Chapter Text
Silas Voss realized it was a trap a split second too late.
His arm shot out, not for a weapon but for her. It was a desperate reach to pull her close, but his fingers grasped at empty air. The blonde Commander was faster.
He had been standing right behind her the whole time, silent and benign, until his large hand lashed out and fisted in her copper braid. Her head snapped back. She let out a choked yelp as he yanked her off balance, the sound cutting short when he slammed her into his chest. The impact punched the breath out of her in an audible rush, hard enough that Silas’s own ribs contracted with it.
The Commander released her hair and drove the inside of his elbow under her chin without breaking his grip, locking the limb tight across her windpipe. Black ink flashed in the light: a tattoo of coiled barbed wire and thorns winding his forearm, the design seeming to bite into the soft skin beneath her jaw.
Her soles skidded on the solid surface as his free arm cinched over her midsection, trapping her elbows to her sides. He hauled her backward, dragging her with him away from Silas. She twisted hard, body straining, but the movement only made the choke tighten. He kept her pinned against him, her spine bowed and heels scrabbling for traction, each kick and gasp reduced to a frantic, airless fight.
Silas went rigid, his frame locked in the posture of a failed rescue. He wasn’t breathing or thinking. Just staring at the barbed wire coiled around her neck, the trapped sliver of copper hair, and her wide, unblinking eyes fixed on his.
The trance broke with the slide of steel. Sidearms cleared holsters from every corner at once, the echo off the rafters making it impossible to fix on any of them.
The others hadn’t moved during the struggle. They’d been waiting. In the chaos, Silas’s tunnel vision had erased them, but now the periphery crashed back in. As the men shifted in unison, his stomach dropped as he came to the horrible realization that the rest of the trap was snapping shut.
One Enforcer stood a step to the right of the blonde man. The remaining three had spread out to flank Silas, closing the ring, and among them was a second Commander, his hair close-cropped and auburn, his stillness different from the surrounding Enforcers. All wore black tactical gear; the plate carriers made them look broader, heavier, less human. Their faces were indistinct in the gloom, but four weapons trained on his centre of mass left no doubt. The Syndicate wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
The sound of her distress tore Silas’s focus from the guns. Her body jolted in the blonde Commander’s hold as she bucked, her head twisting. His muscles flexed with the strain of holding her, each inhale she drew turning shallower until her chest barely rose.
“Harper—” Silas’s hand lifted, palm open. “Harper, baby, stay still. Don’t fight him.”
Her gaze held his, glassy with panic. She stayed stiff, then forced herself to slacken, her shoulders dropping. The limb across her throat eased enough for her to drag in a thin, shuddering breath.
For a few seconds, the only noise in the vast warehouse was the uneven rhythm of Harper trying to pull air. Silas kept his gaze fixed on her face as the colour returned, unwilling to look away even as the threat loomed around him.
“Of all the days to bring your daughter to work, Voss. Today was not a smart one.”
Silas’s gaze lingered on Harper for a final second before he forced himself to turn.
Roman Bauer stood a few paces behind the others, framed by the half-light beyond their shoulders. He hadn’t shifted since they sprung the trap, his breathing unhurried and indifferent to the violence playing out before him. The overhead bulb traced the planes of a hard, angular face: grey stubble, pale eyes that missed nothing. His suit was charcoal and precise. He was a man who’d long ago forgotten what mercy felt like but remembered exactly how to imitate it.
Silas’s hand turned outward, a slow show of nothing to hide, and he nudged the duffel forward with his boot, canvas sliding over concrete.
“I brought you what you asked for, Roman,” he said. His voice was steady but thin, a calm that cost everything to hold. “Keep her out of whatever this is.”
Roman’s laugh came with no performance in it at all. He stepped through the gap between two of his men, their weapons lowering only a fraction to let him pass. His dress shoes clicked on the floor as he passed Silas without a glance. Silas didn’t move. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Roman stopped beside Harper and cocked his head, studying her. The overhead light caught the frantic flutter of her pulse under the man’s arm. She bared her teeth and thrashed once, a small but sudden surge, and the Commander’s grip cinched in response. The sound she made was strangled and half-swallowed, and it drew the faintest smile from Roman. His gaze held hers, unreadable.
