Page 213 of Fractured Allegiance

Bureau.

Dom taunts as he descends, one step at a time, pistol gleaming in his hand. “She’s looking at you differently now, Ward. I’d be careful. That look’s the kind that kills you in your sleep.”

Silas doesn’t rise to it. His focus is absolute, calculating angles, wind, range. But he does flick one glance at me, just for a heartbeat. And what I see there nearly undoes me. Not guilt. Not denial. Just… need.

Dom reaches the last stretch of rungs. Elias fires again, forcing him back. Sparks explode from the frame. Dom’s laughter echoes through as he ducks and returns fire. Bullets scream past, slamming into steel, ricocheting close enough that my ears ring.

“Down!” Silas barks. He shoves me flat against the boards just as another round tears past where my head had been. His body covers mine, hot and heavy despite the cold, his breath jagged against my temple. “Stay low. Don’t move.”

Something in me snaps at that. Defiance. I twist, fingers finding the small revolver still tucked into the side of Elias’s belt. He doesn’t stop me. He sees the fury in my face and lets me take it.

When Dom swings back into view, lining up another shot, I lift the gun with both hands and fire. The recoil nearly knocks me backward, but the bullet finds him. Not a kill. His shoulder jerks, blood blooming dark.

He snarls, loses his footing, and slips two rungs before catching himself with his good hand.

“Fuck!” His roar shakes the scaffold more than the wind.

Silas’s eyes widen as he sees the pistol in my grip. For a second, something like pride flickers through the rage carvedacross his face. Then he shoves me back down, his voice raw. “Again if you have to. Don’t wait.”

Dom climbs lower, even wounded, his determination monstrous. Elias fires from below, Silas from above, me in the middle with trembling hands on the revolver. Three lines converging on one man who refuses to die.

And then the scaffold lurches.

The bolts Dom ripped past earlier finally gives in. The frame tilts, groans, begins to peel away from the building. My stomach drops. The whole world tilts sideways.

Silas lunges for me, Elias braces against the rail, Dom howls with laughter even as the metal screams beneath him.

It’s all about to go.

I lock eyes with Silas as the scaffold shudders one final time. His voice rips through, aimed only at me: “Jump, Lydia!”

The platform bucks, and it leaves me launching into black air, not knowing if I’ll hit a rooftop, a fire escape—or nothing at all.

Chapter 24 – Silas - Lines in the Dark

The scaffold rips loose beneath us with a shriek of twisted steel and shattering bolts. Lydia jumps.

For a half-second, she’s airborne—no ground, no tether, her body cutting through the dark like a coin flipped and forgotten. My chest knots, instinct snapping faster than thought. I lunge, fingers snaring her wrist, grip locking until bone presses bone.

Her weight yanks me forward hard. My grip burns, muscles screaming as I brace one boot on the last rung still bolted to the wall and swing us outward. The frame collapses below, crashing fourteen stories down into an alley that swallows the sound like a tomb.

“Hold on,” I bark, voice raw, but she’s already clinging back, her nails digging into my skin hard enough to break it.

The fire escape looms a few feet away. Calculated angles spin in my head: swing, release, absorb impact. I use the momentum, hauling her toward me, our bodies colliding midair before I shove us both against the ladder cage. My spine slams the bars. Pain spikes my vision white.

Lydia gasps into my chest, but she’s here. Alive.

I hook one arm through the rail, cradle her tight with the other despite the way my muscles burn from the strain. She trembles against me, not just from fear. I know what’s in her head. Dom’s words. Bureau.

And she hasn’t asked yet. But she will.

Above, metal clangs. Dom. That bastard didn’t go down with the wreck. He’s crawling back, boots scraping against the ledge like claws.

I lower Lydia to the narrow platform, tucking her against the wall. “Stay here,” I mutter, gun already raised.

Her eyes snap to mine, wide and shattered, but cutting enough to wound. “You lied.”

Not now. I shove the word down. Not here, not with Dom closing in.