Chapter 7
ONYX
For the past few days, I’d been walking around strung so fucking tight I felt like a single spark could set me off. Not just because I was holding back with Elena, but also because a quiet storm was building behind the scenes.
Wizard had been running symbols nonstop. Ace was picking apart every dollar Marks had ever touched. Rebel was digging deep, too, and he’d hit something big yesterday. He found a syndicate tied to Marks. Not just a passing association, either. Real ties. Money, contact, and movement.
He still hadn’t figured out what Mark’s role was in it. No one had. Which was part of what made my hands itch every time I walked Elena to her apartment door at night and didn’t follow her inside.
She still didn’t know we were investigating him.
Or how far it had gone. We’d kept everything from her on purpose.
She was already in deep without realizing it, and I couldn’t risk her tipping her hand, partly because we had something concrete.
If Marks suspected she was aware of what he was doing, there was no telling how fast this situation would spiral.
So I kept my hands to myself when I walked her home—until last night, when I’d given in to my need.
I’d kissed her fiercely, barely restrained myself from taking her into her apartment, stripping her down, and claiming her as I desperately wanted to.
I only allowed my hands to roam her waist as I owned it, pressing my mouth to hers until her knees went soft and she whimpered into my throat.
And then I left. Again. Because I was still playing the long game.
Trying to give her something worth remembering instead of just tearing into her the way I wanted.
She didn’t realize what kind of self-control that took. How hard I was under my jeans half the damn day.
But right now, protecting her meant staying sharp. Keeping my dick in my pants and my eyes on the problem.
It was beginning to take shape, but all the unknowns were carving away at my patience.
Hell, I’d been more relaxed back when I went with my brothers to take down a trafficking ring.
At least when you were facing down a known enemy or putting bullets in a problem, you knew where you stood.
This was shadow work. Psychological, coded, and strategic.
Elena wasn’t just a bystander. She was being used. I just didn’t know how. Not until today.
She moved through the studio that afternoon like she always did—with quiet grace, focused energy, and her hair pulled up with soft wisps falling around her face.
She wore those snug black jeans that hugged her hips like a second skin and a fitted charcoal T-shirt that stretched across her tits when she reached for supplies.
Her apron was tied tightly around her waist, with a few smudges of ink on the front, but she still looked fucking edible.
Ink was working on a client in his booth. I was handling paperwork, half-distracted by the memory of Elena’s lips and the constant buzz of stress that never quite left my spine.
The doorbell chimed, and Elena hurried up to the front desk since our receptionist had stepped away for a minute.
When the guy walked in, I clocked him instantly.
Trim black beard, dark slacks, and pressed dress shirt as he’d stepped out of a business meeting.
But he didn’t carry himself like an office drone.
King had been in the CIA before he became the president of the Hounds of Hellfire, and I’d learned a lot about how to read people from him.
This guy’s body language was all wrong. Too controlled and measured. Every step was specifically placed, like a man trained to move through hostile space without triggering alarms.
Elena smiled at him. “Hi. Jareth told me you’d be by today.”
The guy returned her smile with just the right amount of polite warmth. “Had a gap in the schedule. Figured I’d take advantage of it.”
I stepped out of my office and crossed to her side before I even realized I was moving. My tone was low enough not to spook the guy, but firm enough to make her pause when I murmured, “Elena.”
She turned toward me without hesitation, wearing a bright expression that always knocked the air out of me. “Reeve, this is Darren. He works with Jareth on one of the local charity boards.”
I didn’t offer a hand. Just looked him over and gave a nod. “A friend of Marks's?”
Darren’s eyes flicked to me. “We’ve worked together for a while now.”
That wasn’t a yes.
Elena’s brow creased slightly. “He’s here for a tattoo. A commission piece Jareth asked me to design. He said Darren wanted something special and knew I’d make it perfect.”
My jaw locked.
