FAZER LOGIN“Say that again,” I say.Dante doesn’t answer. He’s looking at the phone like it’s something that bit him, and for a man who walked out of a warehouse full of people who wanted him dead approximately four minutes ago looking completely unbothered, the fact that a phone call is doing this to his face tells me everything.“Dante.” I put my hand on his arm. “Say that again.”“Judge Callum Sorin,” he says. “My father.”I stare at him.“Your father,” I repeat. “Is a corrupt judge. Who was working with the people who tried to have you killed. Who is now calling you directly after we just sent evidence of his crimes to a journalist.”“Yes.”“And he’s Daxton’s grandfather.”“Biologically.”“Dante.”“I know.”The phone is still ringing.“Are you going to answer it?” I ask.He looks at me. Then he picks up.He doesn’t say anything. He just waits.A voice comes through the speaker, older, clipped, the voice of a man who has spent decades being the most important person in every room he enters. “
“How is that possible?” I say. “Your people aren’t in position yet. You said seven.”“I know what I said.” Dante is already texting. Both thumbs, fast, the phone Rafe handed over replaced with his own. “They moved because Rafe’s call spooked them. They think we’re onto the location.”“We are onto the location.”“They don’t know that yet. They just know something shifted.” He looks up. “My people can be there in forty. The Kavris will be set up in twenty.”I do that math. “That’s a twenty minute gap.”“Yes.”“Dante—”“I know.”“That’s twenty minutes of you walking into a room full of people who want you dead with no backup and a hard drive they’re going to take the second they see it.”“They won’t see it,” he says. “Because you’re not bringing it in.”I stare at him. “What?”“The drive stays with you. Outside.” He holds my eyes. “You are my backup. If I’m not out in twenty minutes, you send it. I set up a journalist contact years ago, a dead drop, it auto-submits if I trigger it from m
I stare at him for another full minute.He doesn’t move. His sides rise and fall, the bandaging still clean and pale against all that black fur. The early light through the cabin’s one window cuts across the floor and lands just short of him, like even the sun is a little bit wary.You need to leave, I tell myself. Right now. Before he wakes up.But I grab the old wool blanket from the cot in the corner anyway and I spread it over him. As carefully as I can. He shifts once and I freeze, but he doesn’t wake.I back out of the cabin.Then I run.I run as far as I can* * *My father is already yelling before I get the door open.I slip into the kitchen, tie my hair back up from where it’d fallen loose, and get the pan on before he gets to the part of the yelling where he starts throwing things. Eggs. He likes his eggs over easy. If I break the yolk he makes me do it again. I’ve learned not to break the yolk.“Where were you?”“Out early.” I keep my back to him. “Sit down Sir, it’s
“Rafe,” I say.Dante doesn’t answer.Which is its own answer.I look in the side mirror. The second car is still there, two lengths behind us, keeping pace. Rafe behind the wheel, both hands visible, completely normal, completely calm.The way he’s been the entire time.“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say.Dante is quiet for a long moment. “You’re not wrong.”“Dante—”“The way Vera knew we were at the mall,” he says. Low. Controlled. Like he’s working through it in real time and not loving where it lands. “She had a photo within the hour. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. Only Rafe knew.”“He could have had someone watching the house.”“The voicemail,” Dante says. “That night. It came three hours after we arrived at the mansion. Vera needed an inside location to send that fast. Someone told her the address the moment we pulled through the gate.”I think about Rafe at the mansion. First on the perimeter. First through the back door. First to say he’s back in the foyer while Vera was st
“Strangers,” Dante says.“A couple. Young. I think they have a cat.” I watch his face. “I’m sorry, did you want me to have kept the house I shared with the man I thought I’d accidentally killed?”He looks at me for a second. “Fair.”“Thank you.”“We’re still going.”“I know we are.”Daxton looks up from the couch. “Are we going on a road trip?”“Yes,” Dante says.“Can we stop for snacks?”“Daxton—” I start.“Yes,” Dante says.Daxton pumps his fist.I grab the wolf plushie off the cushion beside him and hand it over. “Shoes. Right feet this time.”He looks down. Looks back up. “I was testing you.”“Sure you were.”Rafe meets us at the car.He’s already heard — Dante called him on the way down Marcus’s stairs, two minutes, short sentences, the kind of conversation where both people already know the shape of the problem and just need to confirm the details. Now Rafe is leaning against the passenger door with his arms crossed and the expression he wears when he’s about to say something Da
Dante is already pulling on his shirt when I sit up.I grab the cardigan off the floor. Shove my arms through it. My brain is doing two things at once—filing away the fact that thirty seconds ago he looked at me with eight years of memory returned and said you stayed like it was the only thing that mattered, and also registering that Rafe does not do urgent without a reason.“Stay here,” Dante says.“You said that last night.”“And I meant it last night too.”“And I came downstairs anyway.” I stand up. “So we’ve established a pattern.”He looks at me. Full eye contact. And here is the thing about Dante with all his memories back — he is the same. The same warmth under the same control, the same look that lands somewhere behind my sternum. But there is a steadiness to him now that wasn’t there before. Something settled. Like a house that’s finished shifting and decided where it stands.“Fine,” he says. “Stay close.”We go downstairs.Rafe is in the kitchen. He has his phone in one hand
The cabin hums like it’s breathing. A steady, low vibration that crawls up my spine and won’t let go. Everyone else is asleep—rows of heads tilted, eyes shut, mouths slightly open. The air smells like recycled air and burnt coffee of the first class aisle, but all I can taste is him.Dante.He’s si
Five years later.The pen in my hand is heavier than a scalpel, which is ridiculous considering how many skulls I’ve cracked open with one. But this one signature—another approval for a clinical trial, stamped with my name—will get me quoted in journals. Will have my face plastered in magazines. Wi
Hell no. This isn’t what I’m being paid for. I instantly get out of the tub, pushing him off. My clothes are wet but my body is still paralyzed from how he pinned me on the tub earlier.The second I manage to yank the bathroom door open, I feel like I’ve just escaped a fucking warzone.Except the w
No.No fucking way.The second he opens his mouth, my throat closes.“Long time, Omega.”My knees buckle, but I don’t fall. Not yet. My spine locks though it’s been injected with cement, and I swear I can taste bile. His voice is the same. Maybe deeper. Age has gritted it out, but the rot beneath i







