Page 100 of Fractured Loyalties

Chapter 19 – Elias - The Taste of Iron

The scent of her still lingers in my hoodie. It clings to my skin like a warning I can’t ignore. Warmth threaded with sleep and skin and trust I didn’t earn. Not fully. Not yet.

The sky outside the car is clear and pale, the full light of morning spilling across the cobblestones in cool sheets. It’s early, but not quiet—Marseille hums with that particular tension cities wear before they’ve had their first cup of noise.

The buildings here are sun-bleached and crooked, crouching close like they’ve overheard too much. This place doesn’t wake up. It watches, listens, and measures your tread before it decides if you belong.

I’ve been here before. Years ago. When my name meant something else. When I was sharper, meaner, and didn’t give a fuck who bled.

I park two blocks out, kill the engine, and step into the street long enough to run a quick perimeter sweep. No eyes. No heat. When I’m sure the street’s clean, I walk a block further and slip into the driver’s seat of a low-profile sedan Lydia arranged—off-books, burner plates, scrubbed from registry, no digital trails.

I ease the car into idle just outside the drop point—an old port district where the buildings lean into one another like drunks after a fight. The wheel is still warm from my grip. My contact is late.

I check the side mirror. No tail. No reflection of anything but the ripple of ocean through the alley gap.

I adjust the comms loop in my ear. Static. Lydia hasn’t pinged me again. I told her to keep eyes on the house. I trust her to obey that more than I trust most people to breathe.

But my pulse still kicks. Not from fear. Not even from the mission.

From the echo of Mara whispering against my chest, palm pressed over my heart like she was trying to memorize the rhythm of it.

Come back with this still beating.

It will.

Even if I have to coat my hands in old blood to make it happen.

A soft rap at the window breaks my focus.

I don’t startle.

It’s Rafiq, my contact.

Ex-intel runner. Worked the Balkan pipeline until it dried up. We crossed paths on a failed extraction in Bucharest—he got shot, I got promoted. I trust him with data, not lives.

He’s thinner than I remember. Older. Same eyes though—the kind that catalogue exits before they register faces. I kill the engine and slide out of the car.

We don’t speak until we’ve walked two blocks south and turned into a graffiti-smeared tunnel lit by nothing but a flickering street lamp and a busted neon sign for a brothel that hasn’t operated in years.

"You look less dead than I expected," Rafiq mutters.

"You’re losing your touch."

He snorts once. No smile.

"Vale," I say. Not a question.

Rafiq glances at the archway behind us, then back at me. "He’s been using one of your old nests. Lyon tag. Marseille footprint. There is something wrong about the whole setup."

"Define wrong."

"Wrong like it wants to be seen. Every other ghost I’ve tracked in the last year? They erase themselves. This one—he leaves breadcrumbs."

My jaw tightens. "Then he wants me to follow."

"Maybe. Or maybe he wants someone else to think that."

That’s worse. More layers. More chances to slip.