Page 253 of Fractured Loyalties

Caleb throws a wild punch. It catches the side of my jaw, splits skin. I taste copper, sharp and hot. It’s nothing. I catch his second swing, twist his arm until the tendons scream, and slam him back against the hood.

“You always thought pain was power,” I tell him. “Let me educate you.”

I bury my knee in his gut. His breath shoots out in a wheeze. His eyes bulge, spit flying as he tries to curse. He claws at my shirt, nails dragging useless lines that won’t even scar.

“Say her name again,” I order.

He bares his teeth, feral. “Mara—”

The back of my hand cracks across his mouth, blood spraying the hood in a thin arc. He snarls through it, half-laughing, half-choking.

“She’ll never forgive you,” he rasps. “When she finds out what you really are—what you do when she’s not watching—she’ll see you’re no better than me.”

My hand clamps his throat, iron tight. His words scrape into silence. His pulse hammers against my palm, fast, frantic, then stuttering as I lean in, my mouth close enough that he sees nothing but my eyes.

“I am worse than you,” I whisper. “That’s why she’s safe with me.”

His face darkens, veins swelling in his temple. He claws weakly at my wrist. His pistol lies ten feet away, useless now. His passenger whimpers on the ground, too dazed to rise.

And Caleb—Caleb finally feels the truth. Not in my words. In the grip that tightens by degrees, cutting off every breath he thinks he deserves.

His legs kick once against the bumper. His gaze flashes something almost like panic. Not because he fears death. Because he finally understands it won’t be quick.

His boots scrape useless lines in the gravel as I squeeze. The sound of him choking is raw, animal, not human anymore.The hood groans under his weight, every rattle of the steel a reminder of how thin his resistance has become.

I don’t give him the luxury of words. I don’t loosen my grip for bargaining, or for one last insult. He’s had years of talking, years of making her small with every sentence. He doesn’t get another.

His fingernails bite into my wrist, weaker with every second. His face mottles red, then purple, veins standing out like rope. His eyes roll, first wide with fury, then narrowing, then going glassy as the air deserts him.

I lean closer, close enough that my words can sink into what’s left of his mind. “You don’t haunt her anymore. You don’t touch her anymore. You don’t even exist anymore. You end here.”

The fight leaves him all at once, like someone cut a cord. His hands fall. His body slackens against the hood, head lolling to the side. The last sound is a rasp that isn’t even breath—it’s just the body failing to accept it’s finished.

I hold until there’s no pulse under my fingers. Until there’s nothing left but weight.

Then I let go. He slides off the hood and collapses into the dirt like the trash he always was.

The passenger is watching, wide-eyed, frozen in half-rise. Blood leaks from the cut at his temple, gun still half-clutched in his hand. He knows better than to raise it.

“You saw nothing,” I tell him. My voice cuts through the morning air, steady as iron. “You never met him. You don’t know me. If you speak his name again, I’ll know. And I’ll come for you.”

He nods, frantic, eyes locked on the corpse at my feet. His gun clatters to the ground. He scrambles backward, palms slipping in gravel, before finally bolting without looking back.

I look down at Caleb one last time. His face is slack, mouth twisted open, all that obsession burned out with the last beat of his heart. For the first time, he’s quiet.

I crouch, strip the pistol from his belt, and pocket it. Not as a trophy. As a reminder. I’ll decide what to do with it later.

The sun edges higher, bleeding pale gold over the river. The light touches his body, and I almost laugh at the irony. He looks like a man at rest. But I know better. He was never at rest. He only knew how to claw.

Now he’s nothing.

My chest feels like a chamber emptied, hollow but clean. This was always where it had to end—with my hands, not chance.

And when I go back to her, I’ll tell Mara the truth. That her past is finished. That the man who chained her for years lies in the dirt with no more breath to give.

She’ll know relief. She’ll know guilt. She’ll know both can live in her at once.

And she’ll know I did it because no one else ever could.