Page 224 of Fractured Allegiance
I don’t answer. Because he’s right. And because answering means admitting how much deeper I’ve already sunk.
The scrape of a door makes me glance up.
Lydia steps into the kitchen, hair a tangle, my shirt loose on her frame. It hangs halfway down her thighs, and the bruises I left on her wrists are stark against the fabric when she pushes it up to rub her eyes.
She freezes when she sees us: me, leaning against the counter and Elias lounging like a blade disguised as a man. Her gaze shifts between us, intense and calculating.
“Who’s lying to who?” she asks. No preamble. No warmth.
Elias smirks into his coffee. “That depends. How much do you already know?”
She ignores him, eyes locking on me. I straighten, but my silence betrays me.
“Dom’s dead,” she says flatly. “I don’t need to ask to know Drazen won’t sit on it. So tell me—what’s next? What’s the plan?”
Elias sets his mug down with a thud. “The plan is to keep you alive long enough to clean up the mess with your lover here.”
Her head snaps to him, then back to me. Her eyes narrow, suspicion cutting like glass. “Is that what I am to you? A mess to clean? Or leverage to keep your Bureau leash happy?”
The words land harder than bullets.
I cross the space before she can pull further away, my hand catching her jaw, tilting her face up until her glare is locked to mine. “No,” I say, voice low, stripped raw. “You’re the only thing I can’t lose.”
Her breath stutters, but she doesn’t soften. She never does. Her eyes search mine, looking for the lie, daring me to blink.
Elias’s laugh cuts through. “That’s obsession talking. Not love. Don’t confuse the two, Ward. They’ll eat you both alive the same way.”
I don’t look at him. My hand stays steady on Lydia’s jaw, my thumb brushing once over the bruise I left there last night. She doesn’t flinch. She just stares, unbroken, unyielding, and in that moment I know Elias is wrong.
Obsession or not, I’d burn the world before I let Drazen, the Bureau, or Elias himself take her from me.
Elias breaks the standoff first. He leans back in his chair, crosses one ankle over his knee, and lets out a sharp breath through his nose. “Enough of the stares and bruised egos. Drazen doesn’t care if you two are fucking or fighting. He cares that Dom’s gone and he just lost a lieutenant who held half his empire together.”
Lydia stiffens, but I keep my hand on her jaw until she nudges it away. Not rejection—just control. She slides past me, crossing to the table. She sits, elbows propped, staring at Elias like she wants to rip the truth out of his throat.
“What’s he going to do?” she asks.
“Retaliate,” Elias says simply. “Publicly? Maybe not right away. But behind closed doors? He’ll bleed anyone who looks like they stood in on it. That includes you. And you.”
His eyes flick to me.
I don’t react. “Then we hit first.”
He laughs. “Of course that’s your answer. You think this is a fistfight, Ward? He has reach. Soldiers. Politicians. Judges. He doesn’t need to kick down this door himself. He’ll make a phone call, and the Bureau will do it for him.”
Lydia looks between us, her expression hardens. “So, what, you’re saying there’s no way out?”
“There’s always a way out,” Elias says. “But it won’t be clean. Won’t be simple. And it sure as hell won’t happen with the two of you trying to play Bonnie and Clyde in one of my safehouses.”
I cut in. “We don’t bring anyone else in.”
Elias’s brows lift. “You don’t trust anyone?”
“I don’t trust anyone who isn’t sitting in this room.”
“That’s suicide,” he snaps. “I have people who owe me, reliable people who don’t fold under pressure. We could set a net, scatter Drazen’s dogs before they close in.”
I shake my head. “Every person you add is another throat for Drazen to cut. Another mouth for the Bureau to bribe. I won’t risk her on that.”
