Chapter 45
Saint
The house is secure by every measurable standard. Reinforced doors. Bullet-resistant glass. Two exits she doesn’t know about yet. Three weapons within reach from where I stand. Six more downstairs. A panic room behind the west bookcase with its own ventilation and power supply.
Still, I calculate how long it would take someone to breach the property if they came through the woods. Forty-three seconds to reach the back entrance.
I look back at her. She hasn’t moved. For the first time since I found her, there is no crease between her brows. No tension locked in her jaw. No fist curled around the edge of a blanket like she expects sleep to betray her.
But here she is resting. Something violent and unfamiliar twists behind my ribs. I don’t have a name for it. All I know is it consumes me more than anything, and it’s because there is a threat when it comes to her.
The phone on the dresser vibrates. I answer before the second buzz. “Talk.”
Valen’s voice comes through low and clipped. “They found something in Monica’s room.”
I look at Amy, and she is still asleep. I don’t want to wake her.
“And?”
“It was cleaned.”
I go still.
Valen continues, “No blood. No forced entry. No signs of struggle. Her phone was on the desk. Laptop open. Bag still there.”
“Message?”
“Yes.”
My hand tightens around the phone. “What did it say?”
Valen exhales. “Not over the phone.”
That means it’s bad, and it also means it was meant for me.
I look at Amy again. Her lashes flutter once, but she doesn’t wake. For one selfish second, I consider hanging up and staying here, letting someone else handle it.
Azriel.
Garret.
Valen.
The Order.
The twins.
Anyone.
Then I remember Monica’s name moving through the courtyard like smoke. I remember Amy’s face when she heard it.
Then I remember Victor Sokolov’s father begging with a desk full of photographs behind him.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Five minutes out.”
“Bring Azriel.”
“He’s already with me.”
Of course he is, so I just hang up.
For a moment, I don’t move. Then Amy speaks from the bed.
“What happened?”
I turn.
She is awake now, pushing herself upright, the blanket slipping from one shoulder. Her eyes are still heavy with sleep, but fear is already finding its way back into them.
I hate that. I hate anything that touches her before I do.
“They found something in Monica’s room,” I reply, not wanting to lie.
Her face pales. “Did they find her?”
“No.”
She pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “Then what did they find?”
I cross to the bed and crouch in front of her because standing over her right now feels wrong.
“Proof that Victor has her.”
Her lips part. “Victor.”
A knock sounds downstairs. Three sharp raps.
Amy flinches.
My hands curl into fists before I can stop them. “It’s Valen,” I tell her. “You stay here.”
“No.”
My eyes lift to hers. “No?”
“I’m tired of everyone telling me to stay somewhere while they decide how much of the truth I can survive.”
There she is. The part of her I love the most. The part that makes me want to kneel and ruin the world in the same breath.
“You want the truth?” I ask.
She swallows. “Yes.”
“Victor is the kind of man who takes girls because powerful men taught him the world would let him. He’s not coming for Monica because of Monica.”
“Then why?”
“Because someone took something from his family.”
“The ledger,” she whispers, remembering enough pieces to cut herself with them. Azriel told her enough.
“Yes.”
“And now he’s sending a message.”
I nod.
Her voice gets smaller. “To who?”
I look at her. “To me. Because of you. Everyone knows I was with her, and it’s no secret. But he knows what I care about the most.”
The color drains from her face. Downstairs, the knock comes again. Harder this time.
I stand. Amy reaches for my wrist before I can turn away. “Don’t go after him because of me,” she says. The look of worry etches on her gorgeous face.
I look down at her hand on my skin. Then at the plump lips I loved sucking my cock.
“Amy.” My voice is calm. “Nothing is going to happen to you.” I pull away before she can see too much on my face.
Before she can understand that if she asked me to stay, I might. And that is exactly why Azriel is right. She makes me reckless.
Not reckless.
Human.
I leave the bedroom, leaving the door open behind me, giving her a choice.
Victor moves on Amy on a Tuesday. Valen and Zero confirmed last night that Monica is on her way to Russia. The twins are handling bringing her back. I check my phone every few seconds like a caged lion. We all knew he would get to Amy, but I couldn’t lock her up.
I failed her even though Azriel reminds me every few minutes that I didn’t. We knew Victor would, but he touched Amy, and that is the part I can’t stomach. What if he hurt her?
Zero calls at eleven forty-seven in the morning on a group video call. I’m sitting in my room running the surveillance patterns when the call comes in.
“They found Monica,” Zero says.
“Alive?” Azriel asks.
Valen’s mouth tightens. “Yes. Drugged. Terrified. But alive.”
The room goes quiet.
“The twins intercepted the transport outside Montreal,” Zero says. “She is being brought back under private medical care. She will not speak to the Order yet.”
“Good,” I say.
Azriel looks at me. “Good?”
“Good that she is alive,” I say. “Bad for Victor that she can still name him.”
“Amy’s tracker shows she left the east building at eleven fifteen, and the signal went dead near the north perimeter at eleven thirty-two.”
