He gives me a look that’s deeply unimpressed.
“I’m sorry for earlier,” I amend, softer now. “For accusing you. For not trusting you.”
He kisses me, slow and grounding, and when he pulls back his forehead rests against mine. “Don’t apologize. Everything was designed to look wrong. On purpose.”
“I should have known,” I say. “I should have knownyou.”
He studies me for a long moment, then shakes his head slightly. “I understand why you didn’t.”
And I believe him. After two years of hating him, after days of suspecting him, he understands in a way that doesn’t ask to be forgiven but accepts what was.
I pull him in and kiss him again, longer this time, slower, letting the world narrow down to breath and warmth and the fact that neither of us is alone anymore.
Then a voice cuts in.
“Mwah. Mwah. Oh, Alejandro.” Grim is making his voice higher like he’s mimicking a woman’s.
I groan. “Jesus, Grim. You’re still here?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You should have a bedtime.”
“I saved your ass.”
“We’ll call ourselves even. Goodnight, Grim.”
I hang up and toss the phone into the stream without ceremony.
Alejandro watches it disappear beneath the surface, then looks back at me, something thoughtfulflickering behind his eyes. “You never explained that” he says gently. “Why Grim?”
I hesitate, just long enough to decide not to lie.
“He was a mark,” I say. “A job I was supposed to do years ago. I got cocky and ended up on someone’s radar. When I finally found him, he was fourteen.”
Alejandro’s expression tightens.
“I couldn’t kill a kid,” I continue. “So, I told him the truth about the Guild. Told him to disappear. He did. Changed his name from Pussy Reaper to Grim Reaper.” I roll my eyes. “I made him change it. There was no fucking way I was going to let him keep that.”
Alejandro chuckles. “And Kenji found out.”
“Which is when he decided to use me to burn the Guild down,” I say. “Grim was leverage. Proof. A loose end.”
He studies me for a moment, then snorts softly. “So you’re the only one who actually broke Guild law between us.”
I poke his bullet wound. He winces. “Watch it.” We both laugh.
We both look down at our sigils.
Alejandro’s is burned and scarred. Dead against his skin. The Guild branded him once, claimed him, then tried to erase him when he complicated their plan. Whatever power it held is gone now—severed, rejected, rendered obsolete.
Mine is different.
The wound is still raw, the lines distorted where the sigil was burned away and reforged by choice instead of obedience. It’s healing, slowly, painfully, but it’s alive. No longer a mark of ownership. A mark of exile.
Of refusal.
“Grim’s inside the Guild systems now,” I say. “Every ledger. Every contract. Every name they thought was buried.”
