“What the fuck was he doing down there?”
“Reconstructing faces.” His brows furrow in confusion. Underground surgical facilities aren’t anything new to us. We’ve torn through enough of them over the years, only for another one to surface somewhere else a few months later. “I think that’s how they’ve stayed untraceable,” I continue. “He implied that there was someone else pulling the strings. While we’ve been focused on the crown, we’ve missed the one standing behind it.”
“Seraphine,” Ezekiel mutters, and I nod in agreement.
“Given what he was doing down there, I’d say we’ve been looking for the wrong person. Seraphine isn’t Seraphine anymore, and that fuckhead was responsible.”
Ezekiel places the glass on the table in front of him as his attention drifts somewhere beyond the room. His jaw works once, his mind turning everything over. Every name and face we’ve crossed paths with since this all started.
“Access,” he says almost to himself.
“Exactly.”
“A new face doesn’t just help someone disappear, Z. It gets them one step closer to being invited in. It earns trust they never should’ve had, and puts them in rooms they’d never have walked into wearing their old skin.”
“She wants a new life,” he murmurs, his blue gaze settling on me. “To start over.”
I give a slow shake of my head. That would be the first place Ezekiel’s mind goes. Mine never has. He’s spent too long staring into the darkest parts of humanity to believe people simply walk away from that kind of life. Yet, he tries to find the positives. Not me. People are poison.
“Or revenge.”
The words hang heavy between us, and the room grows colder beneath their weight.
“Say nothing,” he says, rising to his feet. I follow suit, instinctively straightening my leather jacket, but hating the way the stiff leather crinkles from Danny’s dried blood.
“If there’s a mole, the moment any of these wordsleave this office, they’ll know we’ve started asking the right questions.”
I nod, reaching for the door before stopping.
“Z?” I clear my throat, hating how vulnerable I sound.
“Yeah?”
“I should have paid closer attention. Danny wouldn’t be hurt if it wasn’t for me.”
Ezekiel walks over, stopping when he’s but an arm’s length away.
“Danny knew exactly what he was signing up for the moment he walked through those doors,” he says, his voice calm and unwavering. “We all did.”
The words aren’t cruel. They’re the honest cost of wearing our colors.
“There’s only one certainty in this life, Raven.” His gaze doesn’t leave mine as he reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. “Death. It’s the only thing every man, woman and child born into this world has in common. Everything after your first breath is a bonus. We just happen to spend our borrowed time living a little closer to the edge than most.” His expression softens, if only for a fraction. “You did good today. You brought your men home.”
Your men.
“Not all of them whole.” My fingers curl into a fist before I realize I’m doing it.
His expression doesn’t change. “You did your job.He did his. Katia will do hers. Since when did you start mourning men before they’re dead. Or at all, for that matter? Don’t answer that. I won’t even begin to unpack that shit.”
He’s right. There have only been four things I’ve cared about in this world.
My sister, my home, my job… And the woman who has consumed years of my life, despite the fact I’m not convinced she was ever a person at all.
A faint smirk touches the corner of his mouth. “Go on. Go back to that creepy as fuck graveyard you insist on calling home, and let my surgeon do what she’s better at than the rest of us.”
***
The iron gates groan behind me as I pull my SUV beneath the old maple tree by my house, killing the engine and letting the silence of the cemetery swallow me whole. I don’t move. My hands remain draped over the steering wheel while my eyes wander across the rows of snow-covered headstones disappearing into darkness. Ezekiel’s words circle my mind like vultures.
