Page 111 of Her Soul to Own

The bottle in my other hand tips slightly, forgotten. The cellar swells with isolation, with the echoes of the woman who brought us both here in some cruel twist of fate.

But I don’t move. Because for once, I’m not running or hiding.And neither is he.

Tonight, in this cellar full of shadows and sins, there are only two of us.

I climb into Silas’s lap, straddling him on the old wine cellar chaise. The worn leather groans beneath us, the only sound in the room besides the rustling of our breaths.

My forehead presses to his, the chill from the wine racks behind us ghosting along my back.

Bottles gleam behind him like polished headstones, old vintages, unspoken years, and too many memories.

“Let’s burn it down,” I whisper, my voice steady with something fierce. “All of it.”

His answer is a vow, low and resolute, “With you.”

He brushes a hand along my back, slow and thoughtful. We stay like that for a few minutes, just the two of us.

Then, he sighs, like he’s already regretting the words forming on his tongue. “You should talk to Zara. She’s desperate.”

I lift my head from his chest, blinking. “Since when did you become her emotional support wolf?”

He gives me a dry look. “Since she cornered me and said if I didn’t say something, she’d hack my contacts list and send nudes to Elijah.”

I snort, half-laughing. “Tempting. But still weird. You two sharing coffee and trauma now?”

He groans. “Please… just talk to her. She misses you. And you know… you’re terrifying when you’re mad. Even I need backup.”

I roll my eyes, but my smile stays. “Fine. But I expect a dramatic retelling of this new friendship. With charts.”

He leans in like he’s about to kiss me again, almost. But then he stops just short, his eyes locked on mine, warm and burning.

We just hold on to the moment. A promise forged in shared destruction.

Chapter 29 – Silas – Ghosts in the Ledger

The parking garage isn’t exactly a five-star accommodation, but it’s quiet and isolated, and the signal’s clean. That’s all that matters. Noah and I have been camped here for the last few hours because it’s where Evander’s latest ghost decided to surface. One of his couriers, low-tier but useful, is about to make a handoff. And we’re here to catch it mid-flight.

Noah has got a mess of surveillance gear in the backseat—micro receivers, signal interceptors, and a signal jammer that technically violates federal law in seventeen ways. He’s also got a USB drive with enough dirt to implode three careers, two fake charities, and at least one trust fund baby who’s spent too much time on encrypted group chats.

He taps it with a smirk. “This little bastard includes financial trails, VPN hop logs, MiraPath contracts, metadata pulls, and… wait for it… a wire transfer note from Evander’s yacht management firm to a PAC that doesn’t technically exist.”

I arch a brow. “You’ve been busy.”

“I’ve been tailing his transactions since Miami. When you called? Let’s just say the pieces were already scattered on the table. I just needed someone angry enough to flip it.”

Across the lot, the courier does what we expect. He shuffles up to a guy in mirrored shades like they’re in a spy movie written by idiots. The drive exchange is quick. No conversation, just shadows swapping secrets.

Noah mutters, “That feel like redemption to you?”

I don’t answer right away. But when I do, I say, “No. It feels like an overdue reckoning.”

“Same thing if you strip out the guilt,” he says, shooting me a sidelong glance.

We go silent because there are too many things unsaid.

He finally hands me the backup drive. “This is everything, including the offshore shell trail. Rosepoint Holdings ties into a dozen dirty fronts, fake consulting gigs, ghost PACs, bribery circuits… Oh, and one charming little note labeled ‘influencer recalibration budget.’”

I frown. “Translation?”

---