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eighteen

The safe house was too quiet without his brothers and teammates filling the space.

Elliot sat at the wide dining table, fingers drumming against the surface as he scanned the monitors in front of him. If he didn’t think it’d distract too much, he’d turn on some music—something loud and fast to match the adrenaline thrumming through his veins.

But he needed to stay sharp. Needed to catch every whisper, every rustle coming through their comms.

Everything was running smoothly.

For now.

Across the room, Benji was twitching like a junkie two days into withdrawal. The guy had been fidgety since everyone else left yesterday, but tonight, it was worse. His knee bounced. His fingers tapped out an erratic rhythm on the arm of the couch. His eyes kept darting toward the door like he was expecting someone to bust in at any moment.

It was grating .

Thank fuck his shift was almost over. After the gala, the kid would be Dom’s problem for the next twenty-four hours.

“Hey, man,” Elliot called out, trying to keep his tone light. “You need to chill. You’re making me nervous just looking at you.”

Benji huffed. “I’m making you nervous? Dude, you’ve been staring at those screens for, like, an hour without moving. It’s weird. Like—do you even blink?”

Elliot groaned. He shouldn’t have opened the door to conversation because now Benji wasn’t going to stop.

“Swear to God, you’re just sitting there like some… I dunno, creepy robot. Or, like, one of those snipers in a movie that never talks until the last five minutes. It’s unsettling.” He shifted, wincing. “And another thing—who the hell designed these safe houses? Because this couch is a war crime. I swear, I’ve sat on cinder blocks that were softer.”

Elliot sent him a flat look. “Unless you’ve got something useful to say, shut the fuck up and let me work.”

Benji rolled his eyes and flopped back against the cushions, but his knee kept bouncing. He shot another glance at the door.

Then—a chime.

“The hell?” Elliot was on his feet instantly, gun drawn before the second chime sounded. His pulse didn’t spike—he was too well-trained for that—but his muscles tensed as he signaled for Benji to stay put as he moved to check the door cam.

No one was supposed to know this place existed.

Benji, however, had the audacity to look sheepish. “Uh… okay, so, before you, like… freak out… I may have ordered a pizza.”

“You what? ”

He winced. “Look, man, I was hungry. And you sure as hell weren’t offering to cook me a five-star meal. Figured I’d make myself comfortable. Or as comfortable as I can on this couch.”

Elliot stared at him for a full five seconds, then he exhaled through his nose to quell the urge to throttle the guy.

“You dumb motherfucker,” he muttered before stalking toward the door.

He checked the cam. Sure enough, a teenager in a red uniform and a visor stood at the elevator, balancing a pizza box in one hand while scrolling through his phone with the other. No visible weapons. Nothing suspicious.

Still. Elliot wasn’t taking chances. He pointed at Benji. “Don’t fucking move.” Then he jabbed the elevator call button. The doors whispered open, and he stepped inside, keeping the gun down by his leg but visible.

When the doors opened in front of the delivery guy, the kid’s eyes went wide. He held out the pizza box. “Uh… p-pizza for Benji?”

Elliot scanned him and found nothing overtly threatening. Just a regular teenage kid. He grabbed the box and hit the door close button. He fumed the entire ride back up to the apartment.

“Eat your goddamn pizza,” he snapped, tossing the box onto Benji's lap.

Benji grinned. “You know, you should really work on your hospitality.”

Elliot ignored him, settling back into his chair as Benji flipped the box open and inhaled deeply.

“Jesus,” he moaned, lifting a slice like it was a religious experience. “This is what I needed.”

Elliot shook his head and returned to his spot at the table, setting his gun down beside the monitors. His focus zeroed in on the screens, back on the mission—until Benji, mouth full, shoved the pizza box under his nose.

“Want a slice?”

He was about to refuse—he didn’t eat on duty, and he sure as hell didn’t trust anything Benji ordered—but the smell of melted cheese and garlic hit his nose, and his stomach made a low, traitorous sound. Shit, he couldn’t remember the last time he ate something. And now that the thought had taken root, he couldn’t shake it.

“One,” he muttered, snatching a slice.

Benji smirked like he’d won something, but Elliot ignored it. He took a bite and—yeah, okay, it was good. He returned his attention to the screens.

That was when everything went to hell.

“ The fuck? ” Dom’s voice muttered over the comms.

Excitement rippled through the gala’s guests, and his stomach dropped like he’d just crested a roller coaster. Because there, standing in the middle of the gala, right beside that bastard Frost?—

Was Rue Bristow.

For a heartbeat, everything froze.

His chest locked up. Breath caught, stuck somewhere between a gasp and a curse.

His brain lagged behind, refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him.

Rue.

In the middle of the gala. Standing beside Frost.

The pieces didn’t fit. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t.

Then—

Terror. Fury. A sharp, brutal mix that shot through him like an electric pulse.

“Rue?!” His chair clattered back as he stood, heart hammering. “What the fuck is she doing there?!”

No one answered him. He barely heard anything beyond the blood rushing in his ears. He reached for his gun, ready to move—ready to go?—

Something was wrong.

His vision blurred, then snapped back too sharp. A moment of clarity, then—wrong again. The room lurched, a half-second delay between what he saw and what his body felt. His pulse slammed too hard, too fast, like he’d run a sprint, except he hadn’t moved.

A creeping, foreign sensation crawled under his skin, burrowing deep.

Move! His brain screamed the command, but his limbs weren’t listening.

Breath hitched. Too shallow.

Fingers tingled. His hands wouldn’t grip.

His skin burned, then went icy cold.

His first thought was Benji .

That slimy little shit—it had to be him.

Some kind of set-up. Some kind of betrayal. Some?—

But—

Benji was seizing.

His back arched violently, his entire body convulsing as foam bubbled from his lips. The pizza box slid from his limp fingers.

Not Benji.

It was the goddamn pizza.

Fuck.

He tried to reach for his phone, for his comms, but his muscles weren’t cooperating.

His knees buckled.

His stomach wrenched, twisting violently—painful, raw.

He gagged, choked—couldn’t stop it, didn’t try. He had to get it out.

But his lungs—his fucking lungs?—

They weren’t working.

His world blurred.

The last thing he saw before everything went black was Benji's body jerking violently beside him, his own heartbeat slowing in his ears.