The tracker. The one I asked Zero to embed in her student ID card three weeks ago, which she does not know about. I’m going to have to address it in the future, but it’s currently the most useful piece of intelligence I have.
Gone dead means one of two things: the card was removed, or she is somewhere where the signal is blocked. Victor has access to signal-blocking equipment. It was on the inventory list from his father’s warehouse.
I’m already moving.
I hang up and call Valen as I take the stairs three at a time. “North perimeter. He has her.”
Valen doesn’t waste time. “How long?”
“Seventeen minutes.”
He is quiet for a fraction of a second. “The old service buildings,” he says. “North of the perimeter wall. Sokolov has been using the abandoned groundskeeping depot. Zero flagged the heat signatures two days ago, but we did not have confirmation.”
“I’m going there now.”
“Saint. The Order—”
It doesn’t matter now,” I say.
“If you go in without authorization…”
“I know, Valen. I know exactly what happens. Send the others when you can.”
I hang up.
The north perimeter is a four-minute run from the east building. I do it in two and a half.
The depot is a prewar, low stone structure, half collapsed on the east side and boarded on the west. There are two men outside the main door—not the careful positioning of trained security but the loose arrangement of men who think they are in a place nobody will find.
They are wrong about that.
What happens next takes less time than it should.
I’m not as precise about it as I was with Marcus.
Marcus was a message, calibrated and contained.
This is not a message. This is retrieval, and the distinction means I’m faster and considerably less interested in what happens to Victor. Amy is all I care about.
The door is not locked from the inside, and I find her in the back room.
She sits against the far wall, her wrists zip-tied in front of her, her face pale and absolutely furious.
Not afraid, furious. The expression of a woman who has survived enough that fear has started to feel less useful than rage, which is a development I find, even at this moment, deeply compelling.
Victor stands across the room.
He looks at me when I come through the door. Something flickers across his face—not surprise, exactly, but recognition. He knew I would come. That was the point.
“Saint,” he says. He even smiles. “Right on schedule. Nice mask, and I have to say, I love the robe.”
I glance at Amy.
She looks back at me. Her chin is up. There is a small cut above her left eyebrow. The kind that comes from a struggle rather than a deliberate blow, and the rage in me goes from cold to something considerably hotter at the sight of it.
“Are you hurt? Did he…?” I ask, not wanting to say the words. My stomach is in knots at the thought. Things I plan to do with him run scenarios in my head.
She shakes her head. “No. Annoyed. Deeply, profoundly annoyed.”
An almost smile crosses my face before I can stop it.
Victor steps forward. “Here is what happens now. You walk back out that door. You go back to your room. You stay there. In exchange, she walks out of here unharmed, and I take my operation elsewhere. The Order gets what it wants, you contained, me operational, and nobody has to make any uncomfortable reports to Silas about you fucking Amy in her dorms and how conveniently she is at your home.”
He knows about the nights.
Of course he does. That was the leverage. That was always the leverage.
I look at Victor Sokolov. He is afraid, and holding what he thinks is a winning hand, and he genuinely does not know what he is standing in front of.
“Cut her loose,” I demand.
Victor’s expression hardens. “I don’t think you understand. This is the only way they won’t drag you back into your little playpen.”
“I understand everything. I understand that you took her today because you wanted me here, in this room, making a choice that the Order can use to send me back. I understand all of it. And I’m still here. So cut her loose.”
Victor stares at me. Then he nods at the man who appears beside him. He cuts the zip tie.
Amy stands. She is steady on her feet. She moves toward me without being told, and I put my hand on her back, looking at Victor over her head.
“This is finished,” I say. “Whatever your father built on this campus. Whatever he promised you. It is finished. Not because the Order says so. Because I say so. And unlike the Order, I do not issue the same warning twice.”
Victor says nothing.
I take her out into the cold air, and I keep my hand on her back all the way across the north field and through the perimeter gate and back onto campus.
When we’re clear, she stops walking.
She turns to face me. “How did you find me so fast?”
“Your student ID card. I had Zero embed a tracker three weeks ago.”
Her eyes meet mine, and if she sees the guilt of failing her, she doesn’t say it.
“It’s okay, Saint. I’m fine. You got me in time.”
She stays exactly where she is, looking up at me in the cold afternoon light, her chin still up, the cut above her eyebrow already darkening.
I reach up and brush my thumb very carefully along the edge of it.
“I know what just happened,” she says quietly. “I know what you just did in there. Giving him what he wanted. I also know what you wanted to do to him, but you didn’t, and it’s because of me. You didn’t want me to see.”
“Yes.” It doesn’t mean I’ll let it slide, but I don’t want to worry her.
“The Order is going to find out.”
“I’m aware.”
I look at her. I look at the cut above her eyebrow and the steadiness in her eyes, unbroken, in the cold afternoon light after everything that has tried to break her.
“You’re worth it,” I say.
She holds my gaze for a long moment, then takes my hand.
Behind us, Zero is already watching the Order’s communication feeds light up.
It has started.