Chapter 16 Alejandro
SIXTEEN
Alejandro
The tension had been building at the back of my neck for days—every time Marisol stepped outside, every time the kids walked to school, every time the world got too quiet. I’d told myself I was imagining it. Paranoia. Leftover ghosts.
Then she called.
I was halfway through refilling my medical bags from my supplier when my family burner lit up with her name.
“Alli—” Her voice shook. Just once. Enough to turn my blood to ice. “I’m home. I’m okay. But… something happened.”
My grip locked around the phone. “What do you mean, something happened?”
“I went to drop off the new candles,” she said, breath uneven. “You didn’t know because I didn’t want to bother you. I thought it’d be ten minutes. In and out. But when I came out of the shop… someone grabbed me.”
Everything in me stilled.
“From behind,” she continued. “Hand over my mouth. Big. Strong. I couldn’t see them. But I fought—kicked back, elbowed, scratched. They let go when I screamed. I—I think they were trying to drag me toward the alley.”
My heart slammed so hard it hurt. “Are you hurt?”
“A cut,” she said. “On my arm. Bleeding a little. I don’t know if it was a knife or if I hit something. I just ran to the car. I didn’t look back.”
Fuck.
I was already moving, grabbing my keys, every instinct screaming I knew someone was watching. For days now, I’d felt that itch along my spine—eyes, following us all. Tracking her. The man in the grainy photo. I’d increased security around the house, and I’d told myself it was nothing.
I’d been wrong.
“I’m on my way,” I said. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”
“Alli—” Her voice cracked again. “I didn’t see their face. I don’t know who—”
“We’ll find them, and I swear to God,” I whispered as I tore out of the lot, “they’re going to regret touching you.”
Traffic was a blur. Red lights, horns, people—I didn’t see any of it. I only saw my sister’s face in my head and the tremor in her voice.
By the time I pulled up inside the gates, my hands were trembling. I hadn’t felt that in years, not since the cartel.
Not since Raven.
The front door cracked open before I even got inside. Marisol stood there, pale, her arm wrapped in a dish towel already blooming red. I cursed loudly.
“Don’t, Alli,” she begged when she saw my expression. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
I shut the door behind me, locking it, my body acting before my brain caught up, and I caught her wrist gently, turning it to see the gash. Not deep, but long. Bleeding enough to make my stomach twist.
“You should’ve told me you were going out,” I said, but it came out too sharp, too harsh.
Her eyes widened, hurt flickering across her face, her shoulders rigid. “I didn’t think I needed permission.”
The hit landed clean. I closed my eyes once, exhaling. “That’s not what I meant.” I forced my voice steady. “Come sit. Let me clean it.”
I guided her to the table. My fingers were steady on the outside, but inside—everything shook. Rage. Fear.
“It was probably a mugger,” she said. I glanced up and saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. If that was what she wanted to believe, then that was the story I would go with.
“You’re probably right,” I lied as I discarded the towel. “Did you hear anything?” I asked. “Smell anything? Cologne? Breath? Anything?”
She shook her head. “Not strength. I shook them off. But anger. He was angry.”
“It was a man then.”
“Yes. Taller than me, he didn’t say anything.”
I cleaned the cut with care because she’d had enough violence for one day. But my mind wasn’t calm. It was running through every name, every threat, every possibility.
“He touched you,” I said quietly, and stopped working on the cut, hanging my head. I’d failed. Someone had hurt my sister, and I hadn’t been there. “If I find him, I’ll kill him.”
“No, Alli. Not again.” Her eyes shimmered with fear for the first time. Not for herself. For me.
I waited until Bradley and Molly came home and headed straight to where Marisol had been attacked.
Nice part of town. Independent boutique shops, clean brickwork, polished windows, flower boxes nobody had kicked over. Even the alleys were tidy—swept, painted, the kind of place where nothing bad was supposed to happen.
I parked a block away and walked, slowly, scanning everything. Every doorway. Every rooftop. Every shadow.
That prickle hit me again—low between my shoulder blades, like fingers pressing there. Watching. Tracking. Hunting. It wasn’t imagination this time. It was too sharp, too cold.
A woman unloaded boxes from the back of a café. A man in a suit stepped out of a tailor’s shop. Cars passed. Perfectly normal.
But normal didn’t sit right on this street anymore.
I moved toward the boutique where Marisol had dropped off her candles, my eyes picking apart each reflection in the glass. A figure shifted across the street—just a shape, a movement caught out of the corner of my eye—but when I turned, they were gone.
Not gone. Hiding.
I checked the alley next, the one she’d been dragged toward. Clean concrete. Fresh paint. No sign of struggle except a faint smear halfway down the wall. Blood? Dirt?
My jaw locked hard enough to ache.
Someone had been here. Someone had waited for her.
Were they still close?
I stepped in farther, scanning every inch of the wall, the ground, the shadows. That was when I saw it—one word, scratched low into the paint where only someone looking for it would notice.
GAEL.
My breath stopped.
My real name.
The one that had belonged to a boy who had died years ago, a ghost I’d spent half my life killing off piece by piece. Barely a handful of people had ever known it, and now only Marisol did.
So why the fuck was that name here?
My pulse hammered as I crouched, running my thumb over the carved letters. Fresh. Deliberate. A message, sharp as a blade.
“They’re all dead,” I whispered to the wall—maybe to the boy I used to be. There was no one left of the old águilas Cartel. I’d made sure of it, and no one would know this name. It had to be a coincidence.
A cold rush slid down my spine. Whoever had been watching Marisol had been watching me, too. Calling me out. Dragging Gael out of the grave I’d buried him in under blood, new identities, and years of silence.
Gael.
Did someone want me to see this? To feel it. To remember.
I hit call before I could talk myself out of it.
“Novak.” His voice came through rough, as if he’d been asleep or burying a body—could go either way.
“I need you at my house,” I said. “Outside it. Now.”
A beat. “Problem?”
“Someone grabbed Marisol. And someone left a message for me at the scene.”
Another beat. Longer. “I’m on my way.”
I didn’t hang up.
“Wait,” I added, scanning the alley again, checking every edge, every shadow. “I need eyes on my current location. Cameras. Street feeds. Anything pointing at this block right here. You know anyone who can get into that?” I asked him, already knowing the answer.
A low exhale. “I might. Not cheap though.”
“Do it.”
End of discussion.
I ended the call and stood there in the silence, GAEL carved into the wall behind me like a brand.
Now what?
I stared up at the rooftops, the windows, the clean street that suddenly felt wrong in every direction. Someone was hunting us. Hunting me. And they weren’t hiding it.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and headed toward the street, pulse steadying into something cold and lethal.
If they wanted Gael?
They needed to be ready to meet him.