Chapter 35 #2
I clear my throat. “Canary Wharf,” I say, deliberately clinical, because if I don’t ground this in data I’m going to lose the thread and do something stupid like say you’re the only thing keeping this from collapsing.
“The Syndicate’s using shell manifests to move product and intelligence through lower port lanes.
Russians are riding the clearance under British cover. ”
“Meaning?” she asks.
“Meaning,” I reply, “someone in bed with the Syndicate has access to intel they shouldn’t. Someone local. Someone who’s not supposed to be talking to foreign crews at all, let alone clearing their ships. Someone like your handler.”
Her expression shifts — not surprise. Not shock. Just confirmation. Damien.
I see it hit her. Like a wire pulled too tight.
Her jaw locks, eyes going hard and flat for half a second before she smooths it down to something palatable. To most people, that flicker would read as nothing. To me, it looks like an old wound tearing open. So I log it. Mentally, I write it down.
Damien. Canary Wharf. MI6 fingerprints on Syndicate shipments. Russians in bed with the London machine. Cross-reference. Build timeline. Trace the payments. Follow the dead.
“I’m going with you next time,” Ember says.
Rook growls, “You’re not.”
Her eyes flash. “You said no lies, Caelum.”
He leans back slowly, and every inch of the motion says careful now. “And I haven’t lied,” he says. “You’re valuable where I put you. That doesn’t mean I’m putting you there.”
Her chin tips up. “You don’t get to keep me in a box.”
I can feel the ripple that moves through the room.
Wraith goes still. Saint watches her like a man kneeling at an altar he swore he’d never bow to again.
Vale’s grin softens, of all impossible things.
Rook answers in that slow, lethal calm of his.
“I’m not putting you in a box,” he says. “I’m putting you in position.”
Her lip curls in disdain. “Same thing.”
“No,” he says. Quiet. Final. “A box is where you keep something you’re afraid of losing. Position is where you place something you refuse to let anyone take from you.”
Silence. Even Vale doesn’t have a joke for that. And I hate that I feel it like a punch.
Because that’s the tell—the admission. That’s the shift none of us say out loud. He’s not talking about leverage.
He’s talking about belonging.
Her throat works. She swallows. “I’m still not letting you make decisions for me,” she says, and the sound of it is soft, but not weak. Soft like heat. Soft like warning.
Rook’s mouth tilts. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”
There. There it is. The look on her face. The exact second she realizes she’s not negotiating with one man. She’s negotiating with all of us. And we’re already decided.
I should feel relieved… but I don’t.
I feel something mean and hot curl low in my stomach.
Because they’re all touching her like it’s allowed now. They’re all speaking around her like she’s part of the circle, not locked in the center of it. And I’m still at the edge, where I always am, watching. Recording. Containing.
And she knows it.
Because then she does something I’m not prepared for. She stands, walks around the table, and comes to me. Not to Rook. Not to Wraith. Me.
I tense before she even reaches me. She steps close, lifts her hand, and smooths a wrinkle from the collar of my shirt like it bothers her. Like I’m hers to tidy. Her fingers linger at my throat for a heartbeat too long.
Everyone watches. I feel their eyes like heat on the two of us, warm and uncomfortable.
Ember looks up at me and says, in a voice that’s meant to sound light but isn’t, “You eating or just living on caffeine and anxiety again?”
Wraith snorts. Vale laughs. Saint exhales like he’s been holding his breath for minutes. Rook watches me, not her. He’s waiting to see what I do.
I force my mouth not to part. Force my pulse not to spike. “I’m eating,” I say.
“Good.” She pats my chest once, and it’s nothing and it’s everything. “I need you functional.”
Functional. Not useful, or even convenient.
Needed.
Something twists low in my ribs, sharp and electric. I catalog that too. She goes back to her seat like she didn’t just move a live charge through every man in the room with a touch and a sentence. And that’s when it really hits me.
It’s not just that we’re falling for her.
It’s that we are, quietly, without signing papers or bleeding oaths, already hers.
I should be afraid of that. Instead, I feel—God help me—calm. Because for the first time since Owen Calloway’s name hit our board, nobody’s splintering.
Rook’s watching her like a king watching the future of his house.
Wraith’s cooking like feeding her is now part of his job description.
Saint’s steady for the first time in months.
Vale’s still Vale, but he hasn’t tried to burn anything down in at least twelve hours, which is statistically significant. And me?
I’m noticing all of it, which means I’m already planning for it.
Contingencies. Routes. Exfil. Cover identities. Secure assets. Kill lists.
Because if she is the thing holding us together, we don’t get to fail at keeping her alive.
I take a sip of coffee gone lukewarm and log that, too. We’re past want—past fascination. We’re past whatever game we thought we were playing when we took her.
This is structural now. Load-bearing even. And if she walks?
We don’t bend. We fucking collapse.
I finally understand what that means.
What Rook meant when he told her “position.”
What I did when I deleted those feeds and didn’t tell anyone.
I’ve spent my life protecting assets—people, files, secrets.
But this isn’t that. This isn’t about duty or damage control. It’s about choosing a center and building a world around it. It’s about admitting that somehow, without any of us realizing it, she’s already the axis we’re all turning on.
I watch her laugh at something Vale says. Watch Wraith set a plate in front of her without being asked. Watch Saint lean in and murmur something to her in low, private tones that make her lips soften at the edges.
Her confidence is different this morning. Not performative. Not a front. Settled. Rooted. Like she finally believes she’s not going to be dragged out of bed at gunpoint and disappeared.
Like she’s starting to believe she might actually be ours.
Jealousy burns under my tongue, bitter and uninvited. And then she glances up, finds my eyes across the room, and does the smallest thing. She mouths, you okay?
Just like that. Not are you watching me. Not are you impressed.
Are you okay.
And the anger goes out of me like air from a lung.
Envy, yes.
Exclusion, no.
That’s the difference. That’s the problem—the salvation. She’s not pulling us apart. Ember’s stitching us in.
Thread through throat, through heart, through bone. A tether. A vow none of us said out loud. A liability, absolutely. A weakness, obviously.
The only thing that might keep us from killing each other before this is over?
Also… Yes.
I lean back against the counter, phone in my hand, eyes on her, and for the first time since she landed bloody on our floor, I let myself name it.
We’re already hers.
The only question left is how to make her believe we’re worth belonging to.