28. Malachi
MALACHI
The air in the Seattle safehouse is a cocktail of rot and stagnant brine, thick enough to coat the back of my tongue.
Outside the salt-streaked windows, the rusted skeletons of shipping cranes point like skeletal fingers toward a bruised sky.
I adjust the cuffs of my shirt, the silk a sharp contrast to the peeling wallpaper and the damp, industrial chill seeping through the floorboards.
Savannah stands by the door, a shadow among shadows.
She doesn’t fidget. She doesn't even seem to breathe. Since the night we all finally stopped pretending, since the masks fell away at the compound, there is a new frequency between us. It’s a low hum, a tether of heat that makes me want to reach out and trace the line of her jaw just to confirm she’s real.
But today, the diplomat is back. The manipulator has work to do.
"Five minutes," I murmur, checking my watch.
"He’ll come," she says, her voice dry, raspy. "His kind always thinks they’re the smartest person in the room. You gave him just enough fake desperation to make him feel like a king."
The heavy steel door at the end of the hall groans. Marshal Millim walks in, his posture radiating the manufactured authority of a man who sleeps with a badge under his pillow. He looks at the grimy surroundings and then at me, a sneer curling his lip.
"You’re playing a dangerous game, Vane," Millim says, his hand hovering near his holster. "Luring a federal officer to a hole like this? I could have a tactical team level this block before you can blink."
"But you won't," I say, leaning back against a scarred wooden desk. I toss a manila folder onto the surface. Inside are the digital traces of his offshore accounts, the breadcrumbs of his conversations with El Espectro’s bankers.
"Because you aren't here as an officer. You’re here as a consultant for the Sombra Cartel.
And your employers are starting to wonder why their 'inside man' hasn't delivered Savannah’s head on a pike yet. "
Millim’s face flushes, his eyes darting to Savannah. He laughs, a sharp, ugly sound that echoes off the mildewed walls.
"You think you caught me in some grand conspiracy?
" Millim steps forward, his arrogance flaring like a dying ember.
"We didn't tuck her away in Tartarus Pass to keep her safe, you idiot.
We put a rabid dog in a cage with a pack of wolves and waited for the screaming to stop.
The Bureau wanted the cartel's witness gone, and we wanted Hell Court's assets seized after a bloodbath.
You were both liabilities. Two problems, one funeral. "
Savannah flinches. It’s a microscopic movement—a slight tightening of her throat—but to me, it’s a scream. The Marshal smiles, sensing the wound.
"Don't look so surprised, Cruz," he spits. "In DC, you aren't a person. You’re just a line item we’re trying to balance. You were always meant to be collateral."
The Marshal’s hand trembles on his holster, a frantic, stuttering movement. He’s unraveling. I step into his personal space, my voice lowering to a silk-smooth whisper that feels like a blade against the skin.
"Names, Millim. I want the names of the brokers who moved the Sombra’s crypto through the Caymans. I want the mountain routes they’re using to bypass the Hell Court’s sensors."
"It doesn't matter anymore," he snaps, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill.
"The world is just a marketplace, Vane. Loyalty is just a price tag people haven't met yet. You think these bikers love her? They love the way she handles a rifle. The moment the cost of keeping her outweighs the benefit, they’ll sell her just like I did. "
He gestures wildly at Savannah, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
"You're an afterthought, Cruz! A temporary arrangement! Everyone sells eventually. It’s the human condition."
Savannah steps out of the shadows. She doesn't raise her weapon yet; she doesn't have to. The cold radiating from her is enough to stop the air in his lungs. Her eyes are flat, devoid of the warmth I’ve seen her show Gideon or Dante.
"I spent eight years eating at El Espectro’s table," she says, her voice like grinding stones. "I watched him turn men into mirrors of himself. I lived in the dark, but I never became it. That’s the difference between us, Millim. You sold your soul to feel powerful. I kept mine to stay alive. You’re not a player.
You’re just a coward who couldn't handle the pressure. "
The Marshal’s jaw drops, a silent, strangled noise escaping his throat. Her words hit him harder than a physical blow—a rejection of his entire worldview.
Then the world shatters.
The high-pitched thwip-thwip-thwip of suppressed fire disintegrates the salt-streaked windows. Millim’s head snaps back as a round catches him in the throat, his blood spraying across the manila folder.
"Fuck! Cover!" I roar, diving behind the heavy oak desk as the drywall above my head turns to white dust.
He didn't come here to negotiate; he came as a beacon.
Savannah is already horizontal, sliding behind a rusted machinery crate. She transitions from stillness to lethality in the space of a heartbeat. Two cartel assassins kick through the steel door, their gear tactical and matte black.
"Left pillar!" she calls out.
I roll from the desk, my 1911 barking twice.
The first gunman drops, a neat hole between his eyes.
