Until Death
The travel from Sterling & Rowe conference room, Blackthorn tower to The abandoned Blackthorn chapel, Raven’s Point consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
# Until Death
Evangeline’s throat closed around the words she wanted to say. Jasper’s grin, slick with his own blood, stayed fixed on her as he let the ruined silk fall to the table. The candlelight caught the unnatural angle of his nose and she felt a hot spike of nausea, not from the sight, but from the implication.
*The next photo I send you will be of your son at my wedding.*
She counted the exits. One behind the altar. Two flanking the pews. The windows were stained glass, too narrow for a man to fit through, but the one above the choir loft looked dark, open. She catalogued the distance from her chair to each, the seconds she’d need, the futility of running anyway.
Damian hadn’t moved. His hand rested flat on the table as if he were steadying the earth itself. She could see the calculation happening behind his eyes, the rapid-fire assessment of threat vectors and counter-moves. In another life, she might have found it reassuring. Here, it only meant Jasper was still breathing.
“Two hours,” Damian said quietly. “You said two hours.”
Jasper laughed, a wet sound. “I lied. I’ve been lying since I was eight years old. It’s rather the family trade.” He spat a mouthful of blood onto the marble floor. “Your son is already at Raven’s Point. My father is preparing the chapel. The priest is old and deaf and knows better than to ask questions. You have until the bells ring.”
Evangeline stood. The chair scraped back with a sound that cut through the dim room like a blade. “Let me see him.”
“See him?” Jasper tilted his head, and his grin widened into something too bright. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll let you watch him sleep.”
He pulled a phone from his jacket — *his* phone, not the one Dorian had made her use for the negotiation. The screen glowed to life with a single tap, and Jasper held it up like a holy relic.
The video played without sound. Jace lay on a stone bench, his school jacket balled under his head as a makeshift pillow. His chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. Someone had draped a dark blanket over him, and his face was slack, peaceful. He looked like he was dreaming of something pleasant.
Evangeline’s hands stayed still at her sides. She let her eyes do the only thing they could — memorize every pixel, every shadow, every thread of that blanket. She counted the stone blocks behind him. Twelve across. A crack running from the ceiling down to the third block. A candle niche carved into the wall.
Then the video ended, and Jasper tucked the phone away.
“The crypt beneath the chapel,” Damian said. It wasn’t a question.
Jasper’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve done your homework. The crypt, yes. We hadn’t planned to use it for the ceremony, but the boy needed somewhere quiet to wait. The acoustics down there are remarkable, aren’t they?”
Damian’s jaw held, but not in the way the tabloids wrote about. She saw his throat shift as he swallowed, saw the way his knuckles went white against the table’s edge. It was the only tell he allowed himself.
“Two hours,” Damian repeated. “The chapel. Unarmed.”
“The both of you. Together. A wedding, Damian. You wouldn’t want to miss your own vows.” Jasper pulled a clean handkerchief from his inner pocket and pressed it to his nose, wincing as the fabric came away red. “And don’t think about bringing your little army. The moment I see anyone who isn’t you two, I’ll put a bullet through the boy’s pretty head and scatter his ashes in the harbor.”
He turned, and his heels clicked across the marble as he walked out of the room. The door didn’t slam. It closed with a soft, final click that somehow carried more violence than a shout.
—
Evangeline drove in silence for the first twenty minutes. The coastal road hugged the cliffs, and the ocean below threw itself against the rocks with a rhythm that matched the beating of her heart. Damian had taken a separate car, a black sedan that stayed close enough to be visible in her rearview mirror but far enough to feel like a ghost.
The sun was beginning its slow descent toward the horizon when she finally spoke, even though he couldn’t hear her. “He’s okay. He’s alive.”
The dashboard clock read 4:47. They had seventy-three minutes.
She thought about Jace’s laugh, the way it burst out of him when she surprised him with pancakes on school mornings. She thought about the way he concentrated on his math homework, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. She thought about the night she’d packed her bags and slipped out of Damian’s penthouse while he slept, eight years ago, carrying nothing but the clothes on her back and the secret growing inside her.
She’d thought she was protecting her child from Damian. From the Blackwood empire, its enemies, its blood-soaked history.
