Chapter 37 | Kincade
I ended the call and dropped the phone to my side. The world faded back into existence. In the distance, the hum of the city returned through the open balcony doors.
She didn’t move, didn’t speak. But she was shaking. From rage, or terror, or both. Her face was pale, the scar on her left cheek standing out. The scar they’d given her when they tried to break her.
War.
The word settled into place with a terrible rightness. Munich was now a destination. And it was going to be leveled.
Not for revenge. Not even for justice.
Because as long as that infrastructure existed, as long as those feeds could be replayed, she would never be free.
And I would destroy the world before I let that stand.
I stayed where I was, standing between her and the open door.
Not to cage her in. Not to stop her from leaving.
It was instinct. Ancient and bone deep. The same way I’d positioned myself on battlefields. Always between the threat and what mattered most.
Even when the threat was invisible. Even when it had already struck.
Eight to nine months. Every moment recorded, examined, documented.
I’d survived centuries of war, betrayals, and sieges. I’d watched cities burn. I’d watched empires collapse under the weight of their own arrogance.
But the idea of someone sitting in a room—safe, distant, clinical—watching her live her life? Listening to her breathe when she thought she was alone?
It wasn’t enough they tried to destroy her, to make her something she wasn’t. Now they’d stripped away the one place she thought she was safest.
And they would pay for every breach.
“They were watching,” she said. “They were planning.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t about you returning to the Brotherhood. It was about destroying lives.” Her voice shook. “It was about destroying our lives.”
I glanced down at her, to gauge her emotions. But she wasn’t about to break. She was furious.
“And Vormund knew,” she added.
“He did.”
Her jaw tightened. Her hands curled into fists in her lap.
I watched her carefully, as she took a deep breath in and out.
She was controlling it. Her rage. Her fury.
Because I could feel that spike—that warning tremor in the bond where the programming lived.
She knew it, too. Knew if she let go completely, the wires would react.
So, she held on. Not because she was weak.
Because she refused to let them control her twice.
What I couldn’t say yet was that Vormund wasn’t acting alone—the scale was too big. No system like that existed without layers. Without redundancies. Without sanction. Without men who believed they were untouchable.
I crossed the room without another word to the kitchen. I’d planned for this. Prepared for it. I pulled the bottle from the brown paper bag, grabbed two glasses, and walked to the table. She looked at it, the glasses, then her gaze flickered up to mine.
For the briefest of moments, I thought she’d refuse. She said nothing as I poured, placing it in front of her. She eyed the glass.
“Isn’t it too early in the day for that?” she asked.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
She snatched it up, drank, then held it out for a refill. I poured.
Her hand was steady now. The shaking had stopped.
That should have relieved me. It didn’t.
I’d done this before.
Different room. Different blood on the floor. Different type of death.
Back then, the grief had been raw and uncontained. She’d been shattered, and I’d given her the whiskey because it was something solid. Something she could hold when everything else had come apart.
This was different.
This was quieter. Colder.
She wasn’t breaking—she was changing.
And this time, the ritual wasn’t about stopping the fall. It was about standing beside her and letting her know she wasn’t alone on the other side of it.
I watched her drink. Not to judge. Not to intervene.
To witness.
“Vormund had the pictures,” she said, “but who has the footage?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I think Sebastian does,” she said, sounding bitter.
I didn’t answer right away.
Because she wasn’t guessing. And neither was I.
If the Knights were funded by the Brotherhood, it made sense. They never dirtied their own hands if they didn’t have to. It explained the reach. The funding. The silence.
“He said something to me,” she continued. “I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted me.” Her gaze flicked up to me and in those violet depths—fury.
“He can want whatever he likes,” I said. “It doesn’t make it his. And anyone who forgets that learns why I exist.”
Fury burned low and steady in my chest.
He could want her.
The thought registered as anger but it was something colder than that.
Sebastian didn’t want her the way men wanted women. He wanted her the way empires wanted territory. As proof. As leverage. As a living artifact that justified everything they’d built in the dark.
That changed the rules.
Vormund had been a weapon. Munich was the factory. And Sebastian—Sebastian was a man who believed consequence wouldn’t find him, because he never held the knife himself. He had men like Vormund to do the cutting while he stayed clean.
Because love, I was beginning to understand, wasn’t protection.
It made you visible.
And Anna was no longer visible. She was central.
Which meant this couldn’t be about keeping her hidden anymore. It had to be about ending the people who believed they were entitled to her existence.
I didn’t tell her that yet.
I only tightened my grip on the back of her chair—steady, present—while inside I began dismantling a war I’d hoped never to start.
I’d gone after men like Sebastian before.
They always thought they were indestructible. Insulated by their own arrogance and layers of belief systems and people willing to die in their place.
I’d ended them, anyway.
But this was different.
I wasn’t acting to preserve balance or prevent some catastrophic event or fulfill some ancient obligation masquerading as oaths and obedience.
This time it was personal.
And that was unsettling.
Because I was willing to walk the moral line. And that made me ruthless. I was willing to annihilate anyone in my path to get to the one man who claimed ownership.
And I would.
I would go after Sebastian. Not now. Not recklessly. But soon.
And when I did there would be no room for misunderstanding. He’d know who was coming for him and why. He’d know he’d never live to see the other side of me again. He’d know I’d kill him with my bare hands if I had to.
Whatever I became in the end, I would accept.
Because if the world was determined to take pieces of her, then it would learn—brutally—what making me choose unleashed.
