Chapter 17: Old Ghosts

Chapter 17: Old Ghosts

The safehouse was smaller than the last, tucked into a nondescript row of townhouses that gave nothing away from the street. Reyna ushered them inside quickly, her team fanning out to secure the perimeter with practiced efficiency.

Once the door was locked behind them, Glenmorrin sank onto the edge of a worn couch, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing.

"Tell me about him," Jhonatan said quietly, sitting beside him. "Sebastian Kray. All of it, not just the version you gave me during the heat."

Glenmorrin was silent for a long moment. "My father ran his operation with absolute loyalty as the only currency that mattered. Kray had been with him since before I was born—more of a mentor to me, honestly, than my own father ever was."

"What did he do to earn a death sentence?" Jhonatan asked.

"He tried to pull my father's organization out of trafficking entirely," Glenmorrin said. "Redirect everything toward less... personal forms of crime. Weapons, information, money laundering. He argued it for months. My father saw it as betrayal, an attempt to weaken the empire's most profitable arm."

"So your father ordered you to kill him," Jhonatan said.

"As a test," Glenmorrin confirmed, bitterness sharpening his voice. "Prove my loyalty, prove I was ready to inherit everything, by putting a bullet in the one person who'd ever treated me like I mattered beyond what I could become."

"And you couldn't do it," Jhonatan said softly.

"I staged it," Glenmorrin said. "Made it look convincing enough that my father believed it, arranged for Kray to disappear somewhere he'd never resurface. I thought I was saving him."

"But if he's alive and working for Castellan now," Jhonatan said, "he didn't disappear the way you intended."

"No," Glenmorrin agreed grimly. "Which means either he chose to align himself with the very kind of operation he once claimed to despise, or something happened to force his hand."

Reyna appeared in the doorway, phone in hand. "I found something. Kray resurfaced eighteen months ago, working logistics for Castellan's northern routes. No obvious signs of coercion. Looks voluntary."

Glenmorrin's expression hardened. "Then he made his choice."

"Doesn't change the fact that he knows things about you that almost no one else does," Reyna said. "Your patterns, your properties, the people you trust. If he's the one guiding Castellan's moves against you, this is a much harder fight than we prepared for."

Jhonatan watched Glenmorrin absorb this, the weight of it settling visibly into his shoulders.

"There's a silver lining, if you want to call it that," Reyna added. "Kray knows you well enough to know you don't scare easily. He'll expect you to fight rather than flee. That predictability might work in our favor."

"How?" Jhonatan asked.

"Because," Glenmorrin said slowly, something calculating creeping into his voice, "if Kray expects me to come at Castellan directly, then the smarter move is to make him think that's exactly what's happening, while we do something else entirely."

"Like what?" Reyna asked.

"The Verrone family," Glenmorrin said. "We move on that alliance tonight, not tomorrow. Before Castellan or Kray have time to anticipate it."

"That's risky," Reyna warned. "Approaching them this soon, without proper groundwork—"

"We don't have the luxury of proper groundwork," Glenmorrin cut in. "We have forty-six hours and counting."

Jhonatan felt a chill settle over him at the reminder, his hand instinctively moving to rest over his stomach again, a gesture that had become almost unconscious in the last few hours.

"I want to come with you," Jhonatan said.

"Absolutely not," Glenmorrin said immediately.

"You said we face this together," Jhonatan reminded him, some steel entering his own voice now. "The Verrones were supposed to be my alliance, my marriage. If you show up alone asking for their help, why would they trust anything you say?"

Glenmorrin opened his mouth to argue, then stopped, something reluctant crossing his face as he recognized the logic in it.

"If you come," Glenmorrin said finally, "you do exactly as I say, the entire time. No exceptions."

"I know how this works by now," Jhonatan said.

Reyna cleared her throat. "I'll arrange the meeting. But Glenmorrin—the Verrones don't grant audiences quickly. Even with the right introduction, this could take hours we don't have."

"Then we make the hours count," Glenmorrin said, standing, already moving toward the door with renewed purpose. "Get the car ready."

As Reyna disappeared to make arrangements, Glenmorrin turned back to Jhonatan, something softer breaking through the hardened resolve in his expression.

"Whatever happens tonight," Glenmorrin said quietly, "I need you to trust me completely. Even if what I say to the Verrones sounds nothing like the truth we know."

Jhonatan frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Glenmorrin said, his voice dropping lower, "that securing their help might require me to offer something I have no intention of actually giving."

Before Jhonatan could ask him to clarify, Reyna's voice called urgently from the front room.

"Glenmorrin. The meeting's confirmed. But there's a condition."

"What condition?" Glenmorrin asked, already moving toward her.

Reyna's expression was grim as she held out her phone, displaying the message that had just come through.

"They want Jhonatan to attend alone."