Page 26 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

The moment I pull out from the side street and ease back onto the main road, everything shifts.

Not in sound or movement. But in weight. There’s a pressure in the air now, like I’ve crossed an invisible wire and something on the other end just started listening.

I drive.

Not fast. Not erratic. Just steady. South through the curve of the industrial ring, past shuttered shops and burned-out cars with their windows blown hollow.

Marseille’s skin is thicker down here. Less curious.

More honest. The kind of place where secrets aren’t buried—they’re mounted on walls like trophies.

I pull up beside a loading dock two levels beneath a shuttered textile plant. Lydia flagged it years ago as a fallback vault. Never used it.

Until now.

The garage door groans open when I hit the encrypted signal. Dust billows out like breath from a grave. I guide the car inside and kill the lights.

There’s no comfort here. Just cold concrete and silence and the whisper of old tech coming alive. Motion sensors flicker on. A map blinks to life across the far wall—city grid, heat pulses, traffic overlays.

I stand in front of it, still.

Toma Virelli’s face is a ghost in the margin. Not recent. Not direct. But his movement these last few days aligns too closely with Vale’s old habit trails.

I trace the connection points.

Each one cuts closer to Mara.

That’s not a coincidence.

That’s orchestration.

They’re building something. Not just a trap. A fucking story. One where I don’t come back.

I lean over the workbench and drag open an old weapons drawer. The grips are cold. Familiar. I check each one, reset the chamber counts, reload. Every motion is a ritual I used to perform without thought. Now it feels heavier. Not because I’ve forgotten.

Because I remember too well.

The last time I loaded up like this, I didn’t have anyone waiting.

Now I have her.

Mara.

The way her body curled into mine this morning, soft and wordless.

The way she didn’t stop me from going.

She trusts me to come back.

That kind of trust doesn’t come twice.

I fit the last sidearm into the holster at my spine. Secure. Invisible.

The terminal blinks. New data pinged from Lydia.

It’s not about Vale.

It’s Mara.

Someone tried to log into her clinic access portal at 9:34 AM. Failed attempt. Then another. Location ping came from the northeast grid—not close, but not far.

She’s still inside the house.

But the world is knocking.

And if it thinks I’ll wait for it to ask permission, it doesn’t know who it’s trying to fuck with.

I slam the terminal shut and head for the back room—a vault carved into the wall, lead-lined and shielded. Inside is everything I swore I wouldn’t need again. Identities. Burner drives. Tracer tools I built from scratch with parts that don’t legally exist.

I pull three.

One for Toma.

One for Vale.

And one for whoever just tried to touch her.

You don’t prod a monster when it’s sleeping.

But you especially don’t touch what it dreams about.

I strap the tools into place, reset the lock, and step back into the garage.

The air is sharper now. Brighter.

I start the car.

Time to go hunting.

As I pull onto the coastal route, the sea stretches to my right—flat, gunmetal blue, unbothered. I watch it in the mirror until the road curves inland, and the shadows climb higher on the cliffs.

I wish this wasn't happening now. Not while Caleb's still out there. Not while his name still curls like smoke through every shadow I pass. I haven’t forgotten him. I can’t afford to. Every time I close my eyes, I still see the mark he left. The warning carved into Mara’s world.

And now this?

Now Vale.

I’m not sure what woke him. Maybe it was the Berlin node lighting up. Maybe someone whispered my name in the wrong room. Or maybe he’s just been waiting for me to soften.

Waiting for me to bleed.

I can’t be sure why he’s coming now. But the signs are too aligned. The Marseille packet. The ghost signal on the nest. The message that is tagged with EIDOLON. That wasn’t just a breadcrumb.

That was him announcing he remembers.

Jori Vale, his brother.

Unlisted. Soft-side tech. Recruited for his encryption mind. Smart, clean, and naive. He didn’t belong in the dirt Vale dragged him into. But that didn’t stop them from running him on our Belgium firewall op.

He was the one who failed to purge the shell company routing before our cell got exposed. Two of my team died that night. I wiped the line and shut down the trace—but Jori vanished.

