Chapter 16 Tag
TAG
My Glock was raised and tracking as splinters of ancient oak settled across the floor. Con swept left while Ash went right, and Gus covered our rear with the synchronization that came from carrying out countless missions together.
The tower room stretched before us—circular walls, narrow windows showing the night sky, medieval architecture that had witnessed centuries of violence. But nothing like this.
Then we froze.
Every single one of us stopped dead in the doorway because of who stood in the center of the room—Ambrose Ashcroft. Next to him sat Nightingale, who was bound to a chair, with cold steel aimed at her head.
Brose. Ash’s uncle, the man who’d wandered through our childhood summers with his stories about art and his absent-minded charm, the doddering fool we’d tolerated at family gatherings, who’d asked me countless times about purchasing pieces from Glenshadow’s east gallery, now appeared calm and amused with a weapon in one hand and his mobile in the other with his thumb pressed firmly against the device’s screen.
I surveyed the scene in a heartbeat. Nightingale’s wrists were zip-tied to the seat’s arms, and her ankles were bound to the legs. Bruises marked her throat and arms. Blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. But her eyes tracked everything.
“What the fuck…” Con’s sharp intake of breath cut through the silence.
Beside me, Ash staggered as if he’d taken a blow to the chest. “Brose?”
The man barely looked at him. The absent-minded uncle had vanished. This was someone else entirely—someone who’d hidden behind eccentricity for decades.
“Evelyn?” Lex’s voice was just above a whisper when she came around us and saw her mentor alive, standing near a computer terminal.
McLaren didn’t acknowledge her. She kept typing, her fingers moving across the keyboard with determined speed. Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t going to stop.
Renegade’s voice carried a betrayal sharp enough to cut. “MacLeod?”
His family’s estate manager stood near the door with his head down, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. The man who’d welcomed us to Dunravin, whose wife had fed us, who’d warned us about dangerous passages, was part of this. The hits kept coming.
There were two other men in the room—Dalgleish, who’d positioned himself by the window, with his weapon drawn and tracking our entry, and Ian MacKenzie, who stood near the door, blocking the only other escape route.
“Hello, boys.” Brose’s tone was conversational, as if he were greeting us at the pub for drinks. “It’s been quite a while since we were all together.” He raised the device. “If my finger leaves this screen, AIWS will launch. So let’s all remain calm.”
The standoff crystallized with brutal clarity. We had the numbers—five armed operatives against four hostiles—but Ambrose controlled two things that mattered above all else—Nightingale’s life and the AIWS trigger that would activate the moment we took him down.
Con’s weapon tracked between Ambrose and Dalgleish, his stance perfect despite the shock of betrayal. Ash kept his aim steady despite his uncle standing before him as the enemy. Lex stood beside me with her sidearm raised as she stared at McLaren.
Silence stretched between us. Then Ash broke it with a single word that sounded ripped from his throat. “Why?”
Ambrose’s expression shifted. The mask slipped, and decades of resentment crawled out from underneath—raw and venomous after a lifetime of being buried.
“Why?” His laugh was bitter. “Your father took everything from me. The title. The estate. The inheritance. George received all of it because he was born first.” His words built in intensity. “Birth order gave George everything and left me the scraps.”
His knuckles had gone white around the weapon’s grip, but the barrel never wavered from Nightingale’s temple. She sat absolutely still, reading him the way she’d been trained to read targets. His thumb remained pressed against the mobile’s screen, steady despite the tremor in his voice.
“Do you know what it’s like?” Ambrose continued, his voice rising.
“To grow up in the same house, receive the same education, have the same blood running through your veins, but know that you’ll always be less?
George got Ashcroft, the London townhouse in Belgravia—seven bedrooms overlooking Hyde Park.
The Scottish estates—three of them, including the grouse moors that brought in two million annually.
The art collection—a Rembrandt, two Turners, a Caravaggio that museum curators begged to display.
I got a trust fund that wouldn’t buy a decent flat in Mayfair and the expectation that I’d be grateful for it. ”
He laughed again, ugly and sharp. “I was smarter than him. I understood culture in ways he never could. But none of that mattered. And then he took Alexandria.” The words came out quiet, which made them worse.
“The woman I loved was happy with me until my older brother decided he wanted her. We’d been together for a year, we were planning a future, and then I brought her home to meet my family.
