The Ashes of the Past
The travel from KLAX-TV Studio, Hollywood to Ashby Industries Rooftop & Underground Parking consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The rooftop helipad was a black disc against the bruised evening sky, the wind from the river cutting across the concrete with a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. Ethan’s phone had buzzed with a text from an unknown number—Seraphina’s face, a screenshot from the news feed, with a single line: *They have her in the garage. Come to the roof if you want to see her again.*
He’d known it was a trap within three seconds. The timing was too precise, the threat too clean. A real kidnapping would have come with a ransom demand, a phone call, some kind of verification. This was a lure, baited with his worst fear.
But he’d come anyway. Because the alternative was standing still while Flynn Pemberton dictated the terms of engagement.
The roof door groaned open behind him. Flynn stepped out, alone, his tailored suit rumpled from the day’s unraveling. His father, Reid, was in an ICU three blocks away, hooked to monitors that beeped in time with his shattered pride. The SEC was crawling through Pemberton Media’s financial records. The board had called an emergency vote to strip Flynn of his chairmanship.
He had nothing left but spite.
“You’re predictable, Ashby.” Flynn’s voice carried across the helipad, swallowed partially by the wind. He held up his phone, screen glowing. “One text about the woman you love, and you come running. No backup. No plan. Just the desperate hope that you can fix it.”
Ethan didn’t answer. He was counting. Steps to Flynn: twenty-three. Distance to the edge of the roof: forty feet. The helipad’s perimeter lights blinked in a steady rhythm, marking the seconds.
“She’s in the garage,” Flynn continued, circling slowly. “My men have her. They have the boy. I told them to be gentle, but you know how hired muscle gets when they’re nervous.” He smiled, and it was a thin, brittle thing. “You should have stayed in your lane. You should have let the past stay buried.”
Ethan finally spoke. “You’re stalling.”
Flynn’s smile flickered.
“You’re not here to gloat,” Ethan said, stepping forward. “You’re here to keep me occupied while your men do the real work. But you made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“You told me where she was.”
Flynn’s hand moved inside his jacket. The motion was practiced, almost casual, but Ethan had seen it a hundred times in the faces of men who were about to lose everything. Desperation had a signature. It was the slight tremor in the fingers, the way the eyes went hard and unfocused at the same time.
The knife came out. Not a gun—Flynn wasn’t stupid enough to fire a weapon on a commercial rooftop in the middle of a city. A knife was intimate. A knife was personal.
Ethan didn’t stop moving.
Flynn slashed, a wide arc aimed at his throat. Ethan stepped inside it, taking the blade’s edge across his forearm instead of his jugular. The cut burned, sharp and immediate, blood darkening his sleeve. He grabbed Flynn’s wrist with his other hand, twisting, feeling the tendons flex and resist.
Flynn cursed, trying to pull free, but Ethan had spent years in gyms and dojos, learning how to turn pain into leverage. He drove his forehead into Flynn’s nose. The cartilage cracked with a sound like stepping on a walnut. Flynn went backward, stumbling, blood spraying across the concrete.
“You ruined everything!” Flynn screamed, the words wet and broken. He swung again, wild now, no technique, just rage.
Ethan caught his arm, hooked his foot behind Flynn’s ankle, and drove him onto the helipad. Flynn hit the ground hard, the knife skittering away across the painted circle. Ethan fell on top of him, knee driving into Flynn’s sternum, pinning him.
Flynn gasped, his eyes wide and bloodshot. “They’ll gut her. They’ll hurt the boy. You can’t stop it.”
Ethan hit him. Once, twice, three times—each impact a controlled burst, aimed at the cheekbones, the jaw, the places that bled and bruised and broke without killing. Flynn’s head lolled, consciousness flickering.
“You don’t get to threaten my family,” Ethan said, his voice flat, almost calm. “You don’t get to speak their names.”
Below, in the garage, the first shots rang out.
—
Seraphina had been late to understand the danger. That was her first sin. She’d been walking with Jace toward their car, his hand warm in hers, when the men stepped out from behind a parked delivery truck.
Three of them. Ex-military, judging by the posture, the way they moved with synchronized economy. One had a gun. The other two had zip ties, looped and ready.
