Chapter Six #2
Rowan’s eyes sharpen next, gold but cold as frost. That calculating violence I recognize slides into place behind them like a blade sliding home.
His jaw ticks once, the tendons in his neck tightening, the faint scar near his collarbone shifting as he straightens.
He looks like a man already mapping every kill shot in the room.
Emerson doesn’t smile at all. He just exhales, slow and grounded, and nods once.
The movement makes the dark stubble on his jaw drag shadows across his cheekbones.
His eyes—a deep, molten brown—darken until there’s barely any light left in them.
A vow settles in the set of his shoulders, in the way his tattooed bicep flexes as he reaches for the keyboard.
Every inch of him screams resolve and buried fury.
Together, they look like war given flesh. Like violence tailored into three bodies, each crafted differently, all devastatingly focused. And every one of them is ready to burn the world for me, for Kimber, for our family.
How I turned the twins down this morning is beyond me.
Truly. My cheese isn’t just slipping off my cracker—it’s doing cartwheels off the edge of the damn plate.
And definitely not in the good way… if there is a good way.
Because looking at them now, both carved from heat and danger, tattoos peeking from collars, shoulders broad enough to block out the apocalypse…
yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m drooling regret into my lap.
Ronan catches the look instantly. Because, of course he does.
I swear that man has a built-in Berk radar that pings every time I have an inappropriate thought—which is always.
He drags his chair right up beside mine, brushing my thigh, all warm and infuriating.
Then he leans in and presses a soft kiss to the tip of my nose like I’m something precious instead of a weapon with legs.
Before I can melt into a puddle of poor decisions, he gently tilts my chair back toward the keyboard and the plate of food I’ve ignored.
“Let’s take turns eating and searching,” he murmurs, shifting the keyboard into his lap with practiced control. His fingers flex once, veins standing out along his forearm as he settles in. “You eat first.”
He lifts the plate and places it into my hands, steady as stone, then immediately starts tearing into code like he’s trying to break its spine. His brows knit, jaw tight, tattoos shifting along his forearm as his muscles work beneath them.
I shove a bite of food into my mouth, chewing while keeping my eyes glued to my screens.
“I’m tracing back the last drop from Jory,” I mutter around a mouthful.
“If we can find him on camera, we can do a reverse image search. Or pull the surrounding street feeds. Sometimes those small shops keep footage longer than the big systems.”
Ronan grunts an approval, still typing, still radiating that protective heat.
“If he left even one shadow, one reflection in a window, one stray frame he forgot to scrub, I can find him,” I say, swallowing hard. “People like Jory think they’re ghosts.”
Ronan finally glances over, a slow, dark smile forming, the kind that promises violence in the most exciting way.
I lean forward, watching Ronan tapping furiously through the files we stole, the map of the city glowing across my screens.
While Ronan and I trade off at the keyboard like our blood is wired into the circuits, Rowan stands at the second monitor hammering through financial trails with the precision of a surgeon who hates his patient.
Emerson returns from the forced nap I shoved him into earlier, hair damp from splashing water on his face, eyes clearer but still shadowed with worry.
He tries to hide it, but I see every crack he thinks he’s covering.
I told him sleep helped me reset, helped drag me out of the mental hole I was spiraling into. He didn’t argue. He just nodded and stayed close.
We need to be sharp. Kimber needs us sharp.
Hours bleed together, coffee cooling untouched, fingers flying, eyes stinging.
The war room feels smaller by the minute, like the walls are leaning in on us, listening.
Every so often one of us pushes back from a dead end with a cursed breath, forcing ourselves to try a new angle, a new link, a new door.
Then Ronan goes perfectly still.
Not frozen. Not confused. Still—like a predator whose prey finally stepped into the open.
His mouth pulls slowly into that dangerous grin of his before he hits the return key hard enough the keyboard rattles.
“Found him.”
The words slice through the room. All of us whip toward the main screen.
The footage glows grainy in the dark. Dockside camera. Nighttime timestamp.
There he is.
Jory.
