Chapter 22 Lonari #2
“I didn’t come here for a fight,” I cut in, then lower my voice so the staff can pretend they didn’t hear. “But you’re not going to speak about her like she’s cargo.”
Fyr’s jaw tightens. Pain flashes across his face, quick and involuntary. He breathes through it, then spits, “You’re thinking with your—”
I lean in. My voice drops into something dangerous and intimate.
“I’m thinking with my head,” I say. “And with the part of me that understands timing. Jordan is not a pet. She’s not a trophy. She is leverage, and she is truth, and she is the only reason we’re not blind right now.”
He glares at me like he wants to rip my throat out, even half-broken.
“You’re protecting her in front of captains,” he says. “That’s what I heard.”
“I am,” I say. “Because if they think she’s disposable, they’ll offer her up to buy themselves safety. And if they do that, they deserve what comes next.”
Fyr’s nostrils flare. “You’re betting the syndicate on her.”
“No,” I say. “I’m betting the syndicate on me. Jordan is just the reminder that we don’t get to pretend we’re separate from the larger game anymore.”
He stares at me. For a moment, behind the anger, something else flickers—fear. Not for himself. For what this means.
Then he says, quieter, “You trust her.”
I don’t answer immediately. I can still feel her presence in my mind like a static charge. Her stubbornness. Her eyes when she realizes institutions won’t save her. The way she looks at me like I’m a monster—and still doesn’t lie.
“I trust that she wants to live,” I say. “And I trust that she hates being used. Same as me.”
Fyr snorts. “Romantic.”
I straighten. “Rest. Heal. And if you want to challenge my priorities, do it when you can stand without bleeding.”
His eyes narrow. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”
I turn to leave.
And I make sure the lieutenants outside the door hear me say, casually, “Jordan stays under my protection. Anyone who forgets that will lose something they like.”
They go very still.
Good.
Message delivered.
Night falls like a guillotine.
The Nun’s lights glitter. The casino floors hum. People laugh like the universe isn’t on fire. That’s what places like this are for—pretending.
I’m in the back offices when the call comes.
A warehouse on the east docks. One of ours. Quiet storage. Longtime loyalist running it—old name, old blood. The kind of man who never asked for more than he was owed.
My comm buzzes twice, urgent.
I answer, and the first thing I hear is breathing—ragged, wet.
“Lonari,” my dock captain says, voice cracked. “They hit us.”
I’m already moving. “How many?”
“Six. Maybe eight. Fast. In and out.”
“Casualties.”
A pause that tastes like grief.
“Dren’s dead.”
I stop for half a heartbeat. The world narrows.
Dren.
Loyal. Loud. Used to sneak extra rations to the staff’s kids when nobody was looking. A bastard with a soft spot, which is the worst kind of death sentence in this business.
“What did they leave?” I ask, voice too calm.
“They left a mark,” the captain whispers. “On the wall. Like… like a burn.”
My chest tightens. “Send me a picture.”
The image pings into my slate a second later.
A blackened symbol scorched into concrete, edges still smoking faintly.
The Nine.
I stare at it until my vision goes sharp around the edges.
“Alright,” I say softly. “Alright. So that’s how we’re talking.”
The captain’s voice shakes. “What do we do? We can hit back. I’ve got people ready—”
“No,” I say.
Silence.
“What?” he blurts. “They killed Dren—”
“I said no,” I repeat. “We don’t swing blindly. That’s what they want. They want us loud and stupid so the whole sector can point and say, See? Criminals.”
“Then what?” he demands, almost pleading. “What do we do, God— Lonari?”
I close my eyes and inhale. In my head I can smell the warehouse: salt air, oil, blood cooling on metal. I can hear Dren’s laugh like it’s still alive somewhere.
Then I open my eyes.
“We hurt them where they don’t get to bleed theatrically,” I say. “We hurt them in the part of the body they actually worship.”
“Money,” the captain whispers.
