Page 237 of Fractured Loyalties

“Thank you,” I say.

His relief is a physical thing. It warms his face. He thinks he has bought something. He thinks there is a world where he walks away because he gave me a door.

I step in and break his nose with my palm.

The crack rings off the concrete, and the first drop of blood hits the ground before he can shout. He stumbles back into the bollard, hands up, eyes wide like a horse that smelled fire.

“I didn’t…I didn’t sell her,” he gasps. “I didn’t—”

“You sold me,” I say. “Which is the same thing.”

He swings. It is clumsy and fueled by shock. I catch his wrist and twist. He drops to a knee. My boot clips his ribs.

“You had other choices,” I say. “You chose wrong. You did it more than once.”

I drag him by the collar behind the containers to where the camera doesn’t see. The river watches. The highway drones. I make it fast because kindness is not the same as mercy.

When he stops moving, I take his phone, his wallet, and the brass key in his pocket that isn’t his. Vale’s. The blade etched on the head tells me I’m right.

I lay Kinley face down and close his eyes. He was mine. He isn’t anymore. I do not pray. I do not count.

Back in the SUV, the wheel cuts into my palms. I send Lydia one word:Done.

Her reply comes two seconds later:I know.

I send a second:Union.

Her answer:I’ll hold the house. Get what you went for.

I aim the SUV at Union Mill and keep the needle where I want it.

Union Mill lifts its brick face out of a block of glass and steel like a stubborn bone. The freight tower sits behind the main facade, tall and blind. I park in the alley behind the loading dock and cross the cracked concrete on foot. The service doorhas a keypad that anyone with hands can rip out, so I use the brass key instead. It slides home with the weight of stolen trust.

Inside, the corridor stinks of dust and oil. Two men lean on a dolly near the freight elevator, caps pulled low. They don’t look up until I am close enough to see the scuffs on their boots. When they do, it is already over.

The first reaches for a pocket. My elbow meets his jaw and the back of his head hits the metal door with a sound like a pan dropped in a sink. The second fumbles for a knife. I take his wrist and drive it into the wall. Bone kisses cinder block. He screams. It stops when his face meets my knee.

I take the knife because it is there. The elevator needs the key and the thumbprint above the panel. Vale’s thumb is not available. The man with the broken wrist offers his without trying to be noble.

The cage rattles up six floors and opens into a hallway lined in concrete and silence. A glass door waits at the end with a steel frame and a discreet card reader. No name. Vale likes the idea of being faceless. It only works on people who need names to feel brave.

I knock once. It is unnecessary. The lock clicks.

Vale stands behind a desk that was expensive twenty years ago and now looks like someone’s father’s idea of power. He wears a charcoal suit that will never fit him right and a ring that doesn’t belong to him. His smile shows teeth he purchased.

“Elias,” he says. “We finally do this civil.”

“I am not civil,” I say.

He gestures to the chair. “I’ll make it brief then. Your girl is—”

I cross the room and take his throat with my left hand. The chair tips. The desk shudders. The ring digs into my palm as he claws at my wrist. His eyes go wide. Sound fails him.

“You put men outside her clinic,” I say, steady. “You texted my phone. You took money from a man who uses women like bait for sport. You are a rotting thing in a nice jacket.”

He tries to speak. I don’t adjust my grip. He points toward a cabinet. I know the game. Gun. Panic button. He’s sure backup will arrive in time because money always made it so.

“Don’t,” I tell him.