Chapter 26
My chest was tight, but I didn’t crumble. I just stared at the empty chairs and let the truth burn clean through me.
“Loyalty,” I whispered to myself, “is perfume. Sweet, expensive, and fake. It fades when pressure rises.”
The walls felt heavier. The air was thick. My pulse was quiet but fast. Then my phone buzzed in my coat pocket.
Blocked number.
I almost didn’t answer. But something told me it wouldn’t be another ghost fleeing the battlefield
I pressed it to my ear.
And there he was.
“Danica,” Harvick said softly, as if the name still had rights in his mouth. “You win. You always fucking win. Just come home.”
stood still, gripping the back of Peter’s chair like I might break it.
He kept going.
‘I’ll marry you again. I don’t care if it’s in the same church I buried you in. You’re the only woman who ever made me feel like I had a soul.”
My eyes didn’t blink. I waited until the silence thickened, then replied slowly.
‘Go to hell.”
He breathed in like he’d expected that, but didn’t like the taste of it.
‘Then I’ll drag you with me.”
His voice dropped. Hard. Cold. I could almost feel the venom curl into the line.
‘You think you’re strong now?” he hissed. “Jeremiah is dead. You’re alone. No army. No brother. Just you and your ego playing a goddamn fantasy war.”
didn’t flinch. I walked to the window and looked out at the empty perimeter of my estate.
‘You killed the man who kept me alive. And now you want me to come back? You want to wear a ucking suit and say vows again like any of it ever mattered to you?”
He laughed. But it wasn’t joyful. It was low, broken, and hollow. “You think this is revenge? This is grief. I grieved you, Danica. I buried you with my own hands.”
‘You buried the body of a woman you couldn’t control,” my voice firm. “And now that she’s back and untouchable, you want her back in a cage.”
heard something slam in the background on his end. Maybe a glass. Maybe his fucking pride.
He growled again.
“Say what you want. But I know the truth now. Jeremiah–your Silenc3r–is dead. I killed him. That leaves only you. You’re the last piece.”
His words tightened like a noose. “And if I can’t have you willingly… I’ll take you the same way I took your life the first time.”
I closed my eyes and smiled faintly. “You think I’m scared now? You needed seven lies and one fake wife to break me. I only need one truth to end you.”
He didn’t respond. I knew I’d hit the nerve. He hung up.
And I stood there alone, in a dead war room, with a burning phone in my hand and a promise in my blood.
After four days of staying here on the safehouse, trying to rebuild what was left of my network, the walls finally cracked.
I heard the breach before I saw them.
Boots. Six pairs minimum. Shouting in a dialect I didn’t recognize at first. Not my men. Not Velenza.
I reached for my blade and got two of them down before I felt the syringe slam into my shoulder A hot burn followed, then numbness. My hand trembled. My vision doubled.
| still stabbed a third before my knees gave out.
They shot me in the thigh. Not enough to kill–just enough to drop me.
fell with my black opal ring slipping from my finger. The one I swore no man could ever take of me again. It hit the floor and rolled under a broken chair. My blood followed.
‘Get the bitch,” someone growled. “Elodie wants her quiet.”
They bound my hands, blacked out my eyes, and dragged me through shattered glass and screaming walls. I could still smell the gunpowder when the van doors slammed shut and I passed out to the sound of a speaker turning on.
Her voice came through. Sweet and poisonous.
‘Rise all you want, bitch. I’ll bury you again and this time, for good.”
woke up to stone walls and cold iron biting into my wrists. A single bulb swung above me. The air reeked of mold and piss. My mouth was dry. My dress was torn. My thigh was bleeding slow But I was alive.
And I knew where I was.
Elodie’s territory.
Some estate they kept hidden–too old for satellites, too bloody for contracts. This wasn’t prison. This was purgatory for traitors. The metal door creaked open and the first thing I saw was red. Elodie. Wrapped in silk, glowing like a whore married to fire. She was laughing with a man behind her. His hand on her waist, lips brushing her neck like I wasn’t even there bleeding. “See?” she said, twirling once before walking closer to me. “Told you she’d still be pretty under chains.” She crouched down, her eyes wide with triumph and madness. “Hello, Danica. Or Aria. Or whatever name you fake now. How’s that ‘empire‘ treating you?”
I didn’t answer.
