All Chapters of SIR: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Breakfast the next morning is a performance I was not given a script for. Eli sitting at his usual end of the table, eating his usual breakfast, and responding to the things said to him with the pleasant, contained efficiency of a man doing his job and nothing else. He doesn’t look at me any differently than he looks at the orange juice. When I come in and say good morning to the table, his eyes move to me for exactly the time it takes to register my presence and then move on. I sit down and pour my coffee and tell myself I am not bothered by this, then I proceed to spend the next twelve minutes being very bothered by it. “You’re quiet this morning,” my mother observes, to me. “Migraine’s still lingering,” I say, which is the story I went to bed on and am apparently still living in. Eli says nothing, just keeps buttering his toast. Lucas is talking about something, Tyler is eating quantities of food that should concern someone medically, and my father comes downstairs and moves

My bedroom at six in the morning has one purpose, which is to be dark and quiet and entirely undisturbed, and it is performing that purpose beautifully when someone knocks on my door with the energy of a person who has never once in their life needed more than four hours of sleep and considers this a personality trait. I groan, burying my face deeper into the silk pillowcase, trying to reclaim the hazy vision of a warehouse and the feeling of a fierce hungry kiss. ​“Five more minutes, Holt,” I mumble, my voice thick with exhaustion. “If the house is not currently sliding into the ocean, leave me alone.” The door opens anyway. “Training,” Eli says. “It’s six in the morning,” I say, into my pillow. “Six twelve. We’re already behind.” I lift the corner of the pillow and look at him with one eye. He is standing in my doorway in training clothes looking unreasonably awake. “This is a violation of at least three human rights.” ​“Get dressed,” he says, tossing a shirt at me. “If you

I am standing in the corridor outside the east wing with my pulse still going at a speed that has nothing to do with the current stillness of the house and everything to do with the last several hours of my life. The cleaners are already moving through the dining room in their white coveralls, scrubbing the spray of red from the baseboards and picking shards of expensive crystal out of the rugs. It is a silent, efficient operation that feels far too practiced for comfort. My skin is crawling with the leftover hum of adrenaline, making my fingers twitch every time a door clicks or a heavy footstep falls in the hallway. My family is accounted for. That is the thing I have been using as an anchor for the last forty minutes, returning to it every time my brain tries to pull me somewhere worse. Lucas is with my mother. Tyler is shaken but unhurt. My father is somewhere in the lower levels doing something I have been deliberately not asking about with the man who was caught. Marcus is o

I shouldn’t be down here. The basement of my father’s house has always been a cold labyrinth of storage and utility rooms that I avoided as a child because the air always felt ten degrees colder than the rest of the mansion. But after the general crumbling of my reality, I couldn’t just sit in my room and wait for the sun to come up. I needed to see the face of the man who held a gun to my head. I needed to see if he looked like a monster or just a man. ​I round the final corner toward the holding cell, my footsteps light on the concrete, and that’s when I see him. ​The heavy steel door is ajar. Inside the small, windowless room, the man in the chair is a ruin of flesh and blood, slumped forward against his restraints, but it’s Eli who holds my attention. He has his gun out, the barrel hovering near the prisoner’s chest, and his posture is coiled with a terrifying intensity. ​When the floorboards beneath my feet give a slight creak, Eli spins around with the speed of a cornered pre

Eli sits on the edge of his bed in the small staff quarters, staring at the illuminated screen of his phone. The message from Carver stares back at him, impossible to ignore any longer. 《Miller isn’t back. Fix it.》 The words carry the weight of a deadline he cannot afford to miss. Carver has never been a patient man, and Eli knows there’s an invisible “or else” at the end of that text. He won’t be able to explain the bruised ribs or broken finger or whatever it is Carver’s men would be sent to deliver if he fails to fulfill his end of the deal. He also obviously cannot let Miller talk. The only path forward is action tonight. Eli closes his eyes for a moment and runs through the mental map he built of the estate during his first weeks here. Every corridor, every camera blind spot, every locked door. He knows the underground service tunnel that leads out near the east loading dock, the one rarely used after midnight. That will be his exit route for Miller. He types a quick rep