Berkley
The glow from the monitors washes over my skin, turning everything in the room into a quiet theater of blue light and shadows. Beside me, the guy’s hover like restless ghosts, waiting for me to pull back the curtain. My fingers skim across the keys, and the feeds flicker to life—warehouses, email chains, delivery manifests, faces and names scrolling like a living map of rot.
“Alright,” I say, voice steady even though my pulse is thrumming. “This is what we’re looking at.” The words pull them closer. Ronan leans on the back of my chair, his warmth radiating through me. Rowan shifts to my left, his arms crossed tight, but his eyes locked on the screens. Emerson sits in the chair next to me with a notebook already open, pen poised like a blade.
I point at the live feeds, flipping between them. “Three warehouses left,” I explain, highlighting each one on the screens. “Less than a handful of business partners who haven’t run for the hills. Emails show them pulling back contracts faster than Bryce can patch the leaks.” I scroll to another window and bring up a log of phone calls. “These are the ones I managed to record before they got smart. They toss their phones as often as chewing gum and grab new ones, so surveillance has been a bitch lately. Audio’s been scarce for the last couple of months.”
Rowan leans in, eyes narrowing at the sound of a clipped recording I play. “How’d you get that?”
“Typically, I use women,” I answer, glancing up at him, “bartenders, clerks, hookers, anyone who can get close without spooking them. But after the first place I blew up, they’ve been jumpy. They’re screening harder. Fewer openings.” My lips twitch at his raised brow. “Doesn’t matter. The picture’s clear enough. We don’t need every word to know how this ends.”
Emerson scribbles something down. “What’s the play, Berk? We’re down to three warehouses, but they’re already bleeding from every artery.”
“That’s the thing,” I say quietly, leaning in as my fingers dance across the keyboard. A new feed flickers onto the screen—grainy and a little distorted, but still clear enough to show the wide loading bay of one warehouse lined with crates and steel beams. On the second screen, another angle comes into focus, this one from a different location entirely. It’s another warehouse, smaller but busier, workers moving like ants between pallets and forklifts. The contrast between them is stark—one quiet, waiting; the other alive and unaware. My lips curve because soon, both will be nothing but fire and ruin. I glance at them over my shoulder. “We’re about to be down to one.”
Ronan’s brow arches, suspicion and curiosity mixing with a low edge of pride in his voice as he asks, “What’s that supposed to mean, baby girl? You keeping secrets from me?” His chuckle rumbles through the room like dark amusement.
I glance back at him over my shoulder, a slow smirk tugging at my lips, unable to hide the thrill curling through me. “Not secrets,” I murmur. “Insurance. I planted the charges days ago. Both warehouses were already wired. We’re about to watch them go up live, straight from their own cameras.”
For a second, the room goes still. Emerson’s pen freezes above the page. Rowan shifts as if he’s grounding himself. Ronan leans in close, his voice low and edged with arousal. “You’ve been busy,” he says.
“You have no idea,” I tease, pulling up the feeds until every camera angle fills the wall of screens. I won’t miss a single frame—not if I can’t be there in person. “Watch closely, boys.”
With a single tap of my key, the screens flare white—then the world erupts, tearing itself apart in a storm of fire and light. Fire blossoms across all feeds, voracious and precise—a geometry of orange tearing metal and crate like paper. The next explosion hits a heartbeat later, a violent shockwave that ripples through both warehouses, shattering glass and making the lights flicker in a stuttering pulse of chaos. For a second my body forgets how to breathe; then, something inside unfurls. Adrenaline surges up my spine, burning beneath my skin until every nerve feels alive. I stare at the monitors like they’re living things, their feeds pulsing with the last heartbeats of a dying empire as the lifeblood of their corruption drains away before my eyes.
Figures scatter across the grainy screens, frantic shadows darting through the blaze before the fire swallows them whole. I know every one of them—the smug bastards who kept the ledgers,who sold flesh like it was product, who believed power made them untouchable. Watching them burn twists something deep inside me; disgust and satisfaction coil together until I can’t tell one from the other. The flames paint everything in gold and ruin, a vision both horrifying and holy, and for one breath I can’t decide if I’m witnessing damnation or justice.
A sound escapes me before I can stop it—a low, broken moan that startles me with its rawness. Heat floods my face, shame sparking quick and sharp beneath the rush of it. I should be sickened, shattered by what I’m seeing, even if they were monsters. But instead, there’s this terrible, intoxicating satisfaction curling through my veins. Justice—brutal and blinding—painted in fire and ruin. My fingers twitch against the edge of the desk, grasping for something solid, while my chest heaves like it’s straining to split under the weight of what I’m feeling.
Ronan’s hand settles on my shoulder, firm and grounding, his touch steady in a way that quiets the storm in my chest. He doesn’t speak—he doesn’t have to. The weight there says enough. The silence stretches for a heartbeat, filled only by the phantom echo of the blast on the screens. Emerson exhales a rough curse, the sound torn from somewhere deep, raw and instinctive, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
Rowan’s breath comes slower, measured, his composure ironclad even as his eyes gleam with heat and awe. “Damn, Berk,” he says, voice low but certain. “Two out of three gone, just like that.” There’s pride threaded through every syllable, and the way helooks at me makes my pulse jump, the approval in his gaze curling warm, electric pleasure across my skin.
