I don’t say Berk’s name. She doesn’t exist in this frame—she’s exactly where she needs to be, hidden, protected. “You touch Kimber,” I continue, my voice dropping lower, deadlier, “or you threaten anyone who matters to me ever again, and I will make sure you regret the day you were born.” My gaze never leaves his. “We are coming for you. Both of you.”
There’s nothing left after that. No explanations or mercy. No one left to protect except the people standing in this room with me. My thumb hovers for a single heartbeat before I end the call, cutting off the last echo of Bryce’s voice mid-breath.
The screen goes black, and I stare at my reflection glaring back—my face pale, hollowed, stripped bare. The world feels unbearably loud and eerily silent all at once, like everything has shifted and there’s no going back.
Berk is suddenly in front of me, her hands warm against my cheeks, pulling me back into the world. “Em,” she says softly, searching my eyes. “Are you okay?”
Her voice cracks something in me. I blink, throat working as I try to answer. “Yeah,” I say, though it sounds wrong, broken in the air between us. “Yeah, I’m good.” But the words taste like ash.
Ronan and Rowan close in, silent but solid, each resting a hand on my shoulders. The weight of their touch steadies me in a way I didn’t know I needed. For a moment, none of us breathes. The room feels like it’s holding itself together by sheer force of will.
Then, a sound breaks it. A small, trembling whimper from behind us. We turn at once. Kimber stands in the doorway, wide-eyed and shaking, tears already slipping down her cheeks. Her lower lip quivers as she tries to speak, but the words catch in her throat.
Berk moves faster than any of us, rushing to her side. “Oh, baby,” she murmurs, kneeling in front of her. “What did you see?”
Kimber’s voice comes out tiny and wrecked. “All of it,” she whispers, before the dam bursts. The sobs shake her tiny frame as she collapses against Berk, clinging to her neck like a lifeline.
Berk’s eyes lift to ours over Kimber’s shoulder, full of concern and silent fury. The twins and I stand frozen for a heartbeat, useless statues in our own grief. Then Berk wraps Kimber tighter, rocking her gently, whispering soft reassurances into her hair.
I drag a shaking hand through my hair, fingers catching, tugging too hard, like the pain might anchor me. My chest locks until every breath feels shallow and wrong. My mom is gone—just like that, ripped out of the world in a blink. Kimber watched it happen. Saw it. Heard it. That truth alone feels like it’s carving me open from the inside.
Then there’s Bryce. Still breathing. Still standing. Still out there after what he just admitted—after confirming, without even meaning to, that he and Dean were responsible for the car accident. That Daphne and Evelyn didn’t die by chance or fate or bad luck. They were taken. Murdered. Hearing it out loud detonates something inside me, makes the years between then and now collapse into nothing. The grief doesn’t feel old anymore. It feels brand-new, raw and bleeding, like we just lost them yesterday.
Everything hurts at once—the past, the present, the futures they stole. The lies we were forced to live inside for years. Bryce isstill out there, and now there’s no distance left between what he did then and what he’s done now. It’s all the same violence, the same cruelty, the same man. And I don’t know how I’m supposed to breathe knowing that.
That thought steadies me again. Because as much as grief scorches, vengeance burns hotter—and right now, it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
By the time Kimber finally drifts off, it isn’t just Berk who gets her there. Berk hums softly, a low, familiar sound that wraps around Kimber like a shield, but I’m there too—kneeling beside the bed, one hand smoothing through her hair, the other pressing gently between her shoulders when the shakes come. I murmur to her, grounding, steady, helping Berk hold her together until sleep finally takes her. When her breathing evens out and her body slackens with exhaustion, the house seems to exhale with her, like it’s been waiting for that moment.
The silence that settles afterward isn’t empty—it’s loaded, tense, like we’re all bracing, keeping our pieces in place until the next move is made. I make sure she’s tucked in, that there’s water on the nightstand, a nightlight casting a soft glow across the walls, and I give her the promise she needs most—that she’s not going back. Then we ease the door shut and head down the hall, toward the War Room, toward what comes next.
