Chapter 19 – Kieran
The desert doesn’t end. It just stretches on and on.
It stretches in every direction, bone-dry and brutal. A landscape built for the dead and the damned. I keep the throttle steady as dust kicks up behind me in a long, disappearing tail. The sky’s wide and colorless, the road barely a suggestion beneath my tires. The kind of road you don’t come back from.
The sun bleeds across the mountains, orange and slow, like it’s too exhausted to rise all the way.
Same.
The microdot sits in the glove box—silver case, cold and harmless on the outside, dangerous as hell on the inside. Offshore account numbers. Private buyers. Proxy routes. It’s the spine of Rizzi’s empire, traced down to the marrow. And it’s mine now.
For a price.
I shift gears and keep my eyes forward.
But it’s not the road I see.
It’s her.
Last night.
Her breath ragged. Fingernails clawing down my spine. Her mouth on mine like she needed to bite the past out of both of us.
No poetry. No promises.
Just friction and fire and the kind of release that makes you forget the rest of the world exists.
We were animals. Wild, driven, barely human. But there was truth in it—brutal and quiet.
When I held her after, she didn’t pull away.
She didn’t sleep either. Neither did I.
We just lay there, two ghosts in a bed that smelled like sweat and something terrifyingly close to trust.
Now, with the microdot beside me and the sun turning blood against the windshield, I know the truth I didn’t want to say out loud.
She’s dear to me.
And that makes everything harder.
Because people like me don’t keep what they care about.
We bury it.
The chapel appears like a scar in the sand.
Whitewashed once, now sunburnt and cracked. One cross leans half-buried near the front, the wood twisted like it forgot what faith looked like. No signs of life. Just the wind dragging grit over stone.
I park.
Pop the glove box. Pull out the case.
It’s light. Feels wrong.
I walk toward the door.
Inside, it smells like dust and memory. Burnt candles long since gone. No pews left that aren’t cracked. The altar’s just a slab now, warped by time, warped by flame. But the weight in the air isn’t holy.
Ettore’s here.
He stands where a priest might once have preached, sleeves rolled up, smoke curling from his hand.
“You always show up when the sky breaks,” he says.
“I’m predictable like that.”
I hand him the case. He opens it, inspects the microdot, nods.
“This’ll do it?” He asks.
“Yes, it’ll bleed Rizzi to the bone,” I say, nodding.
“Then it’s already started.”
I nod. My chest is tight.
He watches me, something unreadable in his face. “And you?”
“I’m still here, fighting.” I think of Sylvara and freedom.
He flicks ash to the ground. “You want freedom? You will have to earn it in pieces. Blood for blood.”
I breathe once. “You always make mercy sound like a goddamn debt.”
He shrugs. “Because it is.”
Then he reaches for the folder.
He gives me a job. Not today. But one I’ll owe later.
A promise I didn’t ask for.
I take it anyway.
Because I’m too tired to argue.
Too wired into the life to pretend I’m not still part of it.
We don’t speak after that. Just space and dust and the sound of him walking away.
I stay behind.
Sit on the edge of a broken pew and stare at a sunbeam cutting through the ceiling.
Last night still lingers on my skin.
So does the blood.
I don’t know if I’m doing this for Sylvara, my brother, or some warped piece of myself that still thinks redemption’s real.
All I know is this—
I’ve got a name no one knows and a war no one sees coming.
And I’m not done yet.
I don’t even hear the engine until it’s too late.
The chapel door blows open, light spears across the floor, and the sun hits just right—just wrong—when the black SUV kicks up dust across the empty lot. Tires scream. Doors fly open.
Three men spill out—hard eyes, clipped movements, rifles already rising.
Cartel.
Not Veyra. But close enough.
“Down!” Ettore shouts behind me.
The first bullet hits the chapel’s front door, carving through old wood and stone like it was made of paper. Then the hail starts. Shards of plaster explode from the wall to my left.
I don’t think. I move.
My knife is already in my hand before I register pulling it.
One of them flanks left, close, faster than he should be. I lunge and bury the blade beneath his chin, drag it clean across. His breath catches on blood, then stops altogether.
Gunfire rips the ground near my feet.
The second guy reaches me before I can duck—swings wild, pistol aimed too high. I slam his wrist into the chapel’s stone pillar, once, twice. He drops the gun. I catch it mid-fall.
Turn.
Squeeze the trigger.
Third man staggers back, holes punched through his ribs. He hits the dirt like a puppet with its strings cut.
Then heat explodes through my side.
One last shot, fired from the ground—doesn’t hit bone, but the fire spreads fast. I drop to one knee, gasping.
I didn’t feel the pain at first. Just the cold clarity of being hunted.
Ettore’s hand grabs the back of my shirt and yanks.
I hit the floor, hard, just as another round punches into the chapel’s archway.
Ettore slams the door shut and kicks over one of the pews. We duck behind it.
He’s muttering. Latin. Not prayer—habit.
My vision’s already tunneling.
Blood pours warm across my ribs, soaking my shirt, my waistband.
He tears off a strip of cloth. The edge of his priest’s sash. Wraps it tight. I grunt through my teeth.
“You’re lucky,” he mutters.
“That’s not the word I’d use.”
He presses harder.
I see stars.
“Hold it,” he barks. “You bleed out, I’m not doing your eulogy.”
“I’m not religious anyway.”
“You’re about to be.”
I look down at the dark spreading under his makeshift bandage.
Too much.
I feel it draining.
“Ettore—how the fuck did they find us?”
He doesn’t answer.
He’s staring at the horizon like it’s got something to say.
Something neither of us wants to hear.
Maybe they tracked the microdot. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s him.
Maybe it’s just what happens when you spend too long dancing between devils.
I slump back against the chapel wall, head swimming, breath coming shallow.
The stone’s cool against my spine. My hands are slick.
Ettore leans in close. His voice drops low.
“This war is eating you, boy. And it won’t stop until it eats her too.”
I swallow against the dryness in my throat.
“I know.”
“Do you?” His eyes are too sharp. Too tired. “Your soul’s already scorched. How much more are you willing to lose?”
I don’t answer.
Because I don’t know anymore.
We sit like that for a while—him smoking again, me trying not to pass out.
The dead lie outside. The sun rises like it’s got no idea what just happened.
I lean my head back, watch the dust swirl through a crack in the roof.
“Ashes to ashes,” I whisper.
And I was starting to wonder if I had anything left to burn.