Chapter 49
I’ve looked better.
I’ve definitely felt better.
The sun is starting to crawl up over the horizon, soft and golden and deeply inappropriate considering I just killed my way through the night.
My body is running on adrenaline fumes. I’ve got a limp in my left leg, one hand pressed to my side to keep everything where it belongs, and my lip is swollen enough that I’m going to sound charmingly concussed for the rest of the day.
One eye is already threatening to swell shut. My arm needs stitches. A lot of them.
That’s a future-me problem.
Right now, I’ve got one more body to reckon with.
I limp down the garden path toward Alejandro, who’s still face-down where he fell, sprawled like a man who dramatically committed to the bit and maybe committed a little too hard. I let myself smirk for half a second—
Then I notice he hasn’t moved.
The smirk drops.
“Alejandro?” I call, and this close to sunrise, after everything, it comes out softer than I expect.
I kneel beside him with a hiss, ignoring the way my knee protests, and check his pulse. Strong. Steady. Of course it is. I didn’t shoot him anywhere that would actually kill him. Just his arm. Enough blood to sell it. Enough for Kenji to see the pavement stained and assume the rest.
Still.
I grab his shoulder and heave, trying to roll him over. It’s harder than it should be because he’s a big fucking bitch and I am exhausted. After a moment of undignified effort, he finally flops onto his back, head lolling to the side.
There’s a nasty cut on his forehead. A knot already swelling beneath it.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
A foot away, a shallow stream winds through the garden, water glinting in the early light. I reach over, scoop up a palmful, and fling it into his face.
The cold does the trick.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
He groans, brow furrowing, blinking slowly like the world is taking its sweet time loading. Confusion gives way to recognition.
“Saint,” he murmurs, my name the first thing out of his mouth.
“Hey,” I say, and it comes out a whisper whether I want it to or not.
He pushes himself up with a wince that suggests he’s going to complain later once the shock wears off. He blinks around, takes in the destruction, then glances down at his arm.
Clarity settles in piece by piece.
I cross my arms carefully. “What the fuck did you do?”
He exhales. “I was being dramatic,” he admits. “Wanted to make sure I really sold the you shot me thing.”
He glances at the stone bench beside him and scowls.
“Fucking knocked myself out on the way down,” he adds. “Stupid fucking bench.”
Despite myself, I snort.
He gets to his feet first and offers me a hand. I take it, letting him haul me up, and the second I’m standing, his brown eyes are all over me—cataloging injuries, irritation tightening his jaw.
“Kenji?” he asks.
“Dead.”
“Tex?”
“Also dead,” I say. “Everyone’s dead.”
He lets out a long breath, relief pouring out of him like he’s been holding it since he ran away from that locker room. He steps in close and rests his forehead against mine, careful of the swelling, careful of me.
For the first time all night, the tension drains.
The desert waits and I can finally take a goddamn breath.
And the first thing my brain offers me in the quiet is his face.
Not Kenji’s.
Not Tex’s.
Owen Liang. The wrong guy. The wrong guy, that I killed.
The man who wasn’t supposed to die. Who found something he shouldn’t have, tried to do the right thing, and paid for it because I was marked for blackmail.
I swallow hard and shove the thought down.
There’s no absolution coming. Just direction.
“You figured it out.”
Alejandro says it quietly, his hands coming up to cradle my face with careful fingers, like I’m something that might break if he presses too hard. His eyes are full of something heavy and unguarded, and suddenly this feels less like aftermath and more like confession.
“Of course I figured it out,” I tell him.
My hands slide around his sides and up his back, feeling solid muscle under torn fabric, grounding myself in the fact that he’s real and standing here.
“You would never miss a shot.”
“That’s right, baby,” he says, voice dropping low.
He leans in and kisses me, slow and deliberate, holding it just long enough to make my knees threaten to fold. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine and exhales.
“But I missed my shot with you, Saint,” he murmurs. “For two fucking years.”
The words land.
I remember everything all at once, and my hand slides down to his arm, fingers curling carefully around the gunshot wound.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were El Fantasma?”
He hisses, jerking slightly. “Fucking Christ, Saint.”
“I’m not squeezing that hard.”
He gives me a look. “Debatable.”
Then his expression shifts, serious again. “You would’ve shot me.”
“I did shoot you.”
“Somewhere fatal.”
I lift a brow. “There’s still time.”
He laughs despite himself and pulls me back into his arms. I let him, resting my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
After a moment, he speaks again, quieter now. “I never lied to you, Saint. I’ve been hunting the Guild since they framed me.”
He pulls back just enough to cup my face again, forcing me to look at him.
“There’s more at stake than just me, Picarita,” he says softly. “I needed you to see the truth first.”
His eyes search mine, almost pleading.
“But I couldn’t risk my family. I had to clear my name and keep them safe. And by some miracle…” His gaze flicks between my eyes, his mouth curving into something vulnerable and real. “…get you back.”
We stand there for a moment, neither of us rushing to speak, the quiet settling around us like something earned rather than imposed.
The garden is still torn up from the fight, petals crushed into stone, glass catching the early light, but the sky above us is beginning to pale, the first real hint of morning stretching over the desert.
“Where did you go?” I ask finally. “Tonight. Where did you run off to?”
Alejandro exhales slowly, one hand sliding to my lower back as if anchoring himself there. “I had to track down who put the hit out. Whoever contacted Kenji claimed to be El Fantasma. Promised him a partnership. Hartley was the mark. A takeover after.”
