Page 157 of Vow to Claim You

“I’ll call you.”

I’m already at the door.

The pyre has its match now.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Aric

The warehouse sits at the edge of the docks. The kind of place where screams don’t carry, and blood washes away with the tide.

I stop the car and get out.

Nikos is already here, leaning against a black SUV. Hyun-seok stands apart from the others, hands in his pockets. And Alexei watches me approach with those winter-storm eyes. We’ve never been close. But he understands something the others don’t—what it is to have a thing torn out of you and keep walking around the hole it leaves. What that does to a man.

I stop in front of them, and no one says a word.

Tassilo emerges from the warehouse entrance, looks at me, and nods.

Ready.

I start walking, and they follow.

Inside, three men hang from chains in the center of the room, arms wrenched over their heads, feet barely brushing the concrete. Tassilo’s hours are already written on them.

“Two more we caught running,” he says at my shoulder. “Men are still working the area.”

The hanging men turn their faces toward the sound of my steps.

“We didn’t know who she was. We were just following orders. The target was you, not her. She got in the way. We didn’t mean to⁠—”

I don’t respond, just keep walking.

“Please, we didn’t plan it. We have rules. Standards. We don’t⁠—”

I’m close enough now to see the tears streaming down the man’s face.

“I have a family. I have kids. Please. We already told everything. The intermediaries. The dead drops. The encrypted channels⁠—”

I stop. Three feet away. And I look at him. At the face of the man who shot my wife. Who killed my unborn child. The others spread out behind me, The Gods, my men.

“Boss.” Tassilo’s tone is low. “They claim they don’t know who hired them. Cut-outs. Encrypted relays. Standard for work like this.”

I lift a hand, and he goes quiet.

The man is still going—still crying, still bargaining, offering me names he doesn’t have and a future he won’t see.

I reach into my pocket instead. The cigarette feels foreign between my fingers. I don’t smoke. Never have. The taste reminds me of my father. Of the way he used to blow smoke in my face when I was a child, watching me flinch, testing to see if I’d break.

I never broke. Not for him. Not for anyone.

Until tonight.

I scream and cry and fall to my knees. Defeated. Destroyed. Torn apart into pieces. But that’s inside me. Those are the parts that no one will ever see.

Because on the outside, I show none of it. Outside, I’m the embodiment of control everyone takes me for.

I place the cigarette between my lips, and reach for the lighter. I flick it, and the flame catches. I draw, and the taste floods my mouth—bitter, acrid, the taste of childhood, the taste of everything I swore I would never become. Then I exhale, and the smoke curls between the man who killed my child and me.