Chapter 26
26
ATLAS
T he storm hadn’t made landfall yet, but the city was already holding its breath.
Charleston’s streets were empty, save for the slow rotation of wind-blown debris and the soft, sullen groans of old shutters trying to cling to their hinges. Gray clouds pressed low to the earth, thick and wrong. Not just hurricane weather— war weather. The kind that turned the horizon to ash and made the air smell like it remembered fire.
Leonard Pennington’s house stood at the edge of that waiting silence, perched like a relic from a time that had long since passed.
Old Charleston money.
You could always tell the difference. The new money built fortresses: sharp edges, steel gates, mirrored windows. The old money didn’t need defenses. Their power was in the foundation, in the centuries of lineage that whispered from the walls.
But this house was tired.
Paint flaking at the cornices. Shutters hanging crooked. Ivy that had once been trimmed now choked the columns. The gravel drive hadn’t been swept in weeks, maybe months. But the bones were still strong.
It was a place built on legacy—and crumbling under its weight.
There were no cameras. No security. Just the wind and the coming dark.
I let myself in.
The back door, tucked behind the overgrown hedges near what had once been the servants’ quarters, was unlocked. Not broken. Just left open like an afterthought. A carelessness that smelled like too much money and too little fear.
Inside, the air was stale. Tidy, but not clean. The kind of upkeep you bought from a maid service that came every six weeks and didn’t give a damn, or couldn’t afford it.
I moved through the hall without sound.
Wood floors muffled by Persian rugs, the scent of mildew crawling in from the walls. A chandelier above the foyer flickered once, then steadied, casting long, skeletal shadows down the corridor.
He was in the office.
I heard him before I saw him—wet sniffling, the slap of a card against glass, the unmistakable rasp of nostrils pulling in poison.
The door was open.
Leonard Pennington sat slouched in a high-backed leather chair, a marble ashtray balancing precariously on the arm, an old-school sterling razor next to a mound of white powder on the desk.
He was a ruin.
Still handsome, in the way some men could be even after burning the wick at both ends for decades. But his eyes were bloodshot, his skin yellowed at the edges, and his mouth twitched from the aftershocks of his last high.
He didn’t even flinch when I walked in.
“Mm?” he mumbled, blinking slowly. “Who the hell are you?”
I didn’t answer.
I kicked his chair.
Hard.
The thing tipped backward with a grunt and a crash, Pennington’s limbs flailing as he hit the ground in a heap, powder flying, the edge of the desk catching him in the ribs.
“ Christ! ” he shouted, coughing. “What the—who the fuck ?—?”
He tried to scramble up.
I stepped on his chest and pushed him back down.
“I’m not here to talk,” I said.
He blinked up at me, dazed. Then—like any good addict—his irritation caught fire and turned to arrogance.
“You have any idea who I am?” he snapped, spit flecking the corners of his lips. “This is my house. You can’t— ugh! ”
My fist drove into his stomach like a piston.
He folded immediately, retching hard onto the floor beside the desk. His body shook, spasms taking hold of his shoulders and neck. I let him choke it out.
Let him feel it.
He groaned and rolled to the side, one hand still on his gut, the other reaching blindly toward the desk. Not for the phone. For the coke.
“Can I do another bump before you kill me?” he muttered, voice hoarse.
I stared down at him.
“Why do you think I’m here to kill you?”
He gave a rasping, bitter laugh and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Because that’s how these things go. You don’t send bruisers to negotiate . ”
“I’m not here for negotiation,” I said.
“No shit.”
He didn’t even try to rise. Just laid there on the floor, eyes glassy but sharp beneath the haze. I wondered how much of the man was still in there. How much he’d sold to survive this long.
Probably most of it.
I crouched beside him. “I want answers.”
“Good luck with that,” he muttered. “All I’ve got are bad habits and worse stories.”
“Then start telling one,” I said. “Something about Department 77. About the people you talk to when you think no one’s listening.”
