Chapter Seven
TOREN
The scream lodges in my throat like broken glass.
Masen's cry of agony ricochets off the concrete walls, bouncing back at us in sickening echoes. His shirt was already soaked with blood from the beating, but now it's being drenched by the bullet hole in his chest—dark red spreading like a blooming flower across the fabric.
The instant the warehouse empties, Xaden and his men have vanished like smoke. I release the breath I didn't know I was holding. It comes out shaky and broken.
The sirens are drawing closer, their wails cutting through the night, and I'm not sure if I'm relieved the cops are coming or terrified of what happens next.
He was about to break.
I saw it in his eyes, that moment of hesitation when the scalpel clattered to the floor. When he couldn't do it. Couldn't kill me.
Xaden Devlin isn't the type of man to hesitate.
But he did.
For me.
“Devlin... was wrong,” Masen grits out through blood-stained teeth.
I look over at my brother and my face contorts with disgust. Gone is any trace of the loving sibling I once knew. Now that his life isn't in immediate jeopardy, he's back to looking like the smug, entitled prick I've come to despise.
Even with a bullet in his chest, even bleeding out on a warehouse floor, he still manages to look like an arrogant asshole instead of someone facing death.
“About what?” I hiss. “Not shooting you in the head?”
He narrows the one eye that isn't swollen completely shut. “His sister isn't his weakness,” he mutters, then cringes as pain lances through him.
The words hit me like a slap.
“Don't speak about her!” I snap, my voice cracking with fury and grief. “You don't get to say her name. You don't get to—”
He doesn't get the chance to reply. The warehouse suddenly floods with officers. Men and women with guns drawn, shouting commands, fanning out to clear the area before rushing toward us.
A woman crouches in front of me, her mouth moving, but I don't hear a single word she says. I'm too focused on watching two other officers approach my father and Meekan, pressing fingers against their necks to check for pulses.
It's useless.
I already know.
Meekan's eyes are open but vacant, staring at nothing, seeing nothing. There's no life left in those eyes I once found comfort in. The eyes that belonged to the man I thought was my friend.
My father is still breathing, but barely. I can tell from how deathly pale he is, from how shallow and ragged each breath sounds. He has minutes left. Maybe less.
And I feel... nothing.
No grief. No panic. No desperate need to save him.
Just a cold, hollow emptiness where love used to live.
“Miss Kellar!” the woman in front of me shouts, and I slowly turn my gaze to her with a blank expression. Around us medics are barking orders, frantically working to free my father and brother from their restraints, preparing to rush them to the hospital.
The sinister part of me, the part that's been growing stronger with every betrayal, every lie wants them to leave both men here to die.
I want to watch the light fade from their eyes the way I watched it fade from Meekan's.
“Are you hurt?” she demands.
“Do I look hurt?” I snap back.
Something inside me has fundamentally changed. Shifted. I don't know exactly what it is, but I feel... different. Harder. Colder.
More dangerous.
Her features tighten, lips pressing into a thin line. This woman looks like she has a steel rod shoved up her ass and isn't someone to fuck with.
And then it hits me.
I may not know her by face, but I know exactly who she is.
“Kellan's dead,” I say flatly, watching for her reaction.
Nothing. Not a twitch. Not even a fake gasp of surprise or sorrow.
Just cold, calculated indifference.
My teeth grind together and I decide, at this moment, I already hate this bitch with every fiber of my being.
“You were supposed to protect him—”
“Get her out of here,” she snaps, standing and scowling down at me like I'm something disgusting she stepped in. “You will be remanded into CIA custody.”
I say nothing as she stalks off, her heels clicking against concrete.
But I file this moment away. Store it in the growing arsenal of people who will pay for what they've done.
She's on the list now.
I've been sitting in this interrogation room for hours.
The two-way mirror is cliché as fuck. So are the metal chairs and table positioned in the center like this is some low-budget crime drama.
When the guy who escorted me in directed me to sit, I refused. Instead, I claimed the floor in the corner, back against the wall, clear view of the door.
A position of power, even in captivity.
I'm exhausted.
Every muscle aches. Every breath feels like a chore. I'm fighting desperately not to fall asleep, knowing that showing weakness now could cost me everything.
My mind won't stop racing, and I'm grateful for it. It's the only thing keeping me alert, keeping exhaustion at bay.
I'm worried about Carnage.
Is he okay? Did they get out in time?
They had to.
If they didn't, they'd be here too, right? Locked up somewhere in this building?
I'm worried about Harper, about Omen, Vatican, Pope and Halo.
But I'm not worried about whether my father survived. Not worried if Masen made it to the hospital in time.
The realization should disturb me more than it does.
Yes, I redirected Xaden's rage toward me to save Masen from further torture—but it doesn't change how I feel. My brother is a monster. I hate him.
But I didn't want to watch him be destroyed.—didn't want that image seared into my brain forever.
Watching Meekan be torn apart was gut-wrenching enough. I didn't care about him personally, but all I could think about was Kenna. How that was her brother being mutilated.
