Page 69 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

Mara’s hand slips from mine when I leave the bed.

She doesn’t wake, or if she does, she pretends.

The sheet rises with her breathing, her lashes casting faint shadows against her cheeks.

She looks untouched by the night, though my teeth left marks and my hands mapped every inch of her until she broke under me.

She’s not untouched. She’ll never be again.

The clock on the wall says it’s almost dawn. Pale light leaks through the curtains, thinning out the edges of the room. I dress without sound, layering black against black, steel against skin. The knives are where they belong. The gun sits heavy against my ribs. Every part of me is accounted for.

Except her.

I stand at the doorway longer than I should.

Lydia waits outside. I can feel it, but I don’t move yet.

Mara shifts on the bed, her thigh bare where the sheet slides, and I want to go back and wake her with my mouth between her legs, leave her undone one more time before I leave her with the storm I promised.

But Volker waits.

And if I don’t cut him out now, he’ll send someone who doesn’t stop at shadows and warnings. Someone who won’t wait in a Civic. Someone who will carve his name into her life the way Caleb once tried.

That thought makes the decision for me.

I step into the hall. Lydia leans against the wall, tablet tucked under her arm, hair pulled back into something that makes her face look sharper than usual.

“You look like a funeral,” she says.

“It will be.”

Her mouth tilts. Not a smile, not really. “Where?”

“Dockside. Warehouse grid. The files from Vale’s flash gave me enough to stitch the trail; it gave me all the information I needed about their operations. Volker’s been moving shipments out under a blind shell, a name borrowed from Vale’s offshore. He thinks it keeps him invisible.”

“And?”

I take the brass key from my pocket, the one I took off Kinley’s body before the river ate his scent. It catches the thin light. “It doesn’t.”

She studies me. “You’re going alone?”

“Yes.”

Her jaw tightens. “And Mara?”

“She stays.”

“With me?”

I nod once. “You’ll keep her breathing until I’m back.”

Lydia exhales through her teeth. “She won’t like that.”

“She’ll survive it.”

For the first time, Lydia doesn’t mock. She just watches me, sharp eyes cutting for a weakness she won’t find. “Volker doesn’t fold like Vale. He plays with knives and people, same weight in his hands. You cut his head, his network will thrash.”

“I’ll cut deep enough they don’t grow another.”

Her gaze lingers. She’s calculating whether she believes me, whether she cares. Then she shifts the tablet under her arm. “I’ll hold the house. You text when it’s finished. If you don’t, I burn the floor under his name and pull her out myself.”

“Fair.”

I step outside. The SUV’s parked where I left it, its paint cold under the trees. No headlights out here. No road in sight. Just the dark before dawn and a perimeter that hasn’t shifted. Clean. Still. Silent. Exactly how I like it.

I slip behind the wheel, and I drive off.

The water grows closer with every block, the air turning sharper, tinged with salt and rust. Dock cranes loom in the distance, spines of iron against the rising sun. Volker hides where he thinks the noise of commerce makes him invisible. He doesn’t understand that noise makes it easier for me.

When I kill him, it won’t echo.

The pier lot is half full. Forklifts sleep in crooked rows.

A gull drags something dead along a rail and gives up when the wind takes it.

I idle two blocks out, watch the shift rotate on my dash cam, then roll past once to map faces.

Four outside. Two at the loading bay doors, one smoking behind a stack of pallets, one in the shack pretending the clipboard matters.

The bay is stamped with a fake shipper code I saw on Vale’s USB. Same font. Same lie.

I park in a service alley and take the back on foot.

The fence has a weak panel where trucks kiss it on tight turns. I slide through and pause in the shadow of a stack of cold containers. The metal ticks as it warms. I listen. Boots on concrete. A radio squawk. A cough that ends in a curse. Nothing else.

I move.

The smoker never checks his corners. He leans with his back to the pallets like he owns the hour.

I take the cigarette out of his fingers, press it to his forearm, and catch his jaw when he starts to yelp.

The choke is clean and fast. I set him down behind the pallets and take his badge.

His wallet has a photograph of a woman and a child I do not know.

I put it back. He keeps his name. He loses his shift.

The shack has a door with a cheap lock. I rap once.

The guard mumbles for me to hold. I don’t.

The door gives when my shoulder meets it.

He looks up from an old monitor with a split screen.

