Page 24

SIXTEEN

Killian

I made coffee. For everyone, not just Jamie, though I poured his first.

He looked ill, exhausted, slouched in the office chair next to Caleb. I tossed him a protein bar, too. He scowled at me, but the last thing I needed was him passing out on me. I’d aftercare his ass until he accepted it.

He grumbled his thanks, eyes narrowed as if he were suspicious of me being nice, then tore the wrapper with his teeth and devoured it in record time. I’d never seen anyone eat like that.

Sonya caught my eye, cocked an eyebrow, and I gave her a short nod. She slipped out and returned twenty minutes later with a paper bag from the café down the block. Breakfast sandwiches were greasy, hot, and loaded with enough calories to keep Jamie upright.

He didn’t say much, but I caught how his shoulders relaxed a little as he bit into one.

From the corner, I heard him mutter into his phone. “Hey, it’s me. I need a day.” His tone was too formal for Rio. That meant Enzo, maybe Logan. Possibly Robbie, though everyone treated him with the kind of caution usually reserved for explosives.

With good reason.

Robbie had cracked this whole thing open.

Half the intel on the wall behind me came from the chaos in that man’s head.

We had names, lines, arrows, photographs, account details, human movements—Mitchell’s picture marked with a thick black cross, judged and sentenced already—and above him, two names: Kessler and Lassiter.

Lassiter was dirty. We knew that now. The man had his fingers in too many pies, while pretending to care about justice and law. But Kessler? That was murkier.

To all appearances, Kessler, a billionaire businessman, was clean—no aliases, no shell companies, no obvious leverage points.

But Mitchell had named him. And Robbie, when we asked, described a man who fit Kessler to a T, in terms of height and the smug way he smiled as if he knew he’d never get caught.

Still, Robbie hadn’t given us anything solid on Kessler.

And then there was Emmerson Dran, regional director of the FBI, who’d been on the payroll at fifty thousand a month, and had somehow kept it hidden. Not to mention his brother Samuel, whom we had data on proving he washed dirty money.

It was like watching mold on a wall, and every one of the past seven days since we’d taken the intel from Robbie and Mitchell’s computer, the network had grown.

Every new name pointed us back to the same central sources: Lassiter and Kessler.

Everything that hurt stemmed from them. Everything broken could be traced to a decision Lassiter had made, a deal he’d backed, a name he’d erased in court.

We were on the verge of shutting Lassiter down for good. We had enough to burn him in court and ruin him in public.

But Kessler was trickier. He was the kind of man who didn’t need blood on his hands to be the one pulling the strings. Clean. Silent. Dangerous. Too fucking rich to get caught.

I hated not knowing what his game was .

“What are we doing with Lassiter?” Caleb asked on my side.

“What did the club laptop and the memory sticks show?”

I’d been in court the last few days, and I was missing a lot of what they’d discovered, only seeing the headlines and not the meat of it all.

Also, there was the small matter of Jamie turning up at my place every evening, and things had slipped.

I couldn’t keep this up when people out there needed to be destroyed.

“Evidence that the club’s owner was paying Lassiter, no links to Kessler.”

Fucking Kessler.

“Okay, here’s what we’re doing,” I turned to face the room.

Sonya stopped typing, Caleb watched me, but Jamie stared at his lap, and at the remains of the sandwich sitting there.

Okay, so he might not have eyes on me, but he was listening.

“The only way to crack Kessler is to get intel from Lassiter. So I call him, and we meet.”

Jamie’s chin lifted. Was he worried about that? Or pissed I’d be in the company of someone he wanted to erase? What did I care?

“I’ll tell him we found what he was looking for, in that concerned I’m-working-for-you way, and we see what shakes out. ”

“I don’t like that,” Caleb muttered.

Sonya nodded in agreement, and Jamie said nothing. With eyes on him, I called Lassiter, and he answered on the third ring.

“McKendrick?”

“I have some information for you. We need to talk.”

“Talk,” he repeated.

“Just talk. You’re paying me not to judge what my team found.”

There was a pause, and “Same place, an hour?”

He hung up.

Jamie stared at the screen as if it might blink back at him, and the silence between us twisted tight. I should’ve eased him into this, should’ve built a bridge before dropping him into the abyss. But I hadn’t. I’d thrown it all down like a gauntlet, and now the fallout was coming.

Countdown to detonation: five… four… three…

And God help me, I deserved the blast.

“You’re working for Lassiter!” Jamie yelled, his voice cracking with fury as he shoved me back a step. His whole body was tense, vibrating with rage, his eyes wild. “Are you playing us?”

I caught his wrists before he could shove me again, gripping tighter this time. His pulse thudded under my fingers.

“I’m playing him,” I growled, jaw tight. “I’m leaving.”

“The hell you are,” he snarled, jerking away. But I moved fast, grabbing his arms and dragging him with me. He resisted hard, heels skidding on the floor, his free hand punching at my shoulder.

“Let go of me!”

“Not until you shut the fuck up and listen!”

He struggled the whole way, throwing his weight back, but I muscled him forward until we were nose-to-nose with the board. I shoved him lightly, enough to make him stumble the last step and land in front of the mess of names, photos, and red marker lines.

“Look,” I snapped. “Look at this. These are the names of people Robbie gave us. Victims. Dead or missing or broken. Every one of them matters. I’m doing this for them. And for him. For Robbie.”

Jamie stood rigid, chest heaving, fists clenched at his sides. I saw the fire in him flicker, burning bright—then shift. Rage gave way to something colder. His shoulders sagged.

