"You don't know anything about me."
"I know everything about you." Her eyes glittered with something ugly. "I know you watched your grandmother die. I know you cried yourself to sleep in six different foster homes. I know you fell in love with a broken biker who makes you feel needed." She was at the door now, almost through. "You're predictable, Kai. That's why you'll always lose."
"Maybe."
The voice came from behind her. Tyler emerged from the shadows of the side room, gun leveled at Chen's head. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, but his hand was steady.
"But he's not alone."
Chen's smile flickered. "Tyler. I was wondering when you'd?—"
"Let her go. Now."
"You won't shoot. I'm your only link to the Bureau's corruption. Kill me, and it all gets buried."
"I have your files. I have witnesses. I have thirty-seven victims who can testify." Tyler's voice was ice. "I don't need you alive, Chen. I just prefer it."
The standoff turned the air into ice. Chen's eyes darted between us—calculating, always calculating.
Then Axel's voice, from behind Tyler: "He won't shoot you. But I will." He stepped into view, covered in blood and ash, gunraised. Behind him, Irish and Blade, weapons trained. Chen was surrounded.
"It's over," Axel said. "Let the woman go."
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then Chen laughed—a brittle, ugly sound.
"You think this ends anything?" She released the woman, who crumpled to the floor. I rushed to her, checked her pulse—alive, terrified, but alive. "I'm one person. One cog in a machine that's been running for decades. Kill me, arrest me—it doesn't matter. Someone else will take my place. They always do."
"Maybe." Tyler moved forward, pulled out handcuffs. "But you'll be rotting in prison while they try."
He wrenched her arms behind her back. She didn't resist—just stood there with that cold smile, watching me as the cuffs clicked shut.
"Your grandmother's heart was so fragile at the end," she said softly. "These things happen to old women." Her eyes met mine, flat and cold. "Especially when someone decides they should."
Tyler yanked her toward the door. "Move."
She went, still smiling, leaving poison in her wake.
The aftermath was controlled chaos. FBI tactical teams—the ones still loyal—secured the farmhouse, separated Chen's compromised agents from the rest. Medics swarmed the victims, providing the kind of professional care I'd been improvising with bandages and prayers.
Thirty-seven people. All alive. All rescued.
I sat on the farmhouse steps, watching ambulances load the last of the victims, too exhausted to move. The boy I'd saved—his name was Daniel, I'd learned—had refused to let go of my hand until the paramedics gently pried him away. He'd looked back at me as they lifted him into the ambulance.
"Thank you," he'd whispered. Two words. Worth everything.
Axel found me there as dawn broke over the farm.
"Hey." He dropped onto the step beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "You okay?"
"No." I watched the sky lighten, pink and gold bleeding through the grey. "But I will be."
"Chen's in custody. Federal marshals are taking her to a secure facility—one Tyler's partner controls. No chance of escape or... accidents."
"Good."
"The victims are being transported to three different hospitals. Maria's coordinating with social services, trying to find family members." He paused. "Some of them don't have anyone to go back to."
