Chapter 22 - Logan
The hospital discharges her at nine-fifteen.
I have the car out front before the paperwork clears.
The nurse goes through the instructions — concussion protocol, arm brace, the medication schedule — and I stand there writing it down because I don't trust myself to remember it.
My handwriting is neat. My hands are steady.
Underneath both of those things is something I cannot put down.
She almost died because I called her.
That sentence has been running on a loop since the parking lot, since I followed the ambulance, since I sat in a chair and held her hand while the club ran its crises without me for the first time in nine years.
The loop doesn't stop when I collect her prescription from the pharmacy window.
It doesn't stop when she walks out of the hospital room under her own power, slowly, the brace on her right arm, the bandage at her temple already changed to something smaller.
She sees my face.
"I'm fine," she says.
"I know."
The discharge paperwork takes eleven minutes. I count them. I have the prescription filled at the hospital pharmacy rather than stopping anywhere else, because stopping anywhere else adds time.
I left for two hours in the night — after she was stable, after her breathing evened and the monitors settled into their reliable cadence. Long enough to issue instructions, arrange the day bed, make the calls the empire required of me in the dark.
I take her to La Sirena.
She doesn't ask why not the penthouse. The penthouse is isolated, forty floors up, too quiet. She gets in the car without comment and rides in silence while Miami does its morning thing outside the windows.
The day bed is already in my office when we arrive. A proper one, not a cot, with a mattress that doesn't fold at the wrong angle. It looks wrong, a thing that belongs in a bedroom sitting under spreadsheets.
Pillows from the residential floor. A blanket that isn't scratchy. Her water and medication on the small table beside it, within reach of her left arm. Two monitors shifted so she won't wake up staring at accounting reports.
She stops in the doorway and looks at it.
"You've been busy," she says.
"Lie down."
"Logan—"
"Lie down."
She lies down. She lets me straighten the pillow, which she doesn't need, and adjust the blanket, which she also doesn't need. She watches me do both with patience. I take her medication out of the bag, confirm the dosage against the printed sheet, set it next to the water.
"The instructions say every six hours with food," I tell her. "I'll have something sent up at noon."
"It's ibuprofen, Logan. Not chemotherapy."
"Every six hours."
"I've taken ibuprofen before. I know how it works."
"Then you know to take it with food."
She looks at me for a moment. Her left hand comes up and adjusts the blanket at her own hip with a small, deliberate motion — not because it needed adjusting. "You're going to be like this all day, aren't you."
"Yes."
"Okay." She settles back against the pillow. Then, quieter: "Thank you. For the pillow."
I go back to my desk.
The guilt is lodged in me like shrapnel I can't find without making things worse.
I called her to this building. I wanted her close after two days of distance, and she came because I asked, and the blast radius reached her because I needed her visible, within arm's reach, accounted for.
Those facts don't rearrange into something more bearable no matter how many times I run them.
So I don't go looking for it. I go back to work.
The mole hunt is where I left it.
The access logs still open. The timestamps still patient.
Three bait threads running — different false information routed through different access points — and nothing has moved since the bombing.
Either the mole is holding still, or the bombing itself was the action and now they're waiting to see what I do next.
I read the top report. My eyes flick to Wren. She's settled, not asleep, her left arm resting across her stomach, looking at the ceiling.
I go back to the report.
Three sentences in, my eyes flick to her again.
I let it happen. She's the anchor in a room that has been nothing but crisis for four days. The machinery keeps running.
At some point she shifts onto her side, facing me. I hear the quiet rustle of it. When I look up, she's watching me work. Still, giving nothing back.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." A pause. "You do that thing where you look at the screen and your jaw tightens."
"The screen gives me reasons to."
"Is it always the numbers, or do you clench your jaw for fun sometimes?"
I give her a flat stare. "I’m looking for whoever sent the bomb."
She's quiet for a moment. "Fair enough. What do you know so far?"
"That someone inside this building has been feeding money to the people who blew up my entrance."
"What else?"
I consider. “They're patient. Organized. Clever. And they know our systems."
She doesn't say anything for a moment. Then asks, "Can I see it?"
I turn the secondary monitor toward her so she can see it from the day bed.