I’d already chosen.
Everything else was aftermath.
She was quiet, still, her mind working. Then, “Someone had access.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Not once. But many times. Someone with keys or codes or a way around the wards,” she said. “But this isn’t about demons and high lords. So probably not the wards. This is about… proximity. Repeat access. And time. Enough time to place that many devices.”
She was working through it. Turning inward as she assembled the pieces. Pieces she didn’t need me or Silas to lock into place.
Her hand tightened around her glass, her nail beds leeching of color. “Who?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Not anyone we know.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Someone who can slip in and out unnoticed. Without raising alarms.” She sat still, rigid, tension lining her shoulders. “I hate this.”
“We’ll find who it is.” And destroy them.
Silas hadn’t said, which meant he didn’t know, either.
She wasn’t falling apart. She wasn’t breaking down. She was angry. Which meant she was willing to do something outside her moral boundaries. And I couldn’t let her do that.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
Her gaze lifted to mine. “I’m thinking whoever planted those devices needs to understand what happens to them when they violate my home.”
There it was. The line she was willing to cross.
“Anna—”
“Don’t,” she said sharply as she got to her feet. “Don’t try to tell me to be reasonable or tell me there are rules. They broke all the rules when they came after me. I’m done.”
This was a knee-jerk reaction. Coming from a place of deep-seated anger. I understood the impulse. God, I understood it. But this was how good people became the thing they fought against.
“They watched me sleep. They listened to private conversations. They listened to us. Studied me like I was some experiment in a fucking lab. There are no rules anymore. And I want to go back.”
Her words were fire. Her expression pure wrath.
My hand landed on the side of her neck against her wildly beating pulse. “That’s a trap and you know it.”
“At least I’d be doing something besides sitting here hiding, waiting for the next violation.”
“You’re not hiding.”
“Yes, I am.” Her eyes met mine, and I saw it all there. The rage. The exhaustion. The desperate need to control something. “I’m doing nothing while waiting to see what else they’ll take from me.”
I understood the need to act when everything felt out of control. I’d felt it myself for weeks now. Watching her suffer violations I couldn’t prevent, couldn’t undo.
But this wasn’t the move.
“If you go back now,” I said carefully, “you’re not hunting them. You’re letting them dictate your movements. You’re reactive instead of strategic.”
Her jaw worked. “So, what do you suggest?”
“We finish what we started.” I held her gaze. “Munich first. Take down the infrastructure. Burn every server, every backup, every copy of those feeds. Then we find who had access. And when we do—”
I let the pause stretch. Let her hear what I wasn’t saying.
“When we do?” she prompted.
“You can do whatever you need to do. And I’ll stand with you.”
She searched my face. Looking for the limits. The boundaries I’d impose. The moral lines I’d defend.
But I meant it.
“Whatever I need to do?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Even if it means—”
“Yes.” I cut her off before she could finish.
Before she could say the thing that would make it real.
“Because the moment you cross that line—the moment you become what they tried to make you—I need you to know you won’t be alone on the other side of it.
You’ll still be you. And I’ll still be here. ”
Something shifted in her expression. The razor edge of her rage... not dulled. But redirected.
“Munich first,” she said.
“Munich first,” I agreed. “We take away their ability to ever do this again. To anyone.”
“And then?”
“Then we find who had access.” My hand slid to cup the back of her neck. “And we don’t strike. We eradicate. Carefully. Methodically. So that when it’s done, you can still recognize yourself in the mirror.”
“And if I can’t?” The vulnerability in that question nearly undid me.
“I see you,” I said. “All of you.”
I pulled her against my chest, taking the weight she couldn’t hold anymore. “But this isn’t how we do it. Not recklessly. Not when you’re ready to set the world on fire without a plan.”
She leaned her forehead against me. Exhausted.
“I’m so tired of being violated,” she whispered.
“I know. But once you cross certain lines, you don’t come back from them. And I need you to come back. Not for me—for you. Because you’re not what they tried to make you. You’re not a weapon they can point at their enemies. And that matters.”
Her hands fisted in my shirt. Holding on.
“Let your anger make you smarter,” I said.
She sagged against me, the fight draining out of her. Then, in a near whisper, “I hate that you’re right.”
We stood like that. Her breath evening out against my chest. My hands steady on her. One at her waist, one still at the back of her neck. Holding her when everything else felt untethered.
“Of course, I’m right. I’m always right.”
She huffed a laugh. “All right, then. We do it your way. I hope Munich is ready for us.”
“They won’t be. And that’s the point.”
She leaned into me, smaller than she had any right to be after everything they’d done to her. I tightened my arms.
Munich wasn’t a destination anymore.
It was a countdown.
I was already mapping the angles. The routes in, the redundancies, the men who would respond first and the ones who would hesitate. I knew how organizations like the Knights reacted when their sanctuaries were threatened. Panic dressed up as discipline. Loyalty tested under pressure.
They believed themselves safe because no one had ever come for them directly.
That was about to change.
Anna lifted her head, her eyes steady now. Dangerous in their clarity.
“When do we move?”
Soon, I thought. Before they finished tightening their defenses. Before they realized the war had already begun.
“I’ll tell you when,” I said.
She nodded once. Trusted me with it.
And as I held her there, listening to the city breathe beyond the balcony doors, I understood the truth I’d been circling since the call ended.
This wasn’t about retaliation.
It was about erasure.
And when we were finished, there would be no doubt who had come for them—or why.