Page 143 of Fractured Loyalties
“Still good at hiding,” he says. Voice barely above a whisper. Close enough to hum through the wall.
I say nothing. Let silence do what bullets can’t.
“You ever wonder,” he continues, “why she stays so quiet when you leave? Why she never really asks where you’re going?”
I step toward the wall and press the hilt of my blade against a seam I feel under my fingertips.
“She doesn’t ask,” I murmur, “because she already knows.”
A pause.
Then metal groans.
The wall fractures inward.
And I see him.
Standing just inside a split alcove behind the glass wall, shadow-drenched. Pale. Not thin. But precise. Like he carved away every part of himself that didn’t serve a purpose.
“Elias,” he says, and it sounds like a memory that never belonged to either of us.
I step in.
He doesn’t move.
Only his eyes track me.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Because you want answers.”
I tilt my head. “Then start talking.”
I don’t lower my blade. He doesn’t flinch.
Vale exhales like he’s been waiting years to speak. “It was never about her at first.”
I don’t respond. I want him to hear the silence between us like a second blade.
“She was a variable I didn’t calculate. But once I saw the way you looked at her….” He shrugs. “I understood what she was worth.”
“Careful,” I say, voice low.
“No threat,” he says, palms briefly up. “Just recognition. We all have our soft places. Yours happens to walk like a weapon and look like a wound you want to reopen every night.”
I take a step forward. He tracks it. His throat flexes, and the skin there twitches.
He’s afraid of me.
Good.
“You used her clinic to mirror aliases I burned,” I say. “You buried data in her path. You watched her sleep.”
He tilts his head. “You think I’m the only one watching?”
I stop.