She looks at it — the columns of numbers, the timestamps, the routing. Her left hand comes up and touches the edge of the blanket. The same gesture she uses when she's about to reach for a pencil.
"It looks like music," she says.
"It looks like fraud."
"Same thing. Rhythm, pattern, repetition." She tilts her head slightly. "The person who built this had time."
"Yes."
"They weren't scared of being caught."
"They should be."
She resettles against the pillow, and I turn the monitor back. The room holds the sound of the building for a while — the low hum of the ventilation, the distant clatter of kitchen prep running below.
"You should eat something," she says, eventually.
"I'm fine."
"Logan." Her voice is mild. "That's what I said an hour ago and you spent ten minutes telling me about ibuprofen and irritated stomach lining."
I don't answer. I go back to the access log.
But I call down for breakfast for two.
At half past ten, Nico knocks.
"Come in."
He enters, and a step behind him is someone I wasn't expecting to look like that.
She's small — five-foot-five at a generous estimate, soft blonde waves, dressed in something that belongs at a Sunday brunch rather than a war room.
Hazel eyes that move around the room and show everything they're thinking: the screens, the files, the day bed, the woman on it, back to me. Fine bones. Honestly, she looks more like a princess than a warrior, but I know better than to make snap judgements about Rosetti women. After all, I’ve met Sofia Rosetti.
Juliet Price scans the room before she scans me. Not anxiously — methodically. She's done it before. I file this.
Twenty-one years old. Sent by people who have been doing this for generations.
Help and surveillance both — that's what the Rosettis sent.
The expertise is genuine; I need someone who can read gem transactions in a language Andrei didn't speak.
But Juliet Price will carry an answer back to New York about whether the transition holds, whether Logan Cruz can keep Jorge Delgado's empire running without Jorge Delgado's weight behind it.
I accept both. If the Rosettis want to watch over my shoulder, let them.
Her grip, when I extend my hand, is firm.
"Thank you for having me," Juliet says. Her voice is warm, slightly careful. "I know the timing is—" She glances at Wren, at the bandage at her temple. "I'm sorry about what happened."
"Don't apologize for things that aren't yours," I say.
She turns and introduces herself to Wren.
“And you are… a Rosetti? A cousin of Nico’s? Or a sister? Or…”
Juliet smiles, and the room gets brighter. “Nico is my cousin-in-law, I suppose. My sister, Eleanor, is married to Leonardo Rosetti, one of the New York crew.”
Wren frowns. “And you’re here because…?”
“I grew up around business and empires. The gem business. I know how money moves. And I’m just here to help in any way I can.” She turns to me. “What do you need from me?"
Good. We understand each other.
"Pull a chair," I tell her. "I'll explain what we have."
I'm twenty minutes into the explanation when the door opens and Isa walks in.
She scans the room. Her gaze moves over me, over the screens, over Wren on the day bed — one brief, flat acknowledgment — and then it finds Juliet.
Something happens to Isa's face.
I've worked with her for years. I know her face the way I know the floor plan of this building.
I have seen her cold, sharp, closed, occasionally wry.
What I haven't seen is what happens now: a genuine smile.
Not the professional warmth she deploys on VIP guests.
The real version, smaller and less guarded, which she rarely spends on anyone.
She crosses to Juliet. "You must be the one Nico mentioned. I'm Isa. Do you need anything before you start — coffee, water?"
Juliet's shoulders drop about half an inch. "Coffee would be amazing, actually."
"I'll get it myself. The kitchen coffee is better." Isa's tone is easy. Warm. "Come find me if you need anything. I'll show you where everything is later."
She looks at me once — quick, professional — and then she's gone.
Juliet watches her leave. "She seems nice."
"She isn’t," I say, "to most people."
My eyes move to Wren.
She's looking at the ceiling. She’s clearly working hard to keep her face still. Carefully neutral. But I know her well enough now to read what's underneath: the hurt, clean and simple.
She's been here a while. Isa said what's she doing here at the war council. Didn't come to the hospital. Has been cold and excluding since the beginning — and now, for a stranger she's known for thirty seconds, the real smile.
After Isa returns to drop off the coffee, Juliet wraps both hands around the mug and looks at me.
When I say, "I need your expertise on something specific," her eyes sharpen. The princess has a different gear.
"Tell me," she says.