CHAPTER 19: MAKE THIS CHAOS COUNT

ANNABETH

Early the next morning after I'd seen Percy for the first time since Paris, I stood anxiously outside an old, disused library in Queens. My squad were preparing themselves by heading to their stations in and around the building just as I'd instructed, and Luke was organising the drug supplies our recruits had transported here. The negotiation was due to begin fairly soon—our client was a wealthy businessman who no doubt had connections of his own. Percy and Thalia were busy talking with their own recruits, ensuring that they were all prepared for SPQR's inevitable assault. Frankly, his idea to tempt his stepdad by leaking his own whereabouts was inspired. It'd work, too.

Since yesterday, I hadn't been able to get my mind off him. He looked so different from when I'd left him in Paris; his hair had been cut short and dyed back to its natural colour. The undercut style kind of suited him as his hair no longer shadowed his piercing green eyes. I hadn't expected him to change so much in such a short period of time, but it seemed like he had.

Even though I'd never show it, I was glad he'd followed me to New York. Leaving things between us in such an ugly state would have torn me apart eventually. I just wanted to protect him, however misguided that notion might be. And yeah, maybe it was safer for him back in Paris where he'd been far away from Ugliano, but I'd gotten used to having him near me and I was slowly coming to the realisation that I wasn't quite ready to give that up yet.

Through my comm set, I heard Thalia's voice. "Alright, defence squads are hidden and in position. The client is due to arrive in fifteen minutes. Stay alert."

I headed into the building, intending to take my place. I was one of the officers negotiating, the other of whom was Percy—his visibility was imperative if we wanted the trap to work. I couldn't procrastinate talking to him any longer. As I walked up to where he stood by the supplies, I felt my heartbeat quicken. I gritted my teeth, strengthening my resolve. "Jackson," I called.

He spun, one of his hands on the holster of the gun at his belt. Still, he relaxed when he saw it was only me. "Oh, hey." He checked his watch. "It's not long now."

I nodded, leaning against the crate of crack cocaine we'd be trading with the client. A million thoughts clamoured to spill from my tongue, but I still wasn't sure what to say. Percy and I had left things on such a strange note. Where did we go from here? Hesitantly, I said, "You changed your hair."

Almost self-consciously, Percy reached up to touch his hair, then his hand fell away. "The red was too hard to keep up. Thalia did it." A pause. "Is it alright?"

"Oh, yeah," I said quickly. "Yeah, don't worry. It looks nice. Black hair suits you." You look incredible, I should've said.

Percy smiled, a small curve of his lips. "Thank you."

Something warmed in my chest; I hadn't realised how much I'd missed him. Suddenly, it seemed ridiculous that we'd ever been apart at all. I wanted to tell him how stupid I'd been, how I should've dragged him with me rather than leave him, but the words got stuck in my throat. Instead, I said, "I'm grateful that you came to America. I know I haven't really acted like it, but...I am. Leaving you in Paris felt awful."

He fidgeted with his sleeve, which hung over his knuckles. The stupid urge to take his hand and gently roll them up struck me. "I'm glad," he said softly. "I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing. The whole hellish plane ride over here, I just kept wondering and wondering if I was being an idiot." He shook his head and laughed. "God. It's just so surreal."

I cocked my head. "What is?"

He made an empty, encompassing gesture with his hand. "Everything. Leaving Paris behind. Living in New York again." He reached out, and for a second I thought he'd take my hand, but he just brushed his knuckle against my own. A familiar touch. "Seeing you again."

I offered him a smile back. "I really fucking missed you, you know."

He was quiet for a moment. "I know." I was suddenly overtaken by the need to hug him, to hold him in my arms and bury my head into his shoulder. We couldn't, though. Not now. Not here. Percy seemed to understand, so he laced his fingers between mine for a moment. I let go first, but not without squeezing his hand.

Over comms, Thalia's voice echoed into my ear again. "The client is being escorted into the building. Something doesn't feel right about this, Chase. He has a squad of bodyguards with him, and I think I might've seen an SPQR tattoo on one of their wrists. Stay alert; Ugliano's men will no doubt strike as soon as the drug transfer is over."