“You need to let me do what I have to,” I said, blasting through the static between us and making him listen. “You want to stop Lassiter? Then, let me get close enough to drive the knife in. Trust me.”

His eyes flicked to mine, and his jaw worked as if he had more to say but couldn’t find the words. The silence stretched, brittle and heavy.

He didn’t speak.

But he didn’t stop me either when I left ten minutes later, wearing a brand new recording device, this time in a pocket square.

I hoped he’d be there when I got back.

When I stalked into the restaurant and over to the table where Lassiter was waiting, I didn’t sit. I tossed the file onto the table between us like a challenge. The digital forensics were enough to put him away if anyone gave a damn.

“Recovered the laptop,” I said. My voice was ice. “Encrypted. Buried. But not deep enough.”

Lassiter’s expression didn’t flicker. “Who had it?”

I leaned forward. “Does it matter? It came into our possession. That’s the part you should focus on.”

He steepled his fingers. “You said if you found something, you’d hear me out?—”

“And I will because it’s your dime. Your name’s on there. Directly tied to money movements. Millions. Offshore routes. Dead ends and closed doors. So go ahead and tell me a story. Just make sure it’s a good one.”

He blinked slowly, calculating. I didn’t break eye contact.

Then, he smiled and sat back in his chair as though we were discussing golf scores instead of federal crimes.

“You know how it works, Killian. I invest in opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities have complicated histories. Shell companies. Silent partners. I don’t vet every name on every account.

That’s what I pay accountants and lawyers for. ”

He shrugged, all faux innocence. “If someone used my name to grease wheels I wasn’t aware of? That’s unfortunate. But not illegal. Not unless you can prove I knew. And we both know you can’t.”

I stepped in, close enough to cast a shadow across the pristine table.

“You think I care about legal? This isn’t about a court case, Lassiter.

It’s about the fact that every single file in that laptop leads straight to you, and if I cover that up, I’m not just complicit.

I’m implicated.” I dropped my voice, low and sharp.

“You might be used to politics, but I don’t work for you.

If I go down, I’m dragging every last one of you with me.

So don’t give me your investor bullshit.

Give me the truth. Or give me a reason not to burn this whole empire to the ground. ”

Lassiter didn’t flinch. He leaned in, his smile tightening into something more serpentine.

“Burn it down if you want. But be sure you’re not standing too close when the flames hit.

You think you’re the only one with something to lose?

I’ve spent twenty years weaving threads through every corridor of power you can imagine.

Politicians. Judges. Bankers. People you shake hands with every day.

People who smile for the camera and shake in private.

You torch this, and it won’t be me who burns first.”

He picked up the file, flipped it open, eyes skimming the contents as if they bored him. “You’re smart, Killian. Smarter than this. So unless you’re ready to die on a hill no one remembers, I’d think twice about where you plant your flag.”

Then, he set the file down, gave me a look as if we were two old friends at a crossroads. “Be careful, son. Some doors, once opened, can’t be closed.”

I let the silence stretch between us for a beat longer than was comfortable. Then, I nodded, slow, like maybe—just maybe—he’d managed to rattle something loose .

“You think I haven’t been careful? You think I haven’t already paid for every door I opened?”

I turned the file back toward me, flipping a page as though I needed the words to give me courage, as though I was wavering.

“It worries me,” I said, quieter now, eyes still on the page.

“That Marcus Kessler is named in here, too.” Lassiter flinched.

“That’s not a name that just shows up by accident.

So, how much is this worth to me? And I don’t mean petty shit like blackmail; I want a real percentage of the money you’re pulling in. ”

Lassiter’s eyes flickered, a momentary crack in the mask. Did he see me as the same kind of bad guy as him? If he did, then I needed a freaking Oscar for my acting efforts when all I wanted to do was call 911 right now. Strain tightened his jaw before he forced a smile.

“You want money? I can get you money,” he said, voice low, oily. “I know who you are under the suits, Killian. Street rat. Prostitute. But I can make you more than that. I can make you powerful. Protected. Paid.”

He leaned back again, the offer laid out like poison wrapped in gold .

I stared at him for a long moment, then pulled out the chair and sat across from him.

“Now we’re talking.”

But inside, my stomach turned. I hated the way the words tasted coming out of my mouth, hated how natural it felt to slip into the role he expected of me. The kid from the streets who’d do anything for money. The fixer who knew when to take a deal instead of making noise.

Let him think I was cracking. Let him believe I could be bought. That was the point because if I wanted him to confess, to lower his guard, I had to play this right. Let him think I’d crawl into his pocket.

I wasn’t here for power. I was here for justice.

For Robbie. For the ones no one remembered.

And if I had to play the Devil’s game to get it, so be it.

This wasn’t only business, it was personal.

Robbie’s fear haunted me—the photos I’d seen of him when he’d first arrived at Redcars, bloodied, terrified, small beneath the weight of what they’d done to him.

Redcars wasn’t just a garage. It was a line in the sand.

A place where survivors became something more than victims. It was the only thing standing between men like Robbie and monsters like Lassiter.

And if I let Lassiter walk, if I let him keep poisoning everything he touched, then what the hell had any of us bled for?

Robbie believed in me. Rio did. Enzo, Caleb, all of them. And I’d drag Lassiter into the light kicking and screaming if I had to. Because Redcars was built to fight men like him, and I was done playing the good cop.

He wanted a fixer. Then he’d get one.

But I’d be the last one he ever tried to buy.