Page 70 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

I walk to the table and set the stolen clipboard on it. He watches my hands. He enjoys watching anything.

“You took Vale’s ring,” he says, amused. “He kept rubbing the tan line like it meant something. I told him it didn’t.”

I say nothing. Talking will not make this cleaner.

He gestures to the map. “You kill me, and this keeps moving. You know that. I know that. You’re a precise man. You don’t like wasted motion.”

“I like endings,” I say as I step further into the room.

“Then you should like this,” he answers, and taps the map right where the freeway splits. “You leave this room, and a van will hit your street three minutes after you arrive. You might be fast enough to stop the first man. The second will still make the door.”

He wants me to look rattled. He wants me to ask how. I do neither. I look at his hands. No tremor. I look at his pupils. Pinning a touch. Stimulants or the pleasure of a script he’s rehearsed.

“You think I’m lying,” he says, pleased.

“I think you’re talking,” I answer, closing the gap between me and the screen.

He laughs. Real laugh. He enjoys the hour. “I am. I won’t be when you bleed out on my floor.”

The man with the sub-gun starts to raise it. I raise my hand and show them my palm like I’m surrendering. Their eyes go to the hand. People always go to the hand. My other hand pulls the cord from the back of the screen and kills the light.

Dark wraps the room. Someone curses. The shotgun man steps where he shouldn’t.

The table corner bites his thigh. I slide left and fire twice, center mass, then pivot and fire once more where the inhale told me the second man stood.

The sub-gun clatters. The shotgun falls and discharges into the ceiling. Plaster dust rains down like chalk.

The light from the hall stripe punches a thin silver band across the floor. Volker freezes for half a beat, then reaches for the map on the wall like it can protect him. I cross the room and slam him into it so hard the frame cracks. The safe behind the map thumps against the drywall like a heart.

“You talk too much,” I say.

He claws at my forearm and grins anyway. “And you came alone.”

“Absolutely.”

He drives his knee up toward my thigh. I ride it and put him on the table. The marker rolls to the floor and leaves a black smear. He reaches for it out of habit. Useless.

The door to the hall opens a fraction. A curious head. I toss the shotgun into the strip of light. It hits the floor with a boom. The head vanishes, and a voice yells for help. That is the noise I planned to use. Panic starves coordination.

I put my forearm on Volker’s throat and ease the pressure until he wheezes and stops pretending he can chew glass.

“You put a camera on my street,” I say.

“I put five,” he chokes, eyes shining with the kind of joy that only men who think they cannot die own. “And a microphone under your girl’s kitchen window. She makes small noises when she sleeps. Does she know that?”

My hands want to close. I don’t let them. I want names, not silence. I shift weight and let him drink air he does not deserve.

“Which van?” I ask. “Plate.”

“You really think I’ll tell you?” he says, beaming. “You’re better at asking when you can show them a blade.”

I show him my empty hand. He shakes his head like I’m boring him. Then I crack two knuckles into the safe door behind the map. The hollow metal rings. He flinches. He is not afraid for his life yet. He is afraid of what is inside.

“Code,” I say.

He laughs again. Still enjoying himself, even with blood on his teeth. “You won’t shoot it open. You might hit something that stains your conscience.”

“I don’t carry one,” I say. “Code.”

He spits at my cheek and misses. “Take your time. The van does not need me.”

I hear boots in the hall. Two sets. Running in a pattern that says they don’t know if they are brave.

I pick the subgun off the floor without looking and point it into Volker’s chest. His hands grab it just to keep it from breaking his ribs.

I take the marker off the floor and jam it between his fingers and the trigger guard.

“Pull,” I say.

“What?”

“Pull,” I repeat, and lean just enough that the muzzle points at the window. Men in the hall see the barrel. They drop. I release the weapon. It clatters away. Volker flails for it, off balance now, breath hitching like he climbed five flights.

“You make a mess,” he pants. “And for what? One girl. One small woman who will leave you when she understands what you are.”

“She understands already,” I say.

He bares his teeth. “She thinks she does. Wait until you come home with a piece of me under your nails. Wait until she smells me on your skin.”

I pull him off the table and walk him backward into the safe so hard the drywall cracks. Dust coats his hair. He coughs and tries a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. They are wide now. He finally sees me.

“Code,” I say again.

He tries to headbutt. I ride it and let him hit my shoulder. He groans. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes turn deep.

“Eight-four-three-one,” he gasps. “You won’t like what you find.”

