Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Trey
Ashes of a Gentleman – Ether Dark Motivation
Istand at the window of my hospital room with a take-out coffee cooling between my hands, watching Los Angeles stretch endlessly beneath a low winter sky.
The city moves without hesitation, unaware that mine stopped the moment her blood touched my hands and mine poured out onto the ground in return.
At least the coffee is better than the bitter sludge from the vending machines down the hall, even if it has already gone cold.
January.
The word carries its own weight, settling heavy in my chest as I stare out over the glass and steel and distant mountains blurred by haze. Our first January waking in the same bed, her hair spread across my pillow, her fingers tangled in mine.
Instead, there was nothing.
No quiet morning.
No Seraphina curled into my side, stealing the blankets and pretending she hadn’t when I pulled her closer. There was only this.
White walls. Antiseptic air. Pain that never fully loosens its grip, no matter how many drugs they push into my veins to dull it.
I shift slightly, and my ribs protest immediately, a sharp reminder of how close I came to never standing here at all. Every breath pulls tight across my chest, every second proof that I survived something that was never meant to be survived.
I close my eyes briefly, and all I see is my wife.
Her smile.
Her eyes.
The way she looked at me like I was someone worth loving.
I died on that basement floor.
I know I did.
I felt it.
I felt the moment everything slipped, when the world dimmed and the sound of her voice became the only thing tethering me to what remained. I remember wanting to reach for her, wanting to tell her not to be afraid, even as I disappeared.
Yet, against all odds…I came back.
I came back to an empty room.
I feel my jaw tighten as helplessness claws its way up my spine, familiar and poisonous. It settles deep, coiling in my chest beside something far more dangerous.
Resolve.
I made a promise to her.
Not in a church. Not in front of witnesses.
I made it in the quiet moments, with her head resting over my heart and her future placed trustingly in my hands.
She would hurt no more.
No one would ever mark her skin again.
No one would ever take her from me.
Because I died once already.
I did not claw my way back from the dark just to fail her now.
If the world thinks it can touch what belongs to me and survive, it has gravely miscalculated.
Because I am no longer the man I was before that night.
I am what remains.
I will burn every last piece of this earth to ash before I ever let her suffer again.
The thought alone—of someone touching her, frightening her, controlling her—makes my chest seize, my heart hammering hard enough that I feel it all the way down to my ribs.
I squeeze the coffee cup until the lid creaks, nails digging into the plastic, and the old wounds flare, stabbing reminders that the fire inside me is far from spent.
The door opens behind me.
“You ready to get out of here, brother?”
Chace.
“Does the pope shit in his hat?” I mutter without looking.
“Wha—uh… no?” Confusion colors his tone.
“Course he does. It’s why it’s a saying, like British police officers, or bobbies. You can ask to take a leak in their helmets, and they have to say yes.”
Chace snorts. “Man, your meds are really fucking with you, huh?”
“Look it up.”
“Bro, if that shit’s on Wikipedia, it just means some lunatic like you wrote it. Doesn’t mean it’s true. Also, why are both things about hats? Got a new obsession?”
“We’ll agree to disagree,” I growl. “Where are the others? I thought you were coming with Mac and the guys this afternoon?”
“Well…family drama cropped up. I had to keep them in place. I’m just waiting on a—”
His phone rings, slicing through the tension. Chace glances at me, then steps back, answering. “I’m with him now. Hold on—I’ll put you on speaker.”
Every muscle in me locks as a calm, rough Russian accent fills the room.
“I have eyes on the girl.”
Girl…Seraphina?
My chest stutters, my stomach tightening.
“Secured video takes time…horrid, backwater country,” the voice continues.
“Thank you, uncle. I’m signing in now,” Chace says, minimizing the call and opening an app I’ve never seen before.
The video begins to load, and Chace’s uncle continues.
“As you will see, our hunch was correct. The girl was reported at a casino in Las Vegas with Mr. Baker’s father and his colleagues yesterday.
She appears unharmed. Her location is secure, most importantly, static at the moment.
I have men posted inside, outside, on the roof, and in the building opposite. ”
“Static is bad, right?” I ask, my throat tightening.
“On the contrary, Mr. Baker. It means she hasn’t moved from the location.”
Seraphina’s okay—and at a casino of all places. Why the fuck has he taken her there?
“About the casino…” Chace steps toward me, concern written across his face. “That’s public. How do you plan on doing that without starting a war?”
A short, humorless huff precedes the answer.
“The plan is simple. I walk in, plemmyanik. Johnathon Baker might think he’s safe under his boss—but his boss answers to me.”
“Could you not move in without me? I want to be there to—”
“Mr. Baker—” Chace’s uncle cuts in.
