Page 171 of Mystic's Sunrise

He was sitting alone at the bar, a half empty bottle of whiskey in front of him, shoulders hunched just enough to give away how damn tired he was. He didn’t look over right away. Didn’t need to. The moment I stepped into the room, he glanced up, met my eyes with that steady, unreadable expression he wore when everything under the surface was on fire.

“You alright?” he asked.

I gave a single nod. “She’s asleep.”

He let out a grunt, could’ve been relief, could’ve been nothing. Hard to tell with Devil.

I crossed the room, dragged out the stool beside him and sat. Elbows on the bar, shoulders tight, heart still hammering like the danger wasn’t over.

“You got a minute?” I asked.

“You don’t have to ask,” he said.

I stared straight ahead at the shelves of liquor behind the bar, every label blurring into the next. My throat felt raw. My wrists throbbed where the scabs pulled every time I moved. I let the question sit there a second before I asked it.

“How’d you find us?”

Devil didn’t answer right away. He grabbed a clean glass, poured two fingers of whiskey, and slid it across the bar in front of me.

I didn’t touch it.

“Devil,” I said again, firmer this time.

He sighed through his nose, that calm mask slipping just enough to show the weight behind it. “We got a call.”

I turned my head toward him slowly. “From who?”

“Don’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

He didn’t flinch. “Number was untraceable. One of those burn phones. Gatsby ran it. Kickstand tried to backtrack the ping. Came up empty.”

I sat back, the leather seat creaking under me, the chain burns on my wrists biting as I flexed my hands.

“What did they say?”

Devil turned his glass in slow, absent minded circles, the ice clinking loud in the quiet.

“They gave us a location. That’s it. No name. No voice. Just a whisper and a warning.”

My jaw clenched tight. “So someone was watching. Someoneknew—and they waited until the last damn second to lift a finger.”

He nodded once, the movement stiff. “That’s about the shape of it.”

Silence stretched between us again, thick as smoke.

I swallowed back the heat rising in my throat, fists curling on the bar. “It had to be Chelsea. Maybe not the call, but all of it… she was behind it. Why, I don’t know, but I want her found, and I want her to pay.”

Devil gave a slow nod. “We’re on the same page. She’s off grid for now, but we’ll keep lookin’. Someone always talks.”

“She’s not just a problem,” I muttered. “She’s a threat, and as long as she’s out there, Zeynep’s not safe.”

He didn’t argue.

Didn’t need to.

Chelsea wasn’t a memory. She was a fuse still lit, walking through the wreckage she helped create like she’d earned the fire.

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