If this was the end, it wouldn’t be theirs alone.
“Then we take back what’s left,” she said, and stepped forward, set her gun down, and raised her hands. “We have information. I’ll trade it for Mara.”
Rain chewedthe horizon into static. The docks shuddered underfoot, old wood and iron screaming in the wind. Blake’s eyes never left the slip where the boat waited, now crawling with Laurel Tide men. Six, maybe seven. Mara wasn’t crying. She just stood there, small and steady, like she already knew what kind of monsters the world made.
Vivian was two steps to his right, hair plastered to her face. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and boxed in between the sea and a cliff. Typical.
“Step closer and she dies,” the leader called, his voice calm as a sermon. “Hands where I can see them.”
Vivian didn’t move. “You don’t want to do that.”
Blake’s heart kicked once, sharp and clean. He knew that tone. It meant she was about to light the whole place on fire without pulling the trigger.
The man smirked. “You think you know what I want?”
“You want leverage,” she said. “You want to stop losing business.”
The leader blinked, not expecting her to bite back. He didn’t realize yet that she wasn’t bluffing—Vivian never bluffed; she just chose which truth to weaponize.
Blake shifted, taking a step closer. His trigger finger twitched against the guard, muscle memory straining for permission. Vivian didn’t move. Every inch of her radiated control—chin high, eyes locked, the wind tearing her hair into ribbons.
Then she said it. “She’s not just leverage. She’s ours.”
The leader’s brow arched. “Ours?”
Vivian didn’t blink. “She’s our daughter.”
“Not possible. Her mother worked for us for months before she died.”
“I’m not proud, but I wasn’t ready to give up my career. To be a mother. She’d worked for me as a house cleaner. I gave her money to raise Mara for me. But a few months ago, a paper crossed my desk with her name being mixed up with Laurel Tide.”
The man hesitated. His men exchanged uneasy glances.
Blake stepped in, voice gravel-deep. “I didn’t know about my daughter until she told me to join this operation. You kill her, you kill the only reason agents aren’t crawling this dock already. The only reason I haven’t put a bullet in your skull.”
Now the men really stared—at Blake, at Vivian, at Mara.
Vivian pressed the advantage. “If you think Laurel Tide can survive that kind of heat, go ahead. Test it.”
Mara looked up at them, tiny and trembling. “Mom?”
The word hit him like recoil. It wasn’t true—not in any literal way—but the way she said it made him wish it were. Her voice didn’t crack, didn’t hesitate. It was the kind of lie that carried truth under the skin.
The man’s jaw ticked.
Vivian pushed her shoulders back, the hate for Laurel Tide, the disgust etched into the lines between her brows. “Despite how I feel about you, I’m willing to trade.”
The man let out a low laugh and took a drag from a cigar. “What could you have that I’d want? Maybe I’ll keep your daughter and own you. It’s always good to have an agent in my employ.”
“I’m blown with no future with the Bureau, and you’ve been bleeding clients. You’ve been losing routes. You want to know why?”
Blake felt the shift in the air. Even the hired guns were listening now. Doubt was a scent predators recognized in each other.
“The militia you hired, your missionary contractors—they’re not yours. Half of them are FBI. Deep cover. You’ve been feeding intel straight into their hands for months.”
The leader’s smirk faltered. One of his men shifted. Another’s eyes darted toward the comm at his shoulder. Blake saw the first fracture—small, almost nothing, but enough.
“Who told you that?” the leader asked, but his voice had changed. Less sure.