“I’m not in the business of killing kids.” He turned on his heel, his stare locking onto Silas. “But you should have thought about her before you walked in here.”
Barely a second after Roman finished speaking, a gunshot split the warehouse. The blast rolled through the rafters, ricocheting off steel and concrete. Silas jerked, a harsh grunt tearing out of him as his leg buckled.
Harper screamed before his knee even touched the ground. The cry was high and cracking, but the roar of adrenaline in Silas’s ears drowned it out. He slumped forward, clutching his calf where his palm grew slick with warmth. The shot was low, precise, and nonlethal. A reminder of who controlled the pace.
The Commander adjusted his hold, his broad hand sealing over Harper’s mouth to cut the scream off. Her body trembled as the limb hooked around her stomach cinched tighter.
Roman approached Silas, stopping just out of reach. Silas held his position, knee to the cold floor, his fingers clamped over the bleeding muscle of his leg.
Roman looked down at him. “Voss, you have been a tremendous asset to the Syndicate,” he murmured. “Irreplaceable. Almost.”
He didn’t wait for a response. “But you’ve gotten greedy. We had an understanding: You supplied us, we protected you, everyone stayed in their lane.” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “And yet, last week I received a report of a shipment from here bound for the Iron Vultures. Now, there are rumours of a meeting with the Crimson Vipers tomorrow morning.”
Silas gritted his teeth. “I never promised exclusivity,” he ground out. “You wanted supply, you have it. That was the deal.”
Roman offered a slow, patronizing nod. Two Enforcers moved in. They clamped down on Silas’s elbows and shoulders, and he tried to brace, but the pain in his leg sheared through his focus as they hauled him upright. He sagged between them, blood running into his boot.
The auburn-haired Commander stepped up to Roman’s side, watching Silas sway with the same detached patience as the man beside him. The tableau was precise and wordless: Roman untouched, the others doing the work for him.
Roman adjusted his cuffs. “I didn’t build East Halworth’s most dominant operation by sharing, Voss.” He took a slow step closer. “If you supply my rivals, then you are my enemy. And enemies have no place in my city.”
The two Enforcers holding him yanked Silas down onto his knees. Fire tore through his wounded calf, making resistance impossible. The Enforcer on his right forced his arm out to the side, locking his wrist to stretch the muscles taut.
Across from him, the auburn-haired Commander reached to his belt and snapped his hand down. A heavy, dull-black baton extended with the shear of metal on metal.
He swung with controlled force, and the weapon caught Silas’s shoulder with a dense thud.
A scream burst from Silas’s throat as the blow shattered his collarbone with a grating crunch that echoed. His vision flickered at the edges, but even past the ringing in his ears, he could still hear Harper, a keening cry escaping the palm clamped over her mouth.
The grip on his wrist jerked tighter, grinding the fractured ends of his clavicle together until Silas choked on what came out of him, then wrenched the arm straight out and held it there: a perfect, vulnerable line with nowhere left to hide.
Steel met elbow in reverse. The joint buckled the wrong way, the radius snapping with a sound that belonged outdoors, in dry weather, not here, and the noise that ripped out of him was something beyond a scream, high and sustained, filling the warehouse and finding no exit.
Then the baton came down once more, smashing his wrist with a sickening crack. It hung at an unnatural angle, fingers twitching once before going still.
Silas’s agony filled the space.
The blonde Commander tightened his hold across Harper’s waist, crushing her to him to keep her from thrashing. But panic had given way to pure instinct. She forced her jaw open against the pressure of his hand and clamped her teeth down on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. She bit with every ounce of strength she had, tasting copper.
He hissed a curse and snatched his arm back, taking skin with it. That was the split second she needed. Harper dropped her weight, slipping out of his surprised arms. She hit the ground hard, knees cracking on the concrete, and scrambled on all fours before her feet found purchase beneath her.
“Dad!”
She managed three steps before the blonde Commander recovered and lunged. The Enforcer beside him advanced with him, closing the gap. They slammed into her mid-stride, all combined force and forward momentum, and she had no chance.
