No one breathes.
Asher’s stare cuts to him, sharp, lethal. “Don’t.”
“We have to consider it,” Zay pushes, but there’s no satisfaction in his tone. Just grim reality.
My pulse roars in my ears. Talia’s laugh in the kitchen. Her bruised eyes in Jackie’s room. Her voice through the door.Fine. For you. Fine.
I grab the edge of the table to steady myself. “Whatever happened, we find her,” I say. “We assume she’s in danger until we know otherwise. And if the Vipers touched her?—”
“They didn’t,” Asher snaps. Then softer, more broken, “They won’t.”
He looks at me then, something wild and pleading in his eyes, like I’m supposed to have the answer. Like I’m supposed to say the one thing that will make this less terrifying.
I don’t.
All I have is the cold certainty curling in my gut.
15
VALENTINA
Asher hasa gun in each hand when I find him.
He’s in the armory—what used to be a storage room before Xavier turned it into racks and drawers and lockboxes. Now it looks like a catalog of all the bad decisions we’ve ever made: assault rifles lined up in precise rows, shotguns gleaming under the fluorescent light, pistols laid out on a workbench in neat, lethal lines.
Asher stands in the middle of it, shirt half buttoned, hair still damp from a shower he obviously didn’t finish. His movements are efficient, almost mechanical. A pistol disappears into the back of his waistband. Another into the holster strapped to his thigh. A knife slides into his boot like it lives there.
Zay is standing at the end of the workbench, loading magazines with quick, practiced motions. Brass flashes between his fingers. His jaw is clenched so hard a muscle ticks near his temple; his usual lazy posture is gone, replaced by something coiled and ready.
The air in the room is dense—gun oil, adrenaline, purpose.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
Both of their heads snap up.
For a second, something almost like relief flickers through Asher’s eyes at the sight of me. It’s gone as quickly as it appears, buried beneath the steel.
“She’s with the Vipers,” he says. “We’re going.”
He sayswebut he meansme. The way his body is vibrating with barely contained violence tells me that if he doesn’t move soon, he’s going to break something just to release the pressure.
Zay shoves a full magazine into the well with more force than necessary. “They touch Talia, we level the block.”
“No,” I say.
They both look at me like I’ve malfunctioned.
“Asher,” I say, stepping fully into the room, “marching a small army into Viper headquarters is the fastest way to get Talia killed and start a war we can’t control.”
“She’s already in their hands,” he bites out. “The war started the second she disappeared.”
“We don’t know that they took her,” I counter. “We don’t know how willing she was. We don’t know what deal was made. We know nothing.”
“I know she’s gone.” His knuckles whiten around the pistol. “I know Killian wants you dead. I know the Vipers would use her as leverage.”
“Exactly,” I say. “As leverage. They won’t kill their leverage on minute one. If you show up with guns blazing, they have no reason not to put a bullet in her head and send you what’s left.”
The words hang there.