The warehouse had emptied by the time Elian and Jonah returned.
Only Maren remained, sitting atop a stack of crates, lazily flipping a dagger through her fingers. She didn't flinch when she saw Jonah beside Elian; she simply raised an eyebrow, a ghost of amusement flickering across her face.
"I see you picked up a stray," she said dryly.
Jonah chuckled, the sound low and rough. "I'm no stray, sweetheart. More like the family they tried to bury."
Maren's eyes sharpened, but she said nothing. The air was heavy with unsaid words, the kind that pressed against the chest and made breathing feel like drowning.
Elian broke the silence first.
"New plan," he said, his voice steady despite the storm raging beneath his skin. "We're going after the Black Vault."
Maren's dagger froze mid-spin. Her gaze snapped to his.
"You're insane," she said.
"Maybe," Elian admitted. "But the Vault holds the documents, the blackmail, the evidence that props up the Cartel. We take it down, we cripple them."
"And we paint a bigger target on our backs," Maren added sharply.
Jonah stepped forward, the weight of years of secrets in his eyes. "They're coming for you anyway," he said. "Might as well punch first."
---
The Black Vault wasn't just a building; it was a fortress.
Buried five stories underground beneath a luxury hotel, guarded by mercenaries in tailored suits and hidden weaponry, it was the Cartel's greatest secret—and their greatest weakness.
Elian studied the schematics Lena had stolen, spread across the splintering table in front of them. Red ink marked entrances, exits, choke points. It looked impossible. Maybe it was.
But impossibility had never stopped him before.
"We hit it tomorrow night," Elian said. "Fast, hard, no mistakes."
Maren snorted. "When have we ever made no mistakes?"
Jonah grinned wolfishly. "There's a first time for everything."
Despite herself, Maren smiled back.
It was a small thing. But in that moment, it felt like hope.
---
The city sprawled before them like a glittering carcass as they prepared.
Elian strapped a pistol to his side, the metal cold and heavy against his ribs. Maren checked the explosives with clinical precision. Jonah sharpened his knives, the scrape of steel against stone a comforting rhythm.
There was no grand speech, no promises of victory.
Just the quiet, grim understanding that this might be their last night breathing free air.
As they gathered by the stolen black van parked a few streets away from the hotel, Elian looked at each of them—Maren, Jonah, Tomas, Lena, Marcus—and felt something tighten painfully in his chest.
Not fear.
Not regret.
But something deeper.
A fierce, reckless kind of love.
He wasn't just fighting for revenge anymore.
He was fighting for them.
For all the broken, stubborn souls who refused to kneel.
---
The first phase went flawlessly.
Jonah and Tomas took out the external guards with silent efficiency, slipping through the night like ghosts. Lena hacked the hotel's security systems, looping the cameras and unlocking hidden doors with a few whispered keystrokes.
Maren stayed close to Elian, her dagger glinting in the emergency lights, her eyes scanning every corner.
The service elevator groaned as they descended into the belly of the beast.
Floor after floor blurred by.
Basement 1. Basement 2. Basement 3.
At Basement 5, the doors slid open with a reluctant hiss.
The Black Vault stretched before them—rows upon rows of reinforced steel lockers, biometric scanners blinking ominously, a place where the sins of the powerful were buried and forgotten.
And waiting for them at the center, flanked by half a dozen heavily armed guards, was a man Elian had not seen in years.
Sebastian Cross.
Once his mentor.
Now his executioner.
Sebastian's mouth curled into a slow, cruel smile.
"I knew you'd come," he said.
---
Time fractured.
Memories flooded Elian's mind—Sebastian teaching him how to shoot, how to survive, how to lie. The sharp sting of betrayal when Sebastian had sold him out to the Cartel for a promotion and a handful of bloodstained gold.
Rage burned through Elian like wildfire.
"You taught me everything I know," Elian said, voice low and dangerous.
Sebastian's smile widened. "And look at you now. My greatest failure."
The words were meant to wound, but they slid off Elian's armor of pain.
He wasn't that broken boy anymore.
He was something far more dangerous.
Without warning, Elian moved.
Gunfire roared through the vault, deafening and furious. Maren was a whirlwind beside him, her dagger finding flesh and bone with surgical precision. Jonah was a silent blur of violence, his knives singing a deadly lullaby.
Sebastian fought back savagely, years of experience making him a formidable opponent. But there was desperation in his strikes now, an old man clinging to the crumbling throne of his power.
And Elian?
Elian fought like a man with nothing left to lose.
Like a man who had already decided he would burn the whole world down if it meant breaking the chains that bound him.
---
It ended with Sebastian on his knees, blood streaming from a gash above his eye.
"You think you've won," he gasped, laughing through the pain. "The Cartel... the city... they'll never let you go. You're marked. You're cursed."
Elian stared down at him, breathing hard, the weight of countless sins pressing down on his shoulders.
"I know," he said quietly.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The gunshot echoed like a funeral bell.
Sebastian slumped to the floor, a final breath rattling from his chest.
For a moment, the vault was silent except for the whine of alarms beginning to blare—Lena's hacks unraveling, security systems rebooting.
They had minutes, maybe less.
"Grab everything you can!" Elian barked.
They tore open the lockers, stuffing files, hard drives, anything they could find into black duffel bags.
Secrets.
Lies.
The tools to burn an empire to the ground.
As they sprinted back toward the elevator, Maren shoved a detonator into Elian's hand.
"Your call," she said, eyes gleaming.
Elian didn't hesitate.
He slammed his thumb down.
Explosions ripped through the vault, a chain reaction of fire and fury that devoured the Cartel's sins in a roaring inferno.
As they burst out of the hotel into the night, sirens wailing behind them, Elian couldn't help but laugh.
It was a wild, breathless sound—half triumph, half madness.
For the first time in years, he felt free.
Really, truly free.
The war was far from over.
But tonight, at least, the city belonged to them.
---