Chapter Ten #2
Trenton rolled his eyes before looking back toward the playground. “When she said she wasn’t coming home with us last night, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d failed her. Again. She doesn’t trust me to protect her.”
No one responded. We knew he was just getting started.
“When she was little,” he continued, “Dad’s house was homebase for her, ya know?
Where she could relax, where she felt safe.
Dinners, homework, Chicken Joe’s. Fuck, I was the one who taught her to ride a bike because Shane was working so hard.
I was the one she came to when she was scared.
When she needed a good comeback for a bully at school.
And I didn’t even plan on being that guy, it just happened. ”
“Then Oliver came,” Trenton said softly, glancing toward Camille contently patting their son’s back as he slept on her shoulder, “and I realized it’s the same feeling.
Different roles, same instinct, same fear, same permanent attachment.
That’s my little girl,” he said, nodding toward her.
“The last time I saw her she was still kind of little, ya know? And now… she’s this adult, who’s had experiences and moments I’ve missed, and it kills me to think about it.
It kills me to see she doesn’t need me anymore. ”
“She needs you,” I said. “You’re the first name in her prayers every night.”
Olive glanced over and caught Trenton watching her and lifted her hand in an easy wave. He returned it automatically, the motion as instinctive as breathing. She grinned and went back to counting kids.
“Looks like you’re still her go-to,” Travis said quietly. “Look at her over there, trying to keep track of all those kids. Still, she looks for you.”
I watched Olive and the children move through the playground in overlapping bursts of motion and laughter, unaware of anything beyond the small world they had created.
The compound wasn’t home and it never would be, but it offered shelter and protection, and for now, that was enough.
As a family, we weren’t healed, we weren’t finished being angry, and a reckoning was just beginning, but watching Olive standing in the center of our next generation, commanding her small kingdom with patience and a smile, for the moment, hope began to whisper in my ear.
“I’m sorry, Trent. I really am,” I said before I could stop myself.
His jaw twitched. He took in a breath to let me have it, but before he could, three uniformed men approached from the south corridor, boots crunching against gravel as they slowed near our table, shoulders squaring and expressions drifting into something between respect and nervousness.
“Sir,” the largest of them spoke first.
I began to answer, but Travis beat me to it.
“Whitmore” he said, a sour expression twisting his face. “Still smelling like a porta-potty in July. The compound rationing soap?”
Everyone froze, unsure what the next move should be.
Whitmore was as tall as me, but as muscular as Travis. He leaned his head back and cackled. “You dumb fuck. What the hell have you been up to?”
Travis stood and hugged Whitmore, then the other two, introducing them as Hensley and Williams.
“Hensley said you rolled in last night,” Whitmore said.
“This whole op is for your crazy ass family, huh?” Hensley said.
“I thought your stories were nuts last time you were here, but not one but two mafias after you? Witness protection? A governor’s daughter and granddaughter in the crosshairs, all of it you married into and it’s all like…
six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Unreal, dude. Y’all are like cartoons.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Travis said, laughing. “Your uncle faked his own death to avoid taxes and ended up getting robbed of every dime by a ladyboy in Thailand.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
They began to walk off, roasting each other for a full ten seconds before Travis finally stopped and turned around. “You guys coming or you gonna sit there looking like you’re free to a good home?”
My brothers stood up and followed him. I frowned for a moment, staring at Hensley.
Travis slowed and pivoted, beckoning me forward. I slid out of my seat and fell in behind them, aware the rest of my brothers would rather I hadn’t.
As I followed, watching everyone in the compound engage with my baby brother, I realized Travis had become something of a local legend here. Everyone we passed greeted him, thanked him, and tried to pull him into whatever they were doing that night.
In hindsight, it made sense. Years earlier, when Travis was still operating as an FBI asset, I’d sent him into Colorado to pick up what he thought were two contacts.
Naomi had gotten Zeke out of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex’s research facility after months of torture, then kept him alive long enough for Travis to find them in an isolated stretch of terrain and get them out, delivering them safely to the compound.
He stayed in Arizona longer than planned to make sure Zeke made a full recovery, earning loyalty the old-fashioned way.
