Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“We got hit,” Knight says.
A pause.
“What? How?”
“Four inside, at least a few outside,” Knight replies. “Suppressors. They knew the layout. Called me Hayes. We evacuated. Cabin’s compromised.”
“And now?”
Knight’s gaze flicks to me.
I give him a small nod.
“Temporary safe stop,” he says carefully. “Not staying past sunrise. We’re a moving target.”
Arrow exhales. “Fuck. You injured?”
“Bruised. Lark’s clean.”
“I’m not ‘clean,’” I mutter. “I’m furious.”
Knight’s mouth twitches.
Arrow must hear it because his voice softens a fraction.
“Good. Stay that way. It keeps you sharp.”
Knight pulls the phone a little closer. “There’s something else,” he says.
“What?”
We exchanged this information in the car—half shouted over engine noise and adrenaline—so now Knight delivers it cleanly.
“We overheard a name in the cabin,” he says. “Not Luka’s. Not Helios. A woman. Serafina.”
Silence.
So immediate and heavy it makes my spine tighten.
“What did you say?” Arrow asks.
“Serafina,” Knight repeats. “And a tag: NS-11.”
I glance at Knight.
His expression is unreadable.
But the tension in his shoulders says he feels it too—the moment you say something that changes the game.
Arrow doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, I hear movement on his end. A chair scrape. The soft murmur of voices.
Then Arrow says, “I’m patching Dean in.”
A beat later, a new voice joins the call.
“Knight,” Dean Maddox says. “Lark.”
“Dean,” Knight replies.
My mouth goes dry.
I’ve met Dean, technically. At Gage and River’s chaos-HEA era. But hearing him now—like this—makes him feel less like a legend and more like a man about to decide whether we’re a problem or an asset.
“Tell me exactly what you heard,” Dean says.
Knight repeats it. Slow. Precise.
“Serafina. NS-11.”
Another pause.
Then Dean says the words that make the hotel room feel colder:
“Northstar.”
“What the hell is Northstar?” Knight asks.
Dean doesn’t answer in one clean sentence. He answers like this is an old wound he keeps a bandage on because looking at it hurts. “Northstar was an operation that went south years ago,” Dean says. “Black-ops-adjacent. The kind of work that gets buried under paperwork and deniability.”
Arrow adds quietly, “The kind of work that creates enemies who don’t stop.”
“Serafina was tied to it?” I ask.
“Yes,” Dean says. “She believes I’m responsible for what she lost. Some of that is true. Some of it… isn’t that simple.”
“That’s a very dramatic non-answer,” I mutter.
Knight squeezes my shoulder like he approves.
Dean doesn’t sound offended. He sounds tired. “She’s out for payback,” he says plainly. “And if you heard her name attached to your hit, it means she’s either collaborating with Luka’s network or piggybacking on it.”
Knight’s eyes narrow. “Why would she care about us?”
“Because you’re part of the ecosystem,” Arrow says. “You’re connected to us. You were in the River op. The Juno op. You’ve destabilized a lot of bad systems. That gets noticed.”
“And because Serafina doesn’t just want me,” Dean adds. “She wants to dismantle what I protect.”
My stomach flips.
I hate that I understand that kind of revenge.
It’s not rational.
It’s emotional math.
Hurt me by hurting everything I love.
Knight shifts, one hand still around me, the other braced on the nightstand like he’s anchoring himself.
“She attacked Rae, River’s friend,” I say, because Arrow hinted at it earlier in the group channel before we went fully dark.
“Correct,” Dean says.
My heart tightens.
Rae Diaz is the kind of woman I’d trust with my life in a burning building and still expect her to make a joke about my exit strategy.
“She was on vacation,” Arrow adds. “Low profile. Supposed to be safe.”
“Serafina found her anyway,” Dean says. “Rae got out—barely. Holden was with her.”
“Holden?” I repeat.
“New BRAVO addition,” Dean replies. “Ex-military. Good instincts. Fast hands. He helped Rae extract.”
Knight goes quiet in that way he does when he’s processing threat models in real time. “So this isn’t just a Luka bounty,” he says slowly. “It’s a… layered hit.”
“Yes,” Dean says.
“And Northstar is the reason?”
“It’s one reason,” Dean corrects. “Serafina is a catalyst. Luka is an opportunist. And you two are high-value because you’ve become visible.”
I feel Knight’s jaw clench.
I can almost see the gears turning.
“Okay,” Knight says. “What do you need from us?”
Dean doesn’t hesitate. “Move,” he says. “Not to another random hotel. To a controlled node.”
“Meaning BRAVO safehouse?” Knight asks.
“Meaning a place we can secure without putting you on a parade float,” Arrow says. “We’ll send a drop route. You’ll get it in pieces. No single message holds the full location.”
“That’s insane,” I say.
“That’s survival,” Dean replies.
I exhale shakily. “Dean,” I say, “if Serafina is targeting you and your network, why would she loop into Luka’s bounty board instead of just hitting you directly?”
“Because she wants a narrative,” Dean says. “Not just an outcome. She wants chaos. Distrust. Public spectacle. Fear.”
Knight lets out a low breath. “Classic villain PR strategy.”
“Don’t joke,” I say automatically.
He tilts his head toward me. “I’m not joking,” he says. “I’m naming the pattern so we can break it.”
That’s the Knight I know.
The man who turns emotion into strategy.
Then he looks down at the burner.