Chapter 6
OLIVIA
My phone lit up again on the workbench, vibrating just enough to make it rattle against the metal frame.
Lark.
Her name flashed across the screen, followed by a string of messages that kept stacking on top of each other.
Come out tonight.
It’ll be fine.
Nathan said it’s handled.
Another buzz. I didn’t reach for it.
The last time she’d said it was “fine,” I’d ended up on the ground with a fairy’s hand around my wrist and a room full of supes watching to see how it would end.
My grip tightened on the wrench.
Nathan’s name sat in her messages like a safety net she kept trying to throw over the memory, but it didn’t stick. Not when I could still hear the way the room had gone quiet. Not when I remembered who actually stepped in.
Calix Winstale.
The thought alone made my stomach pull tight. Not because he’d saved me, but because he didn’t have to.
That night replayed in flashes I couldn’t quite shake. The way the crowd parted without question, the way Manshu stepped back when Calix spoke, the way no one argued.
His power didn’t announce itself. It simply moved everything else out of the way.
Setting the wrench down harder than necessary, I reached for my phone, flipping it onto the rag so the screen faced the bench.
Later that night, after I got home, after the adrenaline wore off, I opened my laptop and searched. One search turned into ten. Ten turned into hours.
Calix Winstale. The Syndicate. FangTech Labs.
Article after article filled the screen, all interviews clipped and edited for public consumption. Grainy footage pulled from underground sources. Forums filled with speculation, arguments, and theories stacked on theories.
Each new tab led to another.
Photos of crime scenes cleaned too quickly. Stories about disappearances that never made it to official reports. Whispers about how the Syndicate handled problems, quietly, efficiently, permanently.
I’d sat there scrolling, the glow of the screen the only light in my apartment, clicking link after link until the words started to blur together.
Some videos I couldn’t finish. Others, I watched all the way through, even when I shouldn’t have.
By the time I closed the laptop, my stomach had turned enough that I had to sit there for a while, staring at nothing, letting the silence settle back in.
Not everything painted them in blood.
Tracking all the data, it looked like when Calix and his sisters took over, a lot of the public killings and wars took a back seat. There was a larger jump in the number of missing people who were never being found, but nothing that would make splashy headlines.
The only Syndicate name that continued to pop up again and again in my searches was Ezra Desmond.
Articles showed polished photos, clean buildings, smiling children, headlines about outreach programs and support systems for supernatural kids who had lost their families.
Entire networks of orphanages were funded by the Syndicate, offering structure, education, and integration for those supe children that had no adult guidance or supervision.
There were interviews from the kids from the orphanages too.
Some of them were adults now, talking about where they had come and what those places had given them. Stability. Purpose. A chance to build something that didn’t end in human violence.
Then there were the forums. Threads arguing back and forth.
It’s a front. Just a bunch of thugs in suits.
PR cleanup.
They’re buying favor with the human government.
Replies stacked beneath them.
The Syndicate keeps us supes safe and our voices heard in government.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I lived there. They saved my life.
I’d sat there scrolling through it all, watching the divide play out in real time, unable to decide which version felt more real.
One thing was immediately clear, this family had hit the genetic jackpot because every single one of them was stunning.
Even the women made my heart skip a beat, and I didn't swing that way.
The phone buzzed again on the bench. The sound snapped me out of it, and the shop around me came back into view.
“Are you done with the red Audi yet?”
Alto’s voice carried from the office doorway, cutting through the low hum of the garage. I slid the wrench into place one last time and gave it a final turn, the metal tightening with a clean, solid click.
“Yeah,” I called back, rolling out from under the car.
The creeper wheels squeaked softly against the concrete as I pushed myself out into the open. I sat up, wiping the back of my hand across my forehead, leaving a faint streak of grease behind.
Alto stood half in the doorway, already turning his head toward the customer waiting behind him. He gave me a quick nod before shifting his attention fully to them, one hand gesturing toward the bay.
“I’ll pull it out front in a second,” he said, his tone shifting into that smooth, easy cadence he used out front, then the door clicked shut behind him.
I stayed where I was for a second, glancing down at my hands.
