Chapter 5 When smoke clears

By the time night fell again, exhaustion had sunk deep into Celeste's bones, but her mind wouldn't stop racing.

She lay on the narrow bed, staring at the cracked ceiling. Jace was in the next room, still pouring through files, building a timeline, a strategy. He didn't know how to rest. Neither did she-not really. Not anymore.

Every name they found felt like peeling back a layer of rot she'd lived beside her whole life without knowing it. Judges her mother had hosted for dinners. CEOs who'd smiled for cameras. A politician who once kissed her cheek at a fundraiser and whispered, "You look just like your father."

She turned on her side, pulling the thin blanket up to her chin.

The walls here were old, thick stone, but she could still hear Jace faintly-moving, typing, the soft creak of a chair. And for reasons she couldn't explain, that sound kept her grounded. Like as long as he was still working, they hadn't lost yet.

She didn't realize she'd fallen asleep until the door creaked softly open.

She stirred, blinking in the dark. "Jace?"

"Yeah," he said, voice low, just above a whisper. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"It's okay." She sat up slowly, hair tousled. "Everything alright?"

He nodded, but there was something in his face-tension sitting just beneath the surface.

"What is it?" she asked.

Jace hesitated, then stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He crossed the small space in three quiet steps and sat on the edge of the bed, facing the floor. His hands were clasped loosely, the muscles in his forearms tight.

"We found a name," he said. "Connected to the hit on your father."

Celeste's breath caught.

"Not just any name," he added. "Someone close. Very close. Someone who was supposed to protect him."

She swallowed. Her voice was barely a whisper. "Who?"

He didn't look at her. "Dimitri Antonov."

Her stomach turned. "The family's security chief."

Jace nodded.

She remembered Dimitri. She remembered the way he'd always hovered near her father, silent but constant. The way he'd given her peppermint candy at Christmas when she was seven. The way he stood with his hands clasped behind his back during the funeral, expression unreadable.

"I trusted him," she said, more to herself than to Jace.

"He took money. A lot of it. We have bank records, encrypted messages, timestamps that match the day your father was ambushed."

Her throat felt tight. Her hands curled into the blanket like she was holding on to something solid.

"What do we do now?" she asked, quietly.

Jace turned to her finally. The firelight from the other room flickered in his eyes. "We use him."

She blinked. "What?"

"He's still working for Vescari. That means we feed him the wrong information. Let him report it back. He becomes our leak, and he doesn't even know it."

"And when we're done with him?" she asked.

Jace's voice was calm, but steel-lined. "Then we bury him. With the rest of them."

Celeste didn't speak.

She reached for Jace's hand. He looked at it, then laced his fingers through hers slowly, like he was afraid to break her.

"I hate that it has to be like this," she murmured.

"I don't." His grip tightened just a little. "I hate that no one stopped it sooner."

They sat there in the quiet, side by side on a bed too small for the weight they carried.

And somewhere between grief and fury, something else passed between them. Something unnamed. Something that had nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with survival-not just of the body, but of whatever was left of the heart.

Jace didn't leave her room that night.

He didn't try to touch her. Didn't press closer.

He just stayed. And for the first time in a very long time, she let herself sleep all the way until morning.

The soft morning light bled through the shutter slats, casting long stripes across the wooden floor. Celeste stirred beneath the blanket, her eyes fluttering open slowly, adjusting to the pale warmth of dawn.

She wasn't alone.

Jace sat on the chair in the corner, half-asleep, one hand still loosely resting on the edge of the bed. Like he'd stayed there all night, just in case she woke up gasping from another nightmare. Just in case she needed to know someone was still there.

Her throat tightened. She hadn't asked him to stay-but he had.

Quietly, she sat up, brushing hair from her face. Her body ached, not from injury but from the emotional weight she'd been carrying for too long. But this morning... it felt just a little lighter.

Jace's eyes opened as if sensing her movement. He didn't speak, just blinked the sleep from his lashes and offered a small nod. It was the kind of look that didn't ask questions, didn't demand anything-just made space.

"Did you sleep?" she asked.

He gave a half shrug. "Enough."

Celeste swung her legs over the bed. The floor was cold under her bare feet. The house was quiet, but not in a way that felt threatening. It felt like the kind of silence people fought for. Earned.

Rossi had left them breakfast-coffee, cheese, crusty bread still warm under a cloth. They sat at the small kitchen table, sharing everything in near silence. There was something strangely intimate about it. No masks. No walls. Just food, and quiet glances, and the safety of knowing you weren't alone anymore.

Jace broke the stillness first. "Antonov leaves Florence in three days."

Celeste looked up, her heart already tightening. "Where's he going?"

"Sofia. Probably a routine drop. We have a window."

She nodded, chewing slowly. "We use it."

He studied her. "You sure?"

She met his eyes. "He helped kill my father. I don't want mercy, Jace. I want him to know exactly who's bringing the fire to his door."

There was something dark in the way Jace smiled then. Not cruel-but certain.

"You're your father's daughter."

"No," she whispered. "I'm everything they never saw coming."

They packed by midday. Changed locations. Always moving. Always watching the shadows.

The car ride into the countryside was quiet, save for the low hum of the engine and the occasional soft brush of Jace's hand against hers when he shifted. He didn't pull away. Neither did she.

As the city disappeared behind them, so did the last remnants of who she used to be.

Celeste Mancini-the girl who once wore gowns to galas, who smiled politely beside her father, who never questioned the power held by men who only saw her as something ornamental.