Short, shaved head. Narrow shoulders hunched as if life has already beaten him down more times than he can count. He glances around like a man who believes the shadows have teeth. Then he drops a small package behind the metal bench, does another paranoid sweep, and speeds off.
Thirty minutes later Micah appears, jittery as hell, grabbing the drop with all the subtlety of a raccoon stealing a wallet. It’s almost comical—if it weren’t part of the chain that leads to Kimber being taken.
“Can you enhance the face?” Emerson asks, stepping behind us, jaw grinding.
“Already on it,” Ronan murmurs, fingers moving in a blur.
He isolates Jory’s face, runs the frame through my enhancement software. The static cleans up. Lines sharpen. Shadows lift. Not movie-quality. But enough. Enough to spot him in a crowd. Enough to corner him if it comes to that.
We stare at the screen like it might blink first.
“Any of you recognize him?” Rowan asks, voice low.
We all shake our heads.
“What kind of role would someone like him play with Dean and Bryce?” Emerson mutters. “Why pay a third party instead of doing it themselves?”
“The kind that only exists so they don’t get caught on camera,” I say. “Middlemen. Runners. Disposable shields.”
Ronan snorts. “Spineless assholes always outsource their dirty work.”
My focus locks onto Jory’s image, the faint nervous tremor captured in his shoulders.
“If he’s doing drops for them,” I say, “then he’s been close. Maybe close enough to overhear something. Close enough to lead us to whatever holes they’re hiding in.”
Rowan’s fingers curl around the edge of the desk, his tattoos stretching across his knuckles as he leans in. His voice is quiet, but it vibrates with intent. “Now we trace him backwards. Every camera, angle, and step he took.”
We spend hours backtracking Jory’s movements, peeling back digital shadows like old wallpaper. It’s tedious and obsessive work, the kind that makes your eyes sandpaper and your thoughts razor-thin, but none of us stop. We can’t.
Ronan and I sift through dockside footage frame by frame, hunting for anything that resembles Jory’s jittery posture. Rowan pulls different transaction logs, sorting through bank activity and buried transfers with the patience of a sniper waiting for his shot.
Hours pass.
Then a pattern forms.
We catch Jory on a shaky camera outside the docks, dropping something into a rusted metal bin.
He moves fast, nervous, glancing over his shoulder like every second is on borrowed time.
From there, we track him through a series of worn-out cameras across the city.
He cuts through a narrow alley where a broken fire escape hangs crooked above a dumpster.
He stops under a flickering streetlamp to tie his shoe—no, not tie it—he uses the gesture to look back without being obvious.
He ducks into a pawn shop, leaving only minutes later with the same empty hands he entered with.
He keeps moving. Bus to bus. Street to street. Like a man who has lived his life running.
This guy is not only seasoned, but he’s also terrified, and that makes him dangerous.
Eventually the trail leads us to a residential block, courtesy of the real heroes of suburbia—ring cameras and bored homeowners.
It’s a modest, middle-income neighborhood with mismatched mailboxes and overgrown hedges.
The kind of place where neighbors wave in passing and gossip travels faster than lawnmowers.
Kids’ toys are scattered in yards. A dog barks in the background.
A sprinkler sputters weakly on someone’s lawn.
Normal. So painfully normal it sets my teeth on edge.
Rowan freezes the frame. Jory steps up onto the creaking porch of a small, single-story home with chipped blue siding and a sagging porch rail. He unlocks the front door as he’s done a thousand times.
“Wait,” I breathe. “This is his home?”
The twins close in behind me, leaning over my shoulders.
Emerson pulls up his background with a few quick strokes of the keyboard.
Jory Kellan.
Thirty-three.
Local.
Inherited this house five years ago from an uncle who died without children.
Spotty jobs. No criminal record. Quiet. Forgettable.
Exactly the type of person men like Bryce and Dean would use.
“Pull his financials,” I say.
Rowan is already digging. A grid of bank statements fills the screen. At first glance, they look like every struggling thirty-something’s account: small balances, inconsistent deposits, auto-withdrawals for overdue bills.
Then we see the anomalies.
A cluster of large deposits.
No salary. No loans. Nothing legitimate.
Sudden infusions of cash.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs.