Black with grease. Oil worked into the creases of my knuckles. Denim overalls marked with stains that never fully washed out.
The shop smelled the same as always—oil, metal, a faint trace of magic lingering in the air from the last job. It was steady. Predictable.
Nothing like the world I’d been reading about.
Another buzz from my phone rattled the bench, but I didn’t look at it. Not yet.
Why am I still thinking about them? About him?
The lazy prince of the Syndicate. The golden boy genius. The weapons master. Calix Winstale.
I could still see his face above me, gazing down at me with those golden-pink eyes that made my breath catch.
I had just been on the floor between them. Not a person. A piece. A way to get under someone else’s skin. That realization sat heavier the more I turned it over. After that, I made a point of asking around about them, discreetly of course.
People didn’t say much outright, but their reactions filled in the gaps. A pause before answering. A glance over their shoulder. The way some of them lowered their voices without realizing it as they told me about the background to Manshu’s and Calix’s attitude toward each other.
His father had tried to go to war against the Syndicate.
Apparently, he’d gathered a following of supes who thought the Syndicate held too tight a leash. Supes who believed humans should be beneath them in more than just status or wealth. That the Syndicate’s version of “balance” was actually weakness.
In bars and garages, the story always shifted depending on who told it, but the ending never changed.
One old mechanic had leaned closer when he told me about it, lowering his voice as if the walls might carry the words somewhere they shouldn’t go.
“They tried to hit the Syndicate's new labs here,” he’d said, wiping his hands on a rag, eyes flicking toward the open garage door. “Figured the Syndicate would be distracted. New builds. New expansion and all that.”
His voice somehow became even softer. “They were wrong.”
From what I gathered, Manshu’s father had led the charge himself. His people stormed the building, and what happened to them was not something they ever imagined would happen.
The version I heard most often was painted the same way.
Doors mechanically locked behind them, and the inside of the building turned into something else entirely.
Traps were triggered, hallways shifting, pathways narrowing, forcing them forward. Forcing them up. By the time they reached the top floor, there weren’t many of them left, and Falcon had been waiting.
The man telling the story hadn’t described what happened next in detail. He didn’t need to. The way he stopped talking for a second, the way his jaw tightened—that said enough.
Manshu’s father didn’t walk out of that building. Neither did most of his people. What was left of that rebellion got buried under everything else the Syndicate built afterward. Just another story people told in low voices, usually followed by a change of subject.
Back in the shop, I tightened my grip on the rag.
Yeah. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the middle of that again. Not between Manshu and Calix. Not in any supes’ line of sight. Invisible sounded real good right about now.
The rest of the day settled into something normal.
Engines came in and out. Tools clanked against metal. Alto cracked jokes from the front while I worked through a list of repairs in the back. Yendor wandered in later, rubbing his hands together as he approached me.
He hovered for a second, shifting his weight from one foot to the other before speaking.
“So… uh… You got any plans tonight?”
I glanced up at him, wrench still in hand. “No.”
His eyes flicked toward the office where Alto stood, then back to me. His mouth opened slightly, then closed again. Whatever he’d been about to say stalled out before it ever made it past his lips.
“Cool. Yeah. Just—cool.”
He nodded too quickly and turned, ducking back toward the front. I watched him go, brow furrowing.
From the office, Alto’s voice drifted out a few minutes later, smiling casually, as he leaned against the door frame and explained.
“He’s trying,” Alto said, glancing at me with a small smile. “Wants to connect with you in hopes I’ll give him the shop one day.”
I let out a short laugh.
“Good luck with that.”
Alto huffed a quiet chuckle of his own, shaking his head as he went back to his paperwork.
Retire? Alto? Not a chance. He’d still be here long after the rest of us burned out.
By the time the last car rolled out, the sky outside the open bay doors had shifted darker. Alto wiped his hands on a rag, calling out that he would be in the office while I was shutting everything down.
“Don’t forget to order more octane fluid,” I called out from deep in the garage.
“Yeah, yeah,” he waved me off. “You sound just like Tera.” I looked back to see a smile crack along his face. “I’m not so old yet that I’d forget to order our best seller. ”