“You think this ends me?”Gregory spat.“You think you’ve taken everything from me?”
Ethan stopped a few feet away, breathing controlled despite the pain roaring through him.“No,” he said calmly.“I think you ended yourself.”
Gregory laughed, broken and hysterical.“You’re nothing without me.”
Ethan met his gaze, steady and unflinching.“I survived you.”
Gregory opened his mouth to say more.
Niko stepped forward.
The gunshot was clean.Final.
Gregory Rhodes collapsed, the sound of his body hitting the floor echoing through the office like punctuation.
Ethan closed his eyes for one brief second.
Then he turned toward his brother.
Chapter Twelve
“So,” Kael said, leaningback in the chair like his spine hadn’t been stitched together by adrenaline and bad decisions for the last forty-eight hours.“Anyone else still seeing knives when they blink?”
Victor snorted.“I’m seeing trajectories.Perfect ones.”
Drew lifted his coffee mug in salute.“To Rangi and Alexios.May all my enemies die that clean.”
Laughter rippled around the conference room—low, relieved, the sound of men who’d survived something they’d expected not to.Ethan sat at the head of the table, hands wrapped loosely around his own mug, listening more than speaking.The room smelled like coffee and gun oil and the faint ozone tang of his servers humming behind the walls.
Keanu didn’t laugh.
He sat slightly apart, elbows on knees, gaze fixed on nothing in particular.Quiet in a way that wasn’t withdrawn—more ...coiled.
Ethan noticed.He always noticed.
His mind flicked back to the hangar an hour earlier.