Chapter 40
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Mira
The entire cathedral shook around us.
Explosions thundered somewhere below the containment wing while alarms screamed through the steel corridors hard enough to rattle the fractured windows that lined the upper walls.
Smoke curled through the overhead ventilation shafts, thickening the air with the sharp scent of burning metal and gunpowder, while distant gunfire echoed nonstop beneath the storm outside.
Summit was collapsing. And somehow, the most dangerous thing in the room still stood directly in front of me.
Aiden froze the second Silas pressed the gun harder against my head.
I saw the exact moment instinct slammed into restraint inside him. His entire body went rigid beneath the flickering emergency lights, weapon still halfway raised before slowly lowering inch by inch, as if it physically hurt him to obey.
Silas noticed, too. The satisfaction on his face made me sick.
“There it is,” he murmured against my ear. “The leash.”
Rage flashed instantly across Aiden’s face.
“Let her go,” he said flatly.
Lucien stepped into view from the upper stairwell before Silas could answer, calm as ever despite the war detonating around us. Blood streaked one sleeve of his immaculate coat now, though I couldn’t tell if it belonged to him or somebody else.
“You see?” Lucien said almost conversationally while descending the last few steps. “This is exactly what I warned you about.”
Aiden didn’t even look at him. His eyes stayed locked entirely on me, and the gun pressed against my temple. Because every second his attention drifted toward Lucien instead of Silas, it increased the chance that one twitchy movement would get me killed.
The cathedral groaned violently beneath another explosion somewhere below us. Dust rained faintly from the ceiling while distant shouting echoed through the lower corridors.
Havoc was winning. At least enough to scare Syndicate.
Lucien barely reacted to the chaos surrounding us. “You could’ve ended this years ago,” he continued calmly. “But Sanctuary taught you attachment instead of discipline.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Aiden snapped.
The raw hatred in his voice sent something sharp through my chest.
Lucien only smiled faintly. “And now look at you.” His eyes flicked briefly toward me before returning to Aiden again. “An entire operation burned to the ground because you couldn’t control your emotions.”
Silas tightened his grip against me slightly when I shifted instinctively. Pain shot through my shoulder hard enough to make me hiss through my teeth.
Aiden immediately took one involuntary step forward.
The gun pressed harder against my head.
He stopped instantly again.
Lucien wasn’t trying to overpower him physically anymore. He was forcing Aiden into a position where every protective instinct became a liability instead of a strength. And horrifyingly? It was working.
“Aiden,” I said carefully, forcing my voice steady despite the panic clawing hard at my ribs, “don’t.”
His eyes snapped fully onto mine then.
God. The look on his face nearly broke me.
Not fear. Devastation. Because he genuinely believed this was his fault.
Lucien saw it, too.
“That’s the problem with love,” he said softly while the Summit compound continued collapsing around us in fire and violence. “Eventually, someone else learns exactly where to place the knife.”
Lucien kept talking, but I stopped listening.
Not because his words didn’t matter, but because I finally understood the shape of this entire room. Aiden would burn everything down for me. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Sanctuary. Havoc. Himself. He would let Lucien manipulate every weakness he had if it meant keeping me breathing one more second. I saw it all over his face now — in the rigid tension locked through his body, in the way he stood perfectly still despite every instinct inside him screaming to move.
Lucien knew it, too.
That was the point. This entire standoff wasn’t about overpowering him physically anymore. It was about forcing him into emotional paralysis long enough for Syndicate to regain control.
And if I let this continue? They would win. Not because Aiden wasn’t strong enough, but because he loved me enough to hesitate.
The realization settled cold and sharp through my chest while Silas kept the gun pressed hard against my head, his attention fixed mostly on Aiden now instead of me.
His mistake. A small one. But enough.
My pulse slowed, and my focus narrowed.
Solar plexus. Instep. Nose. Groin. Thank you, Gracie Hart.
Silas shifted slightly when another explosion rocked the cathedral below us, just enough that his balance redistributed for half a second.
I moved instantly.
My heel slammed backward directly into his instep hard enough to make him curse, while I drove my head sharply back into his nose at the same time.
Cartilage cracked wetly beneath the impact.
His grip loosened just enough for me to twist violently sideways and drive my elbow straight into his solar plexus.
Air exploded out of him, and the gun jerked sideways.
“Aiden!”
Everything detonated afterward.
Silas snarled in fury and grabbed for me again, but I dropped low before he recovered and drove my knee upward directly into his groin with every ounce of force, exhaustion, and adrenaline left in my body.
He folded instantly.
The gun discharged. The shot exploded deafeningly through the containment wing while I stumbled free toward the opposite side of the room.
Then Aiden moved.
Jesus Christ.
I’d never seen anything cross a room that fast before. One second, he stood frozen beneath Lucien’s manipulation. Next, he hit Silas like pure violence given human form.
They crashed through the containment table hard enough to splinter metal apart while Aiden knocked the weapon from Silas’ hand and slammed him into the wall with enough force to crack concrete.
Lucien shouted something sharply from the stairwell behind us. I barely heard it.
The entire cathedral shook violently beneath another explosion, while smoke now poured thicker through the upper ventilation shafts, alarms screaming nonstop around us.
Silas recovered fast despite the hit to his groin and his broken nose. A knife appeared in his hand, and he slashed upward toward Aiden’s ribs. Aiden caught his wrist mid-strike.
