Page 236 of Fractured Allegiance

Elias takes a step back to the table and points at the map again. “Petrov’s still the target.” He taps the building image like a promise. “We will move soon. Coordinate. Cover. We don’t walk in like fools.”

Lydia leans forward, hand on my sleeve. The contact is brief, just a ghost of a touch. No declarations. Nothing to hang a future on. But it’s charged in the way the flash before a storm is charged.

“You’re not the only one who thinks he’s clever,” she says under her breath. “Drazen won’t play checkers with us.”

The phone on the counter vibrates. Everyone turns. The tiny red light on the screen is an intrusion. Ren answers and listens like someone reading bad news in a foreign language. His face loses color. Elias's expression hardens.

“What is it?” Lydia asks.

Ren’s hand is a little shaky. “Drazen’s men. They’re circling an old front of Elias’s. The warehouse on Bellamy. They’ve been watching for a day. Looks like a probe.”

Elias stands up so fast his chair knocks the tile. He looks at us, at Lydia, at me. That look says the chessboard we thought we were moving on just tilted.

“Bellamy?” I say. “That’s a token front. What would they pull there?”

Elias doesn’t answer at once. He folds his fingers together like a man praying for the right sin. “They’re testing doors,” he says finally. “Finding weak hinges. If they pry Bellamy, Petrov’s next. We move now.” His eyes flick to Jori with a long, slow assessment. Something in his face says he’s remembered the way Jori watched the room.

The air thickens. The map under Elias’s finger looks suddenly like live fire.

Lydia folds the file and tucks it under her arm. Her posture is the kind you get when you’re moving from defense to offense. She meets my gaze, and there is no softness in it, only a shared weight.

“You coming?” she asks.

I shoot her a wink, grinning darkly. We pack in silence. The house breathes. The basement remembers our footsteps like a bruise.

Outside, the city keeps pretending it doesn’t know how to fall apart. Inside, we move toward the next page in a book that will not end politely.

Chapter 29 – Lydia - Blood in the Walls

The SUV is too full of bodies and too short on trust.

I sit wedged between Jax and Ren, their elbows claiming more space than mine, the heat from their jackets pressing in until I can barely shift without brushing one of them.

Jax chews on the end of an unlit cigarette like it’s a bone, the filter soft and soggy where his teeth grind it flat. Every time his jaw works, the scar cutting across his cheek flexes like a rope pulled taut.

Ren, smaller, wiry, jittery, keeps flicking a lighter open and closed. Metal scrapes metal, the flame catching and dying, over and over. The rhythm crawls under my skin.

I want to tell him to stop. I don’t. Because if I open my mouth, it’ll be for something worse.

Jori sits at the far end of the row, shoulders relaxed, head tilted back like this is just another Sunday drive. His fingers tap a steady rhythm on his thigh. No nerves. No wasted motion. It makes him stand out more than the others—the stillness. In this SUV of fidgeting, chewing, grinding men, Jori looks like he’s waiting.

There's something else, too. Something I’ve noticed about him, the way his eyes keep cutting to his phone, the screen dark in his palm, like he's expecting a message he can't check in front of everyone. The way his thumb hovers over it, then pulls back when Elias glances in the rearview.

Silas said Jori fought like he was cataloguing intel. Now he sits like he's waiting for instruction.

My stomach knots tighter.

I catch Silas's eyes in the mirror. Hold them for a beat longer than necessary. His jaw tightens—he sees it too. Sees me seeing it.

Neither of us says a word. But the air between us shifts, charged with unspoken warning.

Up front, Elias drives. His grip on the wheel is steady, eyes fixed ahead, but I know better than to think he isn’t watching everything in the mirrors. He was born reading angles of threat, taught himself to spot a knife in a room full of smiles. I can feel it in the air: his suspicion, coiled and steady, a mirror of my own.

Silas rides shotgun, the seat set back far enough for his knees to bend loose, one hand draped across his thigh. He hasn’t spoken since we pulled out of the safehouse, but I can see the tension running down his arm into the fist braced on the door. His gaze moves like a metronome: windshield, side mirror, rearview. Back again. He doesn’t miss much. He doesn’t miss me either. Every so often, his eyes cut across the glass, lock with mine for a second too long before shifting forward.

It’s too warm from the press of bodies, but a restless chill creeps in through the cracks in the frame. The steady grind of tires over cracked asphalt fills the cabin, underscored by the scrape of Jax’s lighter and the wet click of his cigarette filter.

The silence feels loaded, like all of us are sitting on a powder keg. And maybe we are.