Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lyra
Stryker’s expression goes stark, unreadable in that deadly-quiet way that makes even the shadows seem to hold their breath.
He takes in everything—my name, my father, the Hollingsworth heist—and all the pieces have clicked into place behind his eyes.
I remember my father’s glee when he got away, when he showed me some of the prized pieces.
Hawkeye had been the premier protection firm in the world, renowned for safeguarding treasures no one else could—museum-grade antiquities, royal collections, diplomatic vault transfers. Their reputation was airtight.
Until my father slipped through their carefully constructed layers of security.
The fact that he’d lifted the entire collection from under their watch didn’t just stun the art world—it electrified the dark corners beneath it.
His name traveled fast—whispered, admired, mythologized. He became a shadow hero.
And it changed him.
Made him hungrier. Reckless. Proud of the wrong things. The heist wasn’t just a payday—It was a coronation. He wanted bigger scores, louder stories, a crown no one had asked him to wear.
It stopped being about survival and started being about proving he couldn’t be touched.
And then, right before everything fell apart, he tucked the fob and locket into my go bag and told me he’d won the biggest prize of his life—that this heist would be his last.
He just didn’t know how right he was.
A tremor ripples through me.
Stryker moves me closer immediately, sliding one arm behind my back to brace me. He eases me upright against his chest, my legs draped over his, my shoulder tucked beneath his chin.
His body is warm and immovable, a barricade against a world that’s always hunted me.
It’s a place I never want to leave, and the fact he hasn’t already set me aside shocks me in a way I can’t yet comprehend.
“Lyra.”
He says it like it’s a vow—low, steady, absolute—and for a heartbeat I forget how to breathe. No alias. No mask. No running. Just my name, spoken by a man who sees everything I am and hasn’t flinched.
“None of what he did is on you.”
I wish that were true.
My throat tightens. “People died because of him.”
His breath touches my cheek. “And you think their blood is on your hands?”
“It is.” A sharp exhale escapes. “I didn’t stop him.”
“You were a kid.”
“I helped him.” The confession rips out of me. “Not because I wanted to, but because he told me I was good at it. He made me feel…useful. Important.”
I wish I could convey how charismatic my father was. The way his smile lit the whole room. “After Mom died, and it was just the two of us, he told me I needed to take her place, hold the family together. It was my job. If I took care of him, he could take care of us.”
Viciously he swears. “How old were you?”
“When I took over the cleaning, the cooking, taking care of him, getting myself to school, packing our bags when we needed to run? The first time I was with him when we hid from the cops?”
He winces again.
“Six.”
“Six?” He plows a hand into his hair. “Jesus Christ, Lyra.”
“You don’t understand. I loved him. Wanted him to be proud of me. Wanted—” My voice fractures. “Wanted to matter.”
Stryker goes motionless, the kind of still that means he’s hearing every word, weighing it, absorbing it.
“I never hurt anyone,” I whisper. “But I was taught to shoot, to pick locks, and I did some of that. I lied for him. Ran interference. Drove my first getaway car when I was fourteen.”
“Too young to even have a license.”
“Yeah. He was happy with me. Told me it was a badge of honor. I was Bonnie to his Clyde.” And ironic that he’d go on to die in a hail of gunfire sprayed at his vehicle, just like Clyde.
Stryker moves his hand to my hip, grounding me.
“And that time, when Hawkeye was closing in”—my voice breaks—“I helped him disappear. I organized his things. Burned what he said would get him caught. I thought I was saving my father.”
His arms tighten around me, not trapping me but holding me steady.
“You were a child surviving the best you could with a man who dragged you into his world.” His tone is as firm as it is forceful. “That’s not guilt. That’s captivity.”
“It doesn’t change the outcome,” I choke out. “I made everything worse.”
“Lyra, no.” His words are quiet and solid. “He did. And you survived him.”
He tilts my chin gently until I meet his eyes.
“Listen to me.” His voice is low, steady, the same tone he used when he had me bent over his lap and the world was nothing but heat and his hand and his will.
I nod.
“The Hollingsworth Collection. Do you know where it ended up?”
I swallow. The name has haunted me for years. It was one of the jobs Dad talked about most proudly. “Yeah. I do.”
“Fuck.” Yet he doesn’t blink. Just waits.
I drag in a breath that tastes like snow and gunpowder and regret for all the things that have happened.
“When I cleaned out Dad’s last safe-deposit box, there was a diary of information.
The entire Hollingsworth Collection—emeralds, the diamond rivière, all of it—was sold to a man named Viktor Kress. ”
Stryker’s brows pull together, but it’s recognition, not confusion. “Kress. Runs the Kress Wing at the Kunsthaus in Zurich.”
“That’s the one.” My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else.
“Dad said the museum was the perfect place to hide it. Sunlight, armed guards, insurance forms out the ass. Kress paid him forty-two million, split over three shell accounts. And that wasn’t the only deal.
