Chapter 8
8
ATLAS
T he clang of metal echoed off the stone walls like a war drum.
I pushed the barbell up again, arms burning, muscles screaming. The gym in the lower level of Dominion Hall was nearly silent, save for the low thrum of my breath and the cold, steady rhythm of iron on steel. No music. No distractions. Just sweat, gravity, and pain.
Pain helped.
Pain kept the thoughts away.
I drove the weight up again. And again.
Her face flashed behind my eyes.
Green eyes, wide and wild. Lips parted beneath mine, breathless, begging.
Make me forget.
God help me, I had. I’d made her forget him, and I’d forgotten myself.
The next rep faltered.
I gritted my teeth, locked my arms, and forced the barbell up, shaking.
I couldn’t get her out of my head. Not just the sex—though that haunted me too—but the way she’d looked at me. Like I wasn’t broken. Like I wasn’t a man made of ash and armor.
Anna Peters.
Anya Petrov.
Russian-born, Boston-raised. A harpist with calloused fingertips and skin that tasted like rain and sin. She didn’t move like a woman who’d been trained to survive heartbreak, but I could see it in her eyes. The fragility hidden behind the cultured veneer.
I’d recognized it because I carried the same thing.
Different shape. Same weight.
Don’t think about her. Don’t think about her.
I slammed the bar back into the rack and sat up, breathing hard, sweat soaking through the fabric of my T-shirt.
But my mind didn’t stop.
It shifted—to the last woman who’d looked at me like that.
To the one who’d promised me forever, then shattered it at the altar.
I had been dressed in black. Waiting at the end of the aisle, my brothers lined up behind me. Marcus cracking jokes. Ryker deadpan serious. Charlie, the youngest, nervous but proud.
I’d worn a watch that day. The minute hand had ticked near the hour we were supposed to begin. Then ten minutes. Fifteen.
I’d known.
Somewhere in my gut, I’d known before the groomsman’s whisper reached my ear.
“She’s gone.”
Gone.
Gone to the man she’d been fucking behind my back for months. A civilian. A nobody. The opposite of me in every way.
I could still see the pity in Ryker’s eyes. Still hear the quiet curse Noah hissed under his breath. Still feel the burn in my throat as I walked out of that church, stone-faced, never saying a word.
I didn’t talk about her. Not with my brothers. Not with anyone.
But now Anna had opened that wound without even knowing it.
Fuck.
I picked up the barbell again and pushed through another set. Chest press. Then squats. Then pull-ups until my lats screamed. I didn’t stop until the burn eclipsed the memories. Or came close.
“Jesus,” came a voice behind me, smug and familiar. “Trying to tear a hole in the floor?”
I didn’t have to look to know who it was.
Marcus.
I dropped the bar with a thud, rolled my neck, and turned.
He stood in the doorway of the gym, grinning like the bastard he was. Shirtless, a lazy confidence in his frame that could only come from someone who’d seen war and walked away smiling.
“Thought you’d be down here,” he said, stepping in and tossing a towel at me. “The house was too damn quiet. Always is when The Commander starts brooding.”
I caught the towel, wiped the sweat from my face. Didn’t answer.
“Still built like a fucking tank, I see,” Marcus went on, circling the bench press like he was inspecting a new weapon. “Gotta say, you’re starting to look soft.”
I didn’t react.
He grinned wider. “That’s a joke, big guy. Relax. You look like you could bend a car in half.”
I let the towel drop to the bench and reached for the water bottle at my side.
“You come down here just to insult me, or do you have something useful?”
Marcus shrugged. “I like watching you suffer. Makes me feel better about my own emotional constipation.”
I shot him a look.
He raised his hands. “All right, all right. I came with news. Or lack thereof.”
“Department 77?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Marcus’s grin dimmed. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”
“Bullshit,” I muttered.
“No, really. Mayor’s family? Gone. Off the map. We’ve got one whisper from a cleaner who swears they were relocated after her … disappearance. But no one’s seen them.”
I clenched my jaw.
We had handled the mayor. She’d been the tip of a very deep, very old spear. Tied to Department 77, tied to our father’s past, tied to everything that wanted to swallow us whole. We thought we were cutting off the head of the snake.
But the body was still moving.
Marcus sighed. “We burned a lead we barely understood, and now the city’s in lockdown mode. No one’s talking. No one’s making moves.”
“They’re hiding,” I said. “Waiting for us to get comfortable.”
Marcus tilted his head. “You think the upper crust is involved.”
“I know they are.”
“Country club assholes and politicians?”
I nodded. “The names you don’t see in the papers. The ones who own the judges. Fund the orchestra. Pull the strings.”
Marcus whistled low. “Christ. You really know how to pick a social event, then.”
I glanced at him.
He grinned. “Last night. Garrison Green. Tux and all. I heard you made quite the impression.”
Damn him, He had eyes everywhere. That was his job, after all.
I grabbed the weights again. “It was nothing.”
“Really? ‘Cause rumor has it, there was a harpist involved. A brilliant one, I hear.”
My hands stilled on the bar.
Marcus caught the shift. “Uh huh. There it is.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“She plays like heaven was poured into her fingers and she hasn’t realized it yet.”
Marcus blinked. Then snorted. “Jesus, you are getting soft.”
I gave him a look.
He grinned. “You’re telling me you fell for some girl plucking strings in a courtyard? Sounds like a Jane Austen novel.”
“You listen to garbage rock and sing off-key in the shower.”
He threw up the horns and bellowed, “She’s my cherry pie ? —”
“Stop.”
Marcus laughed, the sound echoing off the walls. “All right, all right. I’m done. But I gotta say, you in a tux, sweating over a harpist? I didn’t see that coming.”
“I’m not sweating over anything,” I muttered.
“Uh huh.”
He pushed off the wall. “Anyway, I’m going to terrorize Ryker in the armory. You coming up for food at some point?”
I didn’t answer.
Marcus paused at the doorway, watching me.
Then, softer, “You good, Atlas?”
I nodded once.
He didn’t push.
He just left.
And I was alone again.
I stared at the weights in my hands, at the sweat beading on my arms. There was so much to do. So many leads to chase, threats to dissect, ghosts to dig up.
But I couldn’t think.
Not when my mind was a battlefield of memory. Her green eyes. The smell of her hair. The taste of her on my tongue. The way she looked up at me after I left her there in the dark like I was the last man in the world she’d ever trust.
And my ex.
My almost-wife.
The altar. The silence.
The shame.
I picked up the weights and started again.
One rep. Then another.
As if I could lift the weight of the world from my shoulders.
As if that had ever worked before.