Just as Thalia had said, the library's old wooden doors swung open to reveal a group of eight men. One of them was grey-haired and wore a sleek suit—presumably our client—and the other seven of them were clad in black gear. They didn't have any visible weapons, but there was no doubt in my mind that they were armed. I wondered which were SPQR members. Maybe all of them were.

I watched carefully for their reactions to Percy. With his new dark hair, I knew he probably looked far more like his younger self than he had with his red hair and was therefore instantly recognisable.

Beside me, I realised that Percy's hands were shaking. Unable to do much else, I shot him a glance. You okay?

A slight nod.

The older man stepped forward into a shaft of bleach-bright sunlight that fell from the library's broken roof, letting his guards fall back in a loose semi-circle behind him. He flashed me a sickly-sweet smile, then turned around to take a leather briefcase from one of the men behind him. "Hello," he said. His voice was hoarse, undoubtedly a result of years of smoking substances. Rich white men were always so predictable. "This briefcase contains exactly five thousand American dollars. You got what I asked for?"

I plastered a smile on my face, mirroring his own. "Of course. May we check within the case? As a formality."

He shrugged. I imagined five thousand dollars was pretty much pocket change to him. "Go ahead."

Percy stepped forward and took the suitcase. To his credit, he'd managed to stop his hands shaking, betraying none of his fear. I watched as he clicked the case open and deftly checked through the bound stacks of notes. "Seems like it's all here," he decided, and snapped the suitcase shut.

We stepped aside to allow a couple of the client's bodyguards to step forward and take the crate, but then several things happened at once. One of the other guards raised his gun to shoot the two men who'd stepped forward square in the head. They fell to the library's floorboards with a hollow thump. Those two probably weren't SPQR.

Percy and I reacted at the same time; I drew my gun and shot the guard on the left in the leg while Percy nimbly dodged their blows and rammed the handle of his gun into a guard's temple, making him crumple to his knees. Suppressed gunshots from our own defence quads rang out all around us, piercing the rest of the SPQR officers in nonlethal areas. Each of them toppled, crying out in pain.

"Get behind me," I said to Percy, raising my gun.

He scoffed. "Gabe wants me captured, not dead. They'll have no qualms about shooting you."

Thalia's voice crackled over my comm set again. "Around twenty SPQR members have attacked and crippled our forces outside the building. They're coming in. Be ready, and for the love of God don't let them apprehend Jackson."

Hardly a second later, a group of gang members holding rifles crashed through the library's doors. Our defence squads slipped out of the shadows, already returning fire. I stood my ground, slicing bullets between the eyes of as many of them as I could. I knew we were supposed to keep some of them alive to interrogate, but it was impossible to hold back my anger. I wasn't letting them take Percy.

It was a bloodbath. A stray bullet ploughed into the flesh of my arm, but my system was so flooded by fiery adrenaline that I barely felt the pain. The shooting went on for what felt like forever, but we'd come prepared with plenty of reinforcements. SPQR hadn't known that we knew they'd been intending to strike, so it was inevitable that we'd overpower them.

We captured eight officers, two of which bit into their poison teeth in a bid to protect SPQR's secrets. The other five—the self-preserving ones—instead spat furious curses at us as we clapped them in handcuffs and pressed gags into their mouths. Everything seemed weirdly quiet, now that the fighting was over. I knew we had to clear out of here as soon as possible; the police undoubtedly would've heard the commotion.

"Annabeth? You alright?" Percy's voice sounded echoey to me. I felt my gun thud out of my hand as the pain from my shoulder registered.

I leaned against him, finding solidarity in his strength. "I'm fine," I managed, even as my other hand rose to press against the ragged wound on my shoulder. My fingers came away red, which didn't quite compute in my sluggish mind. Had I been shot? "It's just a graze," I insisted, but my words came out all slurred.

