Page 257 of Fractured Allegiance

The heat of his grip brands my skin, steady and deliberate, as though he’s rewriting my heartbeat to his rhythm. The part of me that should recoil doesn’t. It leans.

Jax finally stops pacing, his shoulders rigid, his eyes flicking to me, then to Silas. “This isn’t a game,” he spits. “You two—whatever the fuck this is—you’re going to get us all killed.”

I meet his gaze, unblinking. “Then walk. No one’s chaining you here.”

The silence after that is deafening.

Jax doesn’t move. He just swears again and drops into a chair, head in his hands.

Mara sinks onto the couch, her face pale, her body trembling with the effort of staying upright. Elias is gone, and the rest of us are left with the aftershock.

Silas releases my wrist, but only so he can drag his knuckles over the inside of my palm, a fleeting touch that feels more permanent than Ren’s blood pooling on the floor. A mark. A warning. A promise.

He doesn’t say another word. He doesn’t have to.

Because in the hollow of my chest, in the echo of Kinley’s betrayal and Ren’s execution, I realize Silas is right.

I haven’t pulled away.

And I’m not going to.

The smell thickens fast—blood, acrid gunpowder, the sour bite of fear that clings even after the body stops trembling. Ren is a heap of limbs on the floor, but death doesn’t erase the mess. Death leaves you with work.

Jax curses again, too loud, like it will drown out the metallic tang hanging over us. He presses the heel of his palm against his forehead, then kicks the chair Ren had been sitting in. “We can’t just leave him like this.”

Elias’s voice cuts in from the doorway. He’s returned, jacket half-buttoned, cold command radiating off him. “Then don’t.”

Jax stiffens, and when his eyes dart to me, I see the hesitation in them. Not reluctance to move the body—he’s done that before. It’s the symbolism. Cleaning Ren feels like cleaning away the last illusion of trust.

Silas bends first. He doesn’t hesitate. He crouches, grips Ren under the shoulders, and looks back at Jax with a calm so sharp it borders on mockery. “Help me.”

Jax bristles but obeys. Together they haul Ren up, awkward dead weight dragging across the floor. The thud when his head clips the doorframe echoes through the safehouse.

I stay standing, arms folded, watching the stain smear across the boards. A part of me wants to turn away, to let this image fade like all the others. But I don’t. I catalog it, another ledger mark in the book of names and betrayals.

Mara lingers near the couch, pale and tight-lipped, but she doesn’t stop them. She’s shaking, though, her arms clutched around herself as if she could keep her insides from spilling out like Ren’s.

Silas and Jax dump the body on a tarp Elias has rolled out, plastic crinkling loud in the heavy room. Jax mutters under his breath as he knots the edges, hands moving fast, jerky with anger. Silas’s motions are measured, efficient. He doesn’t look at me, not yet.

When the last knot is tied, Elias steps closer. “There’s a morgue. Uptown. Private wing. People who take cash, not questions.” He eyes the bundle on the tarp like it’s not a body, just another piece of evidence to be erased. “We’ll leave him there.”

Jax looks up, incredulous. “And no one asks?”

Elias’s expression doesn’t shift. “Not when they’ve been paid enough times to keep their mouths shut.”

Silas wipes his hands on a rag, tosses it into the sink. His voice is steady, deliberate. “And if someone does ask?”

Elias finally glances at him. “Then they stop asking. Permanently.”

The words hang between them like a balanced knife on the edge of a table.

Mara turns abruptly, snatches her jacket from the chair. Her voice is tight, brittle. “I need to go to work. And after, I’m heading to the house. Ours.” She means another safehouse, but her choice of word—ours—draws Elias’s gaze to her.

“You’ll stay out of this mess,” he says, flat.

She doesn’t argue. She just nods, quick, and pulls the door open. Then she’s gone.

The silence after she leaves is almost louder than the shot.