REPUTATIONS ARE BUILT IN ASH

ZACH

There are moments that define who we are. Not because they’re loud. But because they’re quiet. Because they ask us to choose and we know we won’t come back the same.

This is one of them.

Alana is shaking when she puts the syringe in my hand.

It’s small. Clean. Sharp as betrayal.

But her eyes… They’re not full of guilt. They’re full of desperation.

“I brought it to show you,” she says, breathless. “I didn’t use it. I swear to God, I didn’t.”

I believe her.

She could’ve done it. I wouldn’t have seen it coming. I let her get close — let her touch the parts of me no one’s seen since I was a kid being dragged from one shit foster home to the next.

But she didn’t do it.

She’s standing here, begging me to trust her while holding the thing that was meant to drop me.

And I do. I trust her. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’ll get me killed. But I trust her anyway.

Because when someone like Alana chooses you?

You let her.

“What did he tell you?” I ask.

She blinks. “Roman?”

“Yeah.”

She hesitates, then answers. “He told me to sedate you. Bring you in. No blood. No mess. Just… disappear.”

I nod, slow. “And you were going to follow through.”

She flinches.

“I was supposed to,” she says. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get in the car without shaking. I didn’t know what I’d do when I saw you.”

“You did the right thing.”

She lets out a breath.

“I thought you’d be furious.”

“I am.”

She looks up, startled.

“But not at you,” I say. “At them. At what they turned you into. At the fact that you thought you had to protect me by doing this alone.”

Her lip trembles.

I take a step closer.

“You should’ve told me sooner. We could’ve planned.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to be involved.”

“You’re wrong.”

She blinks at me.

I hold up the syringe.

“Let’s use it.”

Her eyes widen.

 “What?”

“Do it.”

“Zach—”

“Listen to me.” I close the distance between us, grip her arms. “He wants me unconscious? Fine. Let’s give him what he wants. We let you deliver me like a good little soldier. And once I’m on the inside, their inside, we find out what they’re hiding.”

“You want to go in?” she says, horrified.

“I want to end this.” My voice drops. “I want to burn it down from the inside out.”

She stares at me for a long, long time.

“You’ll be trapped.”

“I’ve been trapped my whole life, Alana.”

“What if I can’t get you back out?”

“Then you stay close.”

Her voice trembles.

“They’ll kill you if they find out who you are.”

I smile, just a little.

“They already know who I am. The trick is reminding them I’m not some lost, scared orphan anymore.”

Her breath catches.

“You’re serious.”

I nod. “Let’s build something inside the flames, baby. Not run from them.”

We don’t do it right away. We plan. Because if we’re going to do this, it has to be clean.

Alana says the drop point is one of Roman’s black sites, a warehouse with no cameras, no paper trail, and more armed men than sense. There’ll be three guards minimum. I won’t be conscious, so I’ll have to be positioned like cargo. Unarmed. Unaware. Easy.

It’s a risk. A huge one.

But it’s the only way to get behind the curtain. To see the real moving parts. To figure out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

We rehearse it in her apartment the next night. I lie down. She kneels beside me with the syringe. Her hands shake.

She can’t do it.

I cover her hand with mine.

“Hey,” I say, voice low. “You’re not hurting me. You’re saving me.”

She nods. But there’s tears in her eyes.

“Promise me,” she whispers, “if anything goes wrong, you won’t try to be a hero. Just get out. Run.”

“No.”

“Zach—”

“If I’m doing this, I’m seeing it through. No half-measures.”

“Then let me come in with you.”

I shake my head.

“Not yet. You stay out long enough to keep me protected. You’re my inside link. The one person they still trust.”

She swallows hard.

“And when they stop trusting me?”

“We run.”

Together.

It happens fast. Two nights later. The drop.

We do it in the middle of a storm.

Thunder cracks the sky as we pull up to the warehouse. My body is slumped in the passenger seat, feigned unconsciousness. My heartbeat is steady. Focused.

The needle was clean. A half-dose. Enough to make me limp, just barely conscious. Enough to fool them.

Alana parks.

A man approaches the car. Early forties. Broken nose. Coat too clean for a thug. He shines a flashlight in my face, then looks at her.

“Sedated?”

She nods.

“Per Roman’s orders.”

The man grunts and opens the door. Two others help drag me out. I go limp, heart thudding in my ears. My head rolls, jaw slack. I keep my breathing slow. Eyes mostly shut.

I can feel the tension radiating off Alana like a pulse.

She’s holding her breath.

One wrong twitch from me and it’s over.

The men drag me toward the back entrance. I hear a door slide open, metal grinding on concrete.

I’m dumped onto a cot. The door slams.

One of them laughs.

“So this is the famous Zakhar. Doesn’t look like much.”

“Neither do rats until they bite,” the other mutters.

Footsteps fade. Silence. Alana’s gone. I open my eyes.

The room is dark, concrete walls and low light. Cameras in every corner. I count two. Possibly a third in the corner blind spot.

I don’t move yet. Wait another full minute to be sure.

Then I sit up, slow, careful. Limbs heavy from the drug. Head thick.

But I’m awake. And I’m inside.

Hours pass. No one checks on me.

I pace the room. Test the bars on the door. Fake locked. Easily tripped with a shim.

This isn’t a cell. It’s a test. They want to see what I do.

I stare straight at one of the cameras.

Then smile.

A voice finally comes through the intercom.

“Comfortable?”

I walk toward the speaker.

“Not bad. Missing a mini fridge.”

Laughter. Then:

“You’ll be brought upstairs in an hour. I suggest you behave.”

“Or what?”

A pause. Then:

Or you end up like the last Veronin who crossed us.”

The line clicks off. But the threat hangs in the air.

Not that it matters. Because I’m not here to play nice. I’m here to find out who I was. And then destroy the version of me they think I’m supposed to be.

They think I’m the last ember of a dying legacy.

What they don’t know is, I came to burn the rest of the house down.

Pierce was the name they gave me. But I never felt like a Pierce. I just didn’t know there was a name buried deeper, Veronin.