My brow furrows as the pieces shift again. “Then who was it? Who put the hit out?”
A soft, almost incredulous laugh escapes him. “Hartley.”
I blink at him. “He put out a hit on himself?”
He nods. “It wasn’t meant to succeed. He told Kenji he had to do it himself, to prove loyalty. Set the location. His guards were supposed to intercept. Take Kenji out, take the Guild in the chaos. A double-cross stacked on top of another.”
“The poison,” I say quietly.
“Kenji was the waiter,” Alejandro replies. “No one ever looks at the staff.”
“Not even the staff,” I murmur, the memory clicking into place.
“He was at the brunch,” Alejandro continues.
“Tripped that poor server with one of these.” He pulls a marble from his pocket and rolls it between his fingers.
“Needed to stop you from warning Hartley. He didn’t know Hartley was in on everything.
Then later, at happy hour, I saw him again.
Martini glass. Hartley was dead the moment he took a sip. ”
My chest tightens. “You knew that night we went to Kenji’s house. The berries. You said they smelled sweet.”
“Sweet like the poison,” he confirms. “I needed to be sure.”
There’s regret in his eyes now as he cups my face, thumb brushing gently under my swollen eye, his other arm steady at my waist. “I know how close you were to him. I couldn’t accuse him without certainty.”
Everything finally settles. The doubt. The anger. The relentless noise of the last few days.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He glances down at his arm. “It’s a scratch.”
“I’m not sorry I shot you.”
He gives me a look that’s deeply unimpressed.
“I’m sorry for earlier,” I amend, softer now. “For accusing you. For not trusting you.”
He kisses me, slow and grounding, and when he pulls back his forehead rests against mine. “Don’t apologize. Everything was designed to look wrong. On purpose.”
“I should have known,” I say. “I should have known you.”
He studies me for a long moment, then shakes his head slightly. “I understand why you didn’t.”
And I believe him. After two years of hating him, after days of suspecting him, he understands in a way that doesn’t ask to be forgiven but accepts what was.
I pull him in and kiss him again, longer this time, slower, letting the world narrow down to breath and warmth and the fact that neither of us is alone anymore.
Then a voice cuts in.
“Mwah. Mwah. Oh, Alejandro.” Grim is making his voice higher like he’s mimicking a woman’s.
I groan. “Jesus, Grim. You’re still here?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You should have a bedtime.”
“I saved your ass.”
“We’ll call ourselves even. Goodnight, Grim.”
I hang up and toss the phone into the stream without ceremony.
Alejandro watches it disappear beneath the surface, then looks back at me, something thoughtful flickering behind his eyes. “You never explained that” he says gently. “Why Grim?”
I hesitate, just long enough to decide not to lie.
“He was a mark,” I say. “A job I was supposed to do years ago. I got cocky and ended up on someone’s radar. When I finally found him, he was fourteen.”
Alejandro’s expression tightens.
“I couldn’t kill a kid,” I continue. “So, I told him the truth about the Guild. Told him to disappear. He did. Changed his name from Pussy Reaper to Grim Reaper.” I roll my eyes. “I made him change it. There was no fucking way I was going to let him keep that.”
Alejandro chuckles. “And Kenji found out.”
“Which is when he decided to use me to burn the Guild down,” I say. “Grim was leverage. Proof. A loose end.”
He studies me for a moment, then snorts softly. “So you’re the only one who actually broke Guild law between us.”
I poke his bullet wound. He winces. “Watch it.” We both laugh.
We both look down at our sigils.
Alejandro’s is burned and scarred. Dead against his skin. The Guild branded him once, claimed him, then tried to erase him when he complicated their plan. Whatever power it held is gone now—severed, rejected, rendered obsolete.
Mine is different.
The wound is still raw, the lines distorted where the sigil was burned away and reforged by choice instead of obedience. It’s healing, slowly, painfully, but it’s alive. No longer a mark of ownership. A mark of exile.
Of refusal.
“Grim’s inside the Guild systems now,” I say. “Every ledger. Every contract. Every name they thought was buried.”
Alejandro’s expression hardens as the implication settles. “So the Guild’s blind.”
“And exposed,” I add. “For the first time in its history.”
I lift my hand slightly, fingers brushing the scar. “This isn’t about taking it over. There doesn’t get to be another Kenji. Another Tex. Another man deciding who lives and dies from the shadows.”
He nods once. No hesitation. No doubt.
“We hunt what’s left,” he says. “The ones who corrupted it. The ones who hid behind the creed.”
“And when we’re done,” I say quietly, “there won’t be a Guild like the old one ever again.”
Alejandro studies my face, then gives a slow, dangerous smile. “You’re talking about ending a legacy that’s lasted centuries.”
“I already ended about a dozen tonight.”
That earns a low laugh from him.
“I’m in,” he says. “All the fucking way, baby.”
The desert wind lifts around us as the sky lightens, carrying smoke, dust, and the last remnants of a world that thought it could survive us. Somewhere behind us, bodies cool, and systems collapse. Somewhere ahead, names are already surfacing.
Targets.
I lace my fingers through his and squeeze.
“We don’t ride off into the sunrise,” I tell him. “We walk straight into the fucking fire.”
Alejandro tightens his grip, eyes sharp and unafraid.
“Good,” he says. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
And together, we leave the garden behind—
not as fugitives,
not as pawns,
but as the reckoning that’s been coming for the Guild all along.