31. Mira
thirty-one
Mira
T hrough one-way glass, Damian positions himself across from Gideon Lynch like he's dissecting a particularly interesting specimen. The interrogation room's harsh fluorescents cast shadows that make Gideon look older, more weathered than the man who taught Jax to trust.
Jax paces behind me, that restless energy manifesting in constant movement. Three steps left, tap the wall, three steps right. His fingers drum against his thigh when he pauses—calculating odds he doesn't like.
"Stop." My hand catches his mid-pace, pulling him against me. "He can't hurt you anymore."
"He's trying." His grip tightens on my waist, possessive and desperate, eyes locked on Gideon through the glass. "Sitting there all calm like he's still my mentor. Like Tommy never happened."
Damian's clinical voice cuts through the speaker: "Eastern European connections. Now."
Gideon ignores him, staring directly at the mirror like he knows exactly where we're standing. "Is she worth it, Jax? Really worth throwing away everything I taught you?"
Jax's whole body goes rigid against mine. His hand shoots out, slamming the intercom button hard enough to rattle the equipment. "She's worth burning down everything you built. Starting with your trafficking network."
Mine. The thought hits violent and sudden. The way he claims me publicly, without hesitation.
"Touching," Gideon drawls. "Just like when you swore Tommy was worth saving. How'd that work out?"
The temperature drops. Jax's breathing changes, and his fingers dig into my hip hard enough to bruise.
Damian leans forward in the interrogation room, favoring his right side where bandages bulk under his shirt. There's dried blood on his collar, and his smile is unsettling. "Speaking of things not working out, you should know Thorne is dead. Park too. And Novak."
Gideon's smirk falters. "Who?"
"The men who died cleaning up your mess." Damian shifts, wincing slightly at the movement. "Thorne took shrapnel pulling me to cover. So I take that personally."
The door to the interrogation room opens. Xander limps in, his left arm in a sling, bruises coloring his jaw purple-black. He drops into a chair with barely controlled violence. "Park held a corridor alone for forty-three seconds. Seven bullets in him. Still shooting when he dropped."
Through the glass, blood seeps through Damian's bandage as he leans closer to Gideon. "So here's what happens now. You give us everything on Petrov, or I get creative despite the hole in my shoulder. Mira mentioned some Serbian nerve technique that sounds fascinating."
My pulse kicks up. They're threatening to use my methods.
"Fuck, that's hot," Jax mutters against my neck, then louder through the intercom: "She knows twenty-three ways to keep someone conscious during interrogation."
The pride in his voice as he brags about my violence while his hands shake against me—it's intoxicating.
"Twenty-three," Xander repeats, adjusting his sling. "Your girlfriend's a fucking nightmare, Ryder."
"My nightmare," Jax confirms, pulling me tighter against him.
"Tell me about Petrov." My voice cuts through the intercom like ice. "Current location, security details, movement patterns. Everything."
Gideon's head snaps toward the mirror. "Petrov? Who the fuck is Alexei Petrov?" His confusion seems genuine. "I coordinate Baltimore operations, but I don't get names. Nobody knows anybody else—that's how it works."
Baltimore. Finally, a location.
Jax immediately shifts, positioning his body between me and the glass even though Gideon can't see us. His hand slides to the weapon at his hip—automatic, protective, devastating.
"Information. Now," Damian says quietly. "Or we find out if Mira's techniques work as advertised."
Gideon laughs, but it's hollow. "You think I'll break that easily?"
"Yes," Xander says cheerfully. "Want to know why?"
The silence stretches. Then Jax pulls me toward the door. "Come on. You don't need to watch this."
"I want to—"
"No." His voice is firm but shaking. "I know what you're capable of. I know what they're capable of. But you don't need to watch them take apart someone I used to—" He stops, swallows hard. "Just. Come with me."
Something in his voice makes me follow. Behind us, we hear Gideon's first scream.
Twenty minutes later, Damian emerges from the interrogation room, fresh blood on his hands mixing with his own from the reopened wound.
"Baltimore harbor. Three warehouse locations, rotates every forty-eight hours.
Former Spetsnaz security, twelve-man teams minimum.
Motion sensors, thermal imaging." He pauses, clinical despite the gore.
"Gideon won't be sharing intelligence with anyone else. "
"Is he—"
"Dead?" Damian's gray eyes are flat. "Yes. Eventually."
Xander limps out behind him, good hand bloody. "Petrov knows you're coming. Has for years. But he's tied to Baltimore shipping operations. Can't run without losing everything."
The interrogation room door slams as they exit.
