Chapter Eleven
Ronan
Holding Berk in my arms while she drifts off is something I’ve dreamed about more nights than I can count.
The weight of her body against mine, the way her breaths grow slow and steady, the soft little twitch of her lashes against her cheeks—it’s all so real, it feels unreal.
For years, I’ve woken to emptiness, to a hollow ache where she should have been.
Now she’s here, warm and safe, wrapped in me, and I’m terrified that if I blink too long, she’ll vanish again.
I press my face into her hair and breathe her in, letting that scent anchor me. She belongs here. She belongs to us.
When her breathing evens out and I know she’s truly gone under, I carefully slide free.
My chest protests the loss of her weight, but I tuck the blanket around her anyway, making sure not a sliver of her skin is left to the cold.
I stand for a moment, just watching, letting the truth settle in.
She is here. My Pixie. My warrior. Our girl.
As I straighten and step into the hall, my side pulls—sharp and unforgiving—an ugly reminder of where the bullet tore through me, but I grit my teeth and keep moving.
The hallway is dim, shadows stretching long against the walls, but I don’t need light to know the others are awake.
Of course they are. No way in hell Rowan or Emerson are sleeping with Berk finally under the same roof.
Their guilt won’t let them, and neither will their hope.
I pad down the hall, shoulders tight, my mind racing with what’s been said—and what hasn’t.
We’ve been fractured for so long, bleeding in separate corners, but tonight feels like the first stitch drawing us back together.
They were dicks. No point sugarcoating that.
They thought she hurt me, and they lashed out, blinded by rage and fear.
But their hearts were in the right place, twisted as that might sound.
I’ve always known their loyalty runs deep, even if it cuts in the wrong direction sometimes.
Now that the air’s been cleared, and the truths laid bare, we finally have a chance to move forward. Together.
The world outside this house is rotting with our fathers’ poison.
Their empire has thrived on lies, blood, and destruction for too long.
Every move they’ve made has been a chain around our necks, and it’s past time to break it.
We are not just taking down warehouses or cutting off pieces of the business anymore.
This ends with them. Their reign. Their lives.
I think of Berk as I head toward the faint sound of voices, the indistinct murmur of my brothers waiting.
She isn’t just part of this fight—she’s the blade, the fire, the fury that gives us the edge we never had before.
Our avenging angel, sharpened by pain, and carrying all of us in her vengeance.
For years I thought I was strong enough to take them on alone, but I was wrong.
It was always supposed to be the four of us. And now, finally, it is.
As I round the corner, the murmur of voices cuts off, and two pairs of eyes snap to me.
For a split second there’s a flicker of hope on both their faces, a spark that only one person can light.
They think it’s Berk. They think she’s walked out of my room, ready to face them, ready to bridge the gap.
I see it clearly—that brief flare of anticipation in Rowan’s jaw as it tightens, in Emerson’s restless hands as they still against his knees.
Then, just as quickly, the light fades when they realize it’s only me.
Both of them slump back into their seats with the weight of disappointment.
I can’t help the smirk that curves my mouth.
“Nice to see you too,” I drawl, leaning against the wall like I have all the time in the world.
Their scowls are almost identical, though Rowan’s holds more restraint while Emerson’s flashes raw across his face.
I let the silence stretch a beat before I push away from the wall and cross to them, dropping into the chair opposite.
My voice loses the edge when I speak again.
“She’s fine. Better than fine, actually. She’s on the right track.”
They both stare at me, a dozen unasked questions tightening the air.
I shrug, running a hand through my hair, still smelling faintly of smoke and her.
“You need to understand something. She’s ready to let go of the past. She’s ready to put all of it behind her and forgive.
But that doesn’t mean everything goes back to the way it was overnight.
Building trust again takes time. You can’t just expect her to fall into your arms because you regret what happened. ”
Emerson leans forward, elbows braced against his knees, his brow furrowed. “You really think she’ll forgive us?” The words are quiet, stripped of his usual bravado. Rowan says nothing, but his eyes are sharp, studying me like he’s weighing every word.