“Supply,” I correct. “Routes. Access. Convenience.”
I pull up a map of our black-market flow. ???? of contraband, medicine, weapons, luxuries—everything civilization pretends it doesn’t need.
There’s one route the Nine leans on without owning. A quiet pipeline for high-grade stimulants and nanotech patches that keep their operatives sharp and their addictions quiet. They don’t like getting their hands dirty with logistics.
They like letting people like us do it.
Not tonight.
I patch into my logistics chief. “Freeze the Orpheline Route.”
There’s a pause. “That’s… that’s one of our biggest—”
“Freeze it,” I say. “Lock the manifests. Pull the ships. If anything’s already in transit, reroute it into dead storage.”
“Lonari,” he says, voice uneasy, “that’s going to piss off—”
“I’m counting on it,” I say.
A beat.
Then, quietly: “Understood.”
I hang up and turn to my lieutenant standing nearby—one of the few I trust to carry a message without decorating it.
“Spread the word,” I say. “No retaliation strikes tonight. No vendetta games. Anyone who goes rogue will be handled as a traitor.”
He nods once, serious.
I look back at the Nine’s scorched symbol on my slate.
“You want escalation,” I murmur. “Fine. You can escalate into starvation.”
Later—hours later, when the adrenaline settles into something colder—I sit with Senn again, the accountant still pale, still sweating.
He looks like a man who can’t decide whether he’s honored or doomed.
I slide a second slate across the desk. “One more thing.”
He blinks. “More liquidation schedules?”
“No,” I say. “Extraction.”
His eyes sharpen. “Who?”
I don’t say Morazin’s name right away. Saying it out loud feels like bringing a disease into the room.
But it’s the disease that started this spiral. The man who lit the match.
“Morazin Valeer,” I say finally.
Senn’s breath catches. “He’s… he’s in IHC orbit now, isn’t he? Or—”
“He’s breathing,” I say. “That’s enough.”
Senn swallows. “You want him killed?”
I stare at him. “Did you just meet me today?”
He flushes. “No, I— I meant—”
“I want him alive,” I say. “Because dead men don’t talk, and official authorities love dead men. They make everything tidy.”
Senn nods slowly, understanding dawning in his eyes like a bruise spreading. “So… covert.”
“Yes,” I say. “Quiet. Fast. No flags. No syndicate signatures.”
He hesitates. “If the IHC finds out—”
“They won’t,” I say.
“And if the Alliance—”
“They’re busy posturing,” I say. “And if they’re not, we adapt.”
I lean forward, voice low, intimate, like I’m sharing a secret over a drink.
“Morazin is the kind of man who disappears when he becomes inconvenient,” I say. “I am not letting him vanish into a bureaucratic graveyard.”
Senn nods again, more firmly. “I can contact—”
“I will contact,” I correct.
I open a secure channel and tag my covert operations lead.
“Set a plan,” I tell him. “I want Morazin extracted before anyone can ‘transfer’ him to a place no one can reach.”
A pause. Then: “Understood. Timeline?”
“Tonight,” I say.
He exhales. “That’s tight.”
“Make it tighter,” I say, and end the call.
When the room goes quiet again, I sit back and listen to the building around me—the distant casino music, the soft buzz of power through the walls, the faint pulse of Gur’s night through the window.
It smells like smoke and gold and lies.
I roll the Nine’s coin between my claws, feeling its edges catch, its weight stubborn and arrogant.
Jordan would hate this room. She’d hate the luxury, the implication that suffering is just something you wallpaper over. She’d see the truth under the chandeliers.
And I—gods help me—I want her to see that I’m not hiding from it.
I’m shaping it.
I press the coin flat on the desk.
“Come on then,” I whisper into the night, like the Nine can hear me. “Try to take what’s mine.”
Then I stand, because there’s no such thing as resting when you’ve declared war on ghosts.
And I go to build a trap for a man who thinks he can disappear.