Percy's brow furrowed as he supported me, scanning my expression. I kind of wanted to touch that little dip between his brows, smooth it out. "You're bleeding," he said, touching my arm. My knees started to quiver, threatening to give way, but Percy slung his arm under my shoulders to keep me upright. "You're gonna be okay," he reassured me, then frantically called to anyone who'd listen, "She's injured! Someone, help me get her into a med-van! Please!"

I looked up at his face. "Thanks, Percy," I mumbled. "You're really sweet." Was that a normal thing to say?

My eyes fell to half-mast as I felt someone else's arm slip under my other shoulder. "Annabeth, can you hear me?" I heard Percy ask. I could, but my reply faded on my lips as I slipped away into unconsciousness.

I jolted awake, blinded by a fluorescent light above me. My upper left arm was wrapped in gauze, and I couldn't really move my other hand. Someone was holding it.

As my vision returned, everything came back to me in a flash. The fight, my gunshot wound. I turned my head to see a familiar pair of green eyes looking down at me. Percy. There was that little furrow in his brow again. "Are you okay?" I mumbled.

He laughed, relief flowing out of him. "Me? You're the one who took a bullet to the arm. You're lucky. The medics said it was mainly superficial. The bleeding's already stopped." He brushed a rebellious strand of hair out of my face.

I groaned, pressing a hand to my head. It took me a moment to realise I'd lifted my injured arm rather than my other one as there was barely even a twinge of pain. My first guess was that they had me on some kind of painkiller. "God, I can't believe I fucking fainted."

Percy's thumb was tracing circles on my palm. "You were in shock," he said. "And you weren't out for long—we're still in the med van, on our way back to base." That seemed to be true; I could hear the grumble of an engine, and New York was blurring past us outside the van's window. "We're having to take a few wrong turns, in case any of Ugliano's men are on our tail."

I sat up, with Percy's assistance. Now that my head was clear, I checked over Percy for injuries. He looked like he was fine. "Thanks for staying with me," I said.

Percy shrugged. "Why wouldn't I? You'd do the same for me." I didn't have time to think about the truth of that statement, as Percy went on. "Plus, we're gonna need to join the others for interrogation when we get back. There's no time to lose."

"Hopefully, the officer's will give up some information we can use for our reconnaissance mission," I mused. The idea of leading a mission with Percy had seemed like hell before, but now I was just glad that we could...what? Try and fix things? Continue from where we'd left off? Time would tell.

Percy nodded. A medic behind him leaned over to check on my arm. "Feeling better, Miss Chase?"

"Yes, thanks," I replied, giving them a grateful look. With a nod, they left, moving to work on another recruit that lay unconscious on the other stretcher. At the reminder of what had happened, I sighed. "How many of us died? The fight was pretty brutal."

Percy grimaced. "Eight. Three times as many as that are injured." At my look of horror, he quickly said, "But it could've been way worse. We overwhelmed them quickly."

"I know, I know." I dragged my gaze back up to his. I reached up almost involuntarily and let my fingertips whisper down the side of his face, connecting his brow to his cheekbone to the slant of his jaw. He leaned into my touch ever so slightly. "I'm really happy you're okay. That they didn't take you."

"You'd never have let that happen," Percy grinned, but the joke fell flat. We both knew the distances we'd each travel to protect one another—something which we hadn't realised before, back in Paris. At least, until we'd kissed on the compound's roof under the city's dusky winter sky.

"I regret walking away from you," I said. "After we kissed."

He was silent for a heartbeat, then another. "Still, I understand why you did."

"Do you?" I pressed. Was that cruel of me?

Percy's eyes were searing, a blue-green flame. His thumb stilled where it'd been drawing circles on my skin. "Yeah, I do." How did he make that sound so selfless? "You thought keeping me at arm's length was safer for both of us. You thought that if you acted like nothing had ever changed between us then it'd hurt less to leave me and that things would go back to the way they'd been."