There were others—most of them smaller, but same buyer. ”
Stryker exhales through his nose, a slow, controlled sound. “Kress looks legitimate on paper. Philanthropist, old money, spotless reputation.”
“So he wants people to believe. He’s dirty as they come.”
“Yeah.” He reaches for my hand, thumb stroking over my knuckles like he’s trying to rub the tremor out of me.
“If it had gone to anyone truly clean, we would have recovered it by now. Insurance companies would have screamed. Interpol would have moved. The fact that it vanished completely? That’s how Hawkeye knew dirty money was hiding it. ”
His eyes lock on mine, fierce and absolutely certain.
“Which means all of this is fixable. We get account numbers, amounts, selected parts of the diary to the right people. Maybe an anonymous tip. Kress gets raided; the collection resurfaces. Hawkeye gets credit for the recovery, the clients get their heirlooms back, and no one ever has to know where the information came from.”
A tremor rolls through me—not fear this time, but something terrifyingly close to relief.
“You’re not the criminal here,” he insists. “You’re the witness.”
My heart misses a beat.
“And now we have to deal with what your father left you.”
He shifts me so that I’m facing him, legs tangled with his, chest to chest. His heat surrounds me, steadies me.
“Show me, Lyra.”
My fingers shaking, I unclasp the locket. I’ve worn it for so long, protected it with my life.
Placing it in Stryker’s palm feels monumental. Like surrendering more than metal and memory.
His fingers curl around it gently, with reverence. “Go on.”
I press my thumb to the hidden ridge, and the hinge clicks open with a soft metallic sigh.
Then I point out the secret panel.
The vellum inside glows faintly in the lamplight—the ink old, curling, delicate.
Stryker inhales sharply, muscles coiling beneath his tactical gear.
Then I reach into my coat and pull out the fob, giving it to him.
“Lyra…” His voice drops. “I’ve seen this before.”
My pulse kicks. “You have?” I’ve done tons of research and turned up nothing.
He nods once, eyes fixed on the symbol like it’s a ghost from a briefing he thought he’d never encounter.
“In a Hawkeye intel report.” He’s quiet for a moment. “High-level. Nothing concrete. But they flagged the fob as connected to something called the Tsar’s Tear.”
“I don’t…” I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“We thought it was mostly legend. Supposedly Alexei Mikhailovich Volkov, a Russian aristocrat, crafted the Tsar’s Tear for Nicholas II. It was meant as a coronation anniversary gift.”
“What is it?”
“A forty-five to fifty-five carat blue star sapphire, with a rare six-rayed asterism.”
“Forty-five to fifty-five carats?” My breath catches. A gem like that is museum-grade—basically impossible to insure.
“Supposedly it glows under light as if it’s lit from within.”
Frantically I try to calculate the value of something like that. My dad’s guess that his take would be at least a hundred million is definitely right.
“The nobleman fled Russia, fearing the Bolsheviks and other criminal factions.”
I nod.
“He made his way to Colorado, which wasn’t unusual. But there was a trail of death associated with the Tear.”
Which added to the mystique.
“Alexei had a mining background and supposedly built a vault in the Rockies to protect the Tear. He created a vellum map and a ceramic fob—together they form the instructions to open the vault. He locked both items in a safe-deposit box. He was murdered for the box key.”
How have I never heard this fantastical story before?
“From there, everything goes quiet for about fifty years. Then supposedly the items were stolen, and the map was almost destroyed.”
Which explains the one surviving piece of vellum that was in my locket.
“Then a couple of months ago, we heard that the Bratva had been robbed. We knew of the map, not the locket.”
“Bratva?” As in Russian mafia?
The clearing flashes behind my eyes in perfect, brutal clarity: the black coats, the calm efficiency of men who didn’t flinch when bullets started flying, the way they fanned out like wolves who’d done this a hundred times before.
Remy on his knees, blood pouring between his fingers, still trying to shield me even after taking bullets.
Bratva.
I killed one of theirs.
My stomach lurches so violently; I have to press a hand to my mouth. Remy is dead because of me. Stryker could have been killed.
They weren’t random thugs. They were soldiers. And soldiers have brothers.
Stryker’s watching me, reading every flicker across my face. He closes the locket with deliberate care, the soft click loud in the sudden silence, then cups it between both his palms—like he’s shielding the thing that almost got us all killed. Like he’s shielding me.
“Even if they get the fob and the locket, I will never be safe.”
Remy never knew. He died thinking he was pulling me away from some greedy collector or a rival crew. Not the Bratva. If he’d known, would he have come at all?
I stare at the closed locket in Stryker’s hands and feel the weight of every choice my father ever made settle on my shoulders like a shroud.
I’m not just a thief’s daughter anymore.
I’m a Bratva target.
And there is no alias on earth deep enough to hide me from that.