Page 61 of Traitor

I'm instantly up.

The room spins, my pulse roaring in my ears.

Ely.

I grip the phone tighter, my throat closing. "Where?"

Luca laughs. "Now that's the reaction I was looking for."

I'm already grabbing my keys, my cut, my gun. Everything.

I'm coming for you, Ely.

Fucking finally.

13. Reckoning

Bones

It took four years to get here. Four fucking years of digging, chasing ghosts, watching leads dry up, waking up in cold sweats from dreams that felt more like memories, suffocating under the weight of what I did to her.

And now, I'm here.

The town is small, remote, hidden away in the fucking mountains where no one would think to look for her. It's no wonder it took so long to track her down. Silverpine is the perfect place to disappear.

Luca Romano had his new fancy hacker do some really shady shit to get the information. Nothing legal. Nothing clean. The kind of digital bloodletting that could put us all in prison if the wrong people ever found out. But I didn't care. I told him to do whatever it took. And in the end, it worked.

I found her.Temperance Brennan.

I let out a silent, bitter laugh, shaking my head. A final fuck you. That's what her new name is. A permanent, living reminder of what I did to her. It's cruel. It's perfect. It's so fucking Ely.

She was so careful with it, too. Never used her name online. Even for her business, she used a registered agent. Shielding herself.

I move through her home in silence, taking it all in. It's beautiful. Decorated exactly the way I knew she would. Warm colors, soft fabrics, touches of nature everywhere. There's no sign of the past she left behind. No remnants of the world I forced her to escape.

And then, I step into her bedroom.

The room is dark, but the moon spills through the window, silver light stretching across the hardwood floors, casting soft shadows over the bed where she sleeps. Peaceful, untouched, like nothing bad has ever reached her.

I know better.

She looks like a fucking dream.

Her hair is shorter now. She cut her dark blonde locks, probably trying to shed the last pieces of the woman I knew. The woman I ruined.

My chest tightens, a sharp, unbearable weight pressing against my ribs. I shouldn't be here. I know that.

But it's been four years of torment. Four years of not knowing if she was dead or alive. Four years of suffocating under the weight of my own fucking regret.

So I stay.

I find a chair in the corner of the room and lower myself into it, my heart pounding like a war drum in my chest. My hands clench against my thighs, every muscle in my body tight, coiled, ready for the reckoning that I know will come.

She's right there. Right fucking there.

And yet, she's still so far away.

My breathing is uneven, rough. I don't know what to expect. I don't know what the fuck I'll even say when she wakes up, when she sees me sitting here like some creep who broke into her home in the middle of the night just to get a glimpse of her.

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