He goes for the drawer. I toss the badge onto the desk.

It skitters and spins. His eyes track it by instinct.

My fist meets his throat and the back of his head kisses the filing cabinet. He drops like a bundle of rags.

On the wall, a whiteboard lists lanes and times.

A code at the bottom left matches the numbers on Vale’s index.

Same ghost company. I snap a photo and pocket the shack keys.

The monitor feed shows the interior bay: two men on stools, a third counting crates with a tablet, a fourth leaning against a pillar pretending to be bored.

Off to the right, a door painted the same gray as the wall.

Windowless. Wrong handle for a closet. That’s where Volker nests or where the hall to him starts.

The forklift key hangs from a hook. I hang it on my ring. Noise is an option now if I want it.

I step back into the yard and hug the container line until I reach the blind corner under the loading dock stairs.

The metal has withstood a hundred storms. It smells like rain from last week and the oil that never got wiped.

The bay doors sit four feet above me, slatted.

I can see two pairs of ankles through the gap.

One taps a rhythm against the dock plate.

Impatient. Good. Impatient people miss. Calm ones kill.

The stairs creak under my weight. I make them creak once. Twice. Enough to belong. The nearer man turns his head, sees a badge on my chest and a clipboard in my hand that I took from the shack and didn’t need until now. He relaxes the way amateurs do when they spot a uniform.

“Union drop?” he asks.

“Schedule change,” I say. “Truck in twenty. Volker wants doors clear.”

He groans and stands. “Volker can clear his own—”

I hit him in the ribs where the vest doesn’t cover and catch his temple on the way down. The second man has time to widen his eyes. The clipboard edges cut his nose when I drive it into his face. He sways. I guide him to the floor and let him meet it.

Two down inside. Two more across the bay. Sliding door on the right cracks open, and a real problem steps through it. Jacket that actually fits. Pistol with a light. He scans the room out of habit, not suspicion, and clocks both men on the floor. His mouth opens.

I shoot the light off his pistol before he can raise it.

He flinches at the flash and fire. I cross the gap and slam his hand into the jamb until the gun goes slack.

He swings. I take it on the shoulder, put my knee into his thigh, and ride him to the ground.

His head clips the doorstop. He goes still enough to use.

I drag him into the crack he came from and ease the door shut with my boot.

The corridor beyond smells like dust and printer ink.

Offices on the left, two with blinds that don’t close right.

The first is empty except for a dead plant and a monitor loop.

The second holds a thin man with a headset who keeps saying the word “dispatch” as if it makes him belong.

He sees me and yanks the cord. I shake my head.

He nods like I’ve convinced him. I take the phone off his desk and remove the battery.

He puts both hands flat on the wood and stares at a coffee ring like it knows how to save him.

“Where,” I say.

“Conference room,” he answers at once. “End of hall. Corner. He’s got the big screen on. He never turns it off.”

“Security?”

He swallows. “Two near him. Two in the server closet. No one on the roof. We got pigeons instead of men.”

“What’s the code for that door?”

“Four-nine-one-three.” His gaze flicks to my shoulder holster. “You aren’t law.”

“No.”

He nods like that’s better. “He keeps a safe behind the map.”

“What map?”

“You’ll see it.”

I leave him his tongue and continue down the hall.

Fluorescent tubes buzz overhead. The floor tile carries sound if you stomp. I don’t. The server closet hums on my right. I hear a chair scrape faintly against the floor.

The corner room has frosted glass with a stripe cut clear at eye level for people who like watching without being seen. A blue glow leaks out under the door and paints a thin line across the tile. I angle to the far side and test the handle. Locked. I type the code. Four. Nine. One. Three.

The latch clicks. The hum of the screen gets louder when the seal breaks.

I step in and close the door behind me.

Volker stands at the far end of a long table, eyes on a wall-sized map that shows the river and the roads in a web of routes.

He hears the door, glances over his shoulder, and smiles like we’re late to a meeting.

His hair is cut to government length. His suit is the color of bad weather. He holds a marker like a scalpel.

“Eidolon. Or should I say Elias,” he says, as if he picked the time. “I was beginning to wonder when you’d stop dancing in circles.”

Two men flank the screen—one with a compact submachine gun he looks too eager to fire, the other gripping a pump-action shotgun like he doesn’t realize how useless it is in a room this size.