Elena went on, cheerful and proud, clearly excited about the work. “It’s different from the last few. Most of those were lower-level friends or employees of his. This one’s supposed to be exact. High-end.” She gestured for Darren to follow her. “I’m set up in booth four.”
My gaze tracked him closely as she led him back to her station. He didn’t check out her ass. Didn’t look at anything but the floor. But I still didn’t like it.
I followed and leaned casually against the edge of the booth. I was already sure of the answer, but still asked, “You got the artwork with you?”
She shook her head, her eyes sparkling. “No, I’ll be doing it from memory. Jareth didn’t give me a print. Just a rough sketch for the general flow, then I cleaned it up in my book. He said it would be good practice to internalize layout and negative space. I practiced it for days.”
Of course, he didn’t give her a print.
My pulse picked up. “Where’s it going?”
She nodded toward the guy’s back. “Just below the scapula. High enough to hide with a shirt, low enough to stay out of collar range.”
Strategic placement. Meant to stay hidden but accessible. Easily flashed without being overt.
I stepped around as Darren peeled off his shirt.
His back was lean but muscular. A nasty scar near the shoulder blade said he’d been stitched up at some point, but it was old.
Another flick of my eyes to his lower back spotted a wound from a bullet.
I’d seen enough of them on my brothers and Ink’s Mafia relatives to recognize it.
Elena drew my attention back to her as she placed the stencil, her fingers moving with that same calm grace I’d seen a hundred times now. She worked like the world didn’t exist beyond the lines she drew.
The symbol was a variant of one she’d sketched two weeks ago.
Same base pattern, different interior cuts.
The tapering line ended in a directional hook.
Subtle, elegant, and precise. The more you stared, the more you saw—slight line weight changes, a tiny notch at one junction, and one curl flattened into an angle.
Those variations meant function, position, and rank.
This wasn’t a tattoo. It was a fucking badge.
But it didn’t match the ones traced back to Marks’s syndicate.
It was from a separate cluster I’d known I’d seen somewhere…
That’s when it hit me. I didn’t know how I had fucking missed it all this time.
She hadn’t just been sketching these things for study. Hadn’t just been decoding or redrawing.
Elena was deploying them.
Marks was using her to catalog symbols, but he was also using her to place them.
And not for his own syndicate.
Because this symbol didn’t match the group Rebel linked to Marks's last night. This one belonged to a different set entirely—one Wizard flagged as being under surveillance in Florida. A group with ties to smuggling and black-market biometric spoofing.
Which meant this guy, Darren, wasn’t Marks’s partner.
He was a fucking operative.
Marks was using her to brand his people. Not with his symbols… but with those belonging to other criminal organizations.
That’s how they got in.
Elena was the bridge.
She absorbed a design with near-perfect recall, redrew it without reference, and tattooed it flawlessly onto operatives who were embedding into rival groups. She was inking a mark on this guy who would gain him access to a network she didn’t even know existed.
I watched her smooth the skin, adjust the light, and pick up her gun to start the outline. Her lines were clean, balanced, and deliberate. She was incredibly talented.
But now I saw it all through a different perspective.
All those sketchbook exercises, those reference images he fed her through assignments, critiques, and partials disguised as “reconstruction drills.”
He’d been training her. Fucking grooming her.
And I finally knew why.
Except it wasn’t only about the operatives and their tattoos.
Elena wasn’t just someone with a good eye and fast hands.
She remembered. Recreated. Identified.
She saw the differences that mattered—hook orientation, notch placement, and weight distribution. And when he asked her to redraw them weeks or months later, she added in what he’d missed.
She was memorizing the language. But more than that, she was internalizing it.
Then any photos he’d shown her, along with her sketches, were destroyed.
She was building a library in her head that didn’t exist anywhere else.
And Marks didn’t just want her to remember these symbols. He wanted her to become the only source of them. The only place where the families, deviations, context, and mutations could be compared in full. A repository with no paper trail.
A fucking living index.
Marks didn’t need to maintain files and risk getting caught with digital evidence. She was the evidence. A perfect recall system walking around in jeans with ink-stained fingertips. And Jareth was the only one who could access it.
