Chapter 10 Tristan
TEN
TRISTAN
The hotel room in London is a characterless, stale box.
Beige walls. Corporate art. A window that doesn't open, triple-glazed to keep out the noise below. It's not somewhere I would ever stay, which is exactly why I chose it.
No one would think to look for me here.
Streetlights bleed orange through the glass, turning everything the color of old bruises. The days are just blending together at this point, and my patience is wearing thin.
I sit at the desk with my laptop open, arm still wrapped in gauze from where I cut the tracker out. Thousands of codes are running in the background, trying to find anything remotely tied to the Ferryman.
Minutes blur into hours. The screen washes the room in cold light as encrypted codes scatter across the dark web. Jobs, private docs, real estate, hidden shipments, shell companies, security cameras, contractors.
All of it turns up nothing. Again.
Every second feels like another piece of her slipping further out of reach.
Nick and Zara are probably losing their minds, but the tracker had to go.
You don't beat men like Calder by playing fair.
You sure as shit don't survive them by staying clean.
To kill a monster, you stop pretending you aren't one.
And I'm done pretending.
I turn back to the laptop and pull up my Silt system. A full identity wipe paired with believable death trails. I built it years ago for people who needed to disappear permanently. Targets. Assets. Loose ends. Anyone who got in my way or needed to die.
Never thought I'd be running it on myself, but this will buy me some breathing room.
Calder might not know my name yet, or I'd already be dead. But he knows someone is trying to find him. It's only a matter of time before he connects the dots.
The screen shows a blank field, the cursor blinking.
I type in the access code from memory and add Tristan Barlowe to the list, watching myself get erased from the face of the earth.
TRISTAN BARLOWE — STATUS: DECEASED
The cause of death populates automatically once I select the scenario.
Vehicle accident off Isle of Skye. Body unrecovered due to tide and rocky terrain.
It'll seed the local reports first, then insurance databases, then the webpages that trade in obituaries before families are even notified.
The journalists in Wall Street's business sector will pick it up.
It'll spread everywhere, and Calder will mark me as dead—no longer a threat, if I ever was one before.
Problem solved.
Except for the part where the people I actually care about are going to see this and assume the worst.
I can't have that.
And as much as I hate admitting it, I'm past the point where I can do this alone. That's why the secure line to Aaron exists.
I pull up the encrypted channel and type fast.
Had to reset. Trail went colder than expected. If you see something about me, don't panic. Or do. Might help sell it.
The cursor blinks back in a different color. Aaron logs on.
A: Target confirmed?
Yes.
A: Backup?
My fingers hover over the keys.
Negative.
The moment I send it, one of my background codes blinks. I lean in, pulse kicking up…then it flattens. It appears to be a corrupted job log with no timestamp. Half the text shredded and every name scrubbed clean except for one word.
Viavilda.
That's one of Aaron and Caterina's shell companies.
Why the hell is it buried in Calder's data trail?
Why is their world even touching his?
I dig deeper, trying to force the pathway to open, but the firewall snaps back hard enough to nearly lock me out completely.
"Fuck."
I sit back, jaw tight as I try to work this out on my own.
I could message Aaron again through the line. Ask him directly, but that'll take too long. And if there are hidden tripwires in this system, I don't want to light them up by poking around where I shouldn't be.
I grab a brand-new burner phone, tear it open, and dial Aaron's secure line.
It's a nuclear option, but I'm out of conventional ones.
The phone rings twice before he picks up. "This better be good. It's late."
"It's me."
"Tristan?" The edge in his voice vanishes instantly.
"Yeah."
"We were just talking. Is everything—"
"Something came in right after. I need you to tell me the truth."
I hear him moving, then the soft click of a door shutting.
"Go ahead."
"Viavilda. Ring a bell?"
A frustrated groan. "You know it does. Get to the point."
"Why is it buried in a file tied to Ewan Calder's security contractor?"
"How do you know that name?"
"Doesn't matter. Just tell me if you've worked with him before."
"No. Never directly."
"But indirectly?"
The pause stretches too long. "It's complicated."
"Uncomplicate it."
He lets out a slow breath. "The contractor you're looking at? They don't just work for Calder. They work for everyone. Cartels. Criminals. Corporations. If you have enough money and the right clearance, they'll do whatever you want. Move anything. Anyone."
My jaw tightens. "Including people who don't want to be moved."
"Yeah. Including them."
"So you've used them."
"Yes, to help us track and rescue trafficked kids and women. They offer a wide variety of services, and they don't give a shit you need. As long as you can pay the price, they'll do it. And they're very good at their job."