She’d never imagined the Blackthorns would be worse.
—
Raven’s Point was a jagged finger of land that jutted into the sea, crowned by the crumbling shell of a chapel that had been abandoned since the 1960s. The Blackthorns had owned it for longer than that, had used it for weddings and funerals and the kind of gatherings that didn’t make it into the family records.
Evangeline parked at the base of the cliff and walked the rest of the way up the narrow switchback path. The wind tore at her coat, whipping her hair across her face. She didn’t bother to push it back. Somewhere below, in the shadows behind the chapel, she caught a flicker of movement — Beckett, she assumed, along with whatever crew Damian trusted enough for this.
She was supposed to be unarmed. She was.
She was supposed to walk in and play a role.
She was going to do exactly that.
The chapel doors loomed before her, wood darkened by decades of salt air and neglect. One of them hung slightly askew, and she could see the drift of candlelight spilling through the gap. She paused with her hand on the iron handle, listening to the sound of her own breathing, feeling the weight of the moment press down on her shoulders.
How many steps had she taken in her life that had led her here? How many choices, compromises, moments of cowardice?
She pushed the door open.
The interior smelled of mold and old incense and something sharper underneath, like gasoline. Candle flames guttered in the draft she’d let in, casting long shadows across the pews. The altar at the far end was draped in white cloth, and standing before it, dressed in a suit that looked like it cost more than the chapel itself, was Jasper.
Jace wasn’t in the nave. She scanned the space with desperate, darting eyes, cataloging every corner, every niche.
No. Not here.
But she’d known that. The video had shown the crypt.
“You’re right on time,” Jasper said. He spread his arms wide, a gesture of welcome that made her skin crawl. “My bride, at last. I was afraid you’d keep me waiting at the altar.”
She walked down the aisle slowly, deliberately. Each step measured. The candles threw her shadow across the pews in twisted, wavering shapes. She kept her face soft, her hands still, and let the role settle over her like a second skin — the yielding bride, the desperate mother, the woman who would do anything to keep her son safe.
“Actually,” she said, her voice carrying an echo that surprised her, “I’m a little early. I wanted a moment to… before the ceremony.”
Jasper’s smile flickered, as if he hadn’t expected her to play along so easily. “A moment alone with your future husband? How romantic.” He stepped down from the altar dais and moved toward her, circling slowly, a predator admiring his prey. “You’re braver than I thought, Evangeline. Most people, when they see what’s coming for them, try to run. You walked right into it.”
“I learned a long time ago that running doesn’t help.” She turned to keep him in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t back away. She used the math of the room instead, tracking the distance to the doors, the windows, the spots on the floor. “It only makes them chase you faster.”
“You’re referring to the Blackwood, I assume.” Jasper’s lip curled. “Running from him. Keeping his child a secret. I thought the son of such a man would produce something with more backbone.”
She let the insult slide off her. Her hands hung still at her sides. “The way you’ve produced something with more forgiveness? You put a hit out on his father, and now you want to claim the family through the child instead. Interesting strategy.”
Something dark flashed across Jasper’s face. He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the copper of his blood still drying on his lips. “I’m not claiming anything through the child. I’m claiming you. Jace is just… insurance.”
“Insurance.” She repeated the word softly, tasting it. “You’re going to raise another man’s son and call it a family.”
“I’m going to raise an heir,” Jasper corrected. “The Blackwood heir. With my name, my legacy.” He tilted his head, and the grin she was beginning to hate returned. “His father is going to die. There’s no way around that now. I’m giving you a choice, Evangeline. Let Damian Blackwood die alone, and let me build something better with what he left behind — or die with him, and let Jace face the system alone.”
She let her voice drop to barely above a whisper. “You’re going to kill me either way, aren’t you?”
Jasper laughed. It was a sound that dragged across her skin like sandpaper. “Now, where would be the joy in that? You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face. She held herself absolutely still, the way you hold still when a snake slides past your ankle. “My father’s choice. The Prescott girl. I saw your picture when I was twelve and I decided God had drawn you just for me.” His fingers grazed her cheek, and she felt the fury burn through her. “Twenty years. That’s a long time to wait for something that’s already yours.”
