Chapter 52
Callum
There’s a certain silence that comes the day before hell breaks loose. Not the peaceful kind. No, it’s that tight-chested, too-quiet sort that presses down on the lungs like a storm cloud refusing to break.
I stood at the head of the table in our newest safehouse—an old, gutted estate on the edge of nowhere—and tried to keep my voice steady. Tried to keep my eyes off her. Seraphina. Every inch of me wanted to reach for her, but now wasn’t the time for touch. Now was the time for war.
Quinn leaned over the blueprint Emerson had rendered on-screen, a cigarette tucked behind his ear, as usual. He always looked like he belonged in some gritty, underground card game instead of running black ops. But hell, the man could crack a system like it owed him money.
Basen stood off to the side, arms crossed, face hard as stone. My oldest mate. We’d bled together more times than I could count. If I was the fire, Basen was the hammer—methodical, brutal, but always controlled. And he was loyal. Feckin’ hell, he was loyal in a way I didn’t deserve.
Both of them were handpicked. Years ago, when I realized there were fights I couldn’t take on my own, I started the company—fronted as private security, but that was just the window dressing. We handled the things the world pretended didn’t exist. Langston. Facility E. The shadows in between.
I pulled up the map of the compound. “Main entry’s here, northeast quadrant. Guards rotate every six minutes. Quinn, you’ll jam their outside comms once we’re in position—buy us thirty, maybe forty minutes if we’re lucky.”
He nodded without looking up, fingers already flying across his tablet. He’d been waiting for this just as long as I had. Maybe longer.
“Basen and I will take point,” I went on. “Split at the breach and cover both wings. We secure the intel, free any remaining hostages—if there’s anyone left. Then we plant the charges.”
I looked at Seraphina then. She sat across the room, arms folded, but her gaze never wavered. Fierce. Focused. Brave in a way that made my chest ache.
“You’re with Emerson,” I said, gentler now. “You two’ll run backup—access control, security override, the whole feckin’ works. If we hit resistance on the way out, you’re the ones who’ll keep the gates open.”
I waited for the protest in her eyes, and when it came, I wasn’t surprised.
Before she could speak, Emerson shifted the screen again, highlighting something I hadn’t seen before. A secondary structure. Smaller. Hidden under layers of encryption until now.
“Feckin’ bastards…” I muttered under my breath.
A failsafe lab. Tied to the main facility but far enough it could vanish if triggered.
Quinn let out a low whistle. “They built a contingency.”
Basen’s voice was grim. “Means we’ve got one shot.”
I nodded. “Then we hit them hard and fast. No room for error. If that lab goes dark before we get what we need, we may never find them again.”
The tension in the room grew dense. We all knew what this meant. Langston and Halbrook didn’t just experiment. They planned for fallout. That meant we weren’t just up against a facility. We were up against an empire that knew how to vanish.
Later that night, when the war maps were rolled up and the others had retreated into whatever bits of sleep they could grab, I found her outside. Moonlight catching the curve of her shoulder, her hair a mess of shadows.
Feck, she was beautiful. And strong. And stubborn as hell.
I didn’t speak at first. Just slipped something into her hand. A coin. Worn and dulled around the edges.
“My da gave me that,” I said quietly. “Carried it through every deployment. Said it kept the ghosts away.”
She looked down at it, brow furrowing.
“When I started the company, I stopped carryin’ it,” I went on. “Figured I was done makin’ ghosts.”
I stepped closer, my fingers brushing hers. “But this…this ain’t just another mission, Sera. This one’s personal. For both of us.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She didn’t need to say it. I could see it all over her face.
I tucked the coin deeper into her palm, closing her fingers around it. “Come back to me.”
I didn’t ask. I didn’t plead. I just feckin’ needed her to .
There was a beat. A breath between worlds. And then I turned away before I could change my mind and kiss her until the sun came up. Because come morning, the storm would break. And when it did, we’d either burn Facility E to the ground… or die tryin’.