Chapter 20 Alejandro
TWENTY
Alejandro
I can help you track Raven… There’s something you need to know.
I snapped back, anger flaring hot and sharp. “Like I said, you’ll slow us down,” I snapped, stepping past him, ready to walk out and take care of Raven myself.
Before I got two steps, Levi shoved me back—hard enough to make me stumble—forcing me into a small room. The door slammed shut behind us, cutting off the sight of Novak standing, watching everything with that cold, impassive expression.
“What the hell is your problem?” Levi growled, crowding me back to the wall. “You think running off alone is going to save anyone? You think that’s going to keep your family safe? I have a way to help you!”
I wanted to fight him. I wanted to break something.
But he blocked the door, his eyes locked on mine, fierce and unshakeable.
He looked like fire—righteous, burning, his temper sparking off him in waves.
He was beautiful like that, all heat and fury aimed at keeping me alive, and it terrified me because I was so fucking scared for my family.
I tried to push off the wall, tried to get past him, but Levi’s hand clamped down on my shoulder—firm, immovable.
He pressed me back, holding me there, making me listen whether I wanted to or not.
The pressure wasn’t painful, but it cut straight through the frantic storm in my head.
My agitation cracked my usual icy calm wide open; every part of me felt too loud, too exposed.
“Stop,” he said, low but steady. “Just stop for one second, Alejandro. Please.” His grip didn’t loosen, but his voice was softer. “I know you’re scared for your family. I know.”
“I want them safe. I need to find Raven and end this again. Because I failed last time, I failed them!” My breath stuttered.
Levi steadied me with sheer force of will, pulling me back from the edge without ever raising his voice. “I promise you I can help.”
I stilled. “How?”
“Are you okay? Will you stop and listen?” he asked carefully.
I finally sagged into his hold. “Fuck.”
He dragged a hand through his hair. “I have… people. A team that works off the books—nothing to do with my day job. We call it the Cave. Hackers and investigators who…” He paused. “Fuck, we work in the shadows, but we can find Raven.”
“You trust this Cave?” I asked.
“With my life,” Levi said. “And with yours—and your family’s too.” He pressed a kiss to my lips, and the noise in my head silenced. He moved back then, opened the door, gestured for Novak to join us, then closed the door again, opening his phone and tapping his ear. “Caleb?”
Before I could push for more, the phone pinged.
A man’s voice filled the room a second later from the speaker.
“Already on it, Levi. Pulled street surveillance near you. I’ve got someone on a camera half a block down from Doc’s house, timestamped a couple hours back—tall, dark coat, moving as if he owns the street, and I’ve isolated the best image we have. Is this your man?”
A photo appeared on the small screen, and I peered closely.
My blood froze. “Raven. That’s him.” My voice was flat, dead. The boy inside me—the one who’d watched Raven carve people apart—curled tight in my chest.
“Sit tight,” Caleb said. “I’ll come back once I have more.”
“Thanks, Caleb,” Levi said.
Sit tight.
I couldn’t. My body vibrated with the urge to move, to hunt, to finish this. Waiting felt like choking.
Levi saw it. He always did. And so did Novak, who stepped out of the room with a nod to say he’d be outside if I needed him.
But Levi stepped close, his hands came up to my face, grounding me.
“Hey,” he murmured. “Look at me.”
I did. I couldn’t look away even if I’d tried—something in him pulled me in and held me there.
“You’re not alone in this,” Levi said, brushing his thumb over my jaw. “I’m here. I’m helping you. Breathe.”
I didn’t breathe. Not until he kissed me—slow, steady, a kiss meant to quieten the chaos snapping in my skull. And it worked. My thoughts unknotted, my pulse slowed, and the terror that always lived under my ribs eased enough for me to feel something else.
Him.
The kiss deepened, Levi leaning back against the wall and pulling me with him. I slotted between his legs without thinking, as though my body already knew where it belonged. His hands rested on my hips, anchoring me, drawing me in until our chests pressed together.
I felt so fucking helpless—rage, fear, everything twisting inside me—but he kissed me as if he could hold all of that for me, as if he wasn’t afraid of any of it.
His mouth opened beneath mine, slow but certain, guiding me, steadying me, pulling the panic out of my lungs with every breath we shared.
