“Listen very carefully,” I tell her. “You think this is about vengeance. It’snot. You think this is about you walking into oneof my vault sites and poking around and me getting offended. It’s not that either. This is about the fact that you stumbled onto something that can still hurt me. You broke into my world and touched evidence I was not finished burying. You wandered into a dead zone with cameras and left with someone else’s blood under your nails. You kept a copy of something you should’ve never seen.”
Her jaw tightens. She tries not to look guilty.
“There it is,” I say quietly. “Good girl.”
“I didn’t take anything,” she whispers.
“Lie to anyone else,” I remind her. “Never to me.”
Her stare flickers.
“Where is it?” I ask.
Her defiance comes back like a shield slamming into place. “Even if Ihadsomething—and I’mnotsaying I do—why would I hand it to you? So you can make it disappear like you made him disappear? So you can rewrite whatever’s left of him into your version of events and call that truth?”
“Because,” I say, completely calm, “that drive can get you killed faster than I can.”
Her throat works.
“And because,” I continue, lowering my voice until it’s almost intimate, “if you hand it to me, I will keep you alive. You have my word.”
She lets out a low, bitter laugh. “Your word? I don’t even know your name.”
I smile, slow. “Caelum.”
Her expression flickers, like she didn’t expect that. “My name,” I say. “You wanted it. Now you have it. My men call me Rook. You will call me Caelum when you’re being good. You will call me Rook when you’re trying to make me angry.”
“I’m never calling you anything,” she says through her teeth.
“You already are,” I murmur. “Every time you look at me like that.”
Her pulse kicks in her throat. I watch it. I let her see me watching.
Then I lean back again, because I can feel the tension in her muscles coiling, and I want her steady. I want her thinking.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “You’re going to stay in this room. You’re going to eat. You’re going to sleep. You’re not going to be touched unless you force my hand. You are not a prisoner. You are an investment, and I takegoodcare of my investments. You stay breathing until I’ve decided what parts of Owen’s mess are still burning under my floors. If you cooperate, you will walk out of this house alive.”
She laughs once, a sharp, humorless sound. “And if I don’t?”
My gaze holds hers. “Then,” I say softly, “I stop protecting you from the people who want you more than I do.”
Her anger falters. Confusion slips in around the edges. “People who—what are you talking about?”
“There are men,” I say, “who would take you apart piece by piece for the chance to prove I can bleed. There are factions of Cartel who would buy you. There are Russians who would carve my routes out of you while you scream. I’m the safest option you have, Ember.”
Her voice drops to a whisper. “You expect me to believe that.”
“Yes,” I say simply. “Because it’s true.”
Her throat works again. She looks at me like she wants to spit in my face and also like she can’t decide if I’ve just told her her first real piece of safety in years.
Owen. Russians. Fear.
She’s replaying it. She’s building her own map of his last days. She’s seeing the version of him I’ve just laid out and putting it against the version she loved. She’s trying to make them fit. They never will.
Grief never does.
I watch her sit with that and I feel, for one dangerous, unwelcome second, the echo of something I don’t allow anymore.