Berk drops into the desk chair like she’s come home, fingers already flicking across keys. The glow from the monitors paints her face the color of someone possessed—calm, dangerous, and beautiful in the way she focuses. “One warehouse left,” she sayswithout looking up, and the way she says it is matter-of-fact, not triumphant. She brings up feeds and files, three screens filling with the breadcrumbs she’s been collecting for months. Her voice is steady as she scrolls through names and dates, the paper trail of a rotten empire.
“Bryce is next,” I say. The words hit the room with the weight of a command, then fracture into quiet movement and murmured strategy. Ronan leans back in his chair, arms crossed, a grin pulling at his mouth that never reaches his eyes. Rowan’s attention stays on Berk, studying her like a map he’s only just learned how to read—careful, intent, memorizing every line.
And there it is again—that old, fierce sense of us. Dangerous. Disciplined. Aligned. A kind of unity that doesn’t need reassurance, only direction.
Berk tilts her head and taps the corner of a file. “We don’t hit him with a single loud blow,” she says. “We erode him. Take away his support, his money, his lanes of operation. We show the world what he did in ways he can’t gaslight.” She doesn’t outline explosives or revenge fantasies. Her plan is surgical in tone—public, precise, and humiliating for a man who hides behind cash and muscle.
“Let’s start with proof,” she says, and from there the room fills with quiet, focused argument. We break it down piece by piece—what goes to a lawyer, what becomes leverage, how to stage a leak clean enough that the people who rely on Bryce start seeing him as a liability instead of an asset.
As Berk talks, her fingers move with purpose, pulling up clipped recordings of phone calls, ledger entries, shipment logs—nothing technical, nothing we couldn’t explain away if needed, but every bit of it damning in what it suggests. “We don’t have to fabricate anything,” she says calmly. “We just make the banks, the partners, and the press uncomfortable enough that they walk away on their own. Once his people start asking questions, he’ll be stuck playing defense.”
Rowan lets out a low growl. “He won’t see it coming because he’s expecting violence,” he says. “He’s watching for hits, not erosion. He’ll never anticipate his life quietly burning down around him overnight.”
“That’s the goal,” I say. “We make him paranoid until he collapses into continuous mistakes. We make the higher-ups pull the plug because they can’t afford the scandal.” My voice sounds colder in my own ears than I feel. Berk spins a chair and fixes me with a look that says she already knew I’d land there. She likes the idea. I can see a small smile tugging at her mouth.
We split the work into quick, precise exchanges. Berkley takes surveillance and the dossier, keeping them current and airtight, shaping the record so every piece stands on its own and can’t be dismissed. I handle the legal front—custody, filings, and pressure applied through the systems that still bend for men with money and lawyers. Rowan and Ronan manage security and containment, making sure we aren’t exposed while we drag Bryce into the open.
“No cowboy moves,” Berk says, eyes sharp and unyielding. “No improvising that blows our cover. We move like a machine.”
We outline the timeline in broad strokes. We name contacts who can quietly shift money, follow paper trails, and apply pressure without leaving fingerprints. We don’t talk about witnesses or rescues—there’s no one to save inside that empire. It’s rotten all the way through. The goal isn’t reform or exposure for the sake of justice. It’s total collapse. We want Bryce isolated—cut off from his people, forced to watch what he built turn toxic beneath him. What we’re planning isn’t chaos—it’s controlled destruction, a methodical burn where every decision strips another layer away until there’s nothing left standing.
At one point I catch my reflection in a darkened monitor, and I don’t recognize the man who answers Berk’s question with such cool certainty. Maybe that’s the point. We’ve been running in circles long enough. Tonight, we stop running and start dismantling.
Rowan taps his pen twice. “We do this clean,” he says. “Then we make sure the hits that follow aren’t reactionary—they’re surgical.” He looks at each of us, and suddenly the tiredness in his face looks less like defeat and more like readiness.
Berk finally leans back in her chair, eyes glinting in the glow of the monitors. The room hums around us; the steady thrum of computers layered with the quiet pulse of anticipation. Her smirk curves slow and wicked, a grin that promises chaos and victory all at once. “You all ready?” she asks, scanning each of us. Ronan’s grin is feral, Rowan’s jaw is tight but determined, and I can feel my pulse thudding in time with the fans whirring inside her machines. She tilts her head toward me, the corners of her mouth lifting higher. “Em,” she says softly, “you do the honors.” She gestures to the keyboard in front of her.