Bile climbs hot in my throat, threatening to ruin everything. Four weeks I was listed inactive. No contact. Nothing in the system. Cleared off the board. It wasn’t a miss. It wasn’t oversight. He wrote meout.
He wrote me out and didn’t even flinch at seeing me alive.
My mouth moves before I can help it, everything turning to shit when I go off script. “Funny,” I say lightly, “thought you’d remember me, considering you signed off on my last job.”
Every man at that table looks at me. Wraith’s growl is a low rumble that only I hear, his hand is suddenly and lightly, at my hip. Not stopping me, even if I can feel the frustration rolling off him in waves, but anchoring me.
Rook doesn’t move. Damien blinks once. “I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Don’t,” I say, smile sharp and polite. “You’re not stupid. Don’t insult me like I am.”
Rook’s head tilts, just barely. I can feel it off him like heat. He’s letting me run. Carefully. He’s listening for what Damien does next.
Damien exhales a soft laugh. If I didn’t know him, I’d think it was fond. “Always did have a bite, didn’t you,” he says. His eyes slide to Rook. “She’s…Spirited. Where did you find her?”
There’s something metallic at the edge of my tongue. Rage. It tastes like pennies.
He’s pretending I was never his. Because if I was never his, he was never responsible for me. Because if I was never his, Owen was never his. Because ifwewere never his, he never burned us.
I feel my nails dig into my own palm so hard I’ll probably bruise.
“Question for you,” Caelum says pleasantly, like this is a social call. “Where did you last see Owen Calloway?”
The room shifts, nervous energy flooding the space. Wraith goes still beside me. Ash’s voice is silent in my ear. Even the ones at the table — Damien’s three — lean in, so faintly it wouldn’t read as interest if you weren’t watching for tells. I am.
Damien doesn’t answer right away.
Good, I think distantly.Bleed.
He lifts a brow instead. “Why are we asking about ghosts?”
“Humor me,” Rook says.
Damien smiles. Shrugs. “Last I heard, he got himself in over his head in a Syndicate run near Southwark. Sloppy stuff. Took money from the wrong hand, or sold the wrong intel. Got himself clipped. Tragic, really. Waste of a decent kid.”
White noise. That’s all I hear for a beat. White. Empty. Because that’s it. That’s the lie he’s been feeding. That’s the story he sold to cover his own trail.
Owen—sloppy. Owen—dirty. Owen just got himself killed because he crossed the wrong man.
Not Owen—loyal and embedded. Not Owen—burned.
My chest is steady, but my hands are not. Wraith feels it. His thumb presses once into my hip, slow and deliberate. It’s a reminder to breathe. I do.
My voice comes out almost calm. “You set him up.”
Damien’s gaze slides lazily back to me like I’m background noise. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
That does it. The room changes on a frequency you can’t describe, only feel.
Rook straightens, just a fraction, but it looks like he’s ready to throw a punch. Wraith’s hand leaves my hip. Ash’s voice in my ear, soft and precise as he gives instructions. “Three hostiles at the table, two guns visible, one under the jacket of the one on Damien’s left. I’ve got eyes on the hallway. You’ve got thirty seconds of calm, tops.”
Rook smiles like a knife. “Let’s skip polite, shall we?”
Damien’s smile doesn’t move. “By all means.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Rook says, almost sounding conversational. “You’re going to stop lying in my face. You’re going to stop pretending you didn’t hand my queen’s brother to the Syndicate and call it cleanup. And you’re going to tell me exactly who you’re selling to and why you thought you could do it without my blessing.”
Everything after that happens fast. One of Damien’s men reaches under his jacket, but Wraith is already moving to intercept. I don’t even see him draw. He just isn’t beside me anymore, and then he is on that man like a wall falling off its foundation, slamming him back into the glass so hard the wall fractures.