Hands closed on her limbs and hair, dragging her down. Before she could rise, the Commander’s knee drove into her spine, crushing her flat. He fisted the fabric of her jacket and wrenched backward, pinning her chest under him, shouldering the Enforcer down to her legs.
Harper’s body bowed into a painful curve, every vertebra forced apart. She bucked wildly, but there was nowhere to go and nothing to push against. The wail that erupted from her wasn’t a word at all. Her free hand clawed forward, nails splitting on the cement as she reached for her father across the distance that wouldn’t close.
“Enough!” The Commander’s voice was a rough snarl as he let go of her collar and snatched her outstretched wrist, wrenching it back to pin it flat to her spine. He leaned in, grinding her into the grit until the scream was smothered.
Over by Silas, the auburn-haired Commander whipped around at the commotion, baton already rising, then froze when Roman lifted a single finger. The gesture was small but absolute.
The Commander retracted his weapon with a click, and the two men holding Silas released him. He pitched forward, hitting the concrete face-first. He landed on his stomach, his breath leaving him in a broken groan. His right arm was a mess of torn ligaments and useless bone, pinned beneath his chest.
One Enforcer delivered a brutal, efficient kick, driving his boot into Silas’s lower ribs. He gasped, a choke of air and blood, as something gave way with a deep crack.
Roman straightened his jacket, smoothing a nonexistent crease. “I believe we have finished our business.”
The auburn-haired Commander let the baton fall as he reached for the sheath on his vest. A large, serrated combat knife appeared in his grasp, drawn in a fluid motion.
He stepped over Silas’s prone form and dropped his knee between the man’s shoulder blades. The impact forced a strangled gasp from Silas, pinning his chest to the ground. Without pausing, he seized a fistful of Silas’s copper hair and jerked his head back, exposing his throat to the light.
Silas’s gaze snapped toward his daughter. The blonde Commander wound Harper’s braid into his fist and dragged her face up, peeling her cheek off the concrete.
For a suspended second, their eyes met across the floor: her breath stuttering, his jaw trembling under the pull of the man above him. Neither could move, caught in the same helpless angle, both knowing what came next.
The auburn-haired Commander shifted his grip, angling the steel so the smooth, razor edge pressed against the skin.
Harper screamed. She lurched, every muscle firing at once: spine arching, boots scraping for traction, but the weight above her only ground deeper, her ankles locked in a hold she couldn’t break.
Roman nodded, and without hesitation, the Commander acted. The blade swept once through Silas’s exposed throat in a firm, horizontal draw.
The result was immediate. Blood and air erupted together. A violent, arterial spray painted a wide arc across the cement, accompanied by the wet, bubbling hiss of oxygen escaping from his severed windpipe.
Silas’s back arched hard into the knee pinning him, his body reacting to the sudden, catastrophic loss of pressure: two seconds of pure reflex, every muscle straining against what was already done.
Then the fight drained out of him and he sagged, his mouth working in a silent attempt at breath that produced only a gurgle. His arms slumped onto the concrete: the shattered right lying twisted, the left sliding into the spreading warmth. His lungs spasmed in a wet, rattling noise that wasn’t quite breathing.
For a second, his eyes drifted, finding hers. A thin whine escaped her. And then something in him went still in a way that couldn’t be undone. A fixed, empty stare glazed his wide pupils, and his chest stopped hitching.
Harper didn’t seem to breathe at first; then an airless sob tore out of her. She turned her face, but the fist in her hair tightened, locking her skull in place. He held her there, forcing her to watch. The flow from his throat slowed to a dark, sluggish ooze.
Roman remained motionless, the polished toe of his shoe stopping inches from the spreading red pool. When he finally looked at Harper, his gaze raked over her in the way it had over Silas: measuring, finished.
“Consider this mercy,” he murmured. “You’ll carry his death longer than he ever carried your life.” He gave a small nod, and the Enforcer on her legs stood, stepping back. The blonde Commander hesitated before he shoved himself upright and pulled away.
The pressure vanished, but her body stayed flattened to the floor, the shock still coursing through her.
Without a word, they moved with professional silence, broken only by the sticky suction of soles lifting from the blood, followed by the click of the knife sliding into its scabbard. The auburn-haired Commander retrieved his dropped baton, the scrape of metal splitting the quiet.
