44. Blaze
BLAZE
Shadow Division.
The words settled over the farmhouse like another storm entirely.
Flick stood beside me, frozen, while rain hammered the roof overhead.
Wolf folded his arms slowly.
“I’ve heard rumors.”
Trigger looked offended.
“Why do I never hear the cool rumors?”
“Because you’d immediately tell everyone.”
“Fair.”
Rook ignored both of them.
His attention stayed fixed on the folder sitting on the kitchen table.
Water dripped steadily from his black jacket while lightning flashed through the windows behind him.
The man looked carved from war.
Calm.
Controlled.
Deadly.
And somehow that made me trust him more.
Because men who stayed calm around monsters usually knew how to kill them.
Ava stepped closer carefully.
“How much do you know about Mercer?”
Rook’s steel-gray eyes shifted toward her.
“Enough.”
Not enough for me.
“What’s Shadow Division?” Flick asked quietly.
Every person in the room looked toward her instantly.
Rook’s expression softened slightly.
Not much.
Just enough to notice.
“Officially?” he said calmly. “It doesn’t exist.”
Trigger muttered:
“Fantastic. Secret death squad. Love that for us.”
Wolf elbowed him lightly.
Rook continued like Trigger hadn’t spoken.
“Shadow Division handles threats too politically dangerous for normal channels.”
A cold feeling settled in my chest.
Mercer.
Holy Hell.
Flick looked overwhelmed now.
And honestly?
I couldn’t blame her.
Two days ago she was hiding from killers.
Now she was standing in a farmhouse listening to a ghost-operator talk about covert divisions inside the government.
No wonder she looked shaken.
I moved closer automatically.
My hand finding the small of her back.
Grounding her.
Grounding me too.
Rook noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Men like him noticed everything.
“You care about her,” he said to me quietly.
Not teasing.
Not mocking.
Just observation.
I looked straight at him.
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
None.
Beside me, Flick’s breath caught softly.
Rook studied both of us for one long second.
Then nodded once like something suddenly made sense.
“That explains Mercer.”
Silence hit the room instantly.
Wolf frowned.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rook opened the folder slowly.
Photographs.
Documents.
Names.
Bank records.
Surveillance stills.
The senator’s face appeared over and over across classified pages.
But not alone.
Different men.
Different countries.
Different operations.
My stomach turned colder with every image.
“This isn’t revenge anymore,” Rook said quietly.
No.
It was bigger than that.
A lot bigger.
Rook slid one photograph across the table toward us.
A younger Mercer.
Standing beside armed men near shipping containers.
Children visible in the background.
Flick inhaled sharply.
“Oh my God…”
“The senator’s son wasn’t just laundering cartel money,” Rook continued calmly. “He was helping move human cargo across borders.”
Rage exploded hot inside my chest instantly.
The same kind of rage I felt in Juárez.
The kind that made men dangerous.
“He inherited the operation after Juárez,” Rook continued. “Mercer buried it politically and expanded it privately.”
Wolf’s expression darkened.
“How long?”
“Years.”
Trigger stared at the file.
“So Mercer basically turned himself into a cartel with better lawyers.”
“More or less.”
Ava looked sick now.
“Why wasn’t he stopped?”
Rook’s eyes lifted slowly.
“Because people inside federal systems protect him.”
The room fell silent again.
And suddenly Flick’s father made perfect sense.
The fear.
The paranoia.
The hidden evidence.
He discovered something enormous.
And it got him killed.
Flick’s voice shook beside me.
“You think Mercer murdered my father?”
Rook didn’t answer immediately.
That silence was answer enough.
My hand tightened instinctively against Flick’s back.
She leaned into me slightly.
Tiny movement.
But it nearly destroyed me anyway.
Because after sixteen years apart?—
she still trusted me when she was afraid.
Rook closed the folder slowly.
Then looked directly at me.
“Mercer knows one thing about you, Blaze.”
I held his gaze.
“What?”
Rook’s expression hardened.
“He knows you’d burn the world down for her.”
The room went quiet.
Because everybody knew it was true.
Then Rook delivered the line that changed everything again:
“So Shadow Division is going to make sure you don’t have to.”