Seconds later, they spill into the briefing room where Cole already has three tablets running while Remy rushes forward with medical supplies.
Asher follows them in, pressing gauze to a gash on his forehead while pulling up Baltimore satellite imagery one-handed.
"Quit moving," Remy orders, wrestling with Damian's blood-soaked shirt. "The bullet went through but you need stitches."
"After we plan." Damian waves him off, typing coordinates with bloody fingers. "Harbor warehouses here, here, and here."
Jax helps me load magazines while his eyes track every person in the room, calculating threats that don't exist. His fingers brush mine with each bullet loaded, tiny reassurances that we're both still here.
"Where's the rest?" My voice cuts through the chatter.
Cole looks up from his screens, a bruise darkening his left eye. "Securing Gideon's evidence at the academy. The core team—" He gestures at the battered group around us.
Asher spits blood into an empty coffee mug. "RPG. Thorne saw it." Another spit. "Pulled Damian out."
"Twenty feet with shrapnel in his spine," Damian adds quietly while Remy forces him into a chair to stitch the wound. "Second rocket." He doesn't need to say more.
Xander loads weapons one-handed, cursing creatively. "Park held that fucking corridor like a human wall. Seven bullets. SEVEN! Still shooting. Absolute fucking legend."
"And Novak?" Jax asks, his voice rough as he hands me another empty magazine to load.
Cole pulls up a photo on his tablet—a quiet-looking man with kind eyes. "Covering extraction. Sniper." His measured tone carries weight. "Seven-year-old daughter."
Same age I was when Petrov destroyed everything.
Asher enters, favoring bruised ribs. "Death benefits. College funds." He pauses, uncharacteristically adding: "Novak's kid... she drew him pictures."
The grief cracks through his usual ice-cold demeanor.
The grief in the room mixes with determination as everyone keeps working—loading weapons, checking gear, treating wounds. These men died for a mission connected to my vendetta.
"Holy shit on a stick!" Xander kicks a chair toward me while reloading one-handed. "Sit down! You're making Jax vibrate like a fucking tuning fork!"
Jax immediately pulls me onto his lap instead, arms wrapping around me while I continue loading magazines. His chin hooks over my shoulder, breath warm against my neck as he watches me work.
"You two are like a goddamn romantic IED," Xander mutters, struggling with a tactical vest using one arm. "Explosive and dangerous to everyone nearby."
"Jealous?" Jax's confidence surprises everyone, including me.
"Of your codependent powder keg of a relationship? Hell no." But Xander's grinning despite the pain. "Though watching you two detonate is entertaining as fuck."
Remy ties off Damian's stitches with medical precision before shifting to diplomatic charm. "Now, about those delightful war crimes you mentioned—purely from a medical curiosity standpoint, you understand."
"Capture," I correct, feeling Jax tense beneath me. "Death's too quick."
Everyone stops working to stare. Asher actually laughs—a sharp bark before he winces.
"Twenty years. Now capture?" Cole's measured tone carries curiosity.
"Death ends suffering immediately." My hands keep loading bullets with mechanical precision. "I want him to understand what he's lost first. Like I did at six years old, watching my parents bleed out."
"Some of my methods for keeping people conscious aren't exactly legal," I add. "Hell, they're war crimes in twelve countries."
Damian's eyes actually light up through the pain. "Which twelve? And is it the Serbian technique or the Chechen pressure points?"
"Both," I confirm. "Plus a few things I learned in Morocco that technically violate the Geneva Convention."
"We literally dissolved three bodies last month," Cole points out while ice still pressed to his eye. "Legal isn't exactly our concern."
"Four bodies," Remy corrects cheerfully. "You're forgetting Cincinnati."
"That was self-defense dissolution," Xander argues while struggling with his sling.
"Is that a legal distinction?" I ask.
"No," everyone answers simultaneously.
Jax's arms tighten around me, his lips pressing against my shoulder. "That's my girl."
"Your girl's a sadist," Damian observes approvingly while pulling on a fresh shirt over his stitches.
"Perfect match then," Asher adds, cleaning blood from his sniper scope. "Jax has been calculating torture methods for three hours."
"I was calculating—fuck, the numbers won't stop—all the ways someone could make you scream without killing you.
Blood loss rates and consciousness thresholds and—" Jax's rambling speeds up, his fingers tapping faster against my hip.
"It's different when it's about keeping someone alive to hurt them more. The math gets complicated."
Remy grabs Xander's arm. "On three. One—" He jerks it hard, the pop audible as the shoulder resets.