Roman paused beside the duffel bag. He gestured, and an Enforcer stooped to lift it by the straps. The weight pulled him low, the canvas bottom already darkening where it had soaked in.
“We’re done here,” Roman said, turning for the exit. The others fell in behind him, their shadows stretching across the spill of light.
The Commander was the last to leave. He ran a hand over his head, dragging through the short, dirty-blonde crop, his gaze dropping to the girl. He held there for a moment before he turned and followed the group into the dark.
The warehouse door groaned open, flooding the room with a gust of chilly night wind, and then they were gone.
For a long time, Harper didn’t move. The air smelled of iron, a heavy, thick taste that coated her tongue. The hum from outside seemed miles away.
Then her fingers twitched. She pushed herself up, arms shaking so violently that her elbows threatened to buckle. The world tilted, but she forced herself forward. She crawled, her knees sliding through the slick, dark warmth spreading from his body.
When she got to Silas, she froze, hovering, afraid to touch him. His face was turned, cheek resting in the red tide. Her hand trembled as she flattened her palm to his back. She waited, then pushed harder, searching for a rhythm, a motion, anything.
Harper uttered a low, fractured whimper as his ribs remained still beneath his shirt. She crumpled then, abandoning the effort to keep herself up, and collapsed across him. His blood seeped into her clothes, hot and fast. Her fingers hovered over the broken angles of his wrist, terrified of causing pain that he could no longer feel.
“Dad…” She tugged at his shoulder, trying to turn him, but he was heavy. An immovable, leaden weight. She couldn’t shift him.
Harper slid her legs forward, sinking into the widening red mire, and lowered herself into it, ignoring the wet drag against her skin as she curled into the curve of his ribs.
The smell hit her then. A suffocating mix of copper and his sandalwood cologne. She buried her face in his shirt, the fabric sodden and sticking to his chest, breathing him in, lungs burning with the need to find him still there.
His palm was what her fingers found next, trying to thread between his, but the wrist gave way under her touch. The structure was gone: the bones grinding together in a loose bag of flesh. It was wrong. Horribly, permanently wrong. But she didn’t let go. She pulled the destroyed limb into her chest, pressing the bloody knuckles to her heart.
A low moan dragged out of her, uneven and beyond her control. She closed her eyes, clutching the hand of a father who was already cooling against her.
The cold seeped in, working through her clothes and into her skin until she couldn’t tell where the chill of the floor ended and she began.
She lost track of the line between waking and sleeping. What marked the hours wasn’t sound or darkness but the change in Silas himself: the heat fading from him, one slow degree at a time, until his shoulder felt like stone beneath her cheek. The blood soaking her jeans dried into a dark crust, binding her to him.
The light through the high window had turned a pale pink when the noise came.
At first, she didn’t register it. Then, the low grind of tires on gravel penetrated the haze. An engine cut. Car doors slammed hard and careless.
Harper’s whole body went rigid. The only thought that formed was wordless and absolute: they had come back, and she wouldn’t survive it. She knew she couldn’t stand, so she burrowed, dragging the blood-stiff material of her father’s shirt tighter in her fist, pressing herself flat against his ribs, trying to make herself small enough to disappear into his shadow. Eyes squeezed shut, she wished she could stop her heart from beating, longing to turn to stone like him.
The loading door rattled, then groaned, and a rush of chilly morning air flooded the room.
“Voss? You here already? We said nine—”
Silence fell, abrupt and suffocating, followed by a low, stunned exhale. “Oh, God.”
The footsteps that came after were different: slower, hesitant. “Is that… is that him?”
“Don’t touch anything,” another voice hissed. “Look at the blood.”
Harper, against every instinct screaming at her to die, to vanish, twisted her head just enough to see.
Three figures stood in the pool of grey light by the door. The lead man had stopped five feet away, his boots near the edge of the stain, his eyes on Silas and then on the small shape tucked beside him. It took a moment. Then his gaze locked onto hers.
Harper blinked, her vision blurring, struggling to make sense of what she was seeing. He wasn’t in a suit or tactical gear. He was wearing a jacket of dark leather, with a patch on the shoulder of a black and red serpent.
They weren’t Syndicate. They were Crimson Vipers.