CHAPTER 15 The War We Started

I pulled up to the house in under five minutes. No sounds, no signals. Just moving like an animal. I felt the blood in my ears. I felt Ava’s breath in my body.

She climbed into the passenger seat without a word. Her eyes were bright with fear and determination. “Do you have the drive?” she asked. Her voice was thin.

I nodded. “We get in. We get out. No spectacle.”

She laughed, a short, broken sound. “You said that last time.”

“I meant it.” I kept my hands on the wheel. “Hold on.”

We moved through the gates. For a second I thought the world had slowed. Then everything sped up. A bright light. The sound of a security siren we did not expect. Red. Panic. The plan had teeth to it, and the teeth snapped.

“Move!” I shouted. I gripped the wheel and the car lunged. Guards ran from the gates, screaming names. My stomach tightened. I did not think about the engines. I thought about her.

We hit the side road as Isabella had directed. It was a blind turn. I took it hard. The car leaned. I felt metal and speed and the sudden, awful knowledge that the night could end here.

She reached for my hand. Her fingers were cold. “Nathaniel,” she said. “If we die, remember”

“Don’t say that,” I cut in. “We won't die tonight.”

She looked at me, and in her eyes I saw something like trust. It burned like a match. I held it.

We made it to the old service gate. Two guards, like ghosts, moved toward us. Isabella stepped out of nowhere and crashed into one. Her leg hooked the other. A knife flashed. I pulled the passenger door open and yanked her out.

The alarms grew louder. Footsteps multiplied. I can move fast when I need to. I have moved faster the last few months than I ever knew I could. I pushed her into the hallway and we ran.

The hallway smell of money and power chased us. I focused on the codes Isabella gave me. She typed and typed while I kept us alive. Locks clicked open. Doors quietly surrendered. For one small, lucky second, it felt like the old me at the center of something I could control.

We reached the vault. The metal door was a wall of silence. Isabella hit the key. The jar hummed. Then, suddenly, another sound came from behind us.

A crash. A shiver of air. Men in clothes, but not the normal guards. Silas’s words cut through the fear like ice. “You took your time.”

I had always heard Silas before I saw him. He steps into a room and leaves a cold. He was closer than I expected. My chest tightened. “Isabella,” I mumbled.

She did not look surprised. The files in her hand trembled. “He knows,” she said. “He always knows.”

That was the twist. The trap was bigger than we thought. And the moment of truth arrived like a blow.

“You’ll surrender,” Silas said slowly, almost bored. “You won’t be killed tonight. Mr. Donovan wants her whole.”

I laughed. It was a harsh sound, more like a bark. “You think I’ll hand her over? You think I’ll let you take her and wait for your next command?”

Silas smiled like a man who knows of small heroes. “You’re reckless. You always have been.”

I had half the team outside, or at least I thought I did. I had a plan. I had a hundred vices and one poor sense of safety for the people I loved. The vault door was heavy, and behind it was a small filament of light that might be our salvation or our ruin. The files on the drive would bring down a city. They would also make enemies of everyone who stood to fall.

I stepped in front of Ava. “Don’t touch her.” My voice was low. It was not a request.

“You always talk like that.” Silas’s gun was out and aimed not at me, but at the vault. “Open it. Or she dies.”

Isabella made a move. “You’ll never”

The gun barked. A shot. The echo of it left my ears ringing. Isabella dropped. The world went narrow and immediate. Her face was white. She clutched at her side, blood dark as the secret she’d given us.

“No!” Ava screamed. The sound split me. The world shifted. For a second, my hands forgot how to move.

I lunged. Rage replaced thought. I hit the man in front of me. Another moved to stop me. I fought like a man who had been hollowed out and refilled with fury. I felt skin and bone and smell and the sharp crack of reality. I felt a blade against my ribs for a moment. I felt the world try to take me. But I held on.

The vault door slammed. The lock engaged. My hand closed on the drive. For a moment, I had everythingproof, rage, the taste of revenge.

Then the worst twist. Marco.

I saw him then, at the far end of the corridor. One of my own. He lowered his gun and aimed it at my back. The look on his face was not hatred. It was a regret. The man I had trusted, the man who once saved my life, had a shaking hand.

“Marco,” I said, voice flat. “Why?”