“Good,” Emerson says, his hand dragging over the back of his neck in a slow, heavy motion. The faint smile that tugs at his mouth doesn’t reach his eyes; they’re shadowed and worn, like he’s carrying the weight of every choice we’ve made on his back. “But keep your head, Berk. This is a message, not an invitation for chaos. We control the story, or it controls us.”
His voice cuts through the rush inside me, steady and grounding, and it pulls me back from the high thrumming under my skin. He’s right—the fire isn’t meant to be a celebration. It’s a warning. A declaration. By now, they have to be connecting the dots, piecing together who’s orchestrating the hits. I doubt they’ll trace it directly to me, but with Kimber’s sudden relocation, the guys torching their own house, the arguments with Bryce, and Dean’s silence, the picture is forming.
For months I’ve been dismantling their empire, one contact and warehouse at a time, erasing every trail that could lead back to me. But if they’re smart—and I know they are—the only logical conclusion left is their own sons. And they wouldn’t be wrong. They’ve been plotting the same downfall I’ve already set in motion. I just got there first. My plan has structure and precision. Their plan had a framework, but nothing close to the precision or impact mine carries. At least they moved their clean business into offshore accounts before I turned everything else into ash.
I refocus, fingers flying over the keyboard as I switch through the feeds, making sure every camera catches the full scope.Every angle. Every collapse. Partially because I want to revel in it—but because it needs to be witnessed. Proof that this rot is now extinguished. Proof that we aren’t afraid to cut it out.
Ronan leans in close, his breath brushing against my ear, carrying the heat of victory and the edge of something darker. “This is only the beginning,” he murmurs, his voice rough with certainty and pride. “We’re not stopping here.” The words settle like a weight and a promise, heavy enough to steady my pulse. For a heartbeat, the rush falters. Guilt creeps in, sharp and uninvited, threading through the adrenaline still humming under my skin. Reign’s face flickers behind my eyes—her laugh, her absence, the gaping hollow she left behind. The image cools the fire just enough to sting. I let it. I want it to stay. Because this—every explosion, every strike—isn’t just for me. It’s for her. It’s for all of us who didn’t make it out clean.
We watch as the smoke billows, thick and heavy, swallowing the screens that are left in shifting shades of gray. Sparks crawl hungrily up the metal framework, skittering like angry insects before the entire structure folds in on itself—slow, deliberate, and devastatingly final. The silence that follows feels deafening, the kind that hums in your bones long after the sound dies. Something in my chest shifts with it, a sharp twist that isn’t victory and isn’t quite relief. It’s something cleaner, colder—the quiet that follows when justice finally breathes. The rot has been dragged into the light, burned down to ash. Now comes the hard part. Standing ready for what’s left to rise from the smoke.
Rowan’s fingers find mine and squeeze—firm, grounding, like he’s anchoring me to the only solid thing left in the room. He sounds steadier than he looks when he answers, voice low and certain. “We’ll be careful,” he says. “We’ll make them pay. If it’s the last thing I do.” Emerson’s head bobs once in agreement, his eyes already moving ahead a dozen steps, cataloguing contingencies even while his jaw works through the shock.
The air tastes like hot copper and singed wiring; the monitors still glow with the last embers as the buildings die in the feeds. I let their promises roll over me, let the image sink in and etch itself behind my ribs: fire taking the structures that sheltered their crimes, light swallowing lie after lie. There’s a hard clarity in the aftermath, a cold satisfaction that comes from finally exposing rot to light. It has nothing to do with joy and everything to do with righting our injustice. The feeling steadies me—a quiet, fierce resolve that will carry us through whatever rises out of the smoke.
Something’s alive beneath my skin—an ache, a pull toward the three men who have lived in my blood since before I understood what love really was. I glance at them one by one, the exhaustion etched into their faces, the shadows under their eyes proof of how hard we’ve been fighting. Ronan’s still running on adrenaline, that familiar edge crackling under his skin. Rowan sits tense, his hands clasped like he’s trying to hold himself together. And Emerson—he’s the quiet storm, the one whose calm hides the cracks beneath.
The connection between Ronan and me hums, steady and fierce, but with Rowan and Em it’s still fragile, a bridge half-built and trembling. I can feel the distance between us like static. We’velet too much fear keep us apart, too much guilt, too many ghosts whispering that we can’t have something good again. I don’t want to listen to those voices anymore.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I move. One small step, then another, until I stop in front of Emerson. His pen scratches across a page, his focus locked on strategy and logistics, like he’s holding the world together by sheer will. Without thinking, I slide onto his lap. The motion startles him; the pen clatters from his fingers and rolls across the table. His body goes rigid for a beat before his breath stutters out in one long exhale, and his arms wrap around me like instinct.
“Fuck, Berk,” he whispers against my neck, his voice breaking around the words. His breath is warm where it hits my skin, and the tremor in it says more than he ever could. He buries his face in my hair, the tension bleeding out of him one breath at a time.
I run my fingers through his hair, soft and slow, the way I used to when we were younger, and the world was less cruel. “You’re tired,” I murmur. “We all are.”