Bile surges up my throat as my mind forms the image—him trapped, injured, cutting into himself for the key—and I have tolook away. My face twists with the shock before suspicion rushes in to replace it. “Who’s Lucia?” I ask, hating the jealous edge clinging to the words.
“Oh, well.” He wets his lips. “She, um… was on my team. We were just friends.”
I chew the corner of my mouth until the skin protests, then push off the bed and head toward the bathroom. My imagination betrays me instantly—showing me a woman near him, touching him, helping him while he worked behind my back. The thought sinks sharp teeth into my chest, and I bite down harder on my lip, breaking the skin.
Tears burn again as I rummage through the bathroom, searching for the medical kit. Cane stocked this place well. There’s no universe in which I believe the owners of this motel gave a fuck enough to leave a giant kit full of medical supplies lying around.
I carry it back to the bed and drop it down with a frustrated thud before sitting beside it and yanking the zipper open. I can feel Dante’s gaze on me, steady and worried, as my fingers sift through scissors, needles, painkillers, and an entire arsenal of supplies, each item clinking softly beneath my hands.
But the ball of jealousy swells too quickly, and something inside me snaps. I shove the medical kit toward him and slide onto the floor, turning my face away before he can see the wreck I’m becoming.
It hurts too much to look at him. And he’s a grown man, so he’s more than capable of handling his own fucking wound.
I feel the weight of his stare drilling into my back before he finally begins rummaging through the supplies. The sound of bottles clinking and tools shifting fills the quiet. I drag the heel of my palm across my eyes and cheeks, wiping away the tears with a force that only irritates my already burning skin.
God, I must look like a blotchy nightmare.
I fix my gaze on a random spot on the wall, refusing to give him even a fraction of my attention. He moves in silence, focused on the work—or pretending to be—and despite everything clawing inside me, curiosity slithers through the cracks.
I just know he’s doing a terrible job. He’s proven that already. I mean, look at what he did to himself.
My suspicion is confirmed when I finally glance over and catch sight of him. He looks absolutely lost, his brows drawn together as he squints at the wound, trying to squeeze it, trying to stitch it, failing in increasingly dramatic ways. Blood is everywhere, pooling across his skin, dripping onto the sheets like he’s determined to recreate a crime scene.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss, scrambling back onto the bed and grabbing his wrist, pulling his hand onto my legs. “You really can’t do shit on your own.”
Carefully—because apparently someone has to be the adult here—I disinfect the wound, already knowing he skipped that step entirely. Then I rip out the pathetic little thread he loaded into the needle, since it’s insultingly short, and rethread it properly, sliding a new line through the needle’s eye with practiced ease.
“I can’t argue with that,” he murmurs, soft and somehow apologetic.
I focus on stitching him up, swallowing hard against the emotion thick in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut every few moments, fighting off the tears that just keep threatening to spill, the ones I can’t seem to stop, no matter how viciously I will them away. Silence falls over us, heavy and fragile, broken only by Cane’s muffled voice drifting from somewhere in the kitchen.
But here, in this small circle of light and shadow, it feels like we’re the only two people in the world.
And after everything, I’m not sure I like that feeling anymore.
“You’re so fucking insane!” Estella explodes, barreling past us like a hurricane. “Both of you! You—” she jabs a finger at Cane, “for even thinking about it. And you—” she swings her glare toward me, “for thinking you can actually pull it off.”
Cane and I trade a look, our expressions identical—something between surprise, resignation, and a hint ofwell, she’s not entirely wrong.
“I mean, itispossible,” I say, which earns me a loud, incredulous huff from her. Bracing both palms against the table, I lean over the map spread across it, scanning the building layout again. Each line and corner sharpens beneath my eyes, feeding a slow-growing confidence. “My team and I haveentertained thousands of possibilities before we ever touched the groundwork. They hold meetings regularly. This one will be perfect.”
“So,” she begins, voice dragging with exhaustion and disbelief. “What exactly are you planning to do?”
“There are a few routes,” I answer, straightening my spine. “And I’m choosing the safest one. For us, anyway.” With the tip of my finger, I tap the location on the blueprint. “Before they all arrive in New York for the meeting, we plant a device inside the building—a system controlled remotely with malware linked to my activation command. Right here, in the electrical substation room.”
I circle it with the pen, ink pooling in a tight loop. “Transformers contain mineral oil. When overheated, it becomes explosive. That’s what we’ll trigger.”
“Basically, a bomb,” Cane says. “But not one in the traditional sense. More like a weaponised transformer explosion. Right?”
“Exactly. But it’ll take time since I’ll be working alone.”
Cane shakes his head. “No, you won’t be alone. I know a few capable guys we can trust.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Estella mutters sharply, dragging our attention back to her. “You just happen to have an entire covert team lying around, ready to help blow up the company we’ve been breaking our backs for, for years?”
Cane opens his mouth to argue, but she slices through his attempt with a dismissive wave of her hand. Without waiting for another word, she storms out of the kitchen, footsteps stamping down the hall before the bathroom door slams hard enough to rattle the frame.
I don’t blame her. I felt the same shock when Cane first said he wanted our help taking down The Order. They’ve always felt untouchable—an entity hovering above everything, wrappedin power and secrecy. And while I had at least scraps of intel, Estella walked into this completely blind.
