Chapter 38
WOLFE
The engine cut but I didn’t move. Blood soaked the waistband of my jeans. Sticky. Hot. Slowing now, but not gone.
I pulled open the glovebox. No gauze. No bandage. Just a roll of duct tape and a black cotton T-shirt she used to sleep in. I grabbed both. Pressed the fabric hard to my side. The cotton turned dark in seconds.
I wrapped the tape tight. Around my ribs. Around the shirt. A tourniquet made of memory and spite. My hands shook. Not from pain. From focus. This wasn't about surviving. It was about arriving. Alive enough to make him scream. And I still had the knife.
I reached into the trunk. Pulled the blades from their place beneath the mat. Strapped them one by one. Thigh. Ribs. Spine. Every sheath a breath. Every buckle a vow.
The city didn’t slow. Cars passed. Headlights washed across my face. No one stopped. Just a man bleeding through his shirt, gripping steel, walking like death had given him a deadline.
I crossed the street. Down the alley. Past the graffiti that never faded. Toward the place they thought they could hide him.
He was waiting in the room at the end. Tied to a chair. Not scared. Not shaking. Just still. Like he thought being calm would make it better. Like he didn’t know I was already walking toward him with Camille’s name in my throat and a blade in my hand.
The door creaked as I opened it. Loud enough for him to flinch. Not enough to make me stop. The hallway smelled like bleach and piss. The light was yellow and low. Buzzing.
There was no mirror here. No observation glass. Just a man, a chair, a pipe bolted into the wall. And the kind of quiet that waited for someone to scream.
He looked up when I entered. Met my eyes like a man trying to measure risk. He saw it too late. There was no risk left. Only consequence.
I stepped forward. My boots left prints in the bleach-stained floor. My knife hung loose at my side. He didn’t speak. Not yet.
He let me circle him once. Twice. Tracked me with his eyes like he could still talk his way out of it.
He couldn’t. I stopped behind him.
“You were there,” I said.
My voice didn’t rise. Didn’t crack. It just filled the room like breath.
“You were in the room when they brought Camille in.”
He exhaled. Slow.
“I didn’t touch her,” he said. “I wasn’t involved.”
I stepped closer. The blade kissed the back of his neck. He froze.
“You didn’t need to be involved. You watched.”
He swallowed. I heard it.
“I signed a clearance order. I didn’t know what it meant.”
I pressed the tip harder.
He hissed.
“She died screaming,” I said.
He flinched.
“No,” he whispered.
I moved around to face him.
“That’s right,” I said. “Camille didn’t scream. You know that, don’t you?”
He looked away.
I crouched.
Close. Closer.
“She stayed silent. Even when you made her bleed. Even when you showed her the fire.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t touch her.”
“You didn’t stop it either.”
I reached for his wrist. He tried to pull back. I didn’t let him. The knife carved a line from his palm to the crook of his elbow. He screamed. Not loud. Not enough. I stood.
“But Cloe,” I said. “Cloe screamed.”
He whimpered. His head hung low. Then he lifted it. Just a little.
“She didn’t scream,” he said, voice shaking. “She—she hummed.”
I froze. My grip on the knife tightened. He looked up. Terrified now. But honest.
“She hummed like it was the only thing she had left,” he whispered. “Like it was the only way to keep from begging.”
The room stopped breathing. I turned my head. Just slightly. And I felt it. The collar, still warm in my coat. The echo of her hum in my chest like it had never stopped.
I stepped forward. Knelt beside him again.
“She hummed,” I said.
Now I believed it. Now it lived in my ribs like a second heartbeat. He tried to speak. I didn’t let him. I leaned in, voice low.
“That was the only sound she had left.”
Then I drove the blade into his side. Slow. Measured.
He didn’t scream. Not at first. But when he did, I didn’t stop. Breath was all she had. And now it was mine to take.
Barron
I stood in front of the wreckage of the Lawlor building.
Red and blue lights painted everything in emergency.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The sky hung low, heavy with smoke and the taste of blood in the back of my throat.
Emergency crews rushed in and out through the broken glass and steel, voices shouting names, demands, vitals. But I didn’t move.
Loyal was propped against an ambulance, oxygen mask forgotten in his lap, face pale but eyes still tracking every shadow.
And beside me—
Royal. His coat was torn. Blood soaked through the left side. But he stood tall. Not a word between us. Not at first. Because there wasn’t anything to say when your empire crumbled around your feet.
Camille’s ledger felt heavier than it should have. I opened it with shaking hands. Page sixty-seven. Halfway down. Marked with a small star in red ink. Continuity.
