Jude threatens to use Callie Rose for revenge

Jude threatens to use Sephy’s unborn child as part of his revenge for Callum’s death, turning a confrontation in Sephy’s flat into a deliberate promise of future harm. The threat marks a shift from Jude’s immediate attack to a calculated plan: he wants Sephy afraid, and he intends to make her child central to the retaliation he imagines as justice for his brother.

Circumstances of the confrontation

Jude has wounded Minerva, but believes she will survive and will no longer interfere. He waits until Sephy has finished calling the emergency services before approaching her. With the sirens drawing nearer, the encounter takes place under the pressure of an impending response, but Jude uses the remaining moments to redirect the confrontation toward Sephy and the child she is carrying.

His choice of target is personal. Sephy’s pregnancy is something he knows she cares about, even as she has shown little concern for her own safety. Jude frames that attachment as the means by which he can reach her. His aim is not limited to threatening Sephy’s life; he wants to endanger the future she values and make that threat persist beyond the encounter.

The threat and Sephy’s answer

Jude initially holds Sephy at gunpoint, then lowers the weapon and speaks close to her. He tells her that he will get revenge through her child. Sephy pulls away and warns him that she will kill him if he touches the baby. Her response overturns Jude’s assumption that she has no fear left: although she may appear indifferent to her own fate, she reacts fiercely when he threatens the child.

Jude reads that reaction as confirmation of the leverage he has found. He remarks that Sephy is not so different from him after all and suggests that she is no longer as willing to die. The exchange makes the child the immediate focus of their conflict: Sephy’s protective resolve answers Jude’s attempt to turn her love into a weakness he can exploit.

From menace to a plan

After Sephy’s warning, Jude smiles and says an idea is forming. He promises to ruin her life and the lives of those she cares about, with the child helping him do it. He describes this not as an empty threat but as a plan that will demand time, work and patience. His stated purpose is to avenge Callum, whose death remains the motive governing his actions.

The scene thus distinguishes Jude’s immediate violence from the longer retaliation he now imagines. As the sirens approach, he says he has obtained what he came for: Sephy is terrified. Her fear becomes, in his view, evidence that his threat has succeeded and that he can continue to exert power after leaving the flat.

Departure and consequences

Jude puts the safety back on his automatic, pockets the gun and places a hand against Sephy’s stomach. Sephy flinches but does not move away; he feels the baby move beneath his hand. The moment brings the threat into direct contact with the pregnancy and confirms that Jude intends Sephy to understand his warning as applying to the child, not only to her.

He tells Sephy that he will see her and her child again, then leaves as the sirens sound below her window. The encounter ends without Jude carrying out the future harm he has promised, but it establishes a continuing danger: he means to use the child in a patient campaign of revenge, while Sephy has made clear that she will resist any attempt to hurt the baby. The novel points readers toward the later books in the series for what follows between them.