Chapter 16 16

Chapter 16 16

Caelum's POV

The club burned beautifully.

I stood on the other side of the street, and watched as orange flames leaped up from the walls of Nikolai's most profitable venue. I felt the heat even from where I was standing; it made my face hot in the night chill. Sirens screamed in the distance, but I would be gone long before they arrived.

Kent led the way and joined me, his features lit by the dancing light of the fire. A play of shadows passing over his face made him appear almost faustian. "That's the third one tonight. He's going to retaliate hard."

"Good." I dropped my eye off of the fire and walked toward the car in the dark. "Let him come."

This would be the fourth day that war had been declared upon me by Nikolai and his attack on my weapons shipment. A precisely orchestrated four days of strikes, burning his operations to the ground and keeping civilian casualties at zero. Four long days where nobody was sleeping, no one eating and barely anyone talking about anything other than the next target.

Except that was a lie.

I thought about her constantly.

Kent and I fell in together. "The fellows are there and raring to hit the next target. But boss, we have to talk about resources. We can not continue at this rate indefinitely,” he added.

"We won't need to. Nikolai's getting desperate. Desperate men make mistakes."

“And what if he wants to hit something you love?”

I slowed to a stop and faced him. The words we didn't speak hung in the air between us. Kent knew precisely what he meant. Who he was implying.

"She's protected," I said quietly.

"Is she? Or have we spread ourselves so thin trying to wage war on multiple fronts?” He crossed his arms. “Half our men are looking at her. The other half are with us. If you hit Nikolai hard someplace, we won’t have the numbers.”

“Let’s just make sure he doesn’t get the opportunity.

I slid into the car without waiting to hear what he had to say. Kent jerked the door and slid in beside me, smart enough to hold his tongue as I gunned the engine and sped off from the inferno.

Or rather I wished it were empty, because the same worry swam through my mind wherever we went these days.

Celine.

I’d kept away from her. Tried to give her the space she was due, the choice to get out of here and never turn back. But I could not look away from the surveillance footage my men sent me three times a day.

Of Celine, striding out of class with a stack of books pressed to her chest, her head bent low. Celine in the cafeteria, at a table with Maddie but pushing food around her plate without taking a bite. Celine walking across campus by herself, seeming smaller somehow, more breakable than the spitfire who had come into my classroom and pushed back against everything I said.

She wasn't sleeping. I read it in the dark circles under her eyes; in how she seemed so labored.
It was painful to watch her suffer. Knowing that I caused the torture.

“Why wouldn’t you bring her?” Ryker had questioned two days ago when I'd been sitting there starting at the video rather than plotting where to hit them next. “Throw in safe house and keep her safe there. At least you could see her, make sure she’s really all right.”

"Because she deserves an option," I'd replied, steeling myself and slamming the laptop shut. "And she'd choose to run."

"You sure about that?"

I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

The kiss haunted me. The clutch of my shirt, desperate and mad, so alive it had taken the breath from me. The taste of her lips. The tiny whimper that she had let out when I'd set her on the counter and she had wrapped her legs around my waist, not wanting to let go.

I’d played and replayed that moment a thousand times in my mind, each recollection like a knife slipping between my ribs. The way she’d regarded me after that, with her dark wanting eyes. The sound of her whispers my name.

“I never should have let it happen.” Should have shoved her out the door the second she’d walked through my door again.

But I was too weak. Too selfish. Too desperate for something solid in a world that is nothing but bullshit.

We got to the warehouse I was using as a command post. Within, my men were all drawn up awaiting the command. Weapons laid out on tables. Maps on the walls, red circles denoting Nikolai’s last operations.

This was my world. Violence and strategy and control.

Celine had no place in it.

Kent's phone buzzed. He checked, and I saw his face go white under the warehouse’s faint light.

"Boss, we have a problem."

I glanced up from the map I had been poring over and walked toward him. "What?"

“On the day her baby sister’s body was found, tech team intercepted communique between Amaya and someone at an unknown number. They're planning something." He opened his phone, fingers trembling just a little. "Something involving your girl."