But what made my blood run cold was the realization that he wasn’t just using her as a tool.
She was his fucking weapon.
While she thought she was mastering form, he was using her to infiltrate rival syndicates. Quietly and strategically.
It was no wonder he kept her close and lied about what she was really doing. If anyone else realized what she was capable of—what she held inside her head—they’d come for her. And not to offer her a fucking scholarship.
She’d be kidnapped. Interrogated. Used. Or killed.
Because the only safe place for data that valuable was dead.
Fuck!
My rage was so deep it had seeped into my bones.
I stood there for a while, my arms crossed as I watched her needle move. Her face stayed relaxed. Elena worked on him with the quiet care of an artist, but she might as well have been tattooing a live grenade.
She had no idea what she was really doing.
But I did.
A slow-burning fury was building in my chest, and my eyes stayed on Elena because I didn’t trust myself not to shove my boot through the guy’s fucking ribs.
He was the kind of man who delivered information without blinking.
I knew the type. The ones who played clean and smiled politely while wearing a gun inside their waistband, about to execute a kill order.
When the needle stopped, and Elena peeled off her gloves, she looked flushed and proud. Her cheeks were pink, and her lips were curved in satisfaction from a job well done.
Darren stood, rolling his shoulder once, then nodded in appreciation. “Clean work.”
“Thanks.” Elena glowed slightly.
Of course, she was proud. It was excellent work. She just didn’t know what she’d done it for.
I moved before I even realized, stalking back toward my office, needing space before I punched something or someone.
I stood in my doorway, arms crossed again, and my shoulder braced against the frame. I watched as Darren paid and left, all smiles and gratitude, promising to leave a five-star review.
My chest tightened as the burn grew and crawled up my spine.
She was a fucking target.
And Marks had put her in the crosshairs, for what? A cleaner data trail? A smarter way to map enemy ranks?
She was walking around with a memory that could dismantle half the networks on the Eastern Seaboard if anyone ever realized what she held.
And someone would eventually.
Then they would come for her.
Which meant I needed to end this before it happened.
Put a bullet in the puppet master and burn the strings down to ash.
“Easy,” Ink murmured as he moved beside me a few seconds later. He followed my gaze. “You look like you’re about to chew glass.”
I didn’t answer.
“Talk to me, brother.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it ached. “I want to put that fucker in the ground.”
“Elena’s client?”
“No.” My voice dropped lower. “Marks.”
Ink was quiet for a second, then sighed. “Yeah. Figured.”
I stepped back, dragging a hand over my jaw. “I’m fucking itching, man. One gun, one bullet, one drive to the studio. I could end this right fucking now.”
“And be in a cell by morning,” Ink replied evenly. “With Ash busting his ass to keep your face off the news and King breathing fire down your neck for going rogue.”
“I’d get out,” I snapped.
He gave me a look. “You’d get out eventually. Maybe.” His voice dropped, calm and deadly. “You go off half-cocked, you leave her unprotected. And worse? You leave her unclaimed.”
My eyes jerked to him.
He arched a brow. “Which means she’s fair game. Any asshole in this city could make a move. Could offer her safety. Comfort. Something you’re not around to give her.”
I turned, my hands braced on the doorframe now, breathing hard.
Ink stayed where he was, calm as ever. “You want her safe? You wait. You watch. You collect every piece of that bastard’s life and burn it down the right way.
Quiet. Permanent. Clean. So there’s nothing left to tie you back to it.
” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “And when it’s done, you take her home and make her yours. ”
I didn’t speak. Just stared down the hallway where Elena had disappeared, my heart pounding with a hungry ache.
He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Now breathe. And wait. Let’s take this motherfucker down right.”
I said nothing, my jaw locked, and wrath simmered under my skin.
He was right.
And that made it worse.
Because now I wasn’t just angry.
I was plotting.
Jareth Marks was already a dead man.