘girl,’ ‘manipulative,’ ‘feral,’ ‘orphan,’ or any synonym thereof in relation to her. You will not refer to Owen as dirty. You will not say ‘your brother chose this.’ You will not speak unless spoken to. If you break any of these rules, I turn you over to Mateo for ten minutes while I watch.”
Damien laughs. He actually laughs. It’s thin and shaking, but it’s there. “You think I’m scared of your house pet with prison tattoos?”
Vale’s smile goes incandescent. “Oh,” he purrs. “Say that again.”
Wraith moves so fast the room blurs. His hand goes to Damien’s knee, slamming his palm down just below the kneecap and leans. Not enough to snap it. Enough to send a shock of white-hot pain knifing up Damien’s leg.
Damien chokes on a scream. The sound that leaves him is wet and ugly.
Wraith’s voice is a low growl at his ear. “Call anyone a pet again and I’ll feed you that fucking kneecap.”
He lets go. Damien gasps for air, eyes watering hard now.
Good.
He finally understands.
Ember doesn’t look away. She just watches him shake for a moment. Then, softly, “Who signed off on Owen’s burn notice?”
Damien’s breathing ragged. “You— you don’t—”
“Answer her,” Ash says.
There’s steel in it now. Not heat. Not rage.
Steel.
Damien swallows. Sweat beads at his brow. “Sector chief— sector chief authorized final clearance. It wasn’t— it wasn’t a burn notice, it was a containment order. He— he compromised an op. He made contact with a protected asset without—”
“Liar,” Ash says flatly.
Damien stares at him. “I—”
“Try again,” Ash says.
Something in Damien’s eyes flickers. He looks at Ember, then at me, then back to Ember. He realizes. Finally. That this isn’t going to tilt back to him.
“It was me,” he mutters.
Ember’s lips part.
He looks at her, jaw clenched. “I signed it. They told me he was running hot. They told me he was talking in places he shouldn’t.
They told me he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and he was going to expose the entire corridor we’d embedded into the Syndicate pipeline.
They told me if I didn’t pull him and shut him down, we’d lose everything. I believed them.”
My stomach goes cold.
Ember tilts her head. “You believed who.”
He swallows. “Internal liaison.”
“Name,” Ash says.
Damien hesitates. Wraith shifts, just a little.
Damien blurts it. “Russo.”
Vale sighs, obviously pleased. “Good. A new name to carve.”
Saint’s eyes lift in thought, cataloguing. Like he’s not buying that answer.
Ember doesn’t blink, never giving anything away. “And Owen?”
Damien scoffs, tries for disdain and finds it gone. “Your brother was sloppy. He—”
Wraith’s hand is suddenly around Damien’s throat again. Not squeezing. Just reminding.
Damien chokes back the rest of the sentence. I lean in closer, letting him see exactly what I am to him now.
“He was what,” Ember asks softly.
Damien’s gaze flicks to her mouth, then back to her eyes. “He was too loyal… To you,” he grits out.
It knocks the air out of the room. Ember doesn’t make a sound. Her jaw just tightens. “Say that again,” she whispers. “The truth this time.”
Damien swallows. “He was loyal to you. He wouldn’t shut up about you.
He wouldn’t follow orders that put you at risk.
He wouldn’t stay in his lane. He wouldn’t stop asking questions about Marcus.
He wouldn’t stop being a problem. He wouldn’t stop threatening to walk into Internal Affairs and burn the entire corridor if I didn’t pull Marcus out and have him brought up on misconduct.
He wouldn’t stop saying he’d put a bullet in Marcus himself if we didn’t. ”
My vision goes white around the edges for a second. Saint exhales, slow and reverent, like someone just said mass.
Vale whispers, “Holy fuck,” like he’s ready for the bloodshed.
Ash closes his eyes, jaw clenched so tight I can see the vein in his neck jump. “And you called that a compromise,” he says, voice shaking. “You called that ‘running hot.’ You called that insubordination.”
Damien bares his teeth. “It was.”
“No,” Ember says. Her voice cuts through his like a knife. “No, it was protection.”
She steps in even closer.
She’s so near now that Damien can’t not see her. Can’t not feel her. She takes up his entire field of vision. The only thing he can look at is her. The only thing in his world, right now, is her.
And she makes him sit in it.
“You killed my brother,” she says softly.
“Or you signed the paper that killed him. And you let a man put his hands on a seventeen-year-old girl who was terrified, isolated and in your care because your op looked cleaner that way. And you came into my city and you sold his name dirty. And then you tried to take me out. Silence me, so I could never tell a single soul.”
Her eyes glitter when she smiles this time, and it’s beautiful. Terrifying, and so fucking royal it makes my chest ache.
“Damien,” she whispers, “you’re going to die in this house.”
The silence that follows is absolute. He sucks in a ragged breath, tears spilling down his cheeks despite himself.
“Ember,” I say quietly. Her gaze flicks to me. I don’t tell her no. I don’t tell her slow down. I don’t tell her she’s gone too far. She hasn’t. She’s fucking perfect.
I say, calm and even, so he hears it too, “We’re not finished yet.”
Her chin lifts once, followed by a nod, understanding shining in her gorgeous blue eyes. “Understood.”
We’re going to peel him for every piece of information he can give us. Cleanly. Systematically.
Names, routes, dates, payments. Russo. The internal corridor. Syndicate ties. Anyone who laid a hand on her. Anyone who put Owen in the ground.
Then we’ll end him.
And when that moment comes, I’m not sure there’s going to be anything left in me that isn’t hers.
I release Damien’s hair and step back, giving her the space she’s earned — giving her the floor.
She turns back to our traitor. Our prisoner. The man who thought we were going to kneel down and take it.
Her voice, when she speaks again, is steady. “We should start with Marcus,” she says, a feral grin sliding across her face.