Chapter 27 Unholy Alliance
Now
The burner phone feels like a weapon in my hands as I dial the number Max memorized from Erik’s emergency contact card.
Twenty-four hours have passed since Harper’s ultimatum, twenty-four hours of moving from one abandoned location to another, always staying ahead of whatever forces are hunting us.
The cabin we’ve taken shelter in now—some forgotten hunting lodge deeper in the Vermont wilderness—smells of mold and dead leaves, but it has the one thing we need most: complete isolation.
Max sits across from me at a table made from a tree stump, his laptop open to news feeds that have been our only connection to the outside world.
The morning light filtering through grimy windows catches the stubble on his jaw, the exhaustion in his dark eyes that mirrors my own.
We’ve been running for so long that I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to be still.
The phone rings three times before Luna’s voice cuts through the static.
“Who is this?” Her tone is sharp, suspicious—exactly what it should be.
“It’s Belle. Is this line secure?”
A pause, then: “As secure as we can make it. Belle, what the hell is happening? We had to leave our safe house yesterday after Erik noticed surveillance.”
Relief floods through me so powerfully that my knees weaken. She’s alive. They’re both alive. “We need to talk. All of us. Are you somewhere you can put me on speaker?”
“Hold on.” I hear muffled conversation, footsteps, and the sound of a door closing. “Okay, you’re on speaker. Erik’s here. Belle, we’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
Erik’s voice joins Luna’s, tight with worry. “Max sent a coded message about Harper being compromised. We’ve been operating under the assumption that no one in law enforcement can be trusted.”
“You’re right.” The admission tastes bitter on my tongue. “Harper’s been working for them all along. He’s code-named ‘The Guardian’ in my father’s files—a law enforcement asset who’s been protecting the network’s core members for years.”
“Fuck,” Luna breathes. “Belle, that means everything we told him—”
“Has been fed back to them, yes.” I lean forward, pressing my palm against my forehead where a headache has been building since yesterday. “They know our movements, our plans, our safe houses. We’re completely exposed.”
“Not completely.” Erik’s voice carries that calm authority that once made him Luna’s anchor during her darkest moments. “We’ve been developing contingencies. Alternative contacts, off-the-grid resources. Your warning came just in time.”
The burner phone crackles with static as Max adjusts our signal booster. Outside, wind rattles the hunting lodge’s windows like skeletal fingers demanding entry. Everything about our situation feels precarious, temporary, borrowed time that could run out at any moment.
“Luna,” I say, needing to hear her voice again, needing proof that she’s genuinely there. “Are you okay? I mean, really okay?”
A soft laugh that holds no humor. “Define okay. We’re alive, we’re together, and we’re not in their gilded cage. But Belle, I’ve been getting messages too. Similar to what you described. Photos, threats, references to things I can’t remember.”
My heart sinks. I’d hoped the targeting was limited to me, that Luna’s testimony against her parents might have bought her safety or a fucked up version of respect. “What kind of messages?”
“Surveillance photos going back weeks. Pictures of me and Erik at therapy appointments, at the grocery store, at the coffee shop where we have our Thursday meetings.” Her voice drops to barely above a whisper.
“The latest one came with a note saying I was meant to be the first offering, but my parents convinced them to marry me off instead.”
Janet Wilson. The pieces get confirmed one more time with sickening clarity.
Luna was the original target, but Sebastian and Eleanor Queen somehow negotiated a substitution.
A senator’s daughter instead of their own.
And when that ritual was interrupted, punishment unfulfilled, and the debt went unpaid, it transferred to the next available offering.
Me.
“Belle?” Erik’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Just processing.” I look at Max, seeing my grim understanding reflected in his expression. “Luna, has anyone tried to approach you directly? Phone calls, personal contact?”
“No, just the messages. But Belle, there’s something else.
Something my mother told me during one of her final visits before sentencing.
” Luna’s voice grows smaller, younger. “She said this wasn’t over.
That there were people above her and my father in the hierarchy, people who would never forgive what we’d done to expose the network. ”
“She gave you names?”