That was all it said. One word. No amount. No recipient. But I knew what it meant. Continuity meant insurance. Legacy. The idea that what was built wouldn’t end even if the people who built it did. Camille wrote that word like it was a curse.
I felt Royal glance over at the page. He didn’t ask. Didn’t need to.
“I found one more,” I said quietly.
“Devane Holdings. Near the docks. Camille marked it.”
Royal spit blood to the side. Nodded.
“Then that’s where we go.”
I didn’t look at him.
“Wolfe?”
He ran a hand through his hair. It came back streaked with ash.
“He’s already moving.”
I closed the ledger. Blood had dried on the back cover. I didn’t know if it was mine. Didn’t care. Because Camille left the map. But Cloe was writing the ending.
And tonight?
We stood in the ashes. And said nothing.
Grief didn’t make noise. Retribution did. And Wolfe was already on the way to deliver it.
Wolfe
We didn’t start at the warehouse. We started with the men who led us to it. Not because I needed them alive. But because I needed to hear the hum again.
The gravel cracked beneath my boots. No voices. No orders. No countdown. Just breath. Just the weight of steel. Just the memory of a girl tied to silence and calling out without a word. The air in the safehouse was chemical—false clean.
London was already inside. Blood on his sleeve. Split knuckle. Collar torn like he’d just finished burying someone who didn’t stay down.
He didn’t greet me. Didn’t smile. Just handed me a keycard with fingers still streaked in red and eyes that looked carved from vengeance. Like this was the version of London they built when diplomacy failed.
“Downstairs,” he said.
“Third door on the left.”
I didn’t thank him. Didn’t speak. He didn’t need that. And I was bleeding again.
The tape at my side had started to slip, crimson soaking through the cotton beneath my jacket. But I walked like pain was the currency I planned to spend.
I entered first. The corridor reeked of iron and silence.
Blood splattered across the nearest wall.
A trail smeared toward one of the open doors.
Another body lay halfway in the hall, neck bent wrong, mouth frozen in something that might’ve been a scream if London had left him enough throat to finish it.
The floor was streaked with red. Violence painted like intention. London’s kind of art.
The corridor was silent. A long row of numbered doors. No cameras. No echo. Door 3 waited. Closed. No lock. I opened it.
Inside—
a console.
a man.
a speaker still glowing.
The hum was playing. Faint. Warped. The last breath of her resistance caught in the air like a ghost that hadn’t let go.
The man turned. Too slow. I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the chair. One hand held him still. The other hovered the blade just beneath his jaw. The speaker glowed behind us, the hum rising like it recognized me.
“You heard her,” I said.
The man stammered.
“Please—I just ran the tech, I didn’t—”
I pressed the blade tighter.
“Don’t lie.”
“I didn’t know who she was—”
“You knew she was alive.”
“I—I was ordered—”
“She hummed,” I said.
“Because you didn’t let her scream.”
Then I pressed the blade in. Just enough to draw breath. Just enough to cut memory.
He broke.
“There’s a second signal,” he gasped.
I froze.
“Where?”
“Storage hub near the docks. Devane Holdings.”
I pulled the blade away. Walked to the console. Brought up the signal. It matched. Pinged clean.
I turned to him.
“You were the last person to hear her hum.”
His eyes went wide.
“No—please—”
My voice was steady.
“I want you to hear it one more time.”
I pressed the speaker against his chest. Turned the volume up. Let the hum rise like smoke.
“You turned her hum into currency,” I said. “Let’s see how much you’re worth when it’s your blood on the signal.”
Then I drove the knife into his thigh. He shrieked. I didn’t stop. I sliced through the abdomen—deliberate. Watched him twist. Watched the meat split. Then lower. A tendon behind the knee. Heard the pop.
“You want to beg?” I asked. “Use your spine.”
I tore the speaker cord from the console. Wrapped it around his neck. Tight. I carved a line just above his collarbone. Where Cloe wore hers.
“Now you know what it means,” I said.
“To be owned.”
“You recorded her pain like it was data,” I said.
“You sold her voice to men who watched it on loop while she bled.”
His body thrashed. He begged. He choked.
I twisted the blade. Then pulled it free. Then used it again. Not once. Not twice. Until the chair beneath him was red. Until the floor was painted in the truth.
You’d be proud of that one, Camille.
I made it last.
I didn’t speak. I didn’t breathe. She wasn’t screaming. She was surviving. And now? I was vengeance. And Devane was next.
Cloe
I woke to water.
Not gentle. Not clean.
Cold like punishment. Sharp like teeth. It slid down the inside of my thigh and soaked the floor beneath me.