Chapter 25 Salem
TWENTY-FIVE
SALEM
The warehouse smells like damp metal and old oil, like someone tried to scrub the place clean and only succeeded in spreading the stink around. The overhead lights flicker in a slow, taunting rhythm. Every time they buzz, the shadows jump and my stomach twists tighter.
My wrists ache where the rope bites. My shoulders burn from being yanked into position. My cheek still throbs from the backhand at the gas station, and my mouth tastes like copper. I keep swallowing, trying to get rid of the blood, but it just sits there, sour and stubborn.
Beside me, the man in the chair breathes like each inhale costs him something.
My father.
The word feels wrong. Too big. Too loaded. Like a present someone threw at me without wrapping it and expected me to be grateful.
I stare at him. His face is swollen and bruised, one eye nearly closed. His lip is split. There’s dried blood on his neck and collar. His hands are tied to the chair arms so tight his fingers are slightly purple.
He looks up again, that one good eye locking on me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks.
“You’re really…?” My voice cracks. I hate that. I clear my throat, forcing steadier air. “You’re my father.”
His throat works, and he nods slowly. “Yes.”
“Why did this happen to me?” I ask.
“I think your mother and her rotten boyfriend sold you,” he tells me what I’ve been dreading to hear.
Anger surges hot and immediate. It has nowhere to go except straight up my spine. “Then answer me,” I snap. My voice comes out louder than I mean, and the sound echoes off the empty walls. “How did you know I’d been taken?”
His gaze flickers, and something like shame crosses his battered face. “I saw you.”
My stomach flips. “Where?”
“Online,” he says, voice hoarse. “A site. A… listing.”
My skin goes cold.
A listing.
Like I was furniture.
Like I was meat.
My breath shortens, panic trying to claw its way back in. I force it down and lean forward as much as the rope allows. “What site?”
He hesitates. “It was a buy-now platform. Private. Hidden behind layers. You needed access. You needed an invite.”
Acid surges up, burning the back of my tongue. My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry in front of him. Not after all this time. “So you saw my face,” I say, each word sharp, “and that made you suddenly remember I exist.”
“No,” he whispers quickly. “Salem, no. I’ve always known. I’ve always… I’ve always carried you.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “In your pocket. Like loose change.”
His eyelids lower for a second. When he opens them, that one eye looks glassy. “I’ve been undercover.”
I blink. “Undercover.”
His voice roughens, and the words seem to scrape out of him. “A crime syndicate. They call the woman who runs it Serafina.”
The name hits like a bell in my head. I’ve heard it before through Ozzy’s phone, through hushed conversations. A ghost name. A danger name. A name that makes men like Dean Maddox go quiet.
My stomach turns again. “Serafina?”
He nods. “I went in deep. Years ago. It was supposed to be short. It never is. I couldn’t get out without getting people killed.”
I stare at him, trying to make the story fit the man in front of me. He doesn’t look like a hero. He looks like a broken man who has been living in darkness too long.
“Where have you been all my life?” I demand, voice trembling now with a rage I cannot fully control. “Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you ever contact me? Why did you let my mother… you let me grow up like I was nothing.”
His breath stutters. “I didn’t let you.”
My laugh comes out sharp. “You did. Because you weren’t there.”
His head tilts back against the chair. The movement makes him hiss in pain. He swallows and looks at me again, eyes furious with himself. “I tried.”
I stare at him. “Tried what.”
“I tried to reach you when you were younger,” he says.
“Your mother cut me off. She disappeared. She changed numbers, changed addresses. She was a bitch. And then I got pulled into this operation and my life became a series of fake names and dead drops and nights where I couldn’t sleep because I was too afraid that one wrong move would get people hurt. ”
My chest tightens. I hate that a small part of me wants to believe him. I hate that I want to find a reason that makes it less painful. “So you just… gave up,” I whisper. It’s not a question but fact.
“No,” he says immediately. “I didn’t. I stayed alive.
I stayed in. Because Serafina’s ring isn’t just one ring.
It’s layered. It’s connected. It’s bigger than one city.
Bigger than one state. I thought if I could bring it down, then when I came out, I could come back for you. I could make it right.”
My throat burns. “And you didn’t.”
His eyes squeeze shut for a second. When he opens them, that one good eye is wet. “I didn’t get the chance.”
The anger in me shifts, twists. It is still there, but it has a new edge now. Fear. If this is true, if he’s telling me the truth, then I have been on the edge of something monstrous and never even knew it.