Would she have watched if it was Masen? Would she have tried to save my brother, or would she have sat there frozen like I did?
The question goes unanswered, lost to the void where Kenna's voice used to be.
The door slams open and the bitch from the warehouse stalks in with a man following behind her. They both wear expressions of smug superiority that make my skin crawl.
I don't move from my spot on the floor.
If they think leaving me in here for hours will scare me into cooperating, they're about to be severely disappointed. I may not be physically strong, but mentally? I won't break.
I've survived too much to fall apart now.
With Steven gone, dead or dying and Masen's fate hanging in the balance, this is my chance. My opportunity to seize control of the Kellar Cartel and finish what we started.
Xaden unknowingly handed me the kingdom without even realizing it.
The irony is almost beautiful.
The woman perches on the edge of the table, crossing her arms over her chest and staring down her nose at me like I'm beneath her. The man claims one of the chairs, laying files on the table before turning to look at me with that same insufferable smugness.
My lip twitches in a snarl.
“You can either comply with our requests, or we can make this hard for you, Miss Kellar,” she says.
“I like it rough,” I spit back.
Her shit-colored eyes narrow and I have to bite back my smirk.
Find a way to get under your opponent's skin. Force them to make an error. Getting angry always causes someone to fuck up.
Carnage's voice echoes in my mind, and I can tell I'm already getting to her. I just need to keep pushing her buttons until she reveals what she really wants from me.
“Let's cut the shit, shall we?” She doesn't wait for me to respond. “You're here because you have information.”
I raise a single eyebrow. Saying nothing.
Her face shows cracks, a small twitch in her right eye, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly.
“You think fucking Xaden Devlin makes you untouchable?”
I keep my expression blank, giving her nothing.
“You're in here on charges of aiding and abetting, resisting arrest—” I snort and she continues, “—obstructing a police investigation. You'll be charged with second-degree murder of a federal agent—”
My patience snaps.
“Enough with the bullshit charges, Deputy Director.”
Surprise flashes through her eyes for a split second before she snuffs it out, regaining her composure.
Yeah, bitch. I know exactly who you are and what you did to my friends.
She looks at me for a moment with something in her face I don't expect.
It's gone almost before I can register it, snuffed out and replaced by the professional blankness she wears the way other women wear foundation. But I caught it. Half a second of something old and personal and nothing to do with me.
It is the look of a woman who is not here because of a career.
She's here because of something that happened to her.
I don't know what. I have no context, no reason to follow the thought further. But I file it carefully in the growing inventory of things I know about Deputy Director Fiona Williams that she doesn't know I know.
She wants me to believe this is professional.
I think it has never been professional.
Whatever is driving her, whatever purpose she has built this operation around — started somewhere specific and personal and probably has a name, and the name is not the Devlin Cosa Nostra or the Kellar Cartel.
I keep my face blank.
I wait.
“Well, it appears you are informed,” she says carefully.
“Yeah, I am. Now if I'm not under arrest, I'm leaving.”
“Not so fast.” She snaps her fingers at the man. “John.”
He gathers the files and hands them to her. She opens the top one, pulls out photographs, and tosses them on the floor in front of me.
My eyes widen. My mouth parts.
No. No, no, no—
I gather the images with shaking hands and flip through them.
Tears gather in my eyes, hot and immediate, as pain blooms inside my chest—sharp and devastating, stealing the air from my lungs.
I feel like my ribcage is caving in. Like my heart is being crushed in a vice.
Suddenly I can't breathe. Can't think. The panic rises like a tidal wave and I'm drowning—
The only fucking way you're going out is by my hands, Tink, so fucking breathe. Listen to the waves and try to match your breathing with them. In... out.
Xaden's voice cuts through the chaos in my mind. I picture the waves lapping at the shore that day on the beach when he talked me down from a panic attack.
I close my eyes and breathe.
In... out. In... out.
I keep doing this until the crushing weight on my chest starts to ease, until the pressure in my head lessens enough that I can take a full breath.
When I finally blink my eyes open, I look down at the photographs and carefully arrange them into four piles.
Neave.
Miles.
Emery.
KennaDee.
All of them lying on cold steel slabs in the morgue. Eyes closed. Skin pale. Forever frozen in death.
This bitch wants to break me.
That much is crystal clear.
She wants to see me shatter. Wants to watch me crumble and beg and give her everything she's asking for.
I stare at the photos, at the faces of the four people who lost their lives for the greed of another and I feel an indescribable pain wash over me.
But beneath the grief, beneath the agony threatening to tear me apart, something else rises.
Rage.
Pure, incandescent, all-consuming rage.
They're using their deaths as leverage. As weapons against me.
And that's a mistake they're going to regret.
I carefully gather the photos and place them back in a neat stack. Then I look up at the Deputy Director with tears streaming down my face and fury burning in my eyes.
“You want information?” My voice is steady. “Look somewhere else, I’m not a fucking snitch.”
She just made an enemy far more dangerous than she realizes.
And when this is over, when I've given her exactly what she thinks she wants, I'm going to make sure she pays for desecrating my friends' memories.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
Will be avenged.