His forehead touched mine, his breath warm. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “We’ll get through this. You’re not alone.”
We stayed like that until Caleb’s voice cut through the haze. “Got something.”
I opened the door and gestured for Novak to join us—I owed him a huge fucking bonus for not leaving—and the three of us focused on the screen to see a man’s face—Caleb, I assume.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, Nazario Ortega is Raven, agreed?”
“Agreed.” I managed when the panic at just hearing his name gripped me.
“He’s been in the US at least three months, working with Iron Bulls MC, and Alex Dryden-Wells, trying to reopen an existing organ pipeline network,” Caleb said.
“I’m guessing the body part trafficking isn’t new to you.
” He kept talking, but all I could do was nod.
Fucking useless—I needed to get my head straight.
Caleb returned the nod. “Alex’s father, also deceased, is likely to have been the original carver for the águilas Cartel. This is Oscar Dryden-Wells…”
The screen changed, and a hospital promo photograph popped up. An old man, ill, and next to it an older photo of him in a white coat, younger.
My throat closed, a rush of old terror hitting me so hard the room warped.
For a second, I wasn’t in the room—I was a kid again, barefoot on concrete, the stink of bleach and rot in my nose, metal scraping against metal.
The air tasted like blood. Everything inside me shifted, unmoored, and I felt sick.
And his eyes—God, his eyes. I saw them as if they were inches from my face.
Cold. Eager. Hungry. A kind of empty that didn’t belong in a human skull.
That stare crawled under my skin, hollowed me out, stripped me of time.
I wasn’t twenty-something. I wasn’t grown.
I was small, silent, trapped in that echoing space again while he opened people like puzzles.
That look lived inside me, carved into bone, a thing I could never scrape out. A thing that never let me go. “That’s him,” I forced out. “The man who used to take the organs.”
The words barely left my mouth before the floor seemed to disappear under me.
The concrete was wet. My feet were cold.
Someone was crying—maybe me. Maybe the man strapped to the chair.
Raven’s voice drifted through the dark like smoke, soft, amused, the way he talked when he was teaching.
The surgeon stood beside him, gloved hands steady, scalpel gleaming under a single swinging bulb.
They weren’t in a hurry. They never were. The lesson was always the same: watch.
The sound came back next—the first cut, the wet glide of skin parting, the breathy hum Raven made when he was pleased. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe. I was nothing but eyes and terror and the metallic taste of fear on my tongue.
I don’t know how long I fell into it. A second. A minute. A lifetime.
Then—
“Alejandro.”
Levi’s voice sliced through the memory. A hand cupped the back of my neck, warm, real, pulling me forward.
“Hey. You with me?”
The room came back in pieces, Levi’s breathing in my ear, and his thumb brushing the side of my jaw, anchoring me.
“Look at me,” he whispered. “Stay here. With me.”
I dragged in a shaky breath, the flashback peeling away. My chest hurt. My eyes burned. But I was here with Levi.
“Yeah,” I rasped. “I’m here.”
And suddenly everything was moving again—too fast and not fast enough.
Caleb cleared his throat. “There’s more. Surveillance shows Raven isn’t alone. He’s got two men with him—always close, always scanning. Younger. Fit. Move like they’ve done muscle work before.”
A new set of tiny images flashed across the screen: two men stepping out of a doorway behind Raven, their eyes dead and assessing.
I leaned closer, stomach tight. I didn’t recognize them. And thank God for that—these weren’t other men I thought I’d killed but who’d survived. They were new, not revenants dragged out of the past to haunt me all over again.
“These two look like muscle for hire,” Caleb went on. “Nothing in preliminary databases. I’m running facial recognition now. I’ll get back to you on any matches.”
The screen held on their images a moment longer—two men who didn’t matter to me, not the way the others did. New blood. Not ghosts I’d failed to put in the ground.
I swallowed hard. “Fine. Good. New is better.”
Levi’s hand brushed my back, grounding me again. “Do we have a location on anyone?”
Caleb huffed, the sound irritated, as if Levi had just questioned his competence. I didn’t know the man, but even I could hear the offense in his huff. “Okay… this is interesting,” he muttered.