My heart was a weight in my throat. "I was scared. It was shitty of me to drag you back into your old life. I should've—"

"Done what?" he asked. "Never met me in the first place? Come on, I was always going to fall back into this life. It was just a matter of when." His tone softened, and his gaze dropped to where our hands were intertwined. "I wouldn't trade you for the world. Even if God walked up to me and said, Look, you can have a normal life, but only if you never see her again, I'd tell him to go screw himself. I love you, Annabeth. I told you before."

I kind of wanted to cry, right then. Instead, I let out a shaky breath and pressed my head into his shoulder. "I think...I think I love you too," I murmured. The words resounded, like a thousand realisations crashing through me all at once.

"Then don't walk away from me again. We're good together."

I lifted my head to meet his eyes. "I know we are," I said softly. Before I could think twice, I leaned forward and pressed my lips gently to his, unassuming as anything. He kissed me back, reaching up to grasp the back of my neck. This boy was all soft edges and dark eyelashes, but I didn't think anyone could see past his scars and anger except me.

When we pulled apart, we rested our heads together for a second, smiling giddily into each other's mouths like we were in some fucking rom-com. "I love you," Percy repeated.

I laughed, pushing him away. "I love you too, you big sap." And hell, that word was so incongruous to the complex creature that was Percy Jackson that I could do nothing but sink into laughter, letting him kiss me again.

When we made it back to base, there was plenty to be done. Despite the medic telling me to take it easy, I ignored her and slipped back into the role of officer as easily as breathing. Percy disappeared for a while to give a final briefing to his squad before letting them go and rest, and I went to correspond with Thalia about the captives.

They'd all been transported to separate interrogation rooms, and routine questioning had already been carried out by the time I'd arrived. Thalia handed me a sheet, detailing each of their names. "A couple of them have tried to fight back, but I'm willing to bet it won't take us long to break them down. I've assigned you and Jackson to the one who's being particularly difficult. We'll handle the others."

"Sounds good," I replied. "Give me the key to his room. Percy'll be here in a moment."

At that, Thalia smirked. "So. You and Jackson, huh? I was under the impression you'd tried to cut things off between you."

I rolled my eyes. "Get out of here, Grace. Go interrogate your captive. Maybe then you can put your nosiness to good use."

She left me with a good-natured laugh, giving me the key I needed. It was cool and heavy in my palm, a brass skeleton key. I headed down to where the captive was being held after quickly shooting Percy a text that I was starting the interrogation without him. He replied instantly. I'm on my way, sweetheart.

Ignoring the 'sweetheart' comment, I answered with You better be and slipped my phone back into my pocket. Hopefully, the interrogation wouldn't be too violent. After getting shot, I was feeling queasier than usual.

Percy, surprisingly, made it there at the same time as me. "Did you run here?" I asked, slipping the key Thalia had given me into the lock.

He grinned. "Nah. Power-walked."

Together, we pushed open the interrogation room's door. It was second-nature to slip a mask of indifference over my face, and I looked over to see that Percy had done the same.

The officer was sitting at a metal table, hands cuffed before him. When he noticed us walk in, his features contorted with contempt. He spat on the desk. "Fuck off. I don't need to tell you anything."

I shared a glance with Percy as we both sat down in the two chairs opposite the man. I'd carried out a lot of interrogations over the course of my life, and I knew how to keep the upper hand away from the captive. Once they felt powerless, it was easier to pry whatever you needed to know out of them. Of course, first we had to find out what it exactly was that we needed to know. Silently, I looked down at the sheet Thalia had given me. On it, it said he'd identified himself as Cecil Parker. Whether or not that was true, I didn't know. But it hardly mattered—his name wasn't important.

"Mr. Parker," I began, leaning forward to lace my fingers together on the table. "We don't wish to harm you. But your safety is tied to your compliance, so I hope you'll learn to see our side of things." Palmer didn't bother to reply, so I continued. "I'm going to start by asking where you're ranked within SPQR. This will be over faster if you don't lie."

He laughed. "Do you think you're fucking intimidating, blondie?"

