What I did know was that he was interested in territory. In the fractures between power structures. In the specific opportunities that opened when something stable began to break.
I had kept the number because knowing a door existed wasn’t the same as walking through it.
Tonight, I called.
It connected on the first ring.
“Jaxon Ashford.” His voice was smooth and vast and utterly unbothered; the voice of something that had never once been surprised by anything, because it had simply waited long enough to see everything coming.
“I wondered when you’d use this number.”
“You knew I would.”
“I know a great many things.” A pause that felt like it had centuries folded into it. “How is the shoulder?”
I said nothing.
“Gideon Crossbane has a very particular style of violence,” Matthias
