Chapter 48
Vale
I’ve wanted to kill a lot of men. That’s not poetic. It’s just math. You take enough contracts, carry enough grudges, watch enough people bleed for someone else’s pride, and the list stacks up.
But Marcus?
Marcus is different.
Marcus is not on a list. No. Marcus is carved into the inside of my skull. Marcus is fucking personal.
And I am not allowed to kill him.
That’s the part that’s making me insane.
London is breathing wet tonight. Too warm for the season. Pavement still slick from a rain that came and went without bothering to be dramatic about it. Atmosphere thick, buzzing with low traffic and sodium-orange streetlight. Canary Wharf a glittering lie on the horizon.
We’re in Bethnal Green. Or rather, Marcus is, anyway.
My jaw flexes, and I lean against the brick, watching the entrance to the rowhouse across the street, hood pulled up, hands in the pockets of an old bomber. I’m casual, or I at least look it. Unbothered posture, one boot braced against the wall behind me, eyes half-lidded.
Inside, I’m vibrating.
He’s in there, and the bastard thinks he’s safe. He thinks his new little bolt-hole and his quiet under-the-table contract work and his “nobody knows I’m off-book” routine means he’s crawled away from the consequences of touching what belongs to us.
The others want him alive. I don’t. I want him dead, blood pouring over my hands, while I watch the last bit of his life force leave his useless body.
Ember hasn’t said it out loud, but I watched her eyes. She wants him alive long enough to hear him confess. She wants to stand there while he says it. She wants to decide.
So I keep him breathing. For her.
That’s the only reason. I’m replaying her voice in my head like a rosary to keep my hands off the knife.
Start with Marcus… Start with Marcus… Start with Marcus.
No one has ever told me “start” and “don’t finish” in the same breath before. I don’t like it.
The flat he’s using is shit. Too clean on the letting papers, too anonymous on the outside, too temporary.
One of those fake-renovated places landlords dress up with gray paint and cheap filament bulbs and call “executive studio” while they still haven’t fixed the warped floorboards.
Curtains drawn. Lights low. He thinks closed blinds make him invisible.
He doesn’t know I’ve been watching him two days straight.
Doesn’t know I made the guy who set up his utilities cry and then talk.
He doesn’t know I’ve already cloned his door code from heat patterns on the keypad.
He doesn’t know I’ve watched him leave twice: once for cigarettes, once to get takeout, shoulders hunched, head down, hood up, like no one would clock him.
The worst type. The ones who think touching power makes them powerful.
He’s not power. He’s meat.
Movement, catches my attention on the top floor window. A shadow moving past.
I smile. Got you, bastard.
“Vale,” Ash’s voice slips into my ear. Calm. Taut. Too awake. He hasn’t slept more than an hour at a time since we took Damien. “Visual?”
“Eyes on him,” I murmur.
“Alone?” He asks.
“He’s alone,” I say. “No movement inside except him. No second shadow. Boy’s lonely.”
Ash exhales slowly. “Good. Wraith is two blocks out in the van. Saint’s with him, but don’t let him engage, that wrist is a liability and he knows it. Rook’s staying with Ember.”
“Of course he is,” I say, amused under my breath.
Ash doesn’t rise. He’s been quiet about that. About Ember. About all of us and Ember. Quiet doesn’t mean blind.
“Reminder,” he says instead. “Alive.”
It comes out like he’s repeating a safety protocol to a toddler holding a grenade.
I roll my eyes. “Sí, mamá.”
“I mean it, Mateo.”
“I heard you the first six times,” I counter with an eye roll.
“Alive, coherent, able to speak,” Ash clarifies, like I’m dense. “Not ‘alive technically if you plug him into a machine.’ Not ‘alive if you define alive loosely and squint.’ Alive.”
I grin slow, eyes still on the door. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m so much fun,” Ash deadpans. “You’re just a sociopath.”
“Semantics,” I hum.
“Mateo.”
“I said I heard you,” I say. “You think I’m gonna ruin her party by breaking the toy before she gets to play?”
Silence. Then, softer, almost swallowed, “No.”
Yeah, didn’t think so.
That’s why I’m not going to kill Marcus. Not because I give a fuck about Marcus. Because I care about that woman.
Three weeks ago Ember Calloway was dragged into our world spitting threats and shaking and pretending she wasn’t scared.
Now she walks through the manor like she was built in its walls.
She sits on Rook’s lap at dinner like a queen in court and the rest of us fall in around her like orbit.
Now she looks me in the eye and doesn’t flinch.