“Mrs. Waverly,” the leader said, his voice flat and professional. “You’re going to come with us. The boy stays quiet. No fuss, and nobody gets hurt.”
Jace’s grip tightened. He didn’t cry—her son never cried in the face of threats, a trait he’d inherited from his father—but she felt the tremor in his small body. She pulled him behind her, her other hand fumbling for her phone.
“Don’t,” the man said, raising the gun. “Drop the bag.”
She let it fall. The contents spilled—wallet, lipstick, a small toy car Jace had insisted on bringing. The car rolled to a stop against the leader’s boot.
He smiled. It was not a kind thing.
“Now, we can do this easy, or—”
Beckett came from the stairwell door. There was no warning, no shout. He simply appeared, moving with the brutal efficiency of a man who had spent twenty years in private security and another decade unlearning the habits that kept him alive. He had a fire extinguisher in his hands, ripped from the wall mount, and he swung it like a club.
The first thug went down before he knew what hit him. The extinguisher caught him in the side of the head, a wet, muffled crack, and he crumpled without a sound.
The second thug turned, reaching for his weapon. Beckett dropped the extinguisher and closed the distance, driving his palm into the man’s throat. The thug gagged, stumbled, clawed at his neck. Beckett followed with a knee to the groin, then an elbow to the back of the skull.
The leader raised the gun.
“Beckett, down!” Seraphina screamed.
Beckett dove sideways, rolling behind a concrete pillar. The gunshot echoed through the garage, a sharp, flat report that bounced off the walls and ceiling. Jace screamed—finally, the dam broke—and Seraphina pulled him down, pressing him to the floor behind the rear tire of their car.
The leader advanced, his steps measured, the gun tracking the pillar where Beckett hid. “Come out. I don’t want to kill you. I’m paid to grab the woman and the kid, not to clean up your body.”
Beckett said nothing. His hand appeared from behind the pillar, holding a loose license plate that had fallen from a nearby vehicle. He tossed it to the left. The leader’s gun swung toward the sound.
Beckett emerged from the right.
He tackled the leader into the hood of a parked sedan, the metal groaning under their combined weight. The gun fired again, the bullet punching through the roof of the car, spraying insulation and fabric. Beckett grabbed the wrist, slammed it against the windshield until the fingers opened and the gun clattered away.
The leader headbutted Beckett, splitting his cheek. Beckett responded with a series of short, compact punches to the ribs, aiming for the soft tissue, the organs. The leader gasped, folded, and Beckett drove him to the ground with a knee to the spine.
Silence.
Seraphina was shaking. She could feel it in her bones, a vibration that wouldn’t stop. Jace was crying into her shoulder, his breath hot and ragged. She held him, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other pressed flat against the cold concrete as if it could anchor her.
Beckett straightened, breathing hard. Blood dripped from his split cheek onto his shirt. He looked at the three downed men, then at Seraphina.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Jace—he’s okay. I think. I think he’s just scared.”
Beckett nodded. He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialed. “Ashby. Garage secure. Three tangos down. Seraphina and Jace are safe. How copy?”
The line crackled. “Copy,” came Ethan’s voice, rough and breathless. “Roof is secure. Flynn is down. Police are two minutes out.”
Beckett looked at Seraphina. “He’s coming.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
—
The elevator doors opened onto the garage level. The smell of cordite and exhaust hung in the air, mixing with the coppery tang of blood. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting everything in a sickly pallor.
Ethan stepped out, a cut on his brow weeping blood into his eye, his sleeve torn and dark. He saw the scene in fragments: Beckett, standing over a prone body, his hand pressed to his bleeding cheek. The car with the bullet hole through the roof. The fire extinguisher lying on its side.
And Seraphina, kneeling on the concrete, Jace crying in her arms.
She looked up at him, her eyes raw with terror and hope. The mascara had run, tracking dark lines down her cheeks. Her hands were trembling, still holding their son as if he might dissolve into mist.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
He crossed the distance in four long strides, dropped to his knees beside her, and pulled her to her feet, holding both her and Jace in an embrace that was desperate and fierce and healing.
“We are all okay. For good, this time.”