The phone rings.
Unknown number.
Damian answers without hesitation.
“Cross,” he says, voice cold enough to freeze water.
A laugh slides through the speaker, oily and amused.
“Pretty kid you’ve got,” the voice says.
You feel Damian’s hand tighten on the phone.
“She looks like her mother.”
Damian’s eyes darken, and you can almost see the Wolf rising back into place like armor snapping shut.
“Where is Scarlet?” he growls.
“Safe,” Victor Thornton purrs. “For now.”
“Midnight. East Docks. Come alone.”
There’s a pause, the kind that tells you the man on the other end is smiling.
“And bring the girl. Or your flower dies.”

Damian ends the call so hard it sounds like a punch.
The room feels colder instantly.
Marcus swears under his breath.
Damian stares at the notebook again, then at you, and you realize something terrifying.
Thornton didn’t just threaten your mom.
He threatened you to control Damian.
Damian walks to the window, watching the dark outside like he’s already imagining fire.
“This is a trap,” Marcus says.
Damian nods once. “Of course it is.”
He turns, eyes sharp. “That’s why we’re setting our own trap inside it.”
You step forward before fear can chain your ankles.
“I know where she is,” you say, tapping the notebook.
“There’s a tunnel,” you add, and the adults freeze again, because you aren’t supposed to be useful in a war.
You’re supposed to be hidden.
But you’ve been hidden your whole life, and it didn’t save anyone.

Damian stares at you like he wants to argue, like he wants to wrap you in a blanket and lock you in a safe.
Then he sees your face.
Not just your eyes.
Your stubbornness.
Your mother’s fire.
His own sharp mind mirrored in a kid who shouldn’t have to carry it.
“All right,” he says, voice tight.
“Marcus, you take a team through the tunnel.”
He points at the notebook’s map.
“You hit the basement entry on their guard change.”
He looks at you.
“You stay with Marcus. You do not move from his side.”
You nod, because you know what the nod costs.
Then Damian’s voice drops softer, just for you.
“I’m going to the docks to distract him,” he says.
“And I’m coming back with your mother.”
You want to believe him so badly it hurts.
So you do.
You believe anyway.

Midnight tastes like fog and gasoline.
The East Docks stretch out like a wet spine under broken streetlights, water slapping against pilings in a rhythm that makes your stomach twist.
Damian walks alone down the pier, hands empty, suit dark, silhouette clean against the haze.
Thornton waits with too many men and too many guns, a small army pretending it’s not afraid of one man’s reputation.
“Where’s the child?” Thornton calls out, smug.
“She’s safe,” Damian replies, voice calm.
Thornton’s smile sharpens. “Then your flower isn’t.”
Two men drag your mother into view, and the sight of her punches the air out of your chest even though you’re not there.
Scarlet is bruised, hair messy, but her eyes are awake, blazing with the kind of strength that refuses to bow.
She sees Damian and shakes her head violently, trying to warn him with her whole body.
“Don’t bring her,” she shouts. “Don’t bring Grace!”

While Damian stalls, asking questions he doesn’t need answered, you’re in the dark tunnel with Marcus.
The air is damp, the ground slick, the walls close enough to make you feel like the earth is swallowing you.
You grip Marcus’s sleeve and count turns the way your mom taught you, left at the pipe, right at the cracked brick, straight until the smell changes.
You whisper directions like you’re reciting a prayer, and the men behind you move quieter than shadows.
They reach the steel door exactly as the notebook promised: during the guard change, when boredom makes men careless.
Marcus’s team takes the guards down fast, silent, precise, the way violence looks when it’s trained.
Your hands shake, but you keep your eyes open, because your mom didn’t raise you to close them.
When the door opens, the basement is empty except for restraints and a chair and the kind of evidence that makes you nauseous.
“She’s not here,” a man whispers.
Marcus nods. “She’s at the docks,” he murmurs.
Then he lifts his radio. “Phase two. We move.”

Back on the pier, Damian’s phone vibrates three times.
A signal.
His eyes flicker, and for the first time, you can imagine him smiling without cruelty.
“I think negotiations are over,” Damian says, and Thornton’s grin falters.
Damian gives Scarlet a small hand sign, subtle, something only someone who loved him would know.
Scarlet moves instantly, using pain like fuel.
She headbutts the guard beside her, slams her heel into another man’s knee, and drops low as chaos explodes.
Shots crack through fog.
Men shout.
Bodies scatter.
From three sides, Damian’s crews hit Thornton’s line like a storm finally deciding to land.
Marcus’s team bursts from the warehouse behind them, and you see it from the shadows, the moment Thornton realizes he’s surrounded.
He tries to run, sprinting toward the end of the pier like water might save him.
Damian catches up, steady, inevitable.
Thornton swings his gun around with trembling hands.
“I can pay,” he spits. “Money, power, anything!”
Damian’s voice is ice.
“You threatened my child.”
A single shot.
Thornton falls backward into the dark water, swallowed by the city he tried to control.