“When did they start?” I ask quietly.
Rowan scrolls back. “About four years ago.”
Four years ago.
Around the same time Dean and Bryce tightened their hold, and the guys began pushing back against their fathers from the shadows.
“Look at the sender,” I say, my voice hollow.
Rowan does. Then he clicks to expand it, and a name unfolds across the monitor.
Clean letters.
Simple font.
Deceit dressed in corporate politeness.
I stop breathing.
I freeze so completely that the room seems to tilt.
Ronan swears under his breath.
Rowan leans back like someone just stabbed him in the spine.
I whisper a curse, though the word feels like a punch.
Emerson exhaled like he’s been holding his breath through the entire scroll. “Horizon Logistics,” he says.
The shell company.
The ghost account.
The thing that was never in any of their books, never in any of their contracts, never in any of the digital trails I burned to ash.
The unseen artery pumping money into the people who burned me in hell.
My hands curl into fists so tight my nails cut into my palms.
Of course.
Of fucking course.
They built an entire shadow empire under our noses.
One we never knew existed.
One they hid even from me.
One they’ve used to stay invisible while they hunt us and hold Kimber somewhere we cannot find.
The fury inside me climbs high, hot, blinding.
“They made sure no one would find it,” I whisper, rage scraping my throat raw. “They buried this deep so I couldn’t destroy it along with everything else.”
Ronan’s tattoos flex over his biceps as he grips the edge of the desk.
Rowan’s jaw cracks with tension.
Emerson’s entire body trembles like a bomb waiting for a spark.
We stare at the screen.
Horizon Logistics stares back.
A quiet monster.
A hidden vein.
A map to the men who still have Kimber.
“We’re going to tear it apart,” I say.
“Starting now.” Ronan says it like a death sentence, low and rough, his tone carrying the weight of a man who intends to make good on every syllable. He cracks his neck, rolls his shoulders, and mutters, “If this little shit thinks he can hide, he’s about to learn what a real purge looks like.”
Then he dives in.
His fingers blur over the keys, each tap slicing another thread from Jory’s digital life.
I watch the screens shift and stutter as he forces every firewall, every encryption layer, every attempt at anonymity to kneel.
Emerson hovers behind him, jaw tight, the muscle ticking in his cheek the only sign he is seconds from breaking something.
Rowan stands by the window, arms folded, eyes locked on the door like he’s imagining Jory walking through it so he can tear his throat out.
The tension in the room is a living thing.
I drift behind Ronan, leaning over his shoulder as windows pop open and data cascades across the monitors. “Pull everything,” I say, voice low, steady, controlled. The opposite of how I feel inside. “Bank logs. Travel history. Any device he’s synced to.”
Ronan snorts softly but keeps typing. “Baby, I’m pulling his fucking soul out through the screen.” A savage grin cuts across his face. “And I’m not stopping until I find where he pisses, sleeps, and breathes.”
Part of me wants to snap, wants to push us into the street and toward Jory’s front door, but I don’t. Not yet. Because if we go in blind, Kimber may pay the price. We may pay the price. And I refuse to let that happen. Not again.
Hours pass. They slip by in long, slow drags, but Ronan doesn’t relent. He drags Jory’s life into the open and nails it to the wall for us to study.
Old addresses. Work history. The burner accounts tied to the shell company. Venmo payments that never should have existed. A hidden stash of encrypted messages that Ronan cracks with a growl of triumph.
“Got you, you sneaky little asshole,” he mutters. “Thought you were smart. Should’ve wished for a brain instead.”
The last piece drops into place just as the sky outside turns bruised and dark. Jory’s routines fall into a neat pattern. His hiding spots line up like dominoes. His weaknesses glow like fresh targets.
Ronan leans back, wiping a hand over his face, then flicks his eyes up to mine. They gleam like a predator seeing movement in the brush. “Nightfall,” he says, voice vicious. “That’s when we go.” He lifts his chin, a feral grin spreading, “…we won’t be leaving empty-handed.”
My pulse spikes.
Because night is our domain.
Night is when monsters like Jory learn what real fear tastes like.
And tonight, we are coming for him.