Chapter 53
BELLA
Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
The night air hits me like a slap to the face. My heels scrape against the stone as I step off the porch and make my way toward the black SUV parked by the curb. Kenji stands watch by the front, arms folded, eyes scanning the street like he’s waiting for war.
I open the door slowly. The brunette I had to slap recoils so hard she nearly hits her head on the window. Her eyes are wide and terrified. She curls her shoulders inward like she’s bracing for another hit.
“Hey,” I say softly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. What’s your name?”
She doesn’t move. Just stares at me confused and scared. “Lilly,” she says so quietly I barely hear it.
“I’m sorry I had to hit you, Lilly,” I tell her, crouching down a little, lowering my voice like I would for a child. “We had to sell it. Krolek had to believe that I wanted to buy you. The whole thing was just an act.”
Lilly’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re not who you think we are. My name is Bella and we’re here to get you home. All of you.”
There’s a long pause. Then one of the other girls, a redhead in a silver dress, starts crying. Big, gulping sobs that she tries to hold in with the back of her hand. Another follows, clinging to her friend like she might collapse.
“You’re safe now,” I whisper. “I promise.”
I glance back at the house. Tex is already sweeping the scene. Knox’s van is pulling up behind us, headlights off, quiet and smooth like a ghost in the dark.
“I need you to get out of the car,” I tell the girls gently. “We’re going to have to get your information so we can find your families. We’ve got a change clothes for you, water, blankets, whatever you need.”
They don’t move right away. So, I offer a hand to the Lilly. She hesitates at first but then takes it.
“Look,” I say, nodding over my shoulder as the black van rolls to a stop beside us. “That’s our team. You’re not alone anymore. We’re going to get you girls home.”
By the time I get the girls out of the SUV, Nate and Knox are walking up to us with duffel bags of clothes, bottles of water, and blankets.
Knox sets the bag down and looks at me. “You ok, Bells?”
“Yeah, this is Lilly. Lilly this is Knox and this is Nate. They are going to get you all taken care of. They’ll help you find your families.”
The girls behind me nod and Lilly smiles.
I walk away, the pressure of the night starting to build. The slap, the feel of Laing’s hands on me, the things I had to say. The show I had to put on. The kill shot. All of it starts to crash down on my chest like a weight I can’t breathe under.
And then there’s Cade. He saw it all. Every calculated move. Every lie. Every seductive word that wasn’t me.
My hands begin to tremble.
I look up and see them. Lex is already moving, fast. I pick up my pace until I’m practically crashing into him. He scoops me up, wrapping one arm around my waist, the other cradling the back of my head.
“Are you okay, baby?”
“No.” The word comes out hoarse. Honest. “I hated being the one to put fear in those girls’ eyes. When I opened the van door, the way they looked at me. The way she flinched? All I could see was me flinching from Carlos’s belt in Miami.”
The pressure rises again and my hands start to shake harder. I can’t stop them.
“Baby,” Lex whispers, catching them, pulling them to his chest. His ice-blue eyes lock with mine. “You saved them. That’s all that matters.”
Behind him, Cade stands silent, watching. The worry crawling up my spine sharpens. He hasn’t said a word, just stands there taking it all in.
Tears burn behind my eyes. Fear coils tight in my ribs. The fear that he’ll walk again. That seeing this version of me, the one Lex has already made peace with, will be too much for him.
But he doesn’t move away. He steps forward and reaches out his hand. When I place my hand in Cade’s, his breath catches. Then he pulls me in and slides one hand to the back of my neck and crashes his lips against mine. The kiss is fierce, desperate, alive.
He finally pulls back and presses his lips to my temple. “I love you, sweetheart.”
The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding slips out of me in a shudder.
“I love you too,” I whisper into his chest.
“You were extraordinary.”
My lips part, but no sound comes out.
“Lex was right when he said he didn’t need to tell me about all of this,” he says. “He was right that I needed to see it with my own eyes. And what I saw tonight, it wrecked me. In the best way.”
He cups my cheek, his thumb brushing along my skin with a gentleness that breaks me even further.
“I used to think the line between darkness and light was something you had to pick a side on. But you move between them like you were born to. You walk into shadows and come back with the broken. You turn pain into power. Grief into justice.”
Footsteps crunch behind us. Laing strolls toward us like he didn’t just spend the last hour with his hands all over me, playing a role only one of us enjoyed a little too much.
“Dragon motherfucking,” Lex growls—then hauls off and punches Laing straight in the face.
“Lex!” I gasp.
Cade yanks me into him just as Laing stumbles back, a hand to his jaw. But he doesn’t fight back.
“Nah, it’s okay, Iz.”
He winces slightly but gives Lex a nod. “I deserved that.”
Red and blue lights flicker at the end of the road. Laing glances back at them, then turns to us one last time. “That’s my cue,” he laughs, gesturing to the car that Kenji is already sliding into. Laing winks, lip bleeding just a little. “Try not to miss me too much.”
“You feel better?” I ask.
“Not even close, baby,” Lex says as he wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“Menace.” Cade mumbles.
“You love me. Both of you.” Lex says as he kisses the top of my head.
We walk toward the line of police cruisers, the flashing red and blue lights casting our shadows in a purple hue across the pavement.
Lex’s arm is still wrapped around my shoulders, his thumb absently brushing against my collarbone like he’s trying to soothe the weight of everything we just did.
Cade walks on my other side, close but silent, his hand grazing mine every so often like he’s not sure if I need space or anchoring.
One of the NYPD officers is talking to Lilly, she’s nodding her head to his questions. He looks up and we make eye contact.
There is an instant familiarity about him I just can’t shake.
The way he stands.
His emerald green eyes.
His dark hair is streaked with gray, but then I see it.
The scar curling down on his left forearm.
The scar he would never talk about.
“Bella?” he shouts.
“Oh my God.” I whisper.
“Bella! Oh my God! Bella!” Completely forgetting about Lilly, he sprints to me.
“Baby, who is that?”
I drop Lex’s arm and take off running. We collide halfway across the sidewalk, crashing into each other like we’ve waited a lifetime for this moment. His arms lock around me with bone-crushing strength and we fall to our knees in the grass.
I’m sobbing. He’s sobbing.
His badge digs into my shoulder, his gun belt bruises my hip, but it doesn’t bother me. I’d take a thousand bruises to be here in this moment, safe in the arms of the man who helped raise me. The man who loved me like his own.
“You’re okay,” he chokes, pulling back to frame my face with shaking hands. “Jesus, Bella, I thought we lost you. I thought—”
“I missed you so much.” I nod through my tears. “But I couldn’t risk looking. There’s a lot you don’t know… and I-I didn’t know if you were still—”
“We never stopped looking,” he says. “Never. We tried to find you, Sugar Bear. They said you were placed in the southeast, but everything went dark after that. I didn’t know where to start.”
I sob harder, clutching his jacket like I’m ten years old again.
Behind us, Lex and Cade stand frozen. Watching. Confused as hell. I don’t care, because for the first time in years, part of me feels like that little girl again. The one who used to ride on Uncle Jack’s shoulders through Razorback Stadium on game days.