“I never do.”

I spin the dial and hear the tumblers settle.

The door pops. Inside: cash bands, two passports, a hard drive wrapped in a towel, a fountain pen that belonged to someone who knew how to write, and a velvet tray with small items that never belonged to him.

A thin gold bracelet sized for a girl. A ring with a cracked stone.

A black hair tie that still holds a kink from being worn. He keeps trophies. Of course he does.

He watches my face, hoping for a crack. I give him nothing.

From the hall, metal scrapes tile. They are moving the table to use as cover. Good. Let them.

“You touched the wrong woman,” I say.

“I never touched her,” he answers. “Not yet.”

“Then you do not get the mercy I give men who have.”

He starts to laugh again. It breaks in the middle when my palm meets his mouth and takes the sound away.

His teeth snap uselessly against the heel of my hand. His laugh turns into a wet grunt. I shove his head against the steel lip of the safe until the noise dies. His eyes roll, then focus again, wild now, because he feels it—his margin shrinking.

“Noise is your only weapon,” I tell him. “And I don’t let enemies keep weapons.”

He claws at my wrist. I let him. It feeds the part of him that still believes in chance. I’ve never been one for gambling.

Boots scrape closer in the hall. One voice yells something about “moving in.” Another answers with a curse. They’ll stall because fear does that. Good. Fear keeps them from charging while I finish the piece that matters.

I drag Volker upright and shove him into the chair. His body slumps, then lurches. I press the marker into his palm and wrap his fingers around it like a child learning to grip. “Sign something for me.”

He tries to sneer. I push the cap into his cheek until it leaves a line of ink. His jaw tightens. The bravado flickers. I could almost thank him for showing me the crack.

“You keep souvenirs,” I say. My free hand gestures toward the safe. “Whose bracelet? Whose ring? Whose hair?”

His face changes. Just a twitch—but I see it. He knows which one I mean. Which girl.

“That bracelet,” I press. “Name.”

“Why should I?” His lips curve. “You’ll kill me either way.”

“Yes.” I lean in, voice steady. “But names decide if I do it fast.”

He shifts, eyes darting to the hall. He thinks help will come. He thinks I’ll need to leave him breathing. He is wrong twice.

“Lena,” he whispers finally, hoarse. “Sixteen. From Hamburg. She screamed so sweet.”

My pulse doesn’t jump. It sinks, steady and colder. “Thank you.”

The marker splits under my hand as I drive it into his eye.

He shrieks once. The sound is brief, clipped by my hand closing his jaw shut.

He thrashes, legs kicking against the carpet, until I fold him into the desk, one knee pinning his ribs.

His body jerks, then weakens. His fists flutter like paper. Then stop.

I leave the marker where it sits, jutting like a crude flag.

The voices in the hall shout again. One orders the other to push forward. I let them. They charge through the door, table screeching across the tile, barrels swinging high. Too high. Their mistake.

I already have the submachine gun braced. Two bursts. Their knees vanish under them. The table slams into the wall. Their weapons scatter. Blood pools fast, hot and loud, crawling into the grout lines. One moans. I let him. He won’t see the sunrise.

I step back to the safe. The hard drive slides into my coat. The passports follow. The cash I ignore. The trophies I pocket one by one—not for me, but because they don’t belong rotting in his den. They’ll be burned or buried, given back to silence.

Volker slumps sideways in the chair, head lolling, marker still jutting. His body stinks already. It’s not death. It’s the rot that lived in him long before.

I don’t pray. I don’t spit. I don’t grant last words.

The phone in my pocket buzzes once. Lydia.

Her text: House steady. Mara is steady. No street heat yet.

I answer with one word: Done.

Then I look back at Volker one last time. His smile is gone. His trophies are gone. His name will rot with him.

I leave the safe open, its guts hollow. A warning for whoever thinks they can fill it again.

The hall smells like copper and fear. I walk through it clean.

The freight stairwell hums with dying echoes. Every step down smells of rust and gunpowder, a flavor of endings. My hand rides the rail, streaking it with someone else’s blood. I don’t bother to wipe it.

The stairwell empties into a side corridor lined with rusted lockers. A figure crouches there, trying to make himself invisible. Jori.

His hands tremble around a half-empty pistol he hasn’t fired. His eyes find mine and flood with the same truth I’ve seen in every pawn abandoned by the man who moved them: he knows Vale never cared. He knows Volker used him like a spare part.