Page 40 of Fractured Allegiance
I walk past him without saying another word.
By the time I reach the corridor again, everything feels constricted, like the walls have closed in.
I pass the booth Silas used the first night. It’s empty now. But the memory isn’t.
That stare. That stillness.
That thing in him that saw right through every inch of what I was wearing and every mask I had underneath.
It’s him.
I know it now.
Not just a man.
A threat.
Or maybe worse — a mirror.
And the next time he watches me, I don’t think he’ll let me look away.
Chapter 4 – Silas - The Hunter’s Reflection
The safehouse reeks of solvent and gun oil. A chemical kind of silence clings to the concrete walls, interrupted only by the click of metal against glass as I strip my sidearm and lay it out piece by piece. Frame. Slide. Recoil spring. Barrel.
Each part earns its place on the velvet cloth like a sacred object.
I don’t need to do this. The weapon’s clean. Has been since yesterday. And the day before that. But my hands want something to occupy them—something predictable. So, I dismantle the Glock anyway, letting the action swallow what’s left of my thoughts before they spiral too far in the wrong direction.
Too late.
Lydia’s face keeps cutting in, slicing through the static. Not her voice. Not even her words. Just the way she sat in that bar with Dom standing beside her, flanked by danger but owning the room like she carved it from marble herself. Untouchable. Except she isn’t. I saw it in her fingers, twitching around the glass. In the way her body angled away from Dom, just enough to register as instinct. Revulsion, buried under polish.
And that last look she gave me. Defiant, but almost... questioning.
She knows, not who I am, not yet, but she knows I don’t belong to Dom. Which means she’s thinking about me. Which means she’s dangerous in a whole new way.
I line up the disassembled parts into perfect symmetry.
Behind my ribs, something bruises against bone.“You’re drifting.”
Naomi’s voice — saved for moments like this — plays back in my mind. Then, just as if cued, I hear the deliberate thud of her boots across the floor: military-precise, heavy with judgment.
Naomi Wells carries tension the way others carry scent: it fills the room before she steps in.
And when she appears, she’s clad in Bureau gray, a blazer over a blouse so stiff it could cut glass. Her eyes sweep the room, then settle on the table in front of me.
"You’re losing focus,” she says flatly.
I drag a cleaning cloth down the length of the Glock barrel, not looking up. “Didn’t realize you were keeping score.”
Naomi doesn’t laugh. She never does. She steps closer, takes in the barely-furnished space—the folding cot I haven’t used, the kitchenette I haven’t touched, the untouched tablet on the counter where Bureau updates gather dust.
“This place looks like a kill box,” she mutters.
“It is.”
She crosses her arms. “Then why haven’t you used it?”