Vale thinks I executed him.

Maybe I did, in a way. I made the call that closed that door. And Vale’s been trying to pry it open ever since.

That could be the revenge piece.

But Mara?

And now someone’s reaching for her clinic access? That’s not just timing—that’s calculated. That’s someone testing how close they can get to her digital skin before I react.

That’s a different line.

She doesn’t just matter to me. She matters on paper now. Her clinic ran a string of treatments that processed patients under one of my older burner identities—a patient file Vale might have dredged up through that Marseille node.

If he connected her to me—if he thinks she has access to something I buried—then this isn’t about blood.

It’s about leverage.

And if it’s both?

Then he’s not just coming to kill me.

He’s coming to destroy everything I’ve let myself love.

The car hums low as I crest the next rise. I slow down near the curve and pull off behind a dense line of scrub oak. From here, I can see the train yard where Virelli's last signal hit. Neutral ground. Exfil point for half a dozen silent handovers.

I pop the trunk and check the cache again. Steel, ammo, pressure masks, and one unregistered signal jammer. Everything is tight. Everything is ready.

I don’t just want to cut this off.

I want to gut it from the inside.

And when I’m done, Vale will know that I didn’t just survive his message.

I answered it.

The train yard looms quiet, the tracks stretching out like veins under a pale morning sky. Steel glints where dew hasn’t yet burned off. It smells like rust and oil and something older—memory maybe. Or bone.

I climb out and shut the trunk with a soft click, double-checking the cache behind my jacket. I’ve bled here before. Not on this ground specifically, but in places like it—old exchange points where no one screams and the wind takes blood like a bribe.

I cross the lot slowly. Calm. Let them see me coming if they’re watching. Let them think I’m alone.

Because I am.

But I’m not defenseless.

Movement. Six o’clock high. Grain silo. Fast shape, too smooth to be wildlife. I don’t turn. Don’t break rhythm. Just shift the weight in my step, like I’m walking downhill, and draw the first blade under the cover of my arm.

“Eidolon.”

The name echoes from ahead.

I stop.

Because that name doesn’t exist anymore. Not publicly. Not in any system that hasn’t burned.

The figure steps forward.

Toma Virelli. In the flesh.

Lean. Sun-starved. A slight twitch in his left hand like a relic from an old injury I never gave a fuck to ask about.

“You’re late,” he says.

“I wasn’t invited.”

He smiles, but it’s brittle. “Vale thought you’d come faster.”

“And yet here I am.”

He shrugs like it costs him. “You shouldn’t have brought her into it.”

“I didn’t.”

“No?” He tilts his head. “Then why does her clinic flag three aliases from your black file?”

I don’t answer.

Because that’s bait.

And if I speak now, I’ll confirm more than I deny.

“She’s not just leverage,” he says, stepping closer. “She’s evidence.”

My hand flexes.

He notices.

“Don’t,” he warns. “There are eyes here. Not just ours. You draw, they drop you.”

I nod once. Like I believe him.

But I don’t.

Because if Vale trusted him that much, Toma wouldn’t be standing in front of me with fear stitched behind his teeth.

He’s expendable.

That means this is just another message.

“Where is he?” I ask.

Toma’s mouth twitches. “Far. But closer than you’d like.”

“Is he watching?”

“Always.”

I don’t look away when I say it: “Then tell him this—”

I move.

Blade out. Fast. Quiet.

Toma jerks back, but I’m faster. The knife slides up under his ribs before he can scream. I press him back against a nearby pillar, hand over his mouth.

“You want me to bleed?” I whisper. “Try harder.”

His eyes flare. The twitch in his hand becomes a spasm.

I twist the blade.

He gurgles something useless.

“Your mistake,” I say, “was thinking I left that life behind.”

I let him slide to the ground. Slow. Like I’m laying down a message of my own.

Then I walk.

No clean exit. No apology. Just silence, broken only by the click of my boots and the echo of a name I buried long ago being whispered like a curse.

Eidolon.

It’s not just a ghost anymore.

It’s a warning.

And the next man who tries to touch her?

I won’t leave behind anything to identify.