جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

Rival’s POVThe card with the serpent emblem lay on the table like it owned the room. Like it had slithered in from Vegas just to remind me that no matter how many city blocks I put between myself and Base Two, I was never free.I stared at it too long, jaw grinding, until Thomas finally snatched it up.“Where the fuck did this come from?” His voice was sharp, a low hiss, but I caught the flicker in his eyes not fear exactly, but recognition. He knew what it meant.“Bar,” I muttered, pacing the length of the apartment. The hardwood creaked under every step. “Some asshole slipped it under my glass.”Thomas turned the card over, like the back would spell out answers. Blank. Just the serpent, black and coiled.“Shit,” he breathed. “They’re onto us.”“No.” I spun on him, the word cutting sharper than my blade. “They’re onto me.”Thomas and I had been through the same furnace. Same blood-soaked training floors, same broken knuckles and fractured ribs. But the difference was, he never had

Rival’s POVThe stink of blood still clung to my hands, no matter how many times I washed them. The watcher was rotting under a pile of garbage somewhere in Chinatown, and still I could feel the phantom weight of his body pinned beneath my blade.Base Two is always watching.His last words gnawed at me like rats on bone.Thomas slammed a map of the city down on the motel table, flattening it with his palm. “We can’t just sit here and wait for the next one to show up. You know that, right?”“I know.” My voice was low, steady, the kind that always scared him a little more than when I shouted.He jabbed a finger at the map and drew circles around warehouses, docks, old clubs that used to belong to the Italians. “These are the places we’ve seen movement. If Base Two’s got feelers in New York, it’s through these channels.”“Then we bleed the channels dry.”Thomas lifted his head, searching my face. “You’re talking about a war. In the middle of New York.”I leaned back in the chair, smirk c

Rival’s POVBase Two thought they could turn New York into their hunting ground.They forgot I grew up in the fucking dirt. They forgot I was trained to survive in shadows sharper than these.And they forgot I don’t wait to die.Thomas and I were crouched across the street from a brownstone in Queens, its windows dark, its silence too neat. On the surface it was just another shitty apartment block. But I’d traced the courier’s routes, followed the whispers, and all of it led here.A safehouse. One of their roots.I cracked my knuckles, the blade at my side itching for work. “We go in fast. We go in loud. No witnesses.”Thomas exhaled through his nose, eyes narrowing. “You’re enjoying this too much.”“Enjoying it?” I smirked, teeth sharp under the hood. “No. I’m surviving it. Big difference.”He grunted but fell into step when I moved. He always did.The front door gave way under my boot with a screech of splintering wood. The inside smelled of sweat, gun oil, and moldy carpet. Perfect

Rival’s POVThe motel room still smelled faintly of burnt coffee and cheap detergent when I opened my eyes.For half a second, I didn’t remember where I was. The weight in my chest was lighter, my body wasn’t thrumming with that constant, jagged edge of violence.Thomas was sprawled in the chair, boots still on, a book face-down on his stomach. The idiot had actually fallen asleep reading.I almost smiled. Almost.That day off had been stupid, dangerous, indulgent. And fuck me if I hadn’t enjoyed every second of it. Ice cream, park benches, the sound of Thomas groaning like I was the world’s biggest headache—it had felt too normal, too easy.And normal never lasted.I knew it before the first knock.A sharp, too-perfect rap against the motel door. Three beats, a pause, three beats again. Not housekeeping. Not some lost tourist.Killers.My hand was on my blade before Thomas even stirred.“Get up,” I hissed.He blinked awake, confusion giving way to instinct. His gun was in his hand be

Rival’s POVThe city didn’t sleep. But it bled quiet when I wanted it to.After the laundromat slaughter, Thomas was moving slower. He kept a hand clamped to his ribs like he could hold the life inside by sheer stubbornness. I hated it—hated how human it made him look. Breakable.We should’ve stopped. Should’ve found a hole, stitched him clean, bought ourselves at least one night.But I wasn’t built for “should.” Not anymore.Because word on the street said one of Base Two’s lieutenants had crawled into Manhattan. A handler named Moreno. He wasn’t a soldier. He was worse—he trained them, fed them orders, cleaned their failures with bleach and shallow graves.And I wasn’t going to waste a second letting him breathe.We tracked him through whispers. A bodega clerk with nervous eyes pointed east. A cabbie stammered something about a convoy of black SUVs cutting through the Lower East Side.Finally, a corner dealer muttered he’d seen a sharp suit disappear into an upscale club that charge