"Fuck." I rake a hand through my hair. "I wish you'd mentioned this when I told you I was going after Keira."
He scoffs. "Calder's above us all, Tristan. He has no involvement with her. You're being paranoid."
My jaw clicks. "He has her, Aaron."
A long pause. Whispering I can't make out—he must be talking to Cat. I'm about to hang up when there's static, then rustling.
"Are you positive?" Cat's voice now.
"Yes. I got a confession."
A sharp intake of breath. "From who?"
"A dead guy. Doesn't matter anymore. I need access to the security company's system."
"No."
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my cool. "Caterina, it wasn't a request."
"I said no." Her voice hardens. "That firewall will eat you alive. You try to breach it and they'll know someone's poking around. Then you're dead—and so is Keira."
"Then get me in without tripping the alarms."
"I can't."
"You mean you won't."
A frustrated exhale crackles through the line. "I mean I can't. They're built for this. We can't just hack our way in."
"Then find someone who can."
"Tristan—"
"Am I on speaker?"
She doesn't answer me right away. "Yes."
"Aaron, if Cat were taken, you'd burn the world down to find her. You know you would."
The silence that follows is deafening.
Aaron's voice comes through, rough and low. "Give us twenty-four hours."
"Aaron—" Cat starts, but he's already made the call.
"I'll call you back. Keep your head down." He pauses. "And Tristan?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't do anything stupid before we call you back."
The line goes dead.
I sit there for a moment, staring at the burner phone in my hand.
Then I pull the battery out and snap the SIM card in half.
My eyes catch the red leather notebook on the bedside table.
I picked it up on my way into London. Told myself it was for intel, but that was a lie.
The moment I stepped back into this city, I saw her everywhere. In the curve of a stranger's shoulder. The cadence of a laugh three tables over. The way the rain catches the light on a window I used to watch her through.
Years later, and London still belongs to her.
And the dreams…Christ, the dreams won't stop.
They bleed through whatever scraps of sleep I manage to claw together, vivid and relentless. Her face. Her voice. Her hands on my skin like she's trying to reach through time itself and drag me back to when we made sense. She's in my head whether I want her there or not.
Writing it down felt pathetic at first. Like admitting she still has a hold on me after all these years. Like carving evidence of my own weakness into something permanent.
But the alternative is letting this fester until it consumes what's left of my sanity.
So maybe releasing some of it will buy me a few hours of actual rest.
I don't believe that, but I reach for the notebook anyway.
She said once that if she ever had a kid, she'd steal my middle name.
Hale. She laughed when she said it, like it was a joke.
Like it didn't mean anything. But I remember the way her voice softened when she said it.
The way her fingers traced over my heart one night, repeating my name like she was memorizing something she knew she'd lose.
Did she name him Hale?
My son is out there right now. Living a life I know nothing about. Learning to tie his shoelaces, maybe. Memorizing which floorboards creak. Figuring out that real monsters don't have fangs or claws—they wear nice suits and sit at the head of the dinner table.
Is he scared of Calder?
Does he call him Dad?
Does he make himself small so he won't get noticed? Press himself against walls and hold his breath until the danger passes?
Does she?
The notebook's spine cracks under my grip.
The thought of that man breathing the same air as my son, existing in the same space as them, makes something primal rear up inside me. The kind of rage that only destroys.
I want to tear this room apart. Rip the walls down with my bare hands until there's nothing left but rubble and dust and the echo of my own screaming.
But I can't.
So I write instead.
My pen hovers over the page. The words don't want to come. They want to stay buried where they've been rotting for years.
I drag them out anyway.
She took something from me I didn't even know I had. She used it. Hurt me with it. And if I had stayed, I would have forgiven her for all of it. That's why I left.
Because I couldn't afford to forgive someone who could cut that deep.
The truth I never said aloud. Not to her. Not to myself.
She lied to me. Set me up. And when the proof landed in my hands like a live grenade, I didn't ask why. I didn't give her a chance to explain.
I just turned and walked away.
Told myself it was self-preservation. That she chose her side and I was choosing mine.
But the real reason I left was because staying meant forgiving her.
And forgiving her meant admitting she had that much power over me.
That she could carve me open, leave me bleeding on the floor, and I'd still crawl back to her on my hands and knees.
So I disappeared.
And she vanished right after.
Like we never existed at all.
I stare at the words until they blur together.
I walked away, but she's the one I never stopped returning to.
The place my soul stayed, even when my body didn't.
And now she's out there trapped somewhere with Calder, thinking I abandoned her for good this time. Thinking I never cared for her.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars, then flip to a new page.
I'm coming for you, Red. Even if I hate you for what you did. Even if you never forgive me for leaving.