My spine tightened. “What is it?”
“They’re not hiding,” Caleb said, disbelief bleeding into something colder. “It’s like they want us to see them. Like they’re leaving breadcrumbs on purpose. And—fuck—you’re not going to like this, Levi.”
Levi stiffened beside me. “What now?”
Caleb exhaled. “The pings? The signal traces? They’re coming from the same warehouse where you watched that man bleed out.”
“The fuck?” Novak snarled. The muscle in his jaw jumped, and his eyes cut to the screen as if daring it to keep proving him right.
Caleb’s tone shifted again, brisk and all business. “I’m sending the coordinates, not that you need them, I guess. Jamie and Enzo will meet you three blocks away—I’m routing them in now.”
I blinked. “Jamie and Enzo? Redcars? Why the hell are they even part of this?” The words came out before I could stop them.
Caleb huffed—louder this time, as if I was personally offending him. “The Cave is a team, Alejandro. This is what we do. You think Levi’s the only one who gets his hands dirty for the right cause?”
I didn’t know where to start with that. Hackers, fighters, investigators… people who shouldn’t have belonged together, but somehow did. And now they were all moving because Raven was back.
Because of me.
A chill sliced through my ribs when we got close to the warehouse to meet Jamie and Enzo.
This was it.
After all these years, after all the bodies, after all the running and pretending and surviving when I thought he was dead, I’d face the man who’d made me.
And it seemed that I wasn’t doing it alone.
Enzo was an obsessive, possessive bastard who still hadn’t forgiven me for being a dick to Robbie.
Not that any of that mattered right now—the man was standing for me, even if he was practically snarling at the idea.
He loomed behind Jamie like a wall, arms folded, eyes narrowed, shoulders tight with the barely leashed promise of violence.
Jamie, in contrast, was all energy. Up on his toes, lighter flipping between his fingers. Bright-eyed. Eager. Dangerous in a way most people didn’t clock until it was too late.
“So,” Jamie said, bouncing once on the balls of his feet, “what’s the play?”
I pulled my blade from my pocket, checked the slide on my gun, then drew out the hypodermic I’d carried for years and snapped it to the band on my wrist—a last resort full of something quick, irreversible, a mercy I wasn’t planning to use tonight.
“No play,” I said, my voice flat. “You get my family safe. My sister knows where our money is. You get them away after. But now, I go in. I kill him.” And no, I wasn’t expecting to come back out.
Jamie’s eyes went wide with something between delight and horror. “Jesus, man, subtle.” Then his grin snapped. He held out his palm, revealing a small, flat disk no bigger than a coin. “Here. Slam this on his neck.”
I frowned. “What is it?”
“Burn charge,” Jamie said, looking positively gleeful. “Hit the center hard.” He tapped the tiny indentation. “It’ll activate on impact. Burns straight through muscle, hits the spine if you’re lucky. Nasty little thing.” He grinned. “I love it.”
He flipped it once, and I winced as he caught it, then held it out again. “Press hard. Slam it. Burn, okay?”
I took it from him, the weight deceptively light in my hand, and nodded. “Okay.”
Jamie grinned wider. “Go make history, Doc.”
“We’ll be a block away, moving in after you have his attention,” Enzo murmured, and then he and Jamie left.
“I’m coming with you,” Levi said, and Novak nodded once—silent, steady, meaning he was prepared to do the same.
“No. This I do alone,” I muttered, already moving. My legs carried me in the direction of Novak’s warehouse before my brain caught up, but Levi was faster. He grabbed my arm, spun me, and planted me back against a wall.
“No more alone shit,” he snapped, shaking me once—not hard, but enough to break through the adrenaline roaring in my ears.
I exhaled shakily. “Fine. You stay outside. You leave if it goes sideways. And you look out for my family, Levi—”
“Fuck you,” Levi cut in, fury and fear tangled in his voice. “The man I’m falling in love with is coming back. Do you hear me? I’m not losing you. Not now. Not tonight.”
I froze. Love? That word hit like a bullet—clean, shocking, sinking straight into my ribs. And worse… it felt right.
“Then wait outside,” I managed, my voice rough. “Because I don’t want to die today if I can help it.”