Chapter 7

Oliver read the message three times before he trusted himself to move.

Four words. No name attached. No explanation. Just a number he hadn't seen light up his screen in over a year, one that belonged to a man he had long since assumed was either dead or smart enough to have disappeared for good.

He sat there for a long moment, the photograph of Emily still resting on the nightstand beside him, the glow of the phone casting a pale light across her frozen laugh, and for a moment it almost felt as though she were waiting too, watching to see what he would do with whatever came next.

His thumb hovered over the screen before he typed back two words of his own.

Prove it.

The reply came faster than he expected, fast enough that his pulse quickened before he even read it.

Not over text. Somewhere safe. You know the place.

Oliver's jaw tightened. He did know the place. An old warehouse near the docks, one that had belonged to a rival family before he'd taken it apart piece by piece years ago, back when he was still young enough to believe brute force could fix everything that was broken in his life. The fact that this man remembered it told him two things at once. First, that whoever this was hadn't cut all ties with his old world the way Oliver had assumed. Second, that this could just as easily be a trap set by someone hoping to lure him somewhere quiet and unguarded.

He sat with that thought a moment longer, turning the phone over slowly in his hand, weighing years of dead ends against the small, dangerous flicker of hope trying to catch fire in his chest. He had chased leads like this before. Men who claimed to know something, desperate for money or protection or simply the thrill of being close to a man as feared as Oliver Reed. He had learned, painfully, not to let hope outrun caution.

But something about this felt different. The timing. The place. The fact that whoever this was had waited until now, after years of silence, to finally reach out.

He rose from the bed and crossed to the closet, pulling a jacket from the hanger with quick, deliberate movements. Before he left the room, he paused once, his eyes drifting back to the photograph on the nightstand.

"I might finally get an answer," he murmured, so quiet it barely disturbed the silence of the room.

Then he stepped out, pulling the door shut behind him, and made his way down the hallway toward the stairs, his footsteps steady despite the storm building quietly beneath his composure.

The house was still asleep when he reached the ground floor, save for the two guards stationed near the entrance, who straightened the moment they saw him approaching in the dark.

"Get the car," Oliver said, and one of them moved instantly, disappearing toward the garage without a single question.

Oliver stepped out onto the front steps, the night air cold and damp against his skin, rain threatening somewhere above the clouds but not yet falling. He pulled his phone back out and dialed a number he hadn't needed to use in weeks.

It rang twice before it connected.

"It's four in the morning," came the groggy response, thick with sleep.

"I need you awake," Oliver said, already walking toward the car pulling around the drive. "Now."

There was a pause, brief but telling, the kind of silence that came from someone forcing themselves fully conscious in the space of a single breath.

"What happened."

"I received something tonight," Oliver said carefully, choosing his words the way he always did when the subject mattered too much to risk getting wrong. "Someone reached out. Someone I haven't heard from in a long time."

"About what."

Oliver's grip on the phone tightened slightly. "I'll explain when you get here. I need you with me."

"Where."

"You'll know it when you see it," Oliver said. "Ten minutes."

The line went quiet for a moment before a resigned exhale came through the speaker. "I'm already moving."

Oliver ended the call and slid into the back of the waiting car, staring out at the dark, empty street as the driver pulled away from the estate. His reflection stared back at him faintly in the window glass, unreadable, controlled, the same face he showed to everyone, even now, even with his heart pounding harder than it had in longer than he could remember.

He thought of every year he had spent chasing shadows, every false lead that dissolved into nothing the moment he got close enough to touch it, every quiet, sleepless night spent turning the same unanswered questions over and over until they wore smooth from repetition. He had built an empire out of control, out of certainty, out of never once letting the ground shift beneath him without already knowing which way to step.

This was the one place his control had never reached.

The car slowed as it approached a second vehicle waiting near the edge of the estate's gates, headlights cutting through the darkness, and Oliver watched as a familiar figure climbed out and crossed toward him, expression sharp and alert despite the hour.

They exchanged a brief look through the window before the door opened and the second car fell into formation behind them, both vehicles pulling out into the empty streets together, moving toward the docks, toward the old warehouse, toward whatever waited for him inside it.

Oliver said nothing for most of the drive, his eyes fixed on the passing streetlights blurring past the window, his mind circling the same four words over and over until they had worn a groove into his thoughts entirely.

He had waited years for a sentence like that. He had stopped, somewhere along the way, truly believing he would ever hear it. And now that it had finally come, he found himself terrified of exactly what it might mean once he learned the truth behind it.

The car slowed as the docks came into view, the warehouse rising dark and hollow against the grey predawn sky, exactly the way he remembered it, forgotten by the rest of the city, exactly the kind of place a man might choose if he wanted to disappear the moment the conversation went wrong.

Oliver stepped out of the car first, his eyes scanning the shadows along the building's edge, every instinct honed by years in his world sharpening at once.

"Stay sharp," he said quietly, and the men around him fell silent, spreading out to cover the perimeter without a word needing to be spoken between them.

He approached the warehouse alone, the weak light from inside flickering faintly through a gap in the door, rain finally beginning to fall in a thin, cold mist around him.

He stopped just outside the entrance, one hand resting against the old metal door, and for a moment he simply stood there, breathing slowly, steadying himself against whatever truth waited on the other side.

Then he pushed the door open, stepped into the darkness, and called out into the silence.

"I'm here."

For a long moment, nothing answered him at all.