33. Avery #2
“I slept in your sheets.” Sasha moves close enough to put one hand on the chair I would have occupied during a client meeting, and she smiles when my fingers press harder against the table.
“I know.” This time I look at the jasmine bottle through the glass, remembering how she held my sheet against herself while Declan stood naked beside her.
“I used his mother’s mug while he watched.” She steps closer, hungry for the first reaction she can call pain. “He told me not to touch it the first morning. The next time, I made coffee before he woke up, and he didn’t take it from me. After that I used it whenever I wanted.”
The safehouse returns in pieces I can smell: old coffee inside blue ceramic, jasmine on the pillow, Declan’s shirt hanging open while Sasha held my sheet across herself.
I spent years washing that mug by hand because the crack near the handle belonged to his mother.
Sasha used it to see whether Declan would stop her.
He did not. She didn’t care about the coffee.
It was learning my husband would watch her take something he claimed mattered and choose an easier morning over defending it.
“You wanted me to know,” I say. “That’s why you left your shampoo, toothbrush, and clothes where I would see them.”
“I wanted him to stop hiding me.” Her fingers tighten around the grip. “If you walked in and left, he wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.”
“He hid you for six months because keeping me was part of what he wanted.” The fact still cuts, and I refuse to file that edge down into the love Sasha wants to claim.
“He loved who he was with me.” Sasha brings the gun nearer as if the barrel can force me to give her the better memory.
“He loved that you praised him and asked him for papers instead of the truth.” I take my hand from the table and let it rest close to the concealed holster. “Did you use my things because you loved him, or because making me see them felt like winning?”
Sasha looks at the jasmine bottle on the cart outside the glass, then back at me.
“At first, they were already there. The sheets, the hoodie, the mug. He said the place belonged to the club, but every room had you in it. Your labels were inside the cupboards. Your shampoo was under the bathroom sink. You had a key to a place you supposedly didn’t know existed. ”
“And later?” I ask, moving her past the objects Declan placed there and toward the things she chose to add.
“Later I brought my own things because I wanted yours moved.” She says it with the same pleasure she brought into my workplace the first time she called me easy to replace.
“I used your side of the bed. I put my toothbrush beside his. I wore the hoodie when I knew you might come. I wanted one room where you had to look at me and understand he gave me what was yours.”
She wanted my things moved before I ever opened the safehouse door.
She began with an assignment, found a married man willing to let her inside, and treated my bed, mug, hoodie, and toothbrush space like prizes she could take one at a time.
She thought hurting me would prove Declan chose her.
Declan chose himself instead, lost both of us, and told a clubhouse full of witnesses how.
“What he gave you was access,” I say. “Now the safehouse is empty, the club changed every route, the handler is in custody with his lawyer already negotiating, and both shell companies are exposed. You are standing in the last room where any of that still sounds like a plan. Declan stood in front of the club and said you didn’t steal him from me.
He said he chose to cheat, chose to lie, and chose to let you inside.
Then he rejected you where everybody could hear it. ”
Sasha’s mouth closes, and her eyes move over my face. “He said that because he thinks begging will get you back.” She wants to learn whether his public rejection bought him something.
“We divorced yesterday.” I turn my bare left hand against the table. She watched the house burn and expected Declan to abandon court for the hunt. He sat across from me in a courtroom while a judge ended the marriage.
“The house was burning. He should have come for me.” Sasha looks toward the conference-room door, and the first siren I have let myself hear reaches us through the windows.
“He came to court.” I watch the fact reach her. “Today your vehicle lead pulled Gage toward the quarry while I sent the emergency code. Declan let the vehicle go and followed my plan. He’s outside, Sasha, and he has not broken through one door for you.”
“You don’t know that.” She takes another step, trying to make distance do what the lie cannot.
“I know the building is standing.” I don’t tell her that waiting outside may be the hardest thing Declan has done today. She would hear devotion in it, and I need her to hear failure.
The smart answers leave her. She looks at the hall, the locked office door, and the dark rear camera she thought would blind everyone.
Another siren cuts off beyond the front windows, close, where the ambulances are staging behind the units that came in quiet.
Another sound reaches the wall behind her, a boot against the stairwell landing or Nadia moving below us, and Sasha turns the gun toward it before dragging the barrel back to me.
“You think this ends with you keeping everything,” she says. “His child. His money. His men outside your door. You get to kill what we had and go home while he waits for you to forgive him.”
“You and Declan killed what I had. I ended the paperwork yesterday.” The baby moves beneath my sweater, one hard push near my side that almost breaks my composure.
Relief hits so hard I could cry over being kicked from the inside.
I don’t cover my stomach. “The money you took went back to the marriage before the judge divided it. The club answers to Gage. My house is mine. Declan is outside because I told him where to stand. There is nothing left here that belongs to you.”
Sasha raises the gun with both hands. The barrel passes my chest, crosses the open coat, and stops on my stomach.
Her hands tremble now. She cannot recover the routes, sell the family file, reclaim the safehouse, or force Declan through the door.
Killing me will return none of it. She knows, and the knowledge makes her finger settle against the trigger while my right hand waits inches above the weapon she has not found.
“Move that hand,” she says, aiming at the child she helped turn into a target, “and I’ll take the only thing he has left.”
“This is my baby.” My voice comes out flat beneath the terror.
“You don’t get to shoot my child because Declan wouldn’t come through a door for you.
Lower the gun.” Her finger settles inside the trigger guard.
The barrel stops drifting. She has made her choice, and at this distance she cannot miss if I stay still.
I move left along the table. Sasha fires while I am moving, the shot cracking inside my skull as the wall bursts behind my head.
My shoulder hits the table hard enough to shove it across the carpet.
The baby becomes a hard, precious weight low in front of me while Sasha drags the gun back toward us.
My coat is already open. My hand strikes my stomach before it finds the holster, which has shifted with my waist, but training takes over where thought cannot. I clear the leather, bring both hands together, and raise the sights to the center of Sasha’s chest.
Beyond Sasha, the glass wall opens onto an empty hall and the elevator wall. Nadia is behind the fire door and down the stairs. No one stands in my line. Sasha’s muzzle keeps rising, and I press the trigger.
The shot hits my hands like a blow. Sasha’s shirt jumps in the center, then she crashes into the chair and the table before sliding down the wall. The glass behind her fractures and falls across the carpet. Her gun lands near the overturned chair.
I keep the sights on her while sound returns as a high whine.
Burnt powder and hot metal cut through the jasmine.
My hands shake, my bladder clenches, and a tightening draws across the top of my stomach before releasing.
Then the baby rolls hard beneath my ribs.
I nearly break on the relief, but Sasha still has one hand free, so I keep the gun raised.