Something shifted behind his bloodshot eyes.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
I watched his jaw lock. A moment of hesitation. Then a quiet sigh.
“You’re wasting your time,” he said. “Even if I did know anything, I couldn’t talk.”
I rose to my full height and grabbed the front of his shirt.
He yelped as I lifted him clean off the ground and slammed him against the nearest bookcase. Books spilled around us like bones.
“You’re going to talk,” I growled. “Or you’re going to bleed.”
He gasped for breath, legs dangling two feet off the ground.
“You don’t understand,” he choked. “They’ll kill me.”
“If you don’t start talking, I’ll kill you.”
His lips twitched, and for a second—just a second—there was a flicker of something like admiration in his eyes.
“You’re not them,” he said.
“Try me.”
A beat passed. Then another.
Finally, Pennington sagged.
“Fine,” he rasped. “Let me hit the line. Then I’ll talk.”
I dropped him.
He crumpled, coughing, then half-crawled back to the desk. Hands shaking, he lined up another bump, leaned in, and inhaled like it was salvation.
His eyes lit up.
“Better,” he murmured, licking the residue from his gums. Then he turned toward me, almost grinning. “You’re a Dane.”
I didn’t confirm.
Didn’t need to.
His laugh was low and hoarse, flecked with self-loathing. “Figured. All that money. All that muscle. Doesn’t mean a damn thing with these people.”
“Try me,” I said again.
He studied me. This time, the grin slipped. “They’re coming for you.”
“I know.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t . The people behind this? They’re not some cartel. They’re not crooked politicians or rogue agents. They’re the rot underneath all of it. They don’t threaten. They rewrite rules. Erase names. Burn bloodlines.”
I stayed still.
Unmoved.
But inside, something cold was unraveling.
“Who are they?” I asked.
He chuckled, pulled a crushed cigarette pack from his pocket, and lit one with the gold Zippo on the desk. His hands were shaking now, even more than before.
“Vincent Graves,” he said, exhaling smoke. “Congressman.”
My pulse ticked up.
“And the other?”
“Klein Kemper.” He took a long drag. “Junior Senator. South Carolina.”
I already knew those names.
Everyone did.
And that was the problem.
They weren’t enemies you could break in half in a back alley. They were handshakes in the open. Smiles on television. They were the kind of men who never got their shoes dirty—because they paid someone else to drown the bodies.
“They want Dominion Hall,” Pennington said quietly. “And they want Anna Petrov gone. Her father, too.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Something about old debts. Old blood. I didn’t ask for details. Just kept my ears open. Told Graves I’d flag any noise from the Philharmonic scene.”
My chest burned.
“And Eugene?”
“Little worm’s desperate for a seat at the table,” Pennington sneered. “He thinks if he delivers Anna, they’ll let him in.”
I took a step back.
The rage was creeping in now, slow and merciless.
“You helped them?” I asked.
Pennington met my eyes.
And smiled.
“I’m a survivor,” he said. “We all choose our devils. Mine just pay better.”
I stared at him for a long time.
Wondering how a man could rot so thoroughly and still call it self-preservation.
He exhaled smoke.
Then, in one movement so fast I didn’t even register it, he reached beneath the desk.
There was a click.
A flash of metal.
He pulled a small pistol from the magnetic holster, looked me straight in the eyes—and smiled.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said. “But I’m done running.”
Then he turned the barrel to his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The sound cracked through the office like a firework in a tomb.
Blood sprayed the desk, the walls, the books behind him. His body jerked, then slumped, collapsing against the wood in a slow, almost graceful descent.
Silence followed.
Thick.
Suffocating.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t even breathe.
I just stood there, staring down at what was left of Leonard Pennington.
And somewhere, beyond the stormlight pressing against the windows, I felt the whole game shift beneath my feet.
Vincent Graves.
Klein Kemper.
They weren’t coming.
They were already here.
And they weren’t playing.
They were executing.