Page 65 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

Her lips are swollen where I bit them. The faint smear of my blood—someone else’s blood—marks her jaw like I branded her without thinking. She hasn’t wiped it away, though she could. That small omission is a victory, one she doesn’t realize she’s given me.

Lydia has the good sense to step back toward the couch, giving us the appearance of privacy while keeping herself within earshot. She’s never out of reach, not truly, and that suits me. For all her cynicism, she knows the kind of night I’ve come from.

She can read it on me the way surgeons read a chest opened on a table: the tremor in my hands, the iron in the air, the rhythm of someone who has just broken another man’s last minute of life.

Mara looks at me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m salvation or the trap itself. Her chest rises, uneven.

Her hair is twisted back in a rough knot now, Lydia’s handiwork no doubt, and there’s something about that practical change that unsettles me more than her trembling. She’s been touched by someone else’s instruction. Not possession, but influence. And I can taste my own anger at it.

“You’ve been busy,” Lydia says, voice dry as sandpaper. She doesn’t even pretend it’s a question.

I don’t look at her. Mara is all I see. “Two men,” I answer again. “Both were stationed in that Civic. Both waiting for me. Neither alive anymore.”

Mara flinches at the words, but not like she should. Not with revulsion. It’s something uglier, something she’ll try to bury but I catch anyway: relief.

“They were waiting for you ?” she asks, voice cracking.

“Yes.” I step closer, slow enough to watch her pupils expand.

Lydia makes a sound under her breath, half laugh, half scoff. “Told her she’s bait.”

The word tastes like poison. My jaw locks. “Careful,” I tell her.

She shrugs, unbothered, scrolling her feed. “Not saying anything you don’t know.”

But Mara—Mara doesn’t look away. “So they knew how to get you because of me.”

“No,” I correct. My voice sharpens, meant for her ears alone. “They thought they could use you. That is not the same thing as you being responsible.”

Her shoulders twitch. “But it works,” she whispers.

The word digs into me.

I close the space until she’s nearly pressed against the counter. I can smell the clean wetness of her hair, the ghost of sugar, the metallic stain still clinging to my hands. I want to smear all of it across her until there’s nothing left but me.

“They think they’re clever for spotting my pattern,” I tell her, low and certain. “But they’re children at war. They have no idea what they’ve stepped into. I don’t hunt because I’m provoked, Mara. I hunt because I decide someone’s time is done. And theirs is.”

Her throat works around a swallow. Her hand trembles. She doesn’t move away. She doesn’t tell me to stop. Instead—softly, dangerously—she asks, “And if they keep coming?”

“Then I keep burying them.”

Lydia clears her throat from the couch. “That’s a sustainable plan,” she mutters. “Stack corpses until the street runs out of shovels.”

“Stay out of this,” I snap without looking at her.

But Mara hears it, feels the edges in my tone, and she doesn’t blink. She just watches me like she’s standing on a ledge, deciding whether to jump or let me push her.

I lean in, voice meant only for her. “You are not bait. You are mine. And anyone who mistakes the two will not live long enough to repeat it.”

Lydia shifts her weight on the couch, tablet balanced in her palm. She isn’t fidgeting—Lydia never fidgets—but there’s a tightness in her mouth I don’t often see. She swipes through one feed, then another, as if searching for a screen that can hold her steady.

I watch her. Long enough that she feels it. Long enough that the air thickens between us.

“You’ve been sitting on something,” I say. Not a question.

Her jaw flickers. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I rarely like anything,” I reply. “Show me.”

She exhales through her nose, a sharp, almost reluctant sound, and turns the tablet toward me. The feeds collapse to a log window. A chat thread. Masked header. Unfamiliar routing. She taps a single line.

Kinley: Rotation confirmed. He’s moving her. Same pattern as last time. You’ll have a window.

My teeth grind. “When?”

“An hour ago. He routed it through enough layers to bury it, but the signature is his. I checked twice.”

The image of Kinley flashes through my mind—the facility raid, his timing, the way he slipped in after the smoke cleared like he belonged there. Too convenient. Too practiced.

My conversation with Dom comes to mind, everything tying back to Kinley.

“He wasn’t dropped into our laps,” I say. “He placed himself.”

Mara stiffens beside the counter. She understands enough to go still. Her hand finds the edge of the stone top. She doesn’t speak.

My pulse hardens. “Source.”

