Chapter 6

Ellery POV

The sedan's tinted windows were my shield against the world.

I sat in the parking lot of St. Jude's Private Clinic, a shadow in the dark.

It was a facility funded by the Syndicate, designed to patch up soldiers who couldn't walk into an ER without triggering a police report.

But tonight, it wasn't being used for bullet wounds.

I watched as the automatic doors slid open.

Brendan walked out first.

He looked larger than life under the harsh halogen lights of the entryway, his silhouette cutting a sharp figure against the glare.

He was beaming.

It was a smile I hadn't seen in years-not since the day he signed the deed to the estate I had designed for him.

Behind him walked Kiya.

She was glowing, one hand resting protectively over her lower abdomen.

She wasn't showing yet, but the gesture was unmistakable.

It was a flag planted on conquered land.

Brendan turned to her.

He didn't just help her into the waiting car.

He knelt.

Right there on the pavement.

The Don of the Wiggins family, a man who made city councilmen tremble in their bespoke suits, went down on one knee just to tie her shoelace.

He said something to her, looking up with an expression of pure adoration.

Kiya laughed, the sound inaudible through the glass but visible in the way she ran her fingers through his hair.

My breath hitched in my throat.

It wasn't the affair that broke me.

Men like Brendan had appetites.

I had accepted that as part of the tax for his protection.

It was the tenderness.

He had never knelt for me.

He had never looked at me with that soft, unguarded hope.

I was his fortress.

She was his home.

My phone vibrated in my lap, breaking the spell.

I looked down.

It was Kiya.

Of course it was.

She must have seen my car, or maybe she just sensed my presence like a shark senses blood in the water.

The message was simple.

*"A son. He is finally going to have a son. Don't wait up, Ellery. We are celebrating."*

I stared at the screen until the backlight turned off, plunging me back into darkness.

The hierarchy was dead.

The code was ash.

He had brought a bastard into the fold and elevated the mistress above the wife.

He had publicly humiliated me in the one place that mattered-the lineage.

I didn't cry.

My tear ducts felt like parched riverbeds, long abandoned by the rain.

Mechanically, I put the car in gear and drove away.

I didn't go home.

Instead, I drove to a dead drop location behind a laundromat in The Bronx.

A man in a grey hoodie was waiting in the shadows.

He didn't look at me.

He simply passed a small, insulated cooler through the window.

"The package," he grunted.

I handed him an envelope of cash.

I drove back to the estate with the cooler on the passenger seat.

It rattled slightly with every turn.

Inside was the serum Evans had prepared.

My exit ticket.

My suicide note, written in chemistry.

I pulled into the driveway of the fortress.

The house was dark.

Brendan was out celebrating his heir.

I carried the cooler into the kitchen and set it on the cold granite island.

I opened the lid.

A single vial of clear liquid rested on a bed of dry ice, mist curling around the glass.

It looked like water.

It looked like mercy.

I checked the clock on the microwave.

Midnight.

His birthday had officially begun.

*Happy birthday, Brendan.*

I picked up the vial.

The glass was cold against my skin.

I had twenty-four hours to finish the job.

Twenty-four hours to kill Ellery Rich so June Bennett could take her first breath.