Because she wouldn’t know it was me. Not yet. But she would feel it. When the accounts froze. When her investors pulled out. When her board demanded answers.
She would feel it. And she would remember. Because I don’t need to put my hands on a person to hurt them. All I have to do is touch their name. And let the silence do the rest.
Wolfe
I didn’t turnthe lights on.
The apartment pulsed around me—still, black, watching. Somewhere in the distance, the city kept breathing, but in here, the air didn’t move.
I stood at the edge of the counter with my hands pressed flat to the marble, sleeves rolled up, the veins in my forearms twitching beneath skin that hadn’t rested in forty hours.
The phone sat beside me. I stared at it for a long time. Not because I didn’t know what came next. Because I did. Calling them was easy. Standing still afterward was harder. Royal answered on the second ring.
“We’re done waiting.”
That was all I said. He didn’t ask for more. Because he didn’t need it. Loyal picked up without a word.
“Bring everything. It’s time.”
He grunted once. That was his version of yes.
I didn’t call Barron. He was already moving. I could feel it. The room buzzed. Not with noise. With inevitability.
I stood in the dark for a while longer. The silence in my chest felt wrong. Too quiet. Like something had been removed. Or ripped out. Or never belonged there in the first place.
Cloe stood in the hallway. She didn’t speak. She wore my shirt—oversized, sleeves hanging down to her fingertips, the hem brushing the tops of her thighs. Her hair was pulled back in that half-tied way she did when she didn’t want to look like she was trying.
But she was always trying. Trying to breathe. Trying to stay. Trying to be mine. I looked at her. She didn’t look away. And when the knock came, neither of us flinched.
I opened the door. Royal stepped in first. All teeth and chaos, leather jacket slung over one shoulder like he hadn’t just helped blackmail a man into breaking.
Loyal followed. Face cut from stone. Laptop under one arm, violence under the other.
Barron didn’t walk in. He arrived. He filled the space like judgment. Shoulders squared. Shirt open at the collar. Sleeves cuffed. No tie. No mask. Just weight. They didn’t greet each other. Didn’t need to.
I turned away and walked to the table. Everything was already laid out. Floor plans. Names. Photos. The fixer’s notes. The last name Camille had written in her ledger.
Selene’s. I didn’t say her name. Didn’t have to.
I lifted a photo. Set it down. Drew my finger across the inked line from one dockyard to one apartment to one faceless man whose silence had cost us too much.
“We end it,” I said.
Royal nodded. No smile now. Just fire. Loyal sat. Opened the laptop. Pulled up schematics he’d hacked from three federal channels.
Barron leaned over the table. Picked up a pen. Circled the location.
“She’ll be there,” he said.
I felt the leash curl tighter inside me?—
Not as fear. But as purpose.
I wasn’t just standing here as their survival. I was their silence. And they were ready to kill for it.
Cloe stepped into the room. No one told her to leave. No one asked her to stay. She stood beside me. I felt the way her body pulled toward mine. Not for protection. For proof.
The brothers didn’t look at her. They looked at me. And I didn’t look away. We weren’t fractured anymore. We were fire. And war had already started breathing our names.