He did not answer. He flinched as Silas motioned him. I saw it. It was a hand forced into betrayal. He had choices and he had been broken.

The gunshot cut everything. Not at us. Behind us. Someone struck Silas from the shadows with a long, quiet hit. A man I did not immediately recognize stepped into the light, sweeping in like a ghost.

It was a rescue or another layer of betrayal. I could not tell in the blur of movement. He wore a jacket I had seen before in meetings, but the face was new. He moved with a steadiness that suggested purpose.

“Get out,” he said to me. His voice was rough. He shoved Silas aside. The corridor split into motion. I took Ava and ran.

We had seconds. Fire alarms screamed. Men shouted. The house went into a frenzy, and in that chaos we found the service exit we needed. Metal clanged. Feet pounded. I shoved Ava into the car and slammed the door. The engine roared. The shadow in the doorway watched us leave.

Isabella lay on the floor, the files scattered like a cemetery. She looked up. The bullet had not killed her. It had cut deep. Her eyes were steady now. “Burn it,” she told me, voice thin. “Burn it all.”

I wanted to promise. I wanted to say I would tear his world down. I wanted to tell her that we would not stop. She smiled at me, that crooked, haunted smile she gave when a plan had teeth. Then her eyes closed.

The driver I had trusted was not me. He was a man on the edge. I floored the pedal. We tore through the properties like men running from gods. I felt the car lean into speed and felt as if the asphalt would slide off the world.

Ava was shaking beside me. She reached for my hand. Her fingers dug into mine like a prayer. “You just declared war,” she said, breathless.

I looked at her. Then I looked at the scattered files in my mind: the tapes, the accounts, the faces who would lose everything. My father’s voice echoed behind my teeth.

“I did,” I said. My voice was colder than I expected. “Then we’ll burn his empire to ashes.”

Her eyes widened. “No.”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll expose him. We’ll tear him down in public. We’ll make him watch everything he built fall. We’ll do it the hard way. No violence unless necessary. But make no mistake. This is a war.”

She swallowed. Her jaw was tight. “If we do this, there’s no coming back.”

“There is no coming back,” I agreed.

She looked at me with that old, fragile hope and the lethal fear. “Promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“If we win, if we ever get out, leave. Don’t stay. You don’t owe him anything. Take what’s left and disappear. For good.”

I let out a breath and considered the future like a broken map. “I won't disappear.”

“Then do this for me,” she said quietly, like a confession. “Live with me. Don’t make me fight alone.”

For a second, the war and the world around it softened. I saw a life that might not include revenge. I saw a life that might involve small things: a laugh that wasn’t sharp, someone to bring coffee to, someone to argue over paint colors. That life wanted me. I wanted to take it. But I had blood in my veins and proof in my hands and a city full of men to topple.

I looked at her, at Isabella bleeding on the floor, at Marco’s shaking face in the rearview mirror, and the stranger in the doorway who had shot Silas.

The car screamed down the road. My mind stitched itself to the files and the plan and the promise.

“We burn his empire to ashes,” I said again. “And then we build something better from the ruins.”

She nodded. “Then don’t make me regret trusting you.”

I gripped the wheel like a man who held a bomb and a future at the same time. “You won’t.”

The phone buzzed on the seat between us. A single text from an unknown number slid across the screen.

You started something tonight. No one walks away from it.

For a second, the night became very small.

I read the message twice. My jaw went hard.

“Who wrote that?” Ava asked.

I didn’t answer. I already knew.

The war had begun.

“I never thought freedom could hurt this much.”

Nathaniel drove like a man possessed, his hands squeezing the wheel so tightly his fingers turned white. The world outside blurred, but the silence inside the car was worse than the chaos we left behind.

I stared out the window, my heart still rushing. Every breath felt like a warning that we had just done something permanent.

I mumbled, “We shouldn’t have done this.”

His voice was sharp, bitter. “You wanted out, didn’t you? You begged for it.”

“I didn’t beg for a war,” I said, my throat tightening. “You don’t know what Charles is capable of.”

He let out a harsh laugh. “Oh, I know. I’ve seen what your husband does to people who cross him. But I’m not afraid of him.”

I turned to him, rage rising through the fear. “You should be. He won’t come after you with threats, Nathaniel. He’ll come with fire.”

His jaw clenched. “Then let him burn.”