“That’s my fucking wife. I’m coming to take her back.” Chace pales slightly, eyes widening, until his uncle lets out a small, tired snort.
“I thought this might be how you felt,” he says. “Rest assured, Mr. Baker, transport is waiting. Valentino, you know where to go.”
The call ends. Chace taps his screen and pulls up the video.
I step closer. The footage is grainy, but it doesn’t matter.
Las Vegas, neon, crowds, motion…and there she is.
My wife. My Dove. She walks beside my father, posture composed, face calm, but I see every detail—the tension in her shoulders, the way our dogs flank her, alert and ready.
Then my father’s hand settles at the small of her back.
Possessive.
Get your fucking hand off my wife.
Something inside me snaps. The room shrinks, the air thickens, my pulse roaring louder than my own breath. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe. I don’t speak. But beneath the stillness, beneath the control carved into my bones, something vast, merciless, and untamed rises.
You wanted to beat the weakness out of me, Dad? A feral smile tugs at my lips. You mis-fucking-calculated.
Now everyone standing between me and my wife will learn exactly what that costs.
The video freezes on the casino entrance. Las Vegas. Sin City. My father brought her to Sin fucking City. Of all cities built on excess and vice, temptation and appetite, men who think money buys absolution—he chose that one. Could have been worse. Reno, maybe. My jaw tightens until it aches.
Seraphina doesn’t belong in a city that chews women up and spits them out.
She doesn’t belong anywhere near my father’s violence, his appetites, his belief that people exist to be shaped into tools.
Yet he walked her into it like a trophy, hand on her back, as if she were something he had a right to escort.
Every heartbeat feels like fire in my throat. Why return just to take? Is it to hurt me? I made promises, and I will uphold them. Is he working with Gideon?
The thought of her standing there, surrounded by men who mistake desire for ownership, makes something savage claw up my spine. I feel consumed, raw, ready to destroy. My father sells love as weakness. He’s wrong. Love isn’t weakness—it’s why I breathe, why I survived.
I don’t look away. My father has made his choice.
Chace watches me, waits. Silence stretches thick and heavy. He exhales slowly, bracing.
“What’re the chances of you staying behind while I go get your wife?”
I laugh, humorless, sharp. “Absolutely fucking zero.”
Chace’s jaw tightens, but I don’t let him speak. “I trust you,” I say, voice rough, burning. “With my life. You got me set up with the dogs, security at my place…”
I turn to the window, letting the city lights blur around me.
“Trey, this world you’re stepping into…it’s dangerous.”
“And cults are usually mellow affairs? Always orgies or death, no in-between.”
“We’re not talking about a cult here, Trey.”
“Nope, we’re talking about my old man, and Vegas, baby.”
“Yet another reason to stay the fuck off the Strip.”
“My wife is there.”
“She’s been taken by your cunt of a father.”
“More reason to stop talking and go kick him in the scrotum.”
“Even if I let you come, we’re entering a place controlled by the mob.”
“That’s what I’ve got you for…” Chace pauses, hand running through his hair, weary.
“Fine. Fuck it, but if you die out there, you are not haunting me. Mac, Logan and Sam only.”
Hm, what about the Hallmark twins?
“Clay and Dean too,” I add.
“You really close with the brothers?”
“Na, not really. But just the idea of watching them share a girl…”
“Dude…”
He gets it. That look tells me everything.
“I call them the Hallmark twins…” Chace snorts, shaking his head.
“I love you, bro, but you’re fucking nuts.” Rapid-fire texts, a sigh, and he settles on me.
“There’s really no talking you out of this, is there?”
I shake my head, wincing at the tug in my ribs. “You really love her, huh?”
“Honestly, Chace…she scares me. Watching her is like experiencing everything again for the first time…I don’t know what I mean to her, but to me…
” My chest tightens until it feels like it might crack.
“She’s why I breathe. My peace and my war all at once, the only person that’s ever truly owned my heart.
I woke up after ten days in darkness and the first thought in my head was simple.
I’ll survive it again. I’ll survive anything if it means I get back to her. ”
I drag a hand over my jaw, the truth of it settling deep in my bones.
“Because a world where Seraphina doesn’t exist isn’t one I’m willing to live in.”
My hands curl into fists. “I promised I’d never leave her,” I say, slower now, letting every word carve through me. “And I did. I fucking did leave her. I failed her when she needed me most.” Truth tastes like blood.
“Trey, you didn’t, and you fucking know that.”
I shake my head. “No…I mean, sure, I was a pinata, manhandled and stabbed, but I have a promise to keep. I’ll handle my dad. I’ll handle Gideon. Anyone who stands between me and her.” I pause, long enough for the weight of it to land. “But only after I know she’s safe.”
Because nothing…nothing comes before that. Not my life. Not revenge. Nothing matters more than her.