The look on his face terrified me. Not because it was wild, because it wasn’t. It was cold, focused. Done.
Silas must’ve realized it too because for the first time since I’d met him, real fear cracked visibly across his expression. And somewhere behind all of it, Lucien started retreating toward the upper exits while Summit burned around us.
Silas recovered faster than he should have. Even after the broken nose. Even after the groin shot. Even after Aiden slammed him hard enough into the concrete to spiderweb cracks through the wall behind him.
The bastard still fought like survival itself had teeth.
He twisted violently beneath Aiden’s grip, knife flashing upward again in a brutal arc that sliced across Aiden’s side before either of us could fully react. Blood spread dark instantly through his shirt.
Aiden didn’t even flinch. He drove his fist directly into Silas’ throat hard enough to make the other man choke violently before slamming him across the containment room floor.
“Run!” Aiden barked at me.
Absolutely not.
Silas rolled hard across the concrete instead of staying down. He recovered the dropped pistol near the shattered table just as another explosion rocked the cathedral beneath us. The room lurched to the side briefly from the force, and alarms screamed louder now as smoke thickened overhead.
Silas raised the gun toward Aiden.
I moved before thinking, grabbed the metal restraint chair beside me, and swung it hard into Silas’ arm. The impact threw the shot wide. Gunfire exploded beside Aiden’s head instead of through it, the bullet tearing into the wall behind him.
Silas snarled and backhanded me hard enough to send me sprawling across the floor.
Pain detonated instantly through already bruised ribs and shoulders. My vision blurred sharply while my body screamed from days of interrogation and exhaustion, finally catching up all at once.
I hit concrete hard and couldn’t breathe for a second.
Silas came toward me immediately after that because, of course, he did. Easier target. Weaker target.
Wrong choice.
Aiden intercepted him halfway there like a fucking missile.
The impact sent both men crashing through the shattered remains of the containment table while fists and elbows and violence blurred together too fast for me to track fully.
Silas fought viciously up close, every movement dirty and survival-focused, while he drove the knife repeatedly toward Aiden’s ribs and throat.
Aiden blocked one strike. Took another shallow slash across the forearm. Then headbutted Silas hard enough to spray blood across the floor from his already shattered nose.
I dragged myself upright against the wall, my side screaming from where I’d taken the hit. It wasn’t life-threatening, but judging by the way it burned every time I breathed, tomorrow’s bruise was going to look spectacular.
Didn’t matter. Silas finally managed to shove Aiden backward hard enough to create space between them before raising the knife again.
I grabbed the fallen pistol beside me first.
Silas saw it too late. The shot tore clean through his shoulder and spun him sideways just long enough for Aiden to close the distance again.
Then everything became horrifyingly fast.
Aiden caught Silas’ knife wrist.
Twisted.
Bone snapped audibly.
Silas screamed for the first time.
Aiden ripped the knife free instantly afterward before driving him backward into the containment wall hard enough to crack concrete again. Silas clawed desperately for leverage, blood poured from his shoulder and nose, while panic finally overtook the calm manipulation he’d worn this entire time.
“You should’ve left her alone,” Aiden said quietly.
The tone terrified me more than shouting would have.
Silas tried to reach for another weapon hidden at his waist. But he never got the chance. Aiden buried the knife straight into his throat.
Once.
Deep.
Silas jerked violently against him, choking instantly while blood flooded down the front of his tactical vest in thick dark streams. His eyes widened in shock more than pain, like some part of him genuinely believed he’d survive this, too.
Aiden held him there until the fight left his body completely. Then, he shoved him aside like trash. Silas collapsed hard onto the concrete floor and never moved again.
The room went dead silent except for alarms and distant gunfire echoing through the burning cathedral. And then my knees finally gave out beneath me.
The second my knees hit the floor, the entire cathedral lurched violently beneath us. Not from gunfire this time. Something bigger.
Emergency sirens shifted pitch instantly, deeper now, mechanical and urgent enough to cut through every other sound in the compound. Red containment lights flooded the upper levels while a computerized evacuation warning crackled, distorted, through the overhead speakers.
“Structural failure imminent.”
My blood ran cold.
Aiden’s head snapped upward immediately toward the ceiling while smoke suddenly poured harder through the ventilation shafts overhead. Somewhere below us, a deafening explosion ripped through the harbor foundations hard enough to crack the upper containment wall beside Silas’ body.
Lucien. That bastard planned for this.
Aiden crossed the room instantly and dropped beside me while gripping my face carefully between bloodstained hands. “Can you move?”
“I think so.”
Not fully true. But enough.
Another explosion thundered beneath the Summit compound, closer now. Metal screamed somewhere deep below us while the floor tilted faintly sideways.
Scorched air filled my lungs as realization settled heavy and awful through my chest.
Lucien wasn’t retreating. The bastard built his own apocalypse switch.
He was erasing evidence — erasing Summit, erasing Ironhand, erasing everything before Havoc could fully expose Syndicate infrastructure to the outside world.
Aiden hauled me carefully back to my feet despite the blood soaking his side, while distant shouting echoed through collapsing corridors beyond the containment wing. Somewhere outside, Havoc and Syndicate were still tearing each other apart while the entire harbor fortress burned around them.
And underneath it all sat one brutal truth, settling colder and colder into my chest with every alarm screaming through the cathedral.
Silas was dead.
Summit was collapsing.
But Lucien Draven was still alive. Which meant this war still wasn’t over.