Page 96 of Seek Me Darling

He answers on the first ring. Doesn’t speak, just hums.

Someone’s near him.

“We have to move again,” I say. “Her sister knows. This location is now compromised.”

He responds with a darker hum. One I know too well.

Then his voice, quieter than mine and twice as deadly.

“Make it happen.”

The line clicks off, and I don’t waste a second.

Her phone is still warm in my pocket when I pull it out again. The screen is blank now—silent, innocent—but I know better. Hydessa knows. Which means others might soon, too. It’s compromised. Contaminated. A liability.

I snap it in half.

The screen cracks with a satisfying crunch. Then I pry out the SIM, crush it under my boot, and toss the remains into the fireplace. One flick of my lighter and it’s gone. No signal. No trail. No chance.

Then I move.

Every step is clockwork—methodical, precise. I clean the house top to bottom, scrubbing surfaces, wiping prints, burning anything with a trace of us. The dishes. The linens. Even the fucking doorknobs. It all gets cleaned and erased.

Anything we can’t take or clean? Torched.

By the time I’m done, this place looks like we were never here. A ghost house. A blank slate.

Ruin’s equipment is next—his high-end surveillance gear, servers, laptops, signal jammers. It all goes into two reinforced cases, which I load carefully into the back of the SUV. I double-check it, then lock it all down tight.

One task left.

I head back down the hallway—slow, controlled. Her room is quiet now, but I don’t trust it. Not with her. Quiet with her could mean she's sharpening something.

When I open the door, she’s sitting on the bed, arms still cuffed. Her legs are pulled tight to her chest like she’s waiting. Like she knew I’d come.

And she’sready.

The second I step into range, she kicks. Hard. Right at my ribs.

I block it, but it still lands with enough force to remind me how fucking lethal she is even chained.

“Feisty,” I mutter, catching her ankle, twisting and pulling to send her backward against the mattress.

She snarls, scrambling, swinging her other foot out, this time she goes for my face.

Her entire body is fighting now, a last stand.

I’m sure this sudden resurgence of anger is about that name. That fucking name that I hate. Kingston Reyes. It’s like poison. I knew it would burn.

It’s why I don’t use that name.

I didn’t choose it. That bastard did. That alone makes it toxic. I prefer the one I picked for myself.

Ruin’s the same. He picked his own name, but not out of spite. He just wanted to disappear.

He went so far as to wipe us from every system that matters. Altered documents. Faked images. Scrambled facial recognition.

Our birth names? Dead and buried to anyone not family. The world doesn’t get them. It gets what we became.

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