Chapter 58
Seraphina
The last time I wore a dress like this, I was playing a part.
Tonight, I am the part.
Black silk molded to my body like a second skin, slit high enough for movement, neckline low enough to distract.
The gala glittered with opulence, all marble floors and false pretenses, hiding the rot underneath.
Science posters and biotech banners were just wallpaper for the rich and powerful to pretend they weren’t funding the next genocide.
"You ready for this?" Emerson’s voice crackled in my ear.
"Born ready," I murmured, eyes scanning the floor. Every movement felt rehearsed, practiced, calculated. Because it was.
We’d spent the last two days tearing apart files, hacking into old servers, tracking Tristan’s digital footprint across the ruins of Facility E. It led here: a research exhibition turned recruitment front. Phase Three’s first global unveiling was being auctioned off to the highest bidder.
But they didn’t know their prototype had come to shut the whole damn thing down.
I spotted him across the ballroom. Tristan. Gray at the temples, tailored suit, same smug tilt to his mouth like he was playing chess with people who didn’t know the rules .
My breath caught in my chest.
The part of me that once adored him wanted to curl in on itself. But the woman he trained—the one he weaponized ? She walked forward.
"Seraphina?" his voice was velvet. He turned from the group he was speaking with, smile blooming. "I almost didn’t recognize you."
"That was the point," I said. "You look good for a dead man."
He laughed, soft and fond. "And you look... perfected. Just as she imagined."
My mother. My jaw clenched.
"Why?" I asked, stepping closer. "Why her? Why me? What did you really want from us?"
Tristan’s eyes gleamed. "Evolution."
He gestured toward the stage, where a hologram flickered to life—not of tech or code, but of me. Me as a child. Then teen. Then current.
"The world needed a push. Your mother saw that. But she didn’t have the will to finish it. You were the next step. Built from brilliance. Sharpened by pain."
I nearly lunged.
But gunfire rang out .
Callum
"Bloody hell!" I barked into the comms, shoving through panicked elites in satin and tuxedos.
I’d clocked Sera walkin' toward Tristan like a feckin' blade dressed in silk, and every muscle in me begged to follow. But we'd agreed—split up, cover ground, find Phase Three's control hub.
Now the whole room was eruptin'. Screamin', scatterin', guards drawin' steel.
I moved like instinct. A ghost through chaos.
Found her cornered by two of Tristan's men, one of 'em swingin' a baton that cracked against her ribs.
"Oi, that one's mine," I growled, slammin' into the brute, shoulder first. He hit marble with a crunch that sounded like justice.
Sera wheezed, clutchin' her side, but her eyes burned fire. "Tristan's escaping."
"No he feckin' ain't."
We gave chase, tearin’ through service halls and glass corridors, deeper into the belly of the beast. No more glitz. No more pretense. Just cold steel, hummin’ servers, and a lab that stank of ghosts and grief.
And there he stood. Tristan. Waitin’. Alone. Gun raised like he’d never doubted we’d find him.
His eyes didn’t land on me.
They locked on her.
“I taught you better than to run headfirst, Seraphina,” he said, voice smooth as fuckin’ silk, like he wasn’t standin’ in a tomb built on blood.
Her grip on the wall tightened. Blood trailed down her arm, paintin’ her side in slow, steady rivulets.
“You didn’t teach me anything,” she spat, voice low, fierce. “You programmed me. And I’m done being your project.”
I raised my weapon anyway, slidin’ a half-step in front of her. Not blockin’ her—just there, a wall she didn’t need but might lean on.
“You so much as twitch wrong, and I’ll end it,” I warned, eyes locked on him. “Don’t think for a second I give a shite who you used to be to her.”
Seraphina hissed behind me. “Callum…”
He aimed for her.
And in that moment, I saw red. Every part of me that was trained to kill screamed for it. My finger twitched.
"You don't have to do this," Sera breathed.
Her voice cut through me. A tether.
I moved, quick as a blink, disarmed Tristan with a shot to the shoulder. Let him drop, screaming .
"We take him alive," I growled, breath ragged. "Let the world see the monster behind the curtain."
She smiled through bloodied lips. "You chose mercy."
"I chose you ."
But that peace didn’t last.
Gunfire tore through the room. Not from Tristan—from behind. I shoved Sera down just as a bullet ripped past my ear, then another found my thigh.
Pain burned white. My knees buckled.
Sera crawled to me, eyes wild. "No. No, stay with me."
"Still breathin’, lass," I grunted, fightin’ the fire in my thigh. "But I think that was me good leg."
Sera huffed a broken laugh—but it cracked somewhere in the middle. Her eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were already stormin’ toward the ones pourin’ through the blasted door.
She yanked the sidearm straight from my grip with practiced ease, stepped past me, and unloaded three rounds clean through the chest of the first bastard to cross the threshold.
No hesitation. No mercy.
Another came at her fast, and she dropped low, slid across the blood-slick floor, and shot him under the chin mid-slide. Fuckin’ hell.
The next one she didn’t shoot—she let him get close.
That was his mistake.
Her blade was in her hand faster than I could shout a warning. Long, curved, and strapped to her thigh for weeks now—just waitin’ for its moment. She buried it deep into his gut, twisted once, then shoved him off with her foot.
The room spun a bit in my peripheral, pain makin’ it hard to focus. But she was crystal clear.
Seraphina fuckin’ Vex.
Tristan watched from the far corner, still on his knees where I’d cuffed him, blood at his temple from where I’d cracked him earlier. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.
Coward didn’t lift a finger to stop her. Maybe he finally saw what he’d made.
She stood there, chest heavin’, hair wild, blood—some hers, some not—drippin’ from the blade in her hand. And when the last man fell, she turned to me like the storm was finally passin’.
I pressed a hand to my thigh and flicked my comm open. “Kieran,” I rasped. “We need an extraction. Now. Bring restraints for the bastard we’re takin’ with us—and a lot of fuckin’ gauze.”
"I’m on it," came his voice, already movin’. “You two still breathing?”
“Barely,” I muttered. “But she’s on fire.”
Sera dropped beside me a moment later, wincin’ as her ribs protested. I curled an arm around her shoulder as she leaned into me, blade still gripped tight in one hand.
“We’re taking him,” she said, voice low. “Alive. He doesn’t get the easy way out.”
“Aye, love,” I said, pressin’ a kiss to her temple, “I wouldn’t let him.”
An Hour Later – Safehouse
The world blurred in and out on the drive back. Kieran handled Tristan like the traitorous scum he was, knockin’ him out cold and draggin’ him like a sack of shite into one of the reinforced rooms.
Me and Sera? We were barely upright.
Doc Alvarez met us at the door—my usual no-questions-asked fixer. Mid-forties, chain-smoker, and didn’t give a damn about what we’d done—only how bad we were bleedin’.
He patched Sera first, murmurin’ quiet instructions as he wrapped her ribs, stitched the gash on her shoulder, and checked her vitals. She hissed and cursed, but didn’t flinch.
Then it was my turn.
“Through and through,” Alvarez muttered, proddin’ at my thigh like I wasn’t still bleedin’ all over his table. “Lucky bastard. Bullet missed the artery. Sit still.”
“Wasn’t plannin’ a fuckin’ dance,” I muttered, teeth clenched.
He dug it out with practiced hands, stitched me up without blinking, then slapped a bandage over it like he was patchin’ drywall.
“Try not to get shot again,” he said dryly. “Or next time, I bill you double.”
“Triple if you tell anyone,” I said, catchin’ Sera’s faint smirk from across the room.
We were both a mess. But alive. And together.
And the bastard who started it all?
Now he was the one in chains.