That girl was gone.

What remained now was steel wrapped in velvet. A mind sharpened by loss. And a heart that, despite everything, still beat for the boy who should've been her enemy but became her ally instead.

Whatever came next, she wasn't afraid anymore.

She had a plan.

And she wasn't alone.

The safehouse in the hills was colder than the last, perched above a forgotten vineyard where frost clung to the vines like secrets too stubborn to die. Celeste moved through the rooms quietly, memorizing the exits, the weak points, the shadows. Jace watched her without interfering. He knew better than to pull her back now. She was too far in. And maybe, so was he.

They worked into the night, pouring over Antonov's movements, tracing bank transfers and encrypted calls. Every time Celeste uncovered a new thread, she followed it ruthlessly, her eyes sharper than they'd been weeks ago. There was no trembling now, no hesitation.

Only focus.

Only fire.

Jace saw it in her, and it both scared and thrilled him.

They took shifts sleeping-three hours at a time. When it was Jace's turn, Celeste sat at the desk by the window, her fingers brushing over the old photo she'd kept hidden in her notebook. Her father stood beside Antonov in it. Smiling. Relaxed. She didn't know what unsettled her more: the lie in Antonov's eyes, or the fact that, once upon a time, they'd all believed it.

The photo went into the fireplace. No ceremony. No tears. Just flame.

By the next morning, the plan was ready.

They would intercept Antonov's convoy on the outskirts of Sofia. Three vehicles, minimal detail, just enough to keep things quiet. Jace had pulled strings for local support. Celeste didn't ask who they were or what they wanted in return. She only needed one thing.

Answers.

And a reckoning.

They left before sunrise, their weapons packed, identities scrubbed clean. Celeste tied her hair back tightly, dressed in black. No jewelry. No perfume. She didn't want to feel like the girl from before.

In the car, the silence stretched until she finally spoke.

"When this is over, I want to find the ones above him."

Jace glanced over at her. "You're already thinking ahead?"

"I have to. He was just a hand. I want the head."

He nodded, grip tightening on the wheel. "Then we cut our way up."

She looked out the window. "And when we reach the top?"

Jace didn't answer right away. Then-softly-he said, "Then we see what's left of us after we burn it all down."

She didn't flinch.

Because she knew, somewhere deep in her bones, they wouldn't come out the same. Vengeance had a way of changing people. But maybe that was the point. Maybe who she'd been wasn't someone worth returning to.

And maybe Jace-sharp, haunted, protective to a fault-was the only person who could walk beside her through the ruins and not look away.

They reached the drop point at dusk. The wind was biting. The trees were skeletal. Celeste took her place behind the ridge, watching through the scope as headlights appeared in the distance.

"This is it," Jace whispered through the comms.

Her heartbeat didn't spike. Her hands didn't tremble.

She was ready.

And Antonov? He would never see it coming.

The convoy slowed as it neared the narrow pass-an old rural road surrounded by frost-laced trees and sharp turns. It was the kind of place that made people uneasy. The kind of place no one would hear the screams.

Celeste lay flat on her stomach behind the ridge, eyes locked through the rifle's scope. Jace crouched a few feet away, fingers ghosting over the detonator. They didn't speak.

They didn't have to.

The plan had been drilled in silence, refined by instinct. The first vehicle would hit the spike strip. The second-the one carrying Antonov-would be forced to stop. That was her window.

No gunfire unless necessary.

No mercy unless earned.

The tires of the lead car screamed, metal shrieking against road and rubber. It skidded, swerved, hit the ditch hard. The second vehicle slammed the brakes. Men spilled out before the third even caught up. Confusion burst across the tree line.

Celeste moved before thought could catch her.

Down the ridge, silent as winter.

She reached the side of the armored vehicle in seconds, gun drawn, her pulse calm. The driver was shouting orders-too late. She smashed the butt of her pistol against the window. One of Jace's stun grenades exploded nearby in a blinding flash. The world rang like a bell.

She wrenched the door open.

Antonov sat inside, dazed, a gun halfway raised.

She leveled hers at his head. "Don't."

He froze.

Recognition came slowly. "Celeste...?"

It hit her like poison on her name. Her father had once called her that with warmth. Antonov's voice was dipped in mockery and disbelief, as if she were a ghost clawing back into flesh.

"Get out," she ordered.

He obeyed, lips twitching into a smirk. "Didn't think you had the stomach for this."

"I didn't," she said, stepping back to make room for Jace as he emerged from the shadows, weapon ready. "But then I remembered how you looked my father in the eyes the night you betrayed him."

Antonov's smile faltered.

They bound his wrists, gagged him, dragged him toward the extraction vehicle Jace had prepared. The team fell into motion, efficient and precise. No casualties. No mess. Just one man, bound and shaking in the back of a van, finally stripped of power.

They drove for miles in silence, Antonov blindfolded and restrained.

Jace broke it first. "What do you want to do with him?"

Celeste stared ahead, eyes unreadable. "He talks. Then he rots."

She turned to Jace. "And when he gives us what we need... we climb."

Jace studied her for a long moment, then nodded.

"You sure you're ready for what's next?" he asked.

Celeste looked at the bruises on her knuckles, the blood on her sleeves, the fire in her chest that hadn't burned out since the day her world cracked in half.

"No," she said honestly.

Then she met his gaze with something stronger than certainty.

"But I'm going anyway."