“One. Someone called ‘The Architect.’ She said this person had been planning our family’s operations since before we were born, that everything—our training, our abuse, even our rebellion—was part of some larger design.”
The Architect. The mysterious figure from Harper’s threats, from the documents we’ve been analyzing. Hearing the name from Luna’s lips makes it real in a way that files and financial records couldn’t.
“Max found references to this person in my family’s records, too,” I tell her.
“Financial connections, operational orders, systematic planning that goes back decades. Luna, I think we’re dealing with someone who’s been orchestrating events from the beginning.
Not just reacting to our testimonies, but anticipating them. Using them.”
“Using them how?”
Before I can answer, Erik’s voice cuts through the static with sharp urgency. “Jesus Christ. Belle, Luna, you need to see this.”
I hear the sound of a television being turned up, the familiar cadence of breaking news coverage. The reporter’s voice carries clearly through the phone:
“—An attempt on District Attorney David Stone’s life occurred early this morning outside his Boston residence.
Sources confirm that Stone, who has been leading the prosecution of several high-profile trafficking cases, was targeted by what appears to be a professional assassin.
Stone is currently in critical condition at Massachusetts General Hospital… ”
The world tilts around me. David Stone—Erik’s brother, the prosecutor who gave Luna and me the chance to tell our stories, who believed us when no one else would. He’s fighting for his life because of what we set in motion.
“This is my fault,” I whisper, the words scraping raw against my throat. “If I had turned myself in yesterday, if I had honored Harper’s ultimatum—”
“Don’t.” Luna’s voice cuts through my self-recrimination like a blade. “Belle, don’t you dare take responsibility for what these monsters do.”
“But David wouldn’t be in the hospital if—”
“David is in the hospital because he chose to prosecute criminals,” Erik’s voice joins Luna’s, steady and implacable. “Because he believed justice mattered more than his own safety. You didn’t put him there, Belle. They did.”
Max reaches across the table, his hand covering mine where it grips the phone. His touch is warm, grounding, a reminder that I’m not facing this alone.
“Erik’s right,” he says, loud enough for the others to hear. “This is exactly what they want—for us to feel guilty, to blame ourselves, to turn ourselves in thinking we can save people by surrendering. It’s psychological warfare.”
“Then what do we do?” Luna asks. “Because sitting here feeling helpless while people we care about get hurt isn’t sustainable.”
I close my eyes, forcing my mind past emotion and into the strategic thinking my father drilled into me. The same skills I used to survive my family’s manipulation, to gather intelligence, to stay one step ahead of threats I couldn’t see coming.
“We stop playing defense,” I say finally. “They want us reactive, scattered, making decisions based on fear. But we have something they don’t expect.”
“Which is?”
“Each other.” I open my eyes, meeting Max’s gaze across the table.
“Luna, you know the Queen network’s structure better than anyone.
I have files on the Gallagher operations.
Max has financial connections that could help us track money flows.
And thanks to David, Erik has enough legal experience to know how to build a case that will stick. ”
“You’re talking about going on offense,” Erik says, and I can hear the wheels turning in his mind. “Gathering enough evidence to expose the entire network before they can eliminate us.”
“More than that.” My voice grows stronger as the plan takes shape.
“We’re going to use their tactics against them.
They’ve been hunting us by monitoring our communications, tracking our movements, using law enforcement assets to stay ahead of us.
So we feed them exactly what they expect to see while building our real operation in the shadows. ”
Luna’s laugh has an edge that reminds me of the girl who once turned my own psychological warfare against me at Shark Bay. “You want to run a disinformation campaign.”
“I want to run the same kind of operation they’ve been running on us. Let Harper and his handlers think we’re panicking, making desperate moves, while we systematically document every name, every connection, every crime that’s been covered up.”
Max nods slowly, his expression shifting from exhausted worry to something sharper. “Create parallel evidence streams. One visible to their surveillance, one completely hidden. Make them think they know our plans while we execute something entirely different.”
“Exactly.” I lean forward, energy building in my chest for the first time since Harper’s betrayal. “But we need to coordinate. Share information, resources, create redundant systems so if one of us is compromised, the others can continue.”