Chapter 44
Rook
By morning, the rain has turned to mist.
The kind that hangs low across the grounds, clinging to the hedges and stone walls, curling over the gravel drive like breath. The manor looks almost soft in it. Almost unassuming.
It’s a lie.
I’m in the study when it happens. I haven’t slept. I showered. Changed. Sat down to work. Never made it past opening a file.
The house at this hour is usually quiet in a way I like — early pale light through tall windows, the faint tick of old clocks, the low hum of pipes in the walls.
But even without noise, I can feel movement.
Saint somewhere on the eastern grounds. Ash running silent diagnostics through the security feeds.
Wraith still upstairs because he didn’t leave her bed.
Vale awake too early, which always means trouble.
I’m mid-sip of coffee when the first alert hits. Not an alarm. We don’t use sirens or shrieking sensors like amateurs. It’s a tone in the comms channel in my ear — two short pulses, one long.
Perimeter breach. Front approach, and by the third pulse I’m already on my feet. “Report,” I say, crossing the hall.
Saint’s voice comes back low, calm, threaded with something like pleased violence. “Four men. Black van, no plates. Stopped just outside the front gate. Two out, two still inside. They’re geared and sloppy. Not Syndicate muscle. Hired pull team.”
“Armed?” I ask.
“Of course,” Saint says, almost amused. “They’re not carrying flowers.”
I’m almost to the front hall. “Intent?”
“Snatch and go,” Ash cuts in through the line. His voice is colder than usual. Focused. “Look at the spread. One driver, one wheelman and only two hands. No backup. No overwatch. They weren’t sent to level the house. They were sent to grab and run.”
Not for me, then. Or us. They were here for her.
My jaw goes tight, tension and stress coiling through my body. “And now?” I ask.
“Now,” Saint says mildly, “they’re dead.”
I pause in the foyer. Through the tall front windows I can just make out the drive through the ironwork — a wash of pale morning, a shape of matte black van angled wide at the gate, doors yawning open.
The two who tried to come through the gate are down on the gravel outside it, bodies at ugly angles.
One on his face, blood seeping dark into the stones beneath his cheek.
One curled wrong around his own arm, like he tried to grab his shoulder on the way down and didn’t quite finish the motion.
The two still inside the van aren’t visible from here.
I don’t need to see them to know they’re not a problem anymore.
Saint doesn’t miss. Saint never warns. Saint only sanctifies after.
He did what I told him to do last night — lock down the grounds and make sure no one stepped onto the property breathing unless I said they could. He did it well.
“Confirmation?” I say.
“They’re cold,” Saint answers. “All four. No more movement on thermal. I’ve got my boys sweeping the lane for eyes. There’s no second car in a three-block radius. We’re clean.”
Vale’s voice slides in next, lazy and bright. “Well, good morning to us.”
“Mateo,” I warn.
“What?” he says. “You know I love breakfast entertainment.”
“You know I don’t,” Ash mutters.
“Children,” Saint sighs.
“Shut up,” Wraith’s voice rumbles.
He’s on the channel now.
That tells me everything I need about how fast this escalated, because Wraith hasn’t said a word over comms since last night. He’s been in silent mode — all awareness, no chatter — because his only priority was the woman currently asleep upstairs.
If he’s talking now, it’s because he woke up the same second the alert hit.
“Status,” I ask him.
“Ember’s down,” he says immediately. “She’s fine. I woke her, told her someone tried to come through the gate but they’re already dead. She’s calm, but pissed. She’s pretending not to be trembling.”
Something ugly and protective claws at the back of my throat, but I keep my tone even. “You with her?”
“Obviously,” Wraith says.
“She has eyes on you?” Ash asks, clinical as a surgeon.
“Yeah.”
“Keep it that way,” Ash says. “She’ll stabilize faster if she can see you. She dissociates by thinking, not by shutting down. If you let her sit in her head after that wake-up, she’ll spiral. Narrate for her.”
“I know how to talk to her,” Wraith growls.
“I’m not saying you don’t,” Ash mutters.
Saint lets out something like a chuckle. “Ah. Domesticity.”
“Saint,” I say.
“Yes, my king,” he answers, voice tinged with something light and teasing.
“Bring them in,” I tell him. “All four. I want them in the cellar. Clean, cataloged, stripped. Pull IDs, tattoos, comms, everything. Ash, scrub any signal from that van and wipe the drive from the cams on the main road. Vale—”
“I know,” Vale purrs. “I’m already calling our friends.”
“Careful,” I warn.