My blood turned to ice, cold and lethal. "Show me."

He opened the messages on his tablet. Bits of conversation, so discreet, but quite plain to anyone who knew the code.

"The bait is set."

"She agreed to meet."

"Proceed as planned."

"Tonight. The docks."

My heart stopped. And then started up again, so hard I could feel it in my throat.

I picked up my phone and dialed Celine with fingers that wanted to tremble. It rang once. Twice. Three times. Four.

Voicemail.

Her voice, taped weeks ago, happy and alive. "Hey, this is Celine. Please leave a message, and I will return your call.”
I hung up and dialed again. Same result.

“Get her dorm on the phone,” I told Kent, my voice harsher than I’d meant it to be.

Kent was already dialing. I saw him wait, heard him shake his head. "No answer."

Panic, which I hadn’t experienced in years, clawed up my throat. "Where is she? Track her phone. Now."

Kent’s fingers danced on his tablet. "Tracking now. Got it. She’s off campus, headed toward the industrial district. It seems she is headed for the docks.”

The docks. Nikolai's territory. The one place in this city where I was out of control, without a safety net, or an edge.

Before conscious thought could meet me, I was gone. I grabbed my gun from the table and checked the clip, which was full. There was no rush — but I stuffed two additional magazines in my pocket.

"Boss, wait." Kent grabbed my arm. “We need backup, we need a plan. You can't just—"

"Get everyone to those coordinates. Now." I shrugged him off and went for the door. You pull them from where you have to have they be the choir boys. Between six minutes and ten minutes to get there.”

"Caelum, if this is a trap—"

“Then it’s a trap I’m walking into. Move, Kent. Now."

I sprinted to my car, not even feeling the cold air of the night. My engine started and I peeled out of the parking log, tires screeching.

The drive took twelve minutes. Twelve minutes of envisioning every horrible thing that might be going on with her. A dozen minutes of visualizing her, hearing lines she said, how she looked at me with that trust even after knowing what I am.

If Nikolai so much as laid a finger on her, if he caused her any harm at all, I’d rip him to shreds with my bare hands. Would drive him to beg for death and then deny it to him for hours. Would prove to him why they whispered my name like it was a curse.

He could see the dock in front of him, dark and deserted. Freight containers are stacked like building blocks, leading to a maze of shadows and hiding places. Perfect place for an ambush.
I parked two blocks down and walked up, gun in hand. Years of practice kicked in, and my body just took over. Check corners. Watch for movement. Listen for any sounds that did not fit.
Celine’s car was parked in front of a huge warehouse at the end of the docks. My heart ached at the sight of it, so ordinary and innocent in this site of violence.

I walked nearer, staying along the shadows of the containers. Came across a dirty window and peered in.

My worst nightmare made real.

She was tied to a chair in the middle of the warehouse, her face covered in bruises and blood. Amaya stood on the periphery with a hangdog and defeated look. And around them, placed there with military accuracy, stood a minimum of ten of Nikolai's men. All armed. All watching the exits.

A trap.

And Celine had practically walked into it.

I drew away from the window, my mind tumbling possibilities and odds. Kent couldn’t come for at least another five minutes. Five minutes of heaven in which anything is possible. Five minutes where one of men could determine that Celine was more than she was worth.
I couldn't wait.

I had checked my gun once more, counted the men again, tripped angles and hide-points. Played the assault over and over in my head, visualizing each step, each action.

Ten against one. Not good odds by any measure. But I'd faced worse before.

I remembered Celine's face when she had been kissing me. And trust in her eyes after she knew what I was, what I had done. The way she’d chosen to return instead of fleeing.
I'd promised to protect her. I had sworn to myself that no one would ever hurt her again.

Even if it led to his own death to honor that promise.

I made my way towards the entrance of the warehouse, finger gently nestled upon the trigger. My breath grew more even, heart steadying rhythm. This was what I had been prepared for. What I’d been doing ever since I was twenty-five.

Violence. Strategy. Survival.

I would be the monster everyone already thought I was to her.
For her, I’d torch the world.

I battered down the door and opened fire.