“Courier relay. No subscriber info. Bounced through four shells, two local, two offshore.” Lydia angles the tablet closer to me. “The phrase ‘window’ has been in three messages over the last week. All tied to Kinley’s device. Same grammar tick. Same punctuation. Proof enough?” Lydia asks.

I make myself breathe once. “Yes.”

Mara’s eyes lift to mine. There’s no triumph there. Just an ache that says betrayal tastes the same no matter who serves it. “What does he get for it?” she asks, voice thin. “Money? Leverage? A second life?”

“None of that matters,” I say.

“It matters to me,” she says.

I hear it. I ignore it. I reach for the phone on the console and scroll to Kinley’s name. I hit call. He picks up on the second ring.

“Elias.”

I listen to the air around his word. Too bright. Traffic. He’s near the river or a highway.

“Dock Nine,” I say. “Twenty minutes.”

A pause. “Copy.”

I hang up. Lydia is already moving. She tosses a small black fob to me. “New key to the other SUV. I want mine where it is, in case we need a second exit. I’ll stay with her.”

Mara steps in front of me before I reach the door. She looks like she did when I came in from the kill. Fragile and burning at the same time. “If you’re wrong,” she says, “and you kill him, can you live with it?”

I cup her jaw. My thumb finds the smear of blood I left there and clears it with one stroke. “I am not wrong.”

Her eyes search mine. There’s a plea hiding behind the anger. Not for mercy. For certainty. I give her what I have.

“I’ll come back,” I say. “You’ll be here.”

She nods once. It looks like surrender. It feels like a promise.

I leave before I put my hands on her again and lose the thread.

The hall is cold. The elevator moves too slow. The garage lights smear against metal. Lydia’s fob unlocks the second SUV with a blink. I slide in and start the engine. The city opens and I cut through it, eating lanes, every light a signal to move faster.

Dock Nine sits under the expressway. The river drags past, brown and patient. Containers stack like tombs. Wind ships grit into my face when I step out. The air tastes like rust and oil.

Kinley waits by a yellow bollard in a dark hoodie and cap. Hands empty. Shoulders square. He looks exactly like loyalty until you learn the language of tells.

“Elias,” he says.

I stop five paces away. “You chose a poor place to confess.”

“I didn’t confess.” He lifts both hands. “I came because you asked.”

Odd choice of words.

“You have one chance to make a sound I believe,” I say. “Use it.”

His mouth tightens. His eyes flick past my left shoulder, to nothing. Bad habit. Men check exits when their lies thin out.

“I didn’t give them Mara,” he says. “I gave them you.”

Behind my ribs, something old and violent stretches. “Explain.”

“Vale’s people reached out after the Volker facility hit. They said you were in their way and that they could make a mess if they wanted. They wanted dates. Times. Patterns. Nothing that touched her. Just you.”

“You don’t get to claim that like it’s mercy.”

He swallows. “I did it so they’d keep distance from the clinic. From her. I didn’t sell locations. Only lagged intel. Two hours old. Dead by the time they read it.”

“You wrote ‘window,’ Kinley.” I say the word like a knife. “That is not old. That is an invitation.”

He flinches. “It was supposed to scare you off. To make you change pattern.”

I take two steps in, close enough to see the shave burn along his jaw. “You tried to manage me.”

“I tried to protect her,” he snaps. The mask cracks. “You act like you own the only right way to keep someone breathing. I did the math. I kept it tidy. I—”

“You fed a man who wants her.”

“Better me than someone you don’t control,” he says, desperate now. “I could shape it. I could dull it.”

“You can’t dull a knife with a paper map,” I say. “You can only cut the wrong thing first.”

His throat works. He looks smaller. The wind slams the flag on the far crane into a wild rattle. Somewhere, a container door thuds.

“Who else?” I ask. “Names.”

“No one.”

“You’re not smart enough to be alone in this.”

“Lydia,” he blurts, and then curses himself for it. “She saw some of the messages. She didn’t stop me.”

I file the lie where it belongs. In the trash. “Try again.”

He sags. He licks his lips. “Vale asked for proof you wouldn’t change your guard pattern. He sent two testers in the Civic. You took the bait. That was the only confirmation he wanted. I gave them nothing else. I swear it.”

He’s pleading now. It doesn’t suit him. Kinley has always been a man who follows lines. He is not built to argue for his life.

“Where is Vale?” I ask.

Kinley’s jaw moves three times before sound comes out. “Union Mill. Top floor. Private office in the freight tower. Four men inside. Two in the service corridor. Elevator needs a key. His.”

“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.