My chest still heaved with the adrenaline aftershocks, sweat cooling in tacky streaks down my back. My fists clenched at my sides, knuckles whitening as Sinclair’s icy gaze bore intome from across the cramped, flickering locker room. The heavy stale air pressed in, but it was the weight of Sinclair’s silent expectations that made my skin crawl.
“What is it this time, Sinclair? The missing Holy Grail? The Lost City of Atlantis?” I met his gaze, jaw tight—a challenge of my own sparking in my eyes, even as unease twisted in my stomach. I caught my reflection in the pitted metal of a locker: hunched shoulders, lips pressed in a stubborn line, fighting to mask the tremor of dread clawing at my composure.
The fight was over, but the real battle—the one that blurred the lines between my two lives—was just beginning. The battered benches, peeling linoleum, and the distant clatter of weights only underscored how easily Sinclair could drag me from the arena’s fleeting glory into the shadowed world he controlled. His presence here was no accident; it was a summons, a warning, and a threat all rolled into one. The stakes were higher than any title—this was about debts and secrets, and the parts of myself I wished I could leave behind with the blood and sweat.
He narrowed his eyes, lips pulling into a thin, disapproving line. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Rowen.” The overhead bulb caught the sharp angle of his jaw, highlighting every cold calculation lurking behind his stare. My heart pounded—defiance and fear warring in my chest.
“Then get to the fucking point.” My voice came out rougher than I intended, scraping raw with exhaustion and the need to reclaim some sliver of control.
Sighing, he shook his head before his cold, dead eyes pinned me in place, sending a fresh wave of unease through my body. My fingers curled tighter at my sides, the old instinct to brace for impact rising unbidden. “I told you long ago, Rowen, that the past never truly stays dead.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I shot back, voice wavering just enough for him to smirk. My mind raced, dredging up old ghosts, each one more dangerous than the last.
The bastard grinned, straightening his suit with studied calm. “You’ll see. Get dressed. We leave for Wyoming within the hour.”
His words were delivered with an unflinching finality, and as he turned away, the chill in the air deepened—the line between hunted and hunter, debtor and collector, sharper than ever.
Chapter One
Rowen
As soon as Sinclair’s private plane was cruising above the clouds, I switched the control to autopilot and went searching for answers. I knew better than to expect any direct explanation from Sinclair; he thrived on deception and mind games, always seeming to enjoy the power of knowing more than anyone else. This time, I was done playing along with his manipulations and resolved not to let him have the upper hand.
After everything Sinclair had put Dante and Sypher through, I was finished being his scapegoat, his go-to enforcer when he needed someone brought under his control. I refused to be the pawn he summoned at his convenience—a line had finally been drawn.
I found Sinclair seated comfortably, readingThe Timesas if there were nothing amiss. He seemed utterly unaffected by the tension radiating from me, maintaining the carefully practiced façade he had perfected over years. That same mask was designed to breed uncertainty and hesitation in others, but I was determined not to let it work on me any longer. I sat directly across from him, refusing to be cowed.
Sinclair barely looked up from his paper as he commented, “You know I don’t enjoy flying by autopilot.” His tone was nonchalant, punctuated by the casual flipping of a newspaper page.
“Too damn bad,” I retorted, leaning in. “If you don’t like how I fly this plane, then get your own license. Why are we going toWyoming?” My patience for his evasiveness was gone; I wanted answers, not excuses.
Sinclair replied matter-of-factly, “Because I want to see my granddaughter.”
I narrowed my eyes, refusing to let him deflect. “She’s in Lincoln, Nebraska, not Wyoming. Why are we going to Wyoming?”
Sinclair sighed, lowering the paper as he fixed me with a glare. “When I’m ready to tell you, I will. Now go back to your seat and pilot this plane.”
“No,” I said, smirking and settling back in my seat. Sinclair was nothing if not dangerous, cunning, and pathologically narcissistic. He was a master at getting inside people’s heads, a blackmail artist who relished controlling everything around him. Yet, beneath all that bravado, very few knew about his deep-rooted fear of dying in a plane crash—a secret vulnerability that spoke volumes about the man behind the mask.
Sinclair’s gaze sharpened, the casual indifference giving way to a distinct, almost unnerving intensity. He closed the newspaper with a deliberate thump; the sound echoed in the cabin, underscoring the gravity of the moment.
“Wyoming,” he repeated, his voice stripped of its earlier lightness. “It’s where the past is clawing its way back, Rowen. Something that was buried but not forgotten.”
The air in the cabin seemed to grow colder—not from the climate control, but from a chill that crept through me. I recognized the shift in Sinclair’s tone, the subtle warning that genuine danger was looming, the kind neither of us could ignore or deflect.
I halted, a prickling unease crawling up my spine. The engines’ hum no longer offered comfort; instead, they sounded like the strained breath of a beast about to awaken. “What thehell does that even mean, Sinclair?” I demanded, turning back to him as my smirk faded into apprehension.
He leaned back, a wry smile on his lips, though his eyes betrayed the shadows lurking beneath. “It means, Rowen, that a certain door I thought locked tight has cracked open.”
I stared at him, Sinclair’s words hovering in the recycled air.A locked door forced open.His metaphors always unsettled me, especially when they dripped with cynicism and foreboding. Sinclair thrived in secrecy and hidden truths; his cryptic pronouncements were never idle threats. He was the architect of chaos, and I, somehow, was always drawn into his games—whether I liked it or not. The battle within me, fueled by recent triumphs and lingering adrenaline, clashed with a growing sense of foreboding. Wyoming evoked images of vast emptiness, a landscape perfect for swallowing up secrets or revealing them in brutal fashion.
“A door,” I repeated, the words tasting bitter, like dust. “And this door is in Wyoming. Is this another one of your elaborate illusions, Sinclair? Some carefully orchestrated distraction? Because honestly, my lecture on postmodernism is more captivating than this game.” My gaze bore into him, searching for any trace of honesty, any crack in his impenetrable veneer. Sinclair met my stare, lips curving into a slow, dangerous smile.
“Oh, it’s very real, Rowen. And it involves more than just words. This is about legacies. About what’s owed. The past has a long memory, and it seems yours has finally caught up to you.”
My mind raced, scrambling to connect Sinclair’s threat to the shadows of my fragmented history. Was this about my childhood, a buried incident finally resurfacing? Or did it relate to the clandestine world I’d inhabited—a consequence of a debt settled or a line crossed beyond redemption?
The finality in Sinclair’s tone struck like a cold splash of reality. This wasn’t a simple mission or a routine cover-up. Itwas deeper, something even Sinclair acknowledged was beyond his usual machinations. Whatever I believed I knew, one thing was certain: Sinclair’s ability to resurrect the buried past was both legendary and utterly terrifying.
