Page 282 of Fractured Allegiance

Then Drazen’s eyes flick past me, to the side—and that’s when I see it. Another figure, moving behind the vehicles, carrying something heavy. A backup plan.

“Now!” I shout.

Bullets shred the space between us, tearing through metal, glass, and bone. Silas grabs me, hauling me behind a stack of crates as rounds rip the air apart. Sparks spray where bullets chew into steel. Drazen’s men are firing blind now, desperate. Elias’s squad answers with precision, disciplined bursts cutting them down one after another.

I press against Silas’s chest, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, his other hand firing around the corner. His pulse hammers against my ribs, matching mine, both of us locked in that feverish calm that only comes when death feels inches away.

The gunfire slows, sputters, then stops altogether. When the smoke clears, the only sound left is the hiss of burning rubber.

Drazen’s SUV sits half-destroyed, one tire blown, the windshield spiderwebbed with cracks. The detonator lies on the ground, a few feet from his outstretched hand. He’s down on one knee, blood pouring from a graze along his side. His men—what’s left of them—are sprawled across the gravel, unmoving.

Elias strides forward through the haze, lowering his weapon. His face is hard, but his voice carries that edge of satisfaction. “You’re out of pawns, Drazen.”

I stand beside Silas, watching as Drazen lifts his head. His smile is gone now, replaced by something colder. “You think this ends with me? You’ll never—”

The rest of his words dissolve into a cough, blood bubbling on his lips.

“No speeches,” I say, stepping closer. “You’ve had enough screen time.”

His gaze slides to me. There’s something almost approving in it. “Ah. I see. You’ve finally chosen your side.”

“I have.”

And before he can blink, I pull the trigger.

The shot cracks through the night, clean and final. Drazen drops, his head hitting the gravel with a dull sound that seems to echo longer than it should.

No one speaks. The air tastes of cordite and closure. Elias lowers his gun completely. The fire behind us throws long shadows across the yard, flickering over the bodies, over Silas’s profile as he watches me.

“You didn’t hesitate,” he says softly.

I look at him. “He wasn’t worth it.”

He nods once, eyes dark, unreadable. “You are.”

I holster my weapon and step closer, the adrenaline still coursing hot in my veins. “And that’s why you can’t walk away.”

The corners of his mouth curve. He’s right. I’m right. We’re both too far gone to pretend this ends clean.

Behind us, Elias calls out to his men. “Secure the area. Gather the wounded. Burn the rest.”

His orders echo off the walls, final and certain.

When I glance at Silas again, his gaze is still on me, something burning behind it that isn’t relief or victory. It’s possession. Recognition.

We both survived another night. But survival has never been our goal.

We move like vultures into a body. The yard is still warm where men fell. The air tastes of iron and scorched plastic. I leave the carcass of Drazen where it lies and follow Elias through a gap in the broken fence. He’s all angles and purpose, a man who walks without asking himself permission. Behind him, his perimeter teams funnel outward, locking every exit, taking inventory of the dead with the businesslike calm of surgeons after an amputation.

Silas stays at my shoulder. Even with the flash of victory still raw in us, he walks quietly, eyes flicking to every corner. There’s a bruise along his jawline, a dark stripe that will tell a better story than he will.

Elias motions to Jax. “Sweep the west corridor. Mara, check the breaches and get med on that—now. Ward, Carr, with me.”

Mara is already moving, composed in the way she became after we carved up the underworld. She’s marked by the night the way the rest of us are. Her hands are steady as she produces bandages and gives terse instructions. Jax looks like a man who’s aged ten years in an hour. He answers Elias and goes.

The vault is beneath the clean room, down a flight of steps scored with soot. The corridor narrows until the ceiling low enough to force you to stoop. It smells of oil and stale heat, all the life left out of it. Overhead, a single red emergency light pulses like a dying heart. Silence makes thieves of us; the creak of a boot becomes a confession.

At the door to the vault, Elias pauses. He looks at me in that way he reserves for moments that demand more than muscle. “You’ve seen files like this before,” he says. He doesn’t ask if I want it opened. He already knows the answer.