She lets me touch her, and the amount of trust that took still blows my bloody mind.
Yeah. I’m not taking that from her.
Not Marcus. Not his confession. Not his face when he realizes she’s the one giving the orders down there. No. I’ll gift-wrap that for her.
But I’m going to be honest… I am going to thoroughly enjoy the wrapping.
The door opens, grabbing my attention, and I know it’s showtime.
The building entrance is one of those old communal ones.
Four buzzers. Rotted security glass taped in two places.
Shit camera no one’s checked in years. Marcus comes down alone, hood up, shoulders in, head angled like he thinks turning his face toward his chest makes him invisible. He’s smaller than I expected.
Marcus stops just inside the doorway and peers out like he’s in a spy film.
Adorable.
I push off the wall and stroll across the street like I’m just cutting through to the off-license. He doesn’t clock me at first. When he finally does his whole body goes tight.
Good evening to you too, cabrón.
“Evening,” I purr, voice low and easy.
His mouth parts. “Do I— can I help you?”
English accent. London. Not East. Too polished. Somewhere education-polished. Tries to drop it for “street” and can’t. I can hear the attempt when he says “help ya,” like he’s ashamed of how he sounds.
I smile wider. “Yeah. You can.”
A little sweat beads at his hairline already. Animals always know when the jungle finds them. “I think you’ve got something that belongs to us,” I say softly.
He swallows. “I— I don’t know—”
“Ah,” I trill, stepping in. Not touching. Yet. Just close enough that he feels my heat, smells my sweat, my cologne, my temper. Close enough he sees the ink on my neck. “That’s disappointing. I was hoping we could do this friendly.”
“I don’t—look, I think you’ve got the wrong—”
“That’s cute,” I say.
Then I move. People think I go for the throat first because I like to make it bloody. It’s not true. Throat comes later, much much later.
First? Hands. I snatch his left wrist, and twist—hard. For Saint.
Marcus screams. It’s not a manly sound. It’s high and raw and panicked, and he jerks like a fish on wire, his knees giving immediately as pain shoots up his arm.
“Shh,” I coo, guiding him — yeah, guiding, I’m gentle like that — back into the shadow of the doorway so CCTV street-side can’t get a clean look. “Cállate.”
He’s panting. “Please— please, I don’t— I didn’t—”
“You know what I hate most?” I murmur, leaning in, hot breath right against his ear. “Men who touch what’s not theirs and then pretend they didn’t. Makes me… unfriendly.”
His eyes blow wide.
Yeah. There it is. Guilt. Fear. Just what else have you been doing in the time Ember has been with us?
“I didn’t—she—she wanted—”
I laugh. It’s loud and ugly. He flinches like I hit him.
“You’re going to want to be very careful with what you say next, Marcus,” I whisper, still smiling.
“Because you’re going to be repeating it in front of her.
And if you say something stupid now, and then you say something different later, I’m going to take that as you calling her a liar in my house.
And I’m going to take that personally. You understand? ”
He’s shaking. Full-body, teeth-clacking, eyes-wet shaking.
I love it.
“Wh—who are you?” he tries. “What is this? I haven’t—I haven’t done anything—”
“Oh, sweetheart,” I purr, amused. “That’s not true at all.”
He tries to pull back. I let him, for one step, one small second of safety. Then I slam him face-first into the chipped plaster next to the entry buzzer with a wet crack.
Not hard enough to break his nose. Just hard enough to ring his bell. He lets out a strangled sound, and blood blooms immediately at his eyebrow.
He sags, and I catch him by the back of the neck and hold him there, cheek pressed to peeling paint, breathing hard.
“You are going to come for a little drive with me,” I murmur against his ear.
“You are not going to scream again. You are not going to run, because if you run I will put a knife between your ribs and drag you there like luggage, and I am absolutely allowed to do that. You are not going to piss yourself, because I’m wearing new trousers and I’ll be cross. Nod if you understand.”
He nods like he’s trying to detach his own head.
“Good boy,” I croon.
I pull his hood up, yank it low over his brow to cover the blood, and steer him out of the doorway with a firm grip at his nape. Head down, shoulders slumped, looks drunk or sick if anyone’s watching. London doesn’t stop for drunk or sick.
We move.
I walk him down the pavement like we’re just another old mates situation, me murmuring in his ear, him stumbling along. We pass a gap between buildings that opens into a narrow cut-through, and he lunges sideways, twisting like a rabbit. I feel it before he moves.
You spend long enough breaking men, you feel the twitch just before they fuck around. I let him get exactly half a step, then I hook my foot behind his ankle and yank.