Chapter 15
Colleen sat up in Anchor's bed, heart already hammering, some primal instinct screaming that something was wrong before her brain caught up.
Then she saw the light.
Not sunrise. Not streetlamps. Something brighter, angrier, painting the compound windows in shades of hell.
"Anchor." She shook him awake. "Something's burning."
He was alert in an instant, already reaching for his phone as it started buzzing on the nightstand.
"Turnpike." He listened for three seconds. His face went still. "Where?"
Colleen didn't need to hear the answer.
She already knew.
"Fishtown," Anchor said, meeting her eyes. "Independence Ink."
The drive took twelve minutes. It felt like twelve hours.
Colleen sat rigid on the back of Anchor's bike, watching the glow grow brighter as they tore through empty streets. Three in the morning, and the sky above Fishtown was lit up like daylight.
Please be wrong. Please let it be somewhere else. Please—
They rounded the corner onto her block.
And her world collapsed.
Independence Ink was an inferno.
Flames roared through the roof she'd repaired herself, eating through walls she'd painted with her own hands. Glass exploded outward as windows shattered from the heat. The sign she'd designed—Independence Ink, Est. 2018—was nothing but twisted metal and ash.
"No." The word tore out of her. "No, no, no—"
She was off the bike before Anchor could stop her, running toward the flames, toward everything she'd built, toward six years of blood and sweat and steadiness going up in smoke.
Arms caught her from behind.
"Colleen, stop—"
"That's my shop!" She fought against his grip, wild with grief. "That's everything I—"
"And you can't save it by burning with it!" Anchor held her tight, immovable, his voice cracking despite the force. "You can't save it, Colleen. It's gone."
Gone.
The word hit her like a bullet.
She stopped fighting. Stopped struggling. Just stood there in his arms, watching flames devour everything she'd created.
The leather chair where soldiers had sat while she put their stories on their skin.
The flash art designs she'd spent years perfecting.
The client records—names, addresses, the pieces she'd done for them and the pieces still waiting to be finished.
All of it. Ash.
Firetrucks screamed around the corner, but it was too late. It had been too late before anyone called. Warren Driscoll had made sure of that—the fire was too hot, too fast, too hungry to have been anything but deliberate.
Arson.
He'd burned her to the ground because she told him no.
"Craig Driscoll was spotted leaving the area twenty minutes ago." Turnpike appeared beside them, phone in hand, expression grim. "Two of Warren's remaining guys with him. They had accelerant."
"Gasoline?" Anchor's voice was ice.
"Industrial. The kind that burns hot and fast." Turnpike's jaw tightened. "They wanted to make sure there was nothing left."
Nothing left.
Colleen stared at the flames, and something inside her went cold.
Not numb. Not empty. Cold. The kind of cold that burned hotter than any fire.
She'd felt this before.
In field hospitals, when the mortars fell close enough to shake the walls. When soldiers died faster than she could save them. When the universe demanded she keep working through grief that should have shattered her.
She'd learned to channel it then.
She could channel it now.
"Colleen." Anchor turned her to face him, hands on her shoulders. His eyes searched her face, looking for breaks, for cracks, for signs that she was falling apart.
He didn't find any.
"I'm fine," she said. Her voice came out steady. Flat. Dangerous.
"You're not fine. You just watched your life burn down."
"I watched a building burn down." She met his eyes, and whatever he saw there made him go still. "My life is standing right here. My life is at the compound, with brothers who fight for me and a man who loves me."
"Colleen—"
"Independence Ink was wood and glass and equipment." The words tasted like ash, but she meant every one. "I can rebuild wood and glass. I can buy new equipment. What I can't do is bring back the dead—and Warren Driscoll just signed his own death warrant."
Anchor stared at her.
Then, slowly, something shifted in his expression. Not surprise—recognition. Like he was seeing her clearly for the first time.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want Warren Driscoll to watch everything he built disappear." Her voice dropped, cold and patient. "His operation. His empire. His family. I want him to feel exactly what I'm feeling right now, and then I want to be there when it ends."
Anchor's hands tightened on her shoulders.
"That's not protection anymore," he said. "That's war."
"Then it's war."
Behind her, the roof collapsed inward, sending sparks spiraling toward the sky. Firefighters shouted, hoses blasting water that turned to steam on contact. The heat was intense enough to feel from thirty feet away.
But Colleen didn't move. Didn't flinch.
She'd survived field hospitals while mortars fell.
She'd survived loan shark muscle trying to drag her from a safehouse.
She'd survived a coordinated assault on the compound that should have killed them all.
And now she was going to survive this.
"Craig did this," she said. "Warren's nephew."
"We'll find him."
"Tonight." She turned to look at Anchor, and whatever burned in her eyes made him suck in a breath. "We find him tonight. Before he can run. Before Warren can hide him."
"Colleen—"
"You promised me." Her voice cracked, just once, before she forced it steady again. "You said when this was over, you'd help me rebuild. But it's not going to be over until Warren Driscoll is in the ground. So let's end this."
Anchor was quiet for a long moment.
The fire roared. The firefighters worked. Mrs. Kowalski from the pierogi shop stood on the sidewalk in her bathrobe, crying silent tears for the neighbor who'd refused to bow.
Then Anchor nodded.
"Turnpike," he called without looking away from Colleen. "Where's Craig headed?"
"Kensington. He's got a bar there—uses it as a headquarters when Warren's main place gets too hot."
"Call Patriot. Tell him we're moving tonight."
"Copy."
Turnpike disappeared, already on his phone.
Anchor cupped Colleen's face in his hands, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes.
"You don't have to come," he said. "You can wait at the compound. Let us handle—"
"Don't." The word came out sharp enough to cut. "Don't you dare try to protect me from this. He burned my home, Anchor. He burned everything I built because I had the audacity to say no. I'm going to be there when he pays for it."
"Colleen—"
"Michael." She used his real name deliberately, watching it hit. "I love you. And I know you want to wrap me in cotton and keep me safe. But I'm not that woman. I never was. So either let me fight beside you, or get out of my way."
His breath caught.
For a heartbeat, she thought he might argue. Might insist on protecting her despite everything she'd said.
Then his mouth curved—not quite a smile, something fiercer.
"Beside me," he said. "Always."
"Then let's go burn down Warren Driscoll's world."
She took one last look at the inferno that used to be Independence Ink.
Six years of work. Six years of building something beautiful from the shaking hands that came home from war. Six years of proving she could create instead of just survive.
Gone.
But she wasn't gone.
And neither was the cold fury that had replaced her grief.
Warren Driscoll thought he could break her by taking her shop.
He was about to learn what happened when you burned something a Brannigan loved.
"Let's move," she said.
And she turned her back on the fire.