Page 287 of Fractured Allegiance
Silas drives without speaking, his hands steady on the wheel. The road hums beneath us, the horizon washed in pale gray.
When he finally speaks, it’s quiet but sure. “You know this isn’t over.”
I glance at him. “You mean the Bureau.”
He nods. “Naomi doesn’t let go. Not of assets. Not of mistakes.”
“She’ll try to pull you back in.”
“She can try.”
There’s something in the way he says it—final, grounded. Like a man who already made his choice.
I rest my head against the glass, watching the coastline flicker through the trees. “We’re not safe yet.”
“We’re breathing,” he says. “That’s close enough.”
When we reach the safehouse, the world feels small again. The building is squat and weathered, stone worn smooth by years of wind. Elias steps out of the first SUV and scans the horizon before turning to us.
“It’s done,” he says.
Mara leans against him, exhaustion etched into every line of her face. "Are we not going inside?"
He shakes his head. "No. We're going to my place—the penthouse downtown." His voice carries a note of something almost like relief. That penthouse used to be his sanctuary before everything went to hell, before safehouses and borrowed beds became the norm. I can see it in his eyes—the pull of familiar territory, walls he actually chose.
Not the sterile prison where Dom and Drazen kept me locked up. That was Drazen's setup, all cold marble and surveillance. This is different. This is Elias's.
He turns to me and Silas. "You and Ward stay put."
"Why?" I ask.
“Because you’ve both earned a night without blood.”
The way he says it makes it sound almost like a gift.
He squeezes my shoulder once before turning back.
Mara gives me a small, tired smile before following him.
When their taillights disappear down the dirt road, the silence returns, heavy and strange. It feels like standing in the eye of a storm that forgot to move on.
Silas stands beside me on the porch, hands tucked into his jacket pockets.
The world around us is still crackling from what we did, and I can feel the shift inside me—the strange calm that comes when everything that hunted you is finally gone.
He turns toward me. “You’re thinking.”
“Always.”
“What about?”
“How it feels to stop running. To be free.”
He studies me for a long moment, then says, “You don’t stop. You just change direction.”
He’s right, but I don’t tell him that. I just look past him at the horizon, the sky bruised and soft, and think how strange it is that peace and fire smell the same.
Then I say, “Let’s go inside.”