“She already has,” I tell them, steady and certain, because I saw it in her eyes. “But forgiveness and trust aren’t the same thing. She’ll let the past go, but you’re going to have to prove yourselves to her. Show up. Support her. Be where she needs you when she needs you. No excuses.”
Rowan nods slowly, his throat working like he’s swallowing glass.
Emerson leans back, dragging a hand over his face, looking both relieved and wrecked at the same time.
I watch them both, my brothers, carrying the same scars in different shapes.
“She’s not timid,” I add, softer now. “You’ve seen what she’s capable of.
But that doesn’t mean she’s not carrying the weight of it all.
Give her the space to breathe and the proof that you’re not going anywhere. That’s how you’ll earn her back.”
For the first time tonight, neither of them argues. They just sit there, the silence heavy but not hostile, as if some part of them finally believes we might claw our way back to each other.
The conversation turns like a knife to the one name that has to come next.
Bryce. Saying it feels like punching a hole in the night.
He seems untouchable until you actually line up what he rests his crown on—fear, silence, paper.
Take those away, and he’s just a man afraid of what’s left when everything else is gone.
“He’s one of the heads of the operation,” Emerson says quietly. “Cut off the head, and the rest of it thrashes.”
“And we’ve already taken his second,” I answer, because Trent is finished—a name struck from the list. Saying it out loud still tastes like victory and ash. “He tried to kill me. That’s two birds with one stone in my book. Bryce is weakened. He’ll be watching his back and trusting fewer people.”
Rowan taps the table once, twice, jaw tightening in that familiar way he gets when he’s weighing fallout instead of numbers.
“He’ll expect us to come in hot,” he says.
“He’ll expect retaliation where it’s loud and obvious.
” His gaze meets mine, and I know exactly what he’s seeing—burning warehouses, warnings carved into brick. “So, we don’t give him that.”
We talk strategy like men who have spent too many nights learning the rhythms of risk.
We throw ideas back and forth—not the how-to of it, but the shape.
Make him look weak. Strip him of leverage.
Cut the money he thinks untouchable by exposing the cracks he’s built his walls on.
Use what we have. The footage, the paperwork, the pattern of shipments, the things Berk’s been watching on a hundred screens.
Make his empire smell like rot in front of the people who matter to him.
He’ll get desperate and start making mistakes.
“You think he won’t suspect us?” Emerson asks, and the question is honest. Bryce will definitely suspect us after the move with Kimber.
That was the line we crossed. This isn’t a tidy revenge fantasy—Bryce is a living, breathing threat.
He has eyes everywhere, lawyers on retainer, and allies who benefit from things staying exactly as they are.
He’ll start by hunting for traitors, and he won’t stop until he finds one.
“He’ll suspect everyone,” I say. “That’s our advantage. He thinks he can bait us. He thinks we’re predictable. We aren’t. We use his suspicion against him. Be quiet, get clever, and let his paranoia do our work.”
Rowan leans in, voice small and cold. “We don’t move like kids who want to watch a building burn.
We move like men who want to leave him with nothing to stand on.
Reputation, money, protection, allies. We peel those things off one by one.
When he’s exposed and alone, that’s when we strike for blood. ”
Emerson rubs the bridge of his nose, thinking through angles I can’t see and yet feel in my chest. “We do it with proof,” he says.
“No rumors, no half-truths. Paper, tape, witnesses. We hit him where his world needs to be airtight. If we can make the ledger breathe, make the partners nervous, make his own men doubt him—he collapses from the inside.”
“And Berk’s intel,” I add. “She’s been inside the dark for months and knows the heartbeat of this thing better than we ever did.
She didn’t just stumble onto Trent; she planted herself in the network.
We use her information. The footage. We expose him in ways that matter before taking him out completely. ”
Rowan’s lips twist. “He won’t simply hand himself over to us. He’ll fight and try to split us apart by using Kimber or Berk or anything he thinks will tug at our chests. We have to be ready for bait—family, money, leverage—and we have to make sure we never walk where he can pull a string.”