Three monsters.
And the men I love might be their sons.
I don’t know who to trust.
SIXTEEN
MARA
CJ drives in silence, eyes on the road, giving me the privacy I desperately need but don’t want.
Because privacy means being alone with what Valen just told me.
And what he told me is rewiring every synapse in my brain, re-contextualizing a lifetime of memories until I don’t know what was real and what was performance.
Three men—DSN, OCK, PTO. Three bloodlines.
I press my forehead against the cold window, watching the city blur. Three fathers. One of them belongs to Dredyn, Talon, or Jasper. My hands curl into fists in my lap, nails biting crescents into my palms. The locket Zane gave me, the one with Dredyn’s threatening note inside, rests against my collarbone.
A reminder that the men I love are capable of violence.
That theycomefrom violence.
But which one comes fromthisviolence?
Think, Mara. Think it through.
James Steele—Dredyn’s father. The most obvious candidate. Security magnate, Syndicate enforcer, the man who literally manufactures the violence that keeps their empire running.
I remember meeting James once, at a gala, when I was sixteen. Even then, surrounded by senators and diplomats, he radiated danger.
But Dredyn hates him—hasalwayshated him.
He spent his entire life trying to be different, better, less monstrous than the man who raised him. Would he have kept this secret? That his father sits at the table? It’s hard to believe when he’s spent years learning to be his father’s weapon while secretly sharpening himself into a blade aimed at James’s throat.
Anthony Thorne—Jasper’s father. CEO of Thorne Technologies, the company that manufactures the surveillance equipment the Syndicate uses. Facial recognition software, communications encryption, those horrifying silicone masks that let operatives wear stolen faces.
And then there’s Senator Michael Reed—Talon’s father. The politician. The one who doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of violence and technology and security. Just a senator from a good family, climbing the ladder toward cabinet positions and committee chairmanships.
Except...
Except politicians are the ones who write the laws the Syndicate operates around.
Who confirm judges who’ll look the other way, who approve budgets that fund agencies that can be corrupted. Who shake hands with international leaders while their constituents disappear in shipping containers.
The Syndicate needs someone in government. Someone with access, influence, and the ability to bury investigations and redirect attention.
Someone like Michael Reed.
I try to remember if I’ve ever met him, but Talon’s kept his family at arm’s length since we got together. “They don’t getto have you,” he said once, and I thought it was sweet. Now, I wonder if it was strategic.
Talon, who’s brilliant at reading people, at knowing exactly what they need to hear. What would he do if he discovered his father was part of the Syndicate leadership?
He’d weaponize it.
Find a way to turn it into advantage, into leverage.
And he wouldn’t tell us until he’d figured out how to spin it into something we could use.
