Page 293 of Fractured Allegiance

There’s a pause on the line. I can hear Naomi’s heels click against tile; she’s pacing now. “You’re stalling.”

“I’m bargaining,” I correct. “Leave Lydia and Elias alone. Leave the people who walked out of Petrov Station alive. I give you what you can sell to your Director. You bury my name and walk away. That’s the deal.”

Naomi laughs, a short, brittle thing. “You don’t dictate deals. You’re the rogue asset, Silas. You’re the one we drag back by your teeth, not negotiate with.”

I glance down at the waves slamming into rock. My grip on the phone tightens. Lydia’s eyes are burning now, not with fear but with calculation. She straightens, uncrosses her arms, and takes a step toward me. Bare feet against wood.

Naomi’s voice drops into a hiss. “You’re done. You’re a ghost. I’ll cut every safehouse, every cover, every account. You’ll watch her die first, and then you’ll vanish.”

That’s when Lydia’s hand lands on my shoulder. Her nails graze the back of my neck; a touch that feels like a command. She tilts her head toward the phone and mouths, Let me.

I don’t move. But I don’t stop her either.

Her fingers slide down my arm, closing over my wrist. She pries the phone out of my hand and lifts it to her own ear. “Naomi?” she says, voice even. “It’s Lydia Carr.”

There’s a sharp intake of air on the other end. “You’ve got a lot of nerve—”

“No,” Lydia interrupts, and her voice slices like glass. “You’ve got a lot of nerve thinking you can touch him.”

I watch her as she steps closer to the railing, the sea wind lifting her hair, my shirt clinging to her body. Her eyes are on the horizon, but her tone is aimed like a weapon straight through the phone.

“You think we burned it all?” she says. “We didn’t. We kept one drive. The one with your Bureau’s fingerprints all over Drazen’s deals. The one that proves your ‘system’ wasn’t just looking the other way, it was feeding him.”

The line goes dead silent.

Lydia tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Touch him,” she says, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “And I open it.”

Naomi’s reply is softer now, steel under velvet. “You wouldn’t survive the fallout.”

Lydia’s lips curve into something that isn’t a smile. “Neither would you. And by the time it hits, Silas will already be a ghost. He’s not yours to claim anymore.”

The silence stretches. Even the gulls over the water seem to hold their wings still.

Then Naomi’s voice comes back, colder than before but thinner, like ice cracking. “You just made enemies you’ll never see,” she says. “Enjoy the shadows while they last.”

The line clicks. Dead.

Lydia lowers the phone, her fingers still tight around it. She doesn’t look at me right away. She just stands there, the wind tangling her hair, the sea behind her like a bruise.

I let out a long, shaky exhale and say, “You didn’t have to do that.”

She finally meets my eyes. “Yes,” she says quietly. “I did.”

The phone lies face-down on the deck between us. The last echo of Naomi’s voice fades into the sea wind until it’s just the two of us and the crash of waves gnawing at the rocks below.

Lydia’s shoulders are tense, but her jaw doesn’t move. The wind whips her hair across her face; she doesn’t bother to brush it aside. For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The air smells of salt and burnt coffee drifting from the kitchen, of endings that still taste like smoke.

“She won’t stop,” I say at last. “You know that.”

“She’ll try,” Lydia answers, still staring at the horizon. “But she’s bleeding now. People like her don’t know how to hide a wound. It festers. It turns them against themselves.”

Her tone is matter-of-fact, not triumphant. Just an observation, the kind you make when you’ve seen too many people crumble under their own hunger for control.

I take a step closer. The deck creaks under my weight. “You just declared war on the Bureau, Lydia. They don’t forget. They don’t forgive.”

She turns then, eyes cutting to mine. “Neither do I.”

The defiance in her voice should worry me. Instead, it feels like oxygen. It’s the same fire that burned through her when she faced Drazen. The same flame that pulled me toward her long before either of us had the courage to call it what it was.