Page 233 of Fractured Allegiance

I don’t flinch. I look him in the eye. “You’ll be dead before your cigarette burns to the filter if you think of double-crossing our plan.”

Jax lunges. Ren catches his arm. Papers scatter like frightened birds. For a flash there’s the shape of violence in the room, the kind that looks too familiar. I’m on my feet before the chair stops rocking, ready to finish the moment—because I don’t like surprises. Elias is faster. He drives a hand against Jax’s chest and shoves him back into his seat.

“Sit,” he says, voice like a blade wrapped in smoke. Then he looks at me. “And you, stand down before you prove you’re actually dumber than you look.”

Heat coils through the room. Jax’s chest heaves. Ren mutters something. Jori’s hands wring his jacket hem so hardhis knuckles pale. He gives me a quick, glancing look that disappears before it lands. That look is a thing I’m not supposed to see but I do. It’s a flicker of calculation. A man measuring the room for the best place to stab.

Lydia cuts in, her palm flattening on the table harder than she’s done before. “Enough.” The single word pulls the room into focus.

Her eyes sweep the table and settle on me, hard. “Every minute you waste proving whose the bigger, badder wolf is a minute closer to Drazen sinking his teeth.”

Her words land. Jax looks away. Ren shifts. Jori’s smile slips for a second and something like guilt—or fear—crosses his face. It’s brief. He catches it, tucks it away. Too quick.

“If you’re putting her in the line, I’m going too,” I say. “No one walks her into Drazen’s cage but me.”

Elias laughs, low and bitter. “Obsession talking again.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe it’s the only thing keeping her breathing.”

Lydia’s stare doesn’t soften. She doesn’t let me have the win. But there’s a small measure in the way she adjusts the sleeve of my shirt where it brushes my wrist, like a private punctuation only she and I share. It means something. It means she knows what I am willing to do.

Elias clears his throat. “Enough posturing. We plan.” He points to Petrov on the map. “We either take the files or we die pretending we had a plan. Which do you prefer?”

I study Jori while Elias talks. Little things: the way he shifts his weight to keep the door in peripheral, the too-eager nod when Elias outlines the perimeter, the tiny wetness at the corner of his mouth when he thinks no one’s watching. A manwho worries when the table goes quiet is a man who’s already decided where his loyalties pay best.

I let him think I haven’t seen the tremor. For now, secrets are currency. We’ll trade them when the time comes.

We lean over maps, voices drop into lists and timings. Outside, Miramont huffs and goes about its business. Inside this room, something else begins to move—smaller, slower. Plans form. Eyes watch. And somewhere in the space between Jori’s forced smile and the hard set of Lydia’s jaw, a loose thread begins to tremble.

It’s the kind of thing I can’t afford to ignore.

The planning drags. Hours bent over blueprints, lines drawn and erased, numbers muttered until they lose meaning. Elias speaks with the authority of a man who thinks his shadow can cover the whole room. The others nod and scribble as if repeating him will make it true.

Jax spits tobacco juice into an empty cup. Ren sketches guard rotations with sloppy arrows. Jori pretends to study the maps, but his eyes keep darting—not at Petrov, not at the files, but at Elias. Always Elias. Like a dog checking its master’s mood before it begs for scraps.

I watch Lydia instead. So magnificent. She doesn’t fidget, doesn’t break. She absorbs every detail, every weak point Elias highlights, then adds her own. Cold logic. Surgical precision. When her hand brushes mine as she pushes a file across the table, the charge is raw enough to burn. It’s nothing, a flicker, but her eyes cut to me in the same instant. Not soft. Not forgiving. Just a recognition. We’re both in this cage, and neither of us is pretending otherwise anymore.

“Enough,” Elias finally says, pushing back from the table. His boot heels scrape against the floor. “We’ve got our target. Now we test the chain.”

He gestures to his men. Jax straightens, Ren stiffens, Jori smooths his jacket like it might erase the sweat on his palms.

“Test?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “You’re serious?”

Elias grins. “Better we find the cracks here than in front of Drazen.”

I can’t argue with that. But I know what’s coming. And I know someone’s going to bleed.

The maps blur into noise after a while. Too many arrows. Too many voices. Elias loves the sound of his own command—he lays it down like scripture, expecting everyone to nod. Jax chews harder on his mangled cigarette. Ren doodles guard shifts with the same focus a kid gives stick figures. Jori? He doesn’t say a word. He just watches. Always watching.

I don’t like watchers.

Every time I shift, I feel his eyes flicker my way, then dart back to Elias. He hasn’t contributed a single useful thought, but he keeps his ears open like he’s storing everything to feed someone later.

Lydia leans forward, her arm brushing mine as she points to a cluster of routes on the map. “Drazen’s too careful to put everything at Petrov. He’ll keep shadows in play.”

Her voice is cool and steady. Her scent, faint under the dust and cigarettes, cuts through me sharper than the ink bleeding across the table. She doesn’t even notice her hand lingers a beat longer than necessary before pulling back.

Elias smirks like he sees the twitch in my jaw. “You want to talk shadows, Ward? Then you need to know if the men beside you are worth trusting.”