The screen lights up. A paused frame — security footage, timestamped two hours ago. A girl kneeling beside an open vault in a derelict warehouse near Shoreditch. Red hair. Paint-stained hands. The body next to her—a man, bullet through the throat. One of ours.
The feed rolls. She looks up. Right at the camera. And the face that’s haunted London’s underworld since her brother’s death appears clear as confession.
I set the glass down.
“She broke into a drop site?”
Ash nods. “Looking for answers, maybe. Her brother’s file was in the same batch.”
Vale whistles low. “So the little spitfire finally decided to dig.”
Saint exhales through his teeth. “She’s playing with matches.”
“She’s playing with fire that belongs to me.”
I take the drive, pocket it, and stand. “Wraith—send a recon team to Brick Lane. Find her. Quietly.”
Vale’s grin sharpens. “And when we do?”
“Bring her to me.”
Ash tilts his head. “You planning to kill her?”
The room stills. Even the bass from the club below seems to hold its breath.
I turn toward the rain-smeared window, the lights of the city bleeding into gold and blood beneath the glass.
“She saw something she shouldn’t have,” I murmur. “And I want to know how much of her brother’s ghost she’s still carrying.”
Silence stretches.
Wraith finally says, low, “And if she knows everything?”
I smile behind the mask. “Then we’ll make her forget.”
Chapter 1
Ember
London doesn’t sleep. Itprowls.
The rain slicks the streets until the city gleams like a fresh bruise, neon lights bleeding into puddles that reflect everything and promise nothing. Engines growl. Sirens wail somewhere far enough away to feel theoretical. Above it all, the sky hangs low and heavy, as if it might drop onto my shoulders at any moment and finish the job the last three years started.
I pull my jacket tighter as I move through Brick Lane, boots splashing through shallow water, the smell of damp brick and oil and old beer clinging to the air. My sketchbook is tucked under my arm, wrapped in plastic like it might save me if things go wrong. It won’t. I know that. But habits die harder than people.
I shouldn’t be here.
That thought has been riding shotgun in my head for weeks now, ever since I realized Owen’s death didn’t make sense—not really. Not if you looked too closely. Not if you stopped accepting the official story like a sedative and started tracing the gaps instead. Missing hours. Redacted files. Names that repeated themselves like a bad chorus.
Names that never quite surfaced.
I stop outside a derelict warehouse, its windows boarded, graffiti layered so thick it looks like the building is wearing armor. My pulse ticks faster, not with fear exactly, but with something sharper. Purpose, maybe. Or obsession. The two are easy to confuse when you’re tired enough.
I slip inside through a side door I jimmied open earlier, the metal groaning softly as if it disapproves of me. The air inside is colder, stale with dust and rust and the lingering ghost of something chemical. My footsteps echo, swallowed by the cavernous space, and I pause, listening.
Nothing.
Good.
