Chapter 23 Levi
TWENTY-THREE
Levi
I sat across from Lieutenant Davis, feeling as if my skin didn’t fit right. My arm was in a sling—dislocated shoulder, they said, popped back in by someone who didn’t bother giving their name. Burns wrapped half my hand. My lungs hurt every time I breathed. But I’d made it out alive.
Frank sat beside me, the perfect cop, and he did all the talking because my throat was scraped raw. The talking he and the Cave had worked out between them.
“We got a tip,” Frank reported evenly, “took us to a warehouse. Turned out an old cartel leader was using it to run an organ trafficking operation. Matches the dump site victims. We located two surgeons tied to it—Oscar and Alex Dryden-Wells, father and son. As you know, both are deceased, and likely victims of whoever was running the whole thing.”
Davis nodded and then flipped through paperwork he hadn’t read, as if he already had the whole story figured out. “You’ll write the full report?” he asked. In other words, you will take full responsibility for whatever the fuck this was.
“Yes, sir,” Frank said. Calm. Crisp. As if he wasn’t lying through his teeth.
Davis leaned back, eyes narrowing. “Is there anything else either of you wants to tell me?”
Frank answered first. “No, sir.” Not a flicker.
Then Davis looked at me.
I swallowed a cough, but it clawed its way out anyway—a leftover from the smoke. My ribs hurt with it. “No, sir,” I managed, eyes on him. All I wanted was to get the hell out of that room, out of that building, out of this version of myself that had to pretend I wasn’t shaking on the inside.
But I had to play the game. Had to report injuries. Had to sign paperwork. Had to appear functional and not like a man who’d nearly died dragging the person he loved out of a fire.
Frank smoothed over the rest. He accounted for the missing time—don’t know how, didn’t care—and got us cleared.
“Nice to go out on a high,” Davis congratulated Frank.
“Yes, sir,” he agreed.
By the time we stepped into the hallway, I felt as if I were walking underwater. Slow. Off balance. Every breath tasted like smoke.
Stanton stood there as we passed, eyes wide and lip curled in a snarl. We’d handed him the murderers—dead. Gift-wrapped a backstory that didn’t touch Alejandro, didn’t risk exposing anything real.
And he still looked pissed.
Fuck him.
I want to get out of here.
I headed straight for Alejandro’s house. Frank dropped me at the curb with a look that said go, and I didn’t waste a second. My whole body still hurt, every breath scraping my throat, but nothing was stopping me.
I went in through the front door, barely registering the living room, the quiet, the smell of antiseptic drifting from upstairs. I took the stairs two at a time, gut twisting tight, and walked into the makeshift hospital they’d built in the front bedroom.
Alejandro lay unconscious against stark white sheets, and Christ—he looked so fucking pale.
There were sterile dressings wrapped around his burned forearm, bandages across his ribs, and a brace immobilizing his broken arm.
Scarring already mottled his chest where heat had kissed too close.
Machines beeped beside him—portable units, wires snaking across his chest, oxygen mask fogging faintly with each shallow breath.
The skin on his chest was burned, right across the tattooed bird, and I knew when he woke up, he’d be happy it was half gone, despite the scars and pain.
Everard Jenkins—our doctor for hire and owner of the black van and an entire team—stood beside the bed. Older man, white hair like bleached bone, expression as unreadable and dead-eyed as ever. He looked up as I entered, giving the faintest smile.
“He’s coming around,” Jenkins murmured. “Won’t be long now.” He inclined his head, clinical, detached. “I hear from his sister that he was an actual hero. Go figure.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, the ache in my chest. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “He is.”
I sank into the same chair I’d occupied on and off for the last forty-eight hours, the one that still held the shape of my exhaustion.
The fire had nearly taken him from me—and every time I blinked, I saw it again, felt the heat, saw him shutting the door in my face, choosing to die.
I sat there and tried to figure out where the hell I went from here.
Was I still a cop? Was I Cave now? Was I anything that made sense anymore?
Marisol slipped into the room without a sound, her arms folded tight across her chest. She looked smaller than usual, shadows under her eyes, worry pulling at her mouth.
She lowered herself into the chair beside me. “He did everything he could,” she said, her gaze fixed on her brother, as if sheer will might drag him back to consciousness. “He got me out. Saved my unborn babies. Pulled us out of hell when he was just a kid himself.”
I nodded, throat thick. “I know.”
“So young,” she murmured. “Too young for what he carried. But he saved us. Me. My babies. And it cost him pieces of himself.” Then her gaze flicked to me—sharp, assessing. “And you,” she said, leaning back, “you’re still a cop.” It wasn’t a question. It was a warning. A test. Maybe both.
I didn’t even realize my hand was reaching for hers until my fingers closed around it. She startled, then stilled.
“I love your brother,” I said.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away. It was only the second time I’d said the words out loud, and both times, it had felt like the truth catching up to me.
Marisol exhaled slowly, her gaze dropping to our joined hands. When she spoke again, her voice had changed—quieter, older, worn around the edges.
“You know he wasn’t supposed to survive,” she said. “Not just the cartel. Not just Raven. Before all of that.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
She swallowed; eyes fixed on Alejandro’s still chest. “When he was little—five, maybe six—he stopped talking. Completely. Wouldn’t eat unless I fed him.
Wouldn’t sleep unless I held him. Mama thought someone had hurt him, and Papa dismissed him as broken.
” A tremor moved through her. “He wasn’t broken.
He was