Six months later, they were married and I was invited to the wedding.
I had to stand in the chapel at Ashcroft and watch him marry the only woman I’d ever loved. ”
Beside me, Ash stilled. He knew the story, just not the tragic ramifications of it.
“Then I met Fallon Wallace.” Ambrose’s expression hardened.
“At an auction at Sotheby’s ten years ago.
She was bidding on a Caravaggio, driving the price up just to watch the aristocrats squirm.
She saw me watching and approached during the champagne reception.
She knew exactly who I was—the forgotten younger brother of the Duke of Ashcroft. She’d done her research.”
He shifted, but the barrel didn’t move from Nightingale’s head. “She introduced me to others like me. Dalgleish is the Duke of Moorheath’s younger brother. His sibling inherited eleven estates and an art collection worth fifty million pounds. James got a gallery startup loan and a pat on the head.”
Dalgleish’s expression didn’t change, but his grip on his weapon tightened.
“MacKenzie—the spare heir of Stormbridge—works as a shipping broker while his older brother runs the family empire. He takes orders from men he went to school with, men who treat him like hired help because his brother holds the title.”
MacKenzie’s jaw clenched, but he remained silent.
“And MacLeod—forever in his brother’s shadow, managing the family’s estates like a servant.” MacLeod flinched. “His own family’s properties, and he’s treated like staff.” Ambrose glanced at Renegade. “And your family’s as well.”
“We call ourselves the Forgotten Sons,” Ambrose continued with a smirk.
“We met at the Imperial Club, but it wasn’t until Fallon Wallace provided the resources and connections that we understood our real purpose.
She knew what it meant to be denied your birthright—she’d built an empire from nothing while watching incompetent men inherit fortunes.
Together, we were going to create a new world order.
One where power was earned, not inherited. ”
“Brose—” Con took half a step forward.
“Don’t.” Ambrose’s thumb twitched on the mobile screen. “One more step and I release it.”
He looked at each of us in turn—at Ash, the nephew who’d inherited everything when his father died; at Con and me, earls in our own right; at Gus, who’d recently discovered his own aristocratic bloodline.
“All of you were born into wealth and privilege you never had to fight for.” His eyes had gone too bright.
“You’ve never known what it’s like to be overlooked, dismissed, treated as less than, despite being equal in every way that matters.
AIWS is power that can’t be taken away by birth order or family trees. ”
“This isn’t you.” Con kept his aim steady. “You’re family.”
Ambrose’s sneer was ugly. “Family? None of you ever cared whether I existed. You tolerated me at gatherings, humored me, but did any of you ever really see me? I was furniture. Background noise.”
“You haven’t earned anything.” Ash’s voice broke halfway through. “You’ve destroyed everything. For what? For revenge? Your actions won’t bring my mother back or make you the heir. Nothing will change except prove you were never worthy of any of it.”
Ambrose started to respond, but movement on the laptop screen caught his eye. His head snapped toward McLaren at the terminal.
Even from where I stood, I could read the display. Unauthorized Access. Administrative Override in Progress.
His face went white, then red with rage.
“Step away from that terminal! Now!” he screamed.
McLaren had been working silently the entire standoff, her thin frame hunched over the keyboard. Twenty feet separated her from where Ambrose held his weapon to Nightingale’s head. All focus had stayed on him, on the threat, on his mobile—and she’d used the distractions.
She didn’t pause. She kept entering code with the desperation of someone who knew they had one chance.
“I rescued you!” Ambrose’s voice cracked with fury. “I pulled you from the burning building when everyone else ran. I nursed you back to health, gave you purpose again.”
“You imprisoned me.” McLaren turned to face him, thin and exhausted but with her spine straight. “You kept me drugged for weeks until I was too weak to resist. You threatened to hurt innocent people if I didn’t comply. This was supposed to prevent war, not enable terrorism.”
The screen behind her continued scrolling—Accessing Core Protocols.
“I gave you everything!” Ambrose continued his rant. “Resources, equipment, the freedom to perfect your work!”
“You gave me chains disguised as opportunity.” McLaren’s voice held steady now. “I helped create AIWS to prevent nuclear war, to give governments a non-lethal option. You’ve perverted it into a tool for mass murder.”