“So what does he actually want?” I asked. “Beyond hurting you through me.”
“I don't know yet. But Rafael doesn't want simple revenge. He wants more than that. He wants to prove a point.” Luka's voice went hard. “Which is why we find him, get answers, and end this before he can execute whatever he's building toward. But we do it carefully, because Rafael knows we're coming now. He'll be prepared. He'll turn every advantage we think we have into a trap if we're not smart about it.”
Rafael had engineered all of it, the attacks, the fear, the isolation, all designed to make me feel exactly how I felt right now. He wanted me cornered and desperate, ready to make mistakes. He wanted me to be the weapon he could aim at Luka.
That was fine. I'd be a weapon.
Just not the one he was expecting.
TWENTY-TWO
NO MORE QUIET
DECLAN
The bag swung back toward me and I hit it again with bare knuckles.
The gym was empty. Two in the morning and I had the whole space to myself because sleep was impossible and sitting still felt like drowning. My hands were already bleeding. I could feel the warm slickness on my knuckles and could see the red smears on the black leather every time the bag swung back into range.
I didn't care.
I hit it again with jab-cross-hook, the combination I'd drilled ten thousand times with muscle memory taking over while my brain spiraled.
I threw another combination. The bag barely moved under the assault. My knuckles split wider. Blood dripped onto the mat beneath my feet.
Rafael. The name kept looping in my head like a broken record. Rafael who had shown up at my gym years ago, who had invested in my business, who had fought beside me, who had been in my house, at my table, in my life for years.
Rafael who had tried to kill Troy.
Another combination came harder. My right hand screamed in protest. I could feel the wrongness in the knuckles, the deep ache of bone pushed past what it could take cleanly. But the pain was distant and manageable, better than the helpless rage of knowing someone I trusted had been hunting the person I cared about most.
Better than the fury.
Because I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't hunt him down myself or confront him or fix this. Troy and Luka were handling it, planning operations I wasn't part of, making decisions I had no say in, moving in a world I didn't understand and couldn't enter.
And I was stuck here in my gym at two in the morning, bleeding onto a punching bag because it was the only thing I could control.
I hit the bag with everything I had and felt my knuckles tear open completely. Blood sprayed across the leather.
The betrayal burned. Rafael had sat across from me in diners and had trained beside me. He had asked about my life with what I thought was genuine interest. And the whole time he had been what? Gathering information? Looking for weaknesses? Waiting for the right moment to strike?
Had any of it been real? Or had I been a useful idiot from the very beginning?
I threw a spinning back elbow that made the bag swing wild on its chain. My elbow joint protested. I ignored it.
The worst part was knowing he had been right there in my space, close enough to hurt me or Troy at any time. And I had welcomed him in, had trusted him, had considered him a friend.
The gym door opened behind me. I heard it but didn't stop or turn around. I just kept hitting the bag because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant feeling how completely helpless I was in all of this.
Footsteps crossed the floor and moved toward me without rushing.
Troy.
I knew his walk and knew the particular rhythm of his boots on the gym floor.
He didn't say anything. He just moved behind the bag and caught it on the next swing, pressing both hands flat against the leather and anchoring it so I could keep hitting without the thing swinging wild.
The gesture broke through my rage for half a second and made my chest go tight with an emotion I didn't have room for right now.