I hadn’t known then that favor would later mean life or death for our family.
The AbrP had claimed him as one of their own because he’d given them something no one else could: Marcel’s daughter and son-in-law, relatively unharmed.
“We’re having a get-together,” Williams said. “A lot of the same guys you bunked with are still here. Parks, Vaughn, Torres, Hockenberry… We were all hoping you’d at least stop by.”
“Especially Torres,” Whitmore teased.
“Leave her alone,” Travis said. “She’s cool as shit and y’all know it.”
“She might’ve teared up a little when you started talking about your wife,” Whitmore said.
Travis’s face screwed into disgust then noticed the curious stares from his brothers.
“No. No, no, no. She never made a move on me. Not even close.” He turned to Whitmore.
“She was just chatty and you assholes still won’t leave her alone about it?
She’s lonely. Take her into town once in a while for fuck’s sake. ”
“I heard Meatball broke her heart,” Hensley said. “Turned on the charm, made promises, then ghosted her thirty seconds into her walk of shame. And, uh… he also said he could take you.”
Travis took note of their expressions and then scoffed, shaking his head. “You just want to stage another throw down and bet on me against the guys who don’t know better.”
They laughed, each of them admitting they’d thought about it, then thanking him for the money he’d made them after dropping a former Golden Gloves boxer turned militia—someone I hadn’t met yet named Jamison.
Travis hesitated briefly before glancing back at us. “You up for a guys’ night?”
Tyler hesitated. “I’d have to check with Ellie.”
My brothers all nodded in unison.
“I hear that, brother,” Whitmore said. “I’ve had tonight cleared with the wife for a week.”
We continued through the compound with Whitmore and Williams falling into step beside us, turning the walk into an unofficial tour that quickly became a highlight reel of Travis’s early weeks there.
They recounted the time he tried to shower in his boots instead of asking for sandals, about how he once set off a compound-wide perimeter alert because he didn’t know that what he’d kicked out of curiosity was a motion sensor, and about the afternoon he somehow locked himself in the Longhouse bathroom and had to be rescued in just his skivvies.
He’d also set a microwave on fire and clogged a toilet on his second day.
By the time they finished, I wasn’t sure how he’d managed not to be the most hated person inside the compound, but it was clear Travis had earned respect here, not by charm but the hard way, through persistence, competence, and a remarkable ability to humiliate himself while learning the rules.
By the time we reached the central corridor, it was impossible to miss the shift in energy around us.
Militia members didn’t simply notice Travis as he walked past, they reacted to him.
Every few steps, someone broke away from a work detail or abandoned whatever task they were in the middle of to greet him, shake his hand, clap his shoulder, or call his name across open spaces.
One younger recruit froze mid-step, stared at Travis for several seconds, then blurted out, “Holy shit, it’s you,” before recovering enough to salute out of sheer panic.
Travis, however, laughed and waved it off like this was an everyday occurrence, but it wasn’t.
Once Abby produced the evidence that facilitated her father’s arrest—evidence that led to bigger fish—Travis was released as an asset from the Bureau.
He co-owned IronE Gym in Eakins, Illinois with Agent Lachlan Kostas, fully aware Kostas had remained close and undercover to protect him, his family, Trenton, Camille, and now Oliver.
In truth, Travis had always been charismatic, and even easy to like if you weren’t on the wrong end of his fists.
In Eakins, he was just Travis—known, familiar, the guy who’d help you move a couch one day and threaten to break your jaw if you disrespected his wife the next.
He’d been asked to join the chamber of commerce, run for city council, and a drunk at The Red Door had even suggested he run for mayor.
Back home, that kind of recognition felt small-town predictable. This was different. Inside the compound, my little brother carried real weight, forged under pressure. That left me wondering if he’d done more for Naomi, Zeke, and the militia than what he’d included in his report.
Since arriving, the rest of us had been met with polite caution at best and wary curiosity at worst. People kept their distance, deciding whether we were temporary guests or potential liabilities.
Travis, apparently, had already been cleared on every level that mattered.
Here, he wasn’t just tolerated, he was trusted as one of their own.