Savannah’s gun cracks—a rhythmic, punishing sound—as she pins the second man against the doorframe, her rounds chewing through his chest. We move as one pulse, one mind.
I cover the hallway while she clears the blind spot of the stairs, our shadows dancing across the floor as we weave through a storm of lead and glass.
The office is a thresher of drywall and splintering oak. I stay low, my boots skidding through the wet slurry of Millim’s blood as I reload. Savannah is crouched by a fallen crate, her left hand pressed to her ear, tethered to the radio frequency she swiped from one of the downed gunmen.
Her face goes gray. It isn't the pallor of physical shock; it’s the look of a woman watching her last sanctuary burn.
"Malachi," she gasps, her amber eyes snapping to mine. "They have the bunker blueprints. Sector four patrol rotations, the dead zones in our eastern sniper nests, the emergency extraction cave under the timber mill—they have everything."
A bullet bites into the desk inches from my head, showering my hair with splinters.
I don't care about the lead. I care about the nausea rolling off her in waves.
If the cartel knows the internal architecture of Tartarus Pass, the compound isn't a fortress anymore—it’s a slaughterhouse waiting for the lights to go out.
The feds didn't just sell her; they handed El Espectro the keys to the kingdom.
"We have to go," I shout over the thunder of an automatic weapon chewing the doorframe.
"Millim!" she screams, pointing.
The bastard isn't dead yet. He’s clutching a jagged wound at his neck, his face a mask of primal terror as he scrambles toward a rusted maintenance hatch in the floor. He’s a rat through the floorboards.
I surge forward, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I want his throat. I want to feel the life leave him for what he’s done to the only person I’ve ever valued. I’m three paces away when a flash-bang canister skitters across the floor, hissing like a viper.
"Malachi, back!" Savannah’s hands are on my vest, ripping me toward the rear exit as the world turns into a blinding, white-hot scream.
Pressure slams into my chest. My vision fractures into jagged strobes.
Through the haze, I see the hatch clang shut.
Millim is gone, descending toward the waterfront where the fog will swallow his cowardice.
I try to lunge toward the hatch, my fingers clawing at the air, but the door behind us bursts open with a fresh wave of Sombra hitmen.
"Leave him!" Savannah’s voice is the only anchor I have. "We lose this building in sixty seconds, Malachi! Move!"
I force my legs to turn. I leave the vengeance behind, retreating into the salt air of the Seattle night, fire blooming in the windows behind us.
Millim is out there, a ghost in the smog, and I am standing here with the bitter, metallic taste of failure coating my teeth.
I didn't just lose the target; I lost the only leverage we had to save the men back home.
The air in the motel room smells of ozone and cheap lemon floor wax.
Savannah sits on the edge of the sagging mattress, her fingers steady as she feeds brass cartridges into a fresh magazine.
I stand by the window, the neon sign for The Blue Anchor flickering across my knuckles in stuttering pulses of bruised violet.
I keep seeing the hatch. I keep seeing Millim’s hand—slick with his own treachery—vanishing into the dark.
"I waited," I say. My voice feels like it’s being pulled through a bed of glass. "I saw the threads, Savannah. I saw the rot in his eyes weeks ago, and I didn't cut it out. I wanted a masterpiece. I wanted to wait until the trap was so perfect he couldn't even scream before I buried him."
Savannah pauses, a round halfway into the magazine. She doesn't look up, but her shoulders go rigid.
"I played with the timing for the sake of the theater," I continue, my chest tightening until it aches.
"Every hour I spent polishing that dossier, every minute I spent savoring the thought of his face when he realized I owned him—that was time the cartel spent memorizing our floor plans.
While I was curating the perfect downfall, they were poisoning the walls around Dante and Gideon. I traded our safety for my ego."
Savannah stands. She moves into my space, her hands—calloused and smelling of copper—cupping the sides of my face. She forces me to look away from the window, away from the burning city.
"You aren't the villain here, Malachi," she says, her amber eyes burning with a terrifying clarity. "The man who sold us is the one who bears the blood. You were fighting him the only way you knew how. Don't do this to yourself. Don’t let him win by making you eat his guilt."
I lean into her touch, my forehead dropping against hers. Her heat is the only thing keeping the chill from turning my bones to ice. I’ve spent my life convinced that survival is a game of chess—that as long as I’m three moves ahead, the heart doesn't have to get involved.
I was wrong. Looking out at the rain-slicked skyline, I realize the board has been flipped.
This isn't about the intellectual thrill of the win anymore. It’s about the fact that if I lose them—if I lose the quiet strength of Dante or the jagged loyalty of Gideon—there is no version of Malachi Vane left that I care to be.
I finally built a home, and I’ve led the wolves straight to the door.
"No more games, Savannah," I whisper against her skin. "I’m done being the diplomat."