Chapter 7
The night came fast.
Jude and Vaughn left at nine, two black SUVs sliding through the gates without headlights, disappearing into the dark like they had never existed. Dorothy sang Maeve to sleep with an old lullaby, her voice low and warm drifting into the hallway, where Brielle sat on the wooden floor, back against the wall, the oak staff Jude had left outside her door resting across her lap. Thirty-two inches, heavy, perfectly balanced. She understood exactly what that staff meant. It was the finished version of a rusted chair leg from a June sidewalk. An unspoken sentence: I remember what you held when you stood between my family and danger. Next time, I want you holding something worthy of your hand.
Eleven twenty-three. The first gunshot came from the outer gate. Then more, closer. Glass breaking downstairs. Running footsteps. Then silence — the kind of silence that meant the security team had stopped shooting. Inside the bedroom, Maeve began to cry. Dorothy’s voice stayed impossibly calm. “Hush, darling. Grandma’s here.”
Brielle rose in one motion, low center of gravity, the staff angled exactly the way Mr. Cho had trained her to hold it. She wasn’t the girl from the June street anymore, fighting on instinct and pain and memory. Three weeks with Mr. Cho hadn’t made her a master. But they had turned wildfire into steel. Will doesn’t burn. It flows.
Two sets of footsteps on the stairs — heavy, fast, uncoordinated. Not Jude’s men, who moved like one body. Mercenaries. She slid into the deepest shadow at the hallway’s turn, made herself small, silent. The first man came around the corner without looking left, because no one expects a threat standing half a step into darkness. The oak staff swept his ankles out from under him; before he hit the floor, she was already above him, driving the rounded end into his temple.
The second man rounded the corner toward the sound, gun rising. Brielle was already to his left. The staff drove into his throat with exact, controlled precision — nothing like the desperate strike she had once thrown on a June sidewalk. This was the point Mr. Cho had shown her, over and over, until her body knew it without thinking. He collapsed beside his partner, hands at his own throat, no longer capable of fighting.
Brielle stood in the hallway, chest steady, hands steady, the oak staff streaked dark. Behind the door, Maeve sobbed into a pillow. Dorothy kept whispering the lullaby, her voice never fully stopping. And Brielle stood in front of that door, and nothing, no one, was getting through it.
Across the city, Reno Volkov’s warehouse had already stopped being a fortress. Jude’s team cut the power at 11:15. They came through the roof, through gaps in the rusted walls, through the drainage system. The fight lasted under four minutes. In the middle of it, on his cracked leather throne, sat Reno Volkov. He didn’t rise when Jude walked in. He looked up, tired, strangely peaceful, and laughed.
May you like
“You’re more like your father than you think, boy. Same way of standing. Same look.” His voice dropped. “Catherine.” The name hit Jude harder than any bullet could have. “That car. Lakeshore Drive. Brakes failed. The exact day Catherine was going to meet someone she shouldn’t have met. You’ll never know the truth, boy. Because I’m taking it with me.”
The shot came from behind Jude. Clean. Precise. “It’s done, sir,” Vaughn said. Jude didn’t turn. He stood looking at the dead man’s frozen smile. Reno was gone. But he had taken the truth about Catherine with him.
