Page 28 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

Inside is a row of cases. I don’t open them. Just run my fingers along the tops.

And then I stop.

There, half-hidden under a tactical vest, is a notebook. Leather-bound. Worn. Not new.

Not recent.

I pull it out.

It’s Elias’s.

Not his field notes. Not ops. This one’s different.

It’s names.

Dates.

Small, sharp notes in block print.

And one of them is mine.

Just my name. No date. No details.

But it’s there.

Circled once. Notated with a single word beside it in his tight, unmistakable hand:

“Variable.”

I exhale slowly. The weight of that word doesn’t scare me.

It confirms what I already know.

To Elias, I’m not a weakness.

I’m a factor.

Which means he’s already planning how to use me—or protect me—depending on how the board moves.

And that...that’s something I can work with.

I return the notebook. Close the cabinet.

And as I climb back up the stairs.

By the time I’m back in the main house, the light in the bedroom has shifted again—full now, pushing hard against the edges of the curtains. It paints long bars across the floor, across the bed, across the place where he slept like the echo of a body that’s already left.

I sit on the edge of it, fingertips against the sheets, and I let myself feel the space he left behind.

Not the absence. The shape of him. The heat.

It’s a strange thing, to miss someone like this. When they’re not really gone. When you know they’re still out there, still moving, still bleeding for a life you haven’t been allowed to fully touch.

My hand closes around the burner in my pocket.

This time, I do press the screen.

It doesn’t power up. I don’t let it.

But the screen flickers—just once. A heartbeat. A test. A single, silent message encoded in that flicker: Not yet.

Then I slide it back away.

Because if I turn it on, I’ll be seen. If I light that signal, I won’t just be watching. I’ll be inviting the past into the same room where I’ve started to build something with him.

And I don’t know yet if the walls will survive it.

I go to the mirror. The one beside the closet. Not to fix anything. Just to see myself as I am.

I look older.

Not tired. Not scared.

Prepared.

And in the middle of all that stillness, my reflection holds a question I haven’t asked out loud:

What if this isn’t about me at all?

What if I’m just leverage?

Just the soft part of Elias, someone finally figured out how to press on?

Because the timing doesn’t feel like a coincidence. The Lyon signal. The perimeter ping. The work Elias didn’t talk about last night. He tried to be quiet about it—but quiet isn’t the same as invisible.

He’s walking into something bigger than Caleb.

And I think whoever’s pulling the strings wants to know how many pieces of him they can rip free before he breaks.

My stomach twists. Not in fear.

In fury.

I get up. Move to the closet.

Pull down my bag. Not the emergency one. Not the old one.

The one I packed for here. With clothes that say I expected to stay.

I reach for the knife I tucked into the side pouch. I unwrap it, check the blade. It’s still sharp. Still quiet.

And I place it on the nightstand beside the bed.

Not because I need it right now.

But because if they’re watching, I want them to know something.

I’m not the soft part.

And if they touch him, they’ll learn that the hard way.

The sun is higher now. The house no longer glows—it glares. Light slices through the window slats like knives, and everything feels too sharp, too exposed.

I close the curtains.

The darkness is immediate. Heavy. But welcome.

It gives me something to push against.

I go back to the kitchen and make a second cup of tea, but I don’t drink it. I just hold it, fingers curled around the warmth, letting the steam fog the edge of my vision.

Then I check the comm panel. Quiet.

Too quiet.

I set the tea down just as my phone chirps softly.

Celeste.

Her voice comes in too warm, too bright for the air around me. “Hey, you alive?”

I blink. “Barely.”

“You haven’t been in the clinic. Hardly anyone’s seen you lately, and honestly? Alec and I are starting to get worried.”

I close my eyes, drag a breath through my teeth. “I’ve had some things.”

“Yeah, I figured. But here’s the thing—you look like hell. Not just tired, Mara. Rattled. You ghost me one more time, and I’m sending someone.”

I press my thumb into the curve of my mug, staring at the way the steam curls against the light. “You’re right.”

Celeste pauses. That rare silence of hers that means she knows she hit something raw.

“I told you once,” I say, quiet now. “Back when I started in Miramount. About the man I ran from.”

“The one with the silence you could feel in your bones.”

“Yeah. Caleb.”

Another beat.

She exhales. “He’s back?”

I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Yes. And it feels pretty intense.”

I don’t elaborate. I don’t have to. She hears what I’m not saying.

Her voice softens. “You’re not alone this time, though.”

“I know.”

“You trust him?” Celeste teases, voice laced with that knowing edge only she can wield. “Your Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous with the jaw that could cut glass and hands that could probably dismantle a man just by looking at him?”

That put a smile on my face, but I try not to let it show in my voice, “I trust him to kill anything that tries to touch me. I just don’t know if I trust that he won’t disappear while he does it.”

“Then stay ahead of the fire. And if you need to burn it down, you call me. Don’t wait until it’s ash.”

“I won’t.”

We hang up.