I swallow hard. “So you saw me online.”
“Yes,” he whispers. “I saw your face. And I… I couldn’t breathe. I knew I had to get you out fast. I couldn’t do it myself without exposing my cover and getting you killed. I needed professionals. Someone told me Maddox Security was the best.”
My heart stutters.
Maddox.
Dean.
Ozzy.
The people who saved me.
My mouth goes dry. “So you hired them?”
He nods. “I did. It was the only way I could move without Serafina noticing.”
My stomach twists. “Then why are you here?”
His jaw clenches, pain flashing across his face. “Because Serafina’s crew found out.”
A cold chill crawls down my back. “How?”
He swallows. “They found out I betrayed them. That I was moving money. That I was making contact. I went looking for you after the initial extraction failed. I wanted to be closer. I wanted to see you with my own eyes, to make sure you were safe.”
My throat tightens. “Ozzy said you were missing.”
“I am,” he says. “To them. I went dark. I thought I could slip away for a few hours and come back without anyone noticing.”
He gives a broken laugh that turns into a cough. “They noticed.”
My skin prickles. “So they snatched you.”
He nods once, slow. “They snatched me when I went searching. They brought me here. They wanted leverage. They wanted to punish me. They wanted you.”
My stomach turns, nausea rising. I tug at the rope again, desperate. “Why would they want me?”
His gaze sharpens, and his voice drops lower. “Because you are the reason I moved. You’re the reason I broke protocol. You are… my weakness.”
I hate the way that lands. I hate that I have become a weakness in yet another man’s life, as if my existence is a liability. I swallow hard. “You said you hired Maddox. How did they find out?”
His one good eye narrows. His voice turns rough, urgent.
“That’s what I need you to understand. Only a few people knew I made that call.
Only Maddox would have that connection. Which means someone in Serafina’s crew must be working closely with someone in Maddox’s crew. Someone is selling information.”
My heart pounds hard. “A rat.”
“Yes,” he says. “A mole. I don’t know who. I don’t know how deep they are. But someone tipped Serafina off. Someone told them I hired Maddox to get you out.”
My mouth goes numb. Ozzy has been protecting me. Juno. Arrow. Dean. Rae. The whole team. A mole inside Maddox Security means nothing is safe.
Nothing.
My brain scrambles, trying to fit faces to betrayal.
Dean is too controlled. Too invested.
Rae is always on comms, always protecting.
Arrow? Juno? Ozzy? No, it can’t be Ozzy… can it?
But my mind flashes to something Ozzy said earlier, how Serafina is the kind of name that follows Dean, how the world keeps colliding.
I swallow. “Do you know Serafina’s real name?”
His lips twitch, and he shakes his head faintly. “No. She uses layers. She uses people. She never gives you her whole face.” He coughs again, grimacing. “But she has someone close. Someone who passes information for her. Someone who keeps her two steps ahead.”
My skin crawls. I want to ask a hundred more questions. I want to shake him and scream at him for leaving. I want to collapse into him and demand he prove he is real. I want Ozzy. I want the safehouse. I want my body back, my mind back, my life back.
Instead, I whisper, “What happens now?”
His gaze flicks to the shadows around us. “Now you stay calm. Now you keep your eyes open. Now you trust no one until Maddox clears their own house.”
His voice shakes slightly, and it cracks something inside me because it sounds like fear.
My father is afraid.
The lights buzz again. A distant sound echoes through the building, faint but sharp. A thud. Then another.
Electricity prickles along my forearms, urging me to run or fight. My breath catches in my throat, and my eyes dart to the doors. “What was that?” I whisper.
My father’s head tilts, listening. His face changes, focus sharpening despite the bruises. “Someone’s here,” he murmurs.
My pulse spikes. “They’re coming back.”
The fear hits hard and fast, a wave that makes my hands shake against the rope. I press my shoulders back and force myself to breathe through my nose. If I panic, I lose control.
Another sound. Louder now. Metal on metal. A deep crack like wood splitting or a lock snapping.
I jerk in the chair. “Oh God.”
My father’s voice goes tight. “Listen to me, Salem. If Serafina’s men come in here, you do not speak about Maddox or the mole. You understand?”
I swallow hard, eyes wide. “Okay.”
Footsteps thunder somewhere in the distance, fast and controlled. Not sloppy. Not casual. Not the dragging pace of men who think they own you. Then voices, low and sharp. Orders.
My breath stutters. “That’s not them.”
My father’s head lifts, and his one good eye widens slightly. “No.”