Beside me, Percy tensed. I noticed a muscle in his jaw twitch in my peripheral. To his credit, though, he only let a flicker of his anger show. Evenly, he said, "You might regret saying that." Parker's gaze snapped to Percy, and I was satisfied by the fear that passed behind his eyes. I knew I didn't look like much to be afraid of, but Parker probably took Percy's scarred face and aggressive demeanour seriously. Though Percy didn't often intend to be, he was terrifying at times.

Parker swallowed, seemingly unable to look away from Percy. I realised something. Parker was undoubtedly aware that Percy was Ugliano's son. I mean, he had to be; Percy had been his target, the subject of his mission. It was likely that Percy's reputation preceded him—Ugliano himself was known to be brutal, one of the most violent gang leaders in America. It made sense that Parker was afraid of what his stepson might be capable of, as well.

I wondered if I could use that to our advantage. Hopefully, Percy would play along. "I'll ask you again," I said. "Are you an officer? A lieutenant? How close are you to the top?" And before Parker could say anything, I held up a finger. "Think long and hard what you say next. Jackson here will be more than happy to rough you up if he decides you're lying."

At that, Parker looked somewhat petrified. Percy seemed to catch on to what I was trying to do, and an unsettling grin stretched across his face. He stood up, cracking his scarred knuckles. "So? Answer her."

Parker paled. "Okay, okay!" he relented. "I'm an officer. I work for one of Ugliano's lieutenants."

I smiled. Maybe we were finally getting somewhere. I clicked my pen open, ready to press it to paper. "Which lieutenant?"

One hour and one bloody nose later, Parker had revealed a lot of viable information to us about SPQR. We'd found out the main reason behind Ugliano's agenda against us was that he'd discovered—earlier than we'd thought—that Percy had joined our organisation's branch in Paris. Parker had also spilled plenty of shit about Ugliano's burgeoning drug empire. And as we were the main underground supplier in New York City, that was just another reason for him to want to take us down from the inside.

Still, all that information paled in comparison to the last thing Parker told us. Wiping his freshly oozing, bloody nose on his shoulder—courtesy of a punch from Percy—he spat out the locations of several of SPQR's new bases. Ones that Percy hadn't had any knowledge of, due to the fact they'd only been created after he ran away. It made sense that Gabe wanted his main places of power to be unknown to his turncoat of a stepson, but to me it seemed like overkill. There was no explanation other than that he might be planning to attempt some sort ofcoup, if you could call it that.

As we left Parker once more at the mercy of Thalia to see if she could dredge any more information out of him, Percy and I stepped into the base's elevator which would take us back up to the ground floor. My mind was whirling with possibilities. We'd need to start planning our reconnaissance mission as soon as possible. And with the information Parker had yielded, we now had a starting point.

Beside me, Percy let out a sigh. He was running the pad of his thumb over his knuckles which he'd bruised on Parker's face. He said, "If we're ever going to take down Gabe, we're going to need to work out how to destroy SPQR from the inside out."

"Easier said than done. It's a huge gang. They've got roots everywhere in the city, even throughout the rest of the country." I shook my head. "Maybe we can try and cause some sort of chain reaction or knock-on effect. If we cripple the leadership, the rest of SPQR will be forced to their knees."

He nodded. "We'll need to act fast. Ugliano's probably already planning his counterattack after how badly today unfolded for him. I doubt he'll be content to take the loss lying down."

The elevator dinged and thudded to a stop, brass doors sliding open. As we walked out, I turned to Percy and offered him a comforting smile. "Well, we're working together now. I don't mind our odds."

Percy laughed. "We'll be unstoppable." He glanced down at his watch. "It's late. Do you need to head back to your base?"

I really didn't want to leave. "I guess so," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, yeah? Nine 'o' clock. We need to get ahead with planning."

"Sure," he replied. "Just can't wait to spend more time with me, huh?"

I elbowed him. "Fuck off."

"Always so cruel, Chase." He turned to leave, calling over his shoulder, "See you tomorrow!"

"I hate you!" I yelled after him.

He laughed. "You love me." I flipped him off, but still couldn't stop myself from smiling.

as always, thanks for reading, especially if you've reviewed! I appreciate feedback so, so much :)

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