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“Yes,” she affirmed with a smile, squeezing my hand.

“Ark, what do we do with him?” Jon asked, crouching next to a kneeling White Hand, as he struggled to get his mask off. “This fucking bitch won’t come off. I say we finish him now.”

“You can’t fucking kill me,” the White Hand snickered. For someone on the brink of his deathbed, he had plenty of nerve.

“Is that so, fucker?” Jon sent a sharp elbow to his side, but that only made that fucker chuckle.

I narrowed my eyes.

I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell the White Hand was grinning behind his mask.

“Even if I die, you aren’t making it out alive,” he said. “If I’m gone, someone else will replace me and continue the mission.”

“And how do they plan on doing that?” I asked, stepping forward.

“With this.” He playfully pulled at the chain he stole from me during our fight and retracted the small drive before opening a thin slit of the mask and slipping it into his mouth. “Now not even you can get it,” he announced smugly.

“You think that drive has the codes?” I smiled, tilting my head. “Do I look like I’m a stupid fool?” For the past few weeks, I've made a show of wearing it, pretending to hide it in their presence.

Most wouldn’t have cared, but the White Hand would’ve noticed. I knew it wasn’t a foolproof plan, but even the smartest men were known to stumble in desperate times. And he did just that. For an intelligent person, he took the weakest bait, and with the way he was lost for words, he realized it too.

“Even if you kill me, the Twins will never be yours,” I told him. “I’ve already destroyed the codes and the painting,” I smirked, bending low to meet his empty white eyes. “And the thing you just swallowed is an Invictus bug. You might’ve found a way to get it, but don’t forget I was the one who created it.”

Fury radiated off him in waves, but it was laced with something else. Terror. The fucker was too scared to die.

“So fucking what?” he cursed. “If I’m dying tonight, then so are you.”

I slowly got back up to my feet like I had all the time in the world. “You and I both know a suicide mission was never on your list,” I smirked, tapping the dust off my palms. “You’re too scared to die,” I mocked.

A tic jumped up his shoulder. It was almost as if my words affected him for the first time today.

“Oh, by the way, the Invictus in your stomach will go off in…” I glanced at my watch. “In one minute, twenty seconds.”

Every bone in his body stilled.

I still had no clue who he was. His build was more like Karl’s, his attitude more like Lucien’s, and his intelligence like Marcus’s and his fury like Grayson’s.

Only I knew it wasn’t Jon, because he was right by my side, eyeing the White Hand with equal rage, if not more.

“Let’s go,” I told the others, grasping Bella’s fingers in mine while the White Hand finally regained his voice and his shouts echoed to our empty ears.

The scene was almost too familiar to Rose Ellen as the four of us made a run for it. The throbbing pain in my thigh dulled the more my lungs searched for air. The edges of my vision were almost swimming in a blur when a loud explosion deafened us.

The heat of the burning fire almost grazed our backs, but we made it out just in the nick of time. Halting on the previous landing where the tunnel started, I looked over my shoulder where the flames devoured it entirely.

Exhausted, we all dropped to the ground. My back took the heavy fall as I carefully placed Bella on my chest, too tired to even speak. Beads of sweat gathered down my spine as my lungs heaved for air. But something was free in my chest.

I had done it. I had put a fucking end to the White Hand.

And soon, I’d know who the fuck he was all along.

That was the last thought in my head as my eyes gave way to the darkness.

It took a while, but Simon and Eric eventually found us and got us the fuck out of the tunnels. They were able to escape the Surmans in time and call for help. Rest assured, all the Surmans were now dead.

The bright sunlight was almost too much to take when we stepped out of the house, groggy and tired, like somehow, we’d been to a real war itself. The entire house looked like a disaster scene. The wreckage was piled everywhere, smoke billowing with the slight stench of blood lingering in the air. Thank fuck the bodies had all been cleared by the time we made it out.

It had been an hour since, and I’d hardly had the time to breathe as I gathered my men for a reckoning of the aftermath, sending several teams down the tunnels to assess the situation and rescue the others, knowing very well that whoever didn’t make it was the White Hand.