—
In the crypt below, Beckett pressed his back against the stone wall and listened to the voices drift through the cracks above. He’d entered through a fissure in the cliff face that opened into a drainage tunnel running beneath the chapel’s foundations, a route that the security scans had flagged and the Blackthorns had clearly never bothered to seal.
He moved like he’d been born for this: silent steps, eyes scanning, breath shallow and controlled. The crypt was a long, barrel-vaulted space lined with burial niches. At the far end, a small recessed room had been furnished with a cot and a single lantern.
Jace lay on the cot, still asleep. His school jacket was folded under his head, and someone had placed a canteen of water and a granola bar on the floor beside him.
Beckett didn’t approach directly. He swept the room for cameras — found one in the corner, its lens facing the door — and adjusted his path to stay just out of its range. He crouched by the cot and pressed two fingers to Jace’s neck. Pulse steady. Breathing normal. They’d sedated him, but not with anything harsh. He’d wake up confused, but he’d wake up.
The boy’s eyes fluttered.
Beckett put a finger to his lips. “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he breathed. “We’re going to get you out of here, but you need to be very quiet. Can you do that?”
Jace blinked at him, groggy, then nodded.
Beckett unclipped his radio and keyed it once, twice — the signal. Then he went to work on the door latch.
—
Above, Evangeline heard the echo of the double-click through the wall and felt her body loosen a fraction. Beckett had the boy. She had only one job now.
She lifted her chin and let her mouth curve into a smile she didn’t feel. “You know, Jasper, you’ve been telling me what you want for twenty years, but you never once asked me what I want.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Enlighten me.”
“I want to dance.” She stepped closer to him, close enough that she could smell his cologne. Through the gaps in the stone, she heard the first crack of wood above them — the doors, beginning to move. “Right here. Right now. No priest, no vows, no God watching the contract be signed. Just you and me.”
Jasper laughed, pleased and surprised. “You want me to dance with you?”
“I want to see if you can. If you’re going to call me your bride, then you should at least be able to hold me.” She extended her hand. “Show me.”
He took it. In the back of her mind, she was counting the steps to the altar, mapping the angles of the chapel. The bells above them began to toll.
Vespers.
The heavy doors of the chapel crashed open, and Damian Blackwood stood in the threshold, silhouetted against the dying light. His hands were empty. He looked exactly like the devil Jasper had grown up hearing about.
“Step away from her,” Damian said. His voice carried through the chapel like an oath.
For a moment, Jasper’s face went blank. Then he reached beneath his jacket and pulled out a gun. Evangeline heard a small, sharp sound behind her — Jasper’s father, Dorian, emerging from the sacristy, his own revolver drawn.
“Damian Blackwood,” Dorian said, his voice dry as old parchment. “We expected you.”
“This is the last wedding you’ll ever preside over,” Dorian said, his voice dripping with contempt. He advanced down the aisle, and Evangeline saw movement behind him — dark shapes unfolding from the pews, federal agents rising like wraiths from the shadows. Their guns were drawn, their badges glinting in the candlelight. “We’ve been building this case for years.”
Dorian’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. His eyes went wide as he registered the men surrounding him — the same men he’d paid, the same men he’d thought were his.
Then Jasper fired.
The shot went wide, tearing through the air beside Evangeline’s ear and shattering a stained-glass window behind her. She dropped before she’d even consciously decided to move, her knees hitting the stone floor. Jasper’s finger was already pulling the trigger again when Damian closed the distance and slammed into him, driving them both against the altar.
The lighter that fell from Jasper’s jacket was small, silver. It hit the floor and ignited with a sound like a cough, and the gasoline fumes that had been hanging in the air since the moment she walked in — *that* smell she’d noticed, that sharp, chemical smell — exploded into flame with a roar that shook the chapel’s foundations.
Damian shoved Evangeline into the crypt’s opening. She landed hard on the stone steps, looking up to see the flames engulf the altar, the floor cracking open, Jasper stumbling backward with his face alight with what looked, impossibly, like joy.
Beckett had Jace by the hand, pulling the boy through a gap in the crypt wall. Evangeline scrambled toward them on her hands and knees as the world above them tore itself apart.
From the other side of the collapsing floor, Jasper’s voice echoed in the smoke: I said until death, Evangeline.