“Don’t I always disappoint you,” he says sweetly.
Saint snorts softly in my ear, and I cut the channel.
For a second I just stand there in the foyer, watching the mist hang low over the drive, the iron gate beyond it still closed and gleaming wet in the pale light. Body heat is just starting to rise off the men in faint curls, barely visible. The gravel looks like spilled ink.
First shots have been fired. It's official, now.
Not implied, or whispered. Not backroom threats. He sent people to my fucking door.
And not just my door — to this door. The one place in this city nobody touches. The one line you don’t cross unless you’ve decided you don’t care if you walk back out. Damien either truly doesn’t care, or he doesn’t understand.
Either way, he’s not going to get a second chance to learn.
Footsteps come down the main stairs. Ash first. He’s shirtless under an open zip hoodie, joggers hanging too low, hair a mess, eyes too awake for this hour.
He looks like he hasn’t slept, which means he probably hasn’t.
He’s already got a tablet in his hand, scrolling through feeds he shouldn’t be able to access that fast. He stops beside me, glances once out the window, then back down at his screen.
“Two burner mobiles in the van,” he says. “One of them’s already clean wiped, no data — so they thought. The other one’s pretending to be, which means I can pull the ghosted registry. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll have a chain.”
I nod. “Good.”
He doesn’t move away—doesn’t have to say what he’s thinking. I know it already.
They came straight for us. They didn’t scout, didn’t post, they didn’t even fucking send eyes first. They drove a van right up to our gate and tried to breach. That’s not professional. That’s desperate.
Which means Damien’s already bleeding. Or panicking. Maybe both.
Saint appears a few seconds later, walking in from the front hall like a man coming back from morning prayer instead of dragging four fresh corpses off our lawn.
He’s in black slacks and a white shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled, rosary glinting over his collarbone.
There’s blood misted across his knuckles, his jaw, the line of his throat. He looks satisfied.
He drops a folded piece of fabric onto the table by the entry console. “Patches,” he says. “No insignia I recognize. Not Syndicate colors. Definitely not police. No formal tactical branding. They’re freelancers.”
“Hired grab team,” Ash says without looking up.
Saint nods. “The kind you throw at a problem you think is easy.”
“They thought taking her was easy,” I say.
Saint smiles, and it’s not kind. “I think they were told she’d be alone.”
Vale saunters in last. He’s barefoot, shirtless, tattoos black and carved across his chest and down his stomach like scripture written in sin.
He’s got sweatpants hanging on his hips, blood on the heel of one hand he’s not bothering to wipe off, and eating an apple like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Of course he is.
“Good morning,” he sings.
Ash doesn’t look up. “Shut up.”
Vale grins, takes a bite. “Well then... Somebody woke up mean.”
Saint tips his chin toward the window. “Mateo. Focus.”
Vale flicks a glance outside, then back at me. The lazy amusement in his face doesn’t leave. But something else slides in under it. A line of real anger. It sharpens him.
“So,” he says lightly. “That’s a declaration of intent, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He throws his apple core neatly into a bin across the hall without even looking. “Then I assume we’re done playing nice.”
“We were playing nice?” Saint asks mildly, scrunching his nose up in disgust.
Vale smiles without humor. “Relatively.”
Ash finally looks up from his tablet and shoves a hand through his hair. “We need to accelerate the timeline.”
I turn to him. “How fast?”
“Faster than we planned last night,” he says.
“We were still in recon mode at dinner. We said rattle the Syndicate, pull Damien’s threads, starve him, ruin him, then end him.
” He jerks his chin toward the window, toward the faint shapes cooling on our gravel.
“He just told us he’s skipping to extraction.
He’s not going to sit in some glass box and trade insults.
He’s going to take her and leverage her.
That was move one. Move two is louder. And after move two, it’s war on the street, and none of us get clean exits. ”
Saint’s voice goes smooth. “We need to grab him first.”
I glance at him. “You volunteering to go to confession for it after?”
Saint smiles, all teeth. “Caelum, darling, I haven’t confessed honestly in years.”
Vale barks out a laugh.
Ash nods once, decisive. “We take Damien. Quietly. Before he can reposition. Before he can vanish behind whatever NATO-adjacent handlers he’s playing with.
Before he can throw her name anywhere outside our reach.
We pull him alive. We sit him somewhere no one knows about — not even Syndicate — and we peel him. ”
Saint nods, approving. “Interrogation.”
Vale’s grin goes slow. “Finally.”
“Alive,” I say.
Vale lifts both hands. “Alive,” he echoes, like that part offends him personally.