Chapter 3 The Weak Spot

• The warehouse is warm with stale coffee and old secrets.
• Ellerei stands at the folding table in the middle of their makeshift war room — half blueprints, half battered coffee mugs, all adrenaline and lies. Decker’s oil-slick fingers tap out coordinates on a battered burner phone. Bishop’s bent over his laptop, glare of code reflected in his glasses.
• They’re already in the next job — a corporate blackmail gig that’ll bleed a CEO dry if they play it right. No big marks in a club this time — this is deep game, stealth, extraction. Ellerei’s mind thrums with the puzzle pieces — vaults, codes, passwords, cover stories. This is the part that keeps her sane. The clean lines before the blood stains the floor.
• She flicks her eyes across the table. One, two—
• Where’s the third?
• “Where’s Knox?” she asks, like it’s nothing. Like the air doesn’t tighten in her chest the second she says it.
• Bishop’s hands still on his keyboard. Decker doesn’t look up from the floor plan he’s marking.
• They don’t have to say it.
• They don’t have to say her name.
• But Ellerei hears it anyway — Talia. The ghost that tastes like poison and cheap perfume. The ghost that crawls back through the cracks in Knox’s ribs and rots him from the inside out.
• She presses her tongue to the back of her teeth. Swallows it down. Business. It’s always business.
• “Right,” she says, too bright. Too easy. “Let me know when golden boy’s back. We’ll need his big arms to look scary for this one.”
• Decker glances up. His eyes are too kind for a man who once gutted three men behind a bar for looking at her too long. He doesn’t say Are you okay? He just says, “Want me to get him?”
• “No,” Ellerei murmurs, gathering the loose papers. Her hair falls forward, the white streak brushing her cheek like a leash she slipped years ago. “Let him come back when he’s done. We’ll be ready.”
• Bishop’s jaw flexes. He says nothing. He never does — just watches her gather her armor back piece by piece, pretending she doesn’t know exactly what it smells like when Knox comes home from her bed.
• ♟
• Somewhere across the city, Knox Maddox is drunk enough to think he’s making a choice.
• He’s slammed against cheap brick in a stairwell behind a dive bar that smells like piss and stale beer. Talia’s fingers hook in his belt, her nails scraping the line of his hipbone where bruises bloom under his shirt. She tastes like cigarettes and bubblegum vodka when she kisses him — hard enough to steal whatever scraps of sense he has left.
• He should walk away. He should shove her off and call Ellerei. Hell, he should go home and sleep it off like he promised Bishop he would when they split from the club.
• But Talia smiles at him — that smile. The one that says I own you, even when she never stays long enough to keep him.
• “Miss me?” she breathes against his mouth.
• He grunts, the sound low and helpless. She laughs. It slices through him worse than the ring of her teeth on his bottom lip.
• She pushes him back — palms flat on his chest — and he lets her. Always does. She’s all long legs, cold eyes, hot skin. She climbs him like she’s claiming territory. He grips her thighs to keep her up, the wall biting into his spine, the air knocked out of him by her mouth on his throat.
• He hates her.
• God, he hates her.
• But he hates himself more for how easy it is — how he melts when her nails rake his scalp, how he groans when she rolls her hips just right. She’s poison and he swallows every drop because it’s easier than feeling alone.
• “Thought you just wanted to talk,” he slurs against her collarbone.
• “I did,” she hums. Her lips curve where they drag against his jaw. “Changed my mind.”
• He knows how this ends. It always ends the same.
• She fucks him like he’s nothing but meat and memory — a toy she can wind up, break open, walk away from. She pulls a moan out of his throat that he’d never let anyone else hear. She kisses him too deep, too sharp, until he forgets what he’s supposed to be resisting.
• And when she’s done — when she’s got what she wants — she pulls back, lips red, eyes colder than the January wind. She tugs her skirt down, wipes her thumb across his spit-wet chin.
• “That’s it, baby,” she purrs. “Good boy.”
• Knox tries to catch her wrist. “Talia—”
• But she’s already slipping away, heels clicking down the alley, hair swinging like a blade over her shoulder.
• She doesn’t look back. She never does.
• ♟
• Ellerei waits on the safehouse steps.
• She’s got her phone in one hand, keys in the other. Her mind ticks over the job — the vault, the CEO’s wife’s second phone, the forged IDs Bishop is printing upstairs. She counts passwords in her head. She tries not to count how many times Knox has crawled back smelling like her.
• The engine noise hits first. The squeal of tires on wet asphalt. Then heavy boots, that familiar stagger.
• She doesn’t look up right away. She waits for the scent to hit her — expensive shampoo that isn’t his, the bitter tang of Talia’s perfume mixed with sweat and whiskey.
• She breathes through her teeth.
• Knox drags himself up the steps, blinking like he’s surprised she’s there.
• “Hey, Elle,” he mumbles. His voice is hoarse, lips bitten raw. There’s a fresh scratch on his throat. “You didn’t have to wait.”
• She smiles. Sweet. Weaponized. “Who else is gonna pick your drunk ass up, golden boy?”
• He laughs — a broken, soft thing. He leans on her when she slides under his arm, her small waist bracing his heavy frame like she’s built for this.
• Like she hasn’t been doing it for years.
• Like she won’t do it again.
• His breath ghosts over her temple. “You’re the best, you know that?”
• She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.
• She just shoulders his weight and walks him inside — past Bishop’s pointed look, past Decker’s steady silence, past the safehouse walls that hold all their secrets tight until they’re ready to burn them all down.