Chapter 19
Harper
The kitchen glowed with that particular morning gold that follows a frosty night, sunlight sharp enough to make the crumb-strewn countertop glitter.
I’d been awake for hours, all showered, dressed in soft leggings and an oversized sweater, my damp hair curling at the ends.
The memory of Jess’s hands on my skin kept me warm.
Three empty coffee mugs bore witness to my waiting, the fourth nearly slipping through my fingers as I chased the ghost of last night’s pleasure—his mouth between my thighs, the growl in his voice when I came the third time, how he’d cradled me afterward like something precious.
Crumbs from yesterday’s pastry dusted my notebook, my sweater, and the patch of bare knee peeking through the torn fabric of my leggings. I didn’t brush them away. The stillness felt fragile, like the world was holding its breath.
The front door sighed open at noon. Jess stood framed in the doorway, morning light catching the damp ends of his hair.
His knuckles shone raw and pink. He’d been at the gym again, punishing the heavy bag or maybe just his own regrets.
My chest tightened when his gaze found me, that familiar ache blooming under my ribs.
“Hey,” he rasped, voice rough as gravel. I wondered if he’d spoken at all during the pack meeting.
“Hey yourself.” My mug clinked against butcher block. “How’d the meeting go?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw as he crossed to me. “Gave my apologies for being a colossal dick for the past however many years. Told them I’d been a jealous bastard. That their mates deserved better than my…” His fingers brushed crumbs from my knee. “My shit.”
The touch sparked memories. Those same fingers inside me last night, coaxing sounds I didn’t know I could make. Heat flooded my cheeks.
“You didn’t have to…”
“I did.” His hands engulfed mine, warm and sure. “For years, I let anger rot me. Punished you for surviving. Punished them for…” His thumb traced my pulse. “For finding what I thought I’d lost.”
The confession hung between us, fragile as the sugar crystals on my sleeve. I wanted to kiss it away, to drag him back to bed where words didn’t matter. But his eyes held a new softness; the black irises rimmed with gold like a solar eclipse in reverse. I stayed still.
“You don’t owe me…”
“Let me.” His forehead pressed to mine. “Let me be better.”
The refrigerator hummed. The clock ticked. His thumb kept circling my wrist as shadows moved behind his eyes. The unspoken things waiting in his throat.
“I need you to sit down,” he said, pulling me to the couch. I followed and sat on the edge of the cushion spine straight. His voice had gone formal, like he was reading a bad report and didn’t know how to soften the blow.
He poured himself a mug of the now-cold coffee and walked back over to me. He sat across from me on the new coffee table, set the mug down and put his hands on his knees. He wouldn’t look at me for a full fifteen seconds. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“We were working on finding your sister. Wrecker and Parker ran all the numbers, all the addresses. I was searching too, and I found something. A file from Houston PD. Seems your father hadn’t stopped dabbling in illegal shit when he’d been convicted in that Ponzi scheme.
He must have gotten mixed up with some really bad men who did really bad things.
” He squeezed my hands. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but he was killed last month.”
The world stopped. For a full minute, I didn’t understand what the words meant. Then they clicked together, cold and smooth and permanent.
“How?” I asked. My voice sounded flat, like it was being piped in from another room.
“Hit in a parking garage. Execution style. The news called it a robbery, but the report says there was nothing missing. There were just two bullets to the back of the head. We think it was a mob hit. Or maybe something to do with the Ponzi scheme. He’d made a lot of enemies.”
I felt the edges of my vision go white, the way it sometimes did when I’d danced too long without water, when my blood sugar would crater and the world would shrink to a single, ringing note.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything but breathe, slow and careful, until the feeling passed.
“I should feel something,” I said after a long while. “I should at least want to cry over the death of my parent. But I don’t.”
Jess moved off the table, then knelt in front of me. “That’s okay.”
“I mean, I’m sure he didn’t cry for me when he sold me to a monster.” My lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. “Guess karma got the last word, after all.”
He looked up at me, eyes full of something that wasn’t pity, wasn’t sorrow. It was just real. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “I’m not.”
We sat there like that, frozen. The sun broke through a cloud and lit the room, warming my bare feet. I pressed them against the tile just to remind myself I was still here, still alive, and not just some ghost sitting here.
Jess ran his thumb along my knuckles, slow and steady, not forcing anything.
When I finally looked at him, I could see the struggle on his face. He wanted to fix this, but there was nothing to fix. All he could do was wait until the ice inside me melted, until my blood started moving again.
“Thank you for telling me yourself,” I said. “I would have hated to find out from the news.”
He nodded, like he didn’t trust himself to speak.
I closed my eyes, let the sunlight pour over my eyelids, and imagined a world where the dead stayed dead, where the only monsters were the kind you could outrun, or outlast, or out-love.
I opened my eyes, and he was still there. Solid. Unyielding. Still my wolf.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” I said.
He gave me a sad smile. “Whatever you want.”
I nodded, and for the first time in my life, I believed it might actually be true.
“We need to talk about next steps,” he said, settling on the edge of the sofa. His hands flexed, restless, then stilled as he met my gaze. “First priority is getting to your sister. Bronc says the odds are good Steiner’s already got teams looking for her.”
The name landed like a fist to the ribs. “So she’s in danger,” I said.
“She’s not safe,” Jess agreed. “But we’re better. Wrecker and Parker are on it. They’re trying to get a trace on your mom in Paris. Menace has contacts there, being a royal and all.” He paused. “It’s possible they know someone is after them and they’re running.”
My pulse stuttered, then evened out. I tried to recall the last time I’d talked to my mom.
It was a voice memo, not a call—her voice disguised, heavy with code words.
I’d deleted it a minute later, like I always did.
She’d said, “Your sister is painting now. She’s got a good studio and friends she trusts.
Don’t worry about us. We love you forever. ” Then, it was gone.
“Could she be hiding?” I asked. “I mean, Mom was always good at that sort of thing. She made it through the IRS scandal, the pack betrayal, all of it. She could vanish if she wanted.”
Jess nodded. “If she’s trying, she’s doing a decent job. But we have a couple of advantages Steiner doesn’t.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.
I chewed on my thumbnail, then stopped. “What do you need from me?”
“Any way to contact her, any numbers you remember, any old passwords or codes. Even if it’s just a maybe.”
I shook my head, frustrated. “At Eyrie, they changed my phone every week. Sometimes twice. Steiner’s people monitored every call, every text, every breath I took online. The only number I ever really memorized was the one I got for my sixteenth birthday. It doesn’t even work anymore.”
Jess leaned in, eyes sharp. “You sure?”
I thought for a minute, then closed my eyes and let my brain flicker back through the years. “It was a 713 number. Then they changed the area code, I think. It was the only one Mom ever called directly.”
He handed me a battered spiral notepad. “Write it down.”
I did, my hand shaking just a little. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“It’s enough,” he said. He was already dialing Wrecker before I finished the sentence.
I watched him cross to the sliding balcony door, back straight, shoulders squared. He spoke low and fast, tossing off codes and acronyms like a man born for this. I could see the animal in him now—alert, dangerous, a wall you could crash a truck into and still not dent.
When he hung up, he turned to me. “Wrecker says he’ll have a hit within the hour. If it’s live, we move. If not, we go anyway. We can’t let Steiner get to them first.”
“Do you think Brie will even talk to me?” I hated how small my voice sounded.
“She won’t come willingly to anyone but you,” Jess said. “She’s still your sister, even after all this.”
I wanted to believe him. But I knew Brie. She’d spent her entire life having everything given to her. She always got her way. I love her, but she’s spoiled rotten.
Jess must have seen the worry on my face, because he sat next to me and pulled me onto his lap. My body molded to his instinctively, like it had been waiting all day for this. He held me there, arms wrapped around my waist, and for a long time neither of us spoke.
Finally I managed, “If she doesn’t come with me, she’ll wind up with Steiner. Or in a train car. Or heaven forbid, in the arms of that demon king.”
He buried his face in my neck, breathing deep. “You’ll need to drive that home to her if she resists. Scare the shit out of her. Even if she still resists, that’s not going to happen. I won’t let it.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t believe it completely.
“Go pack,” he said gently. “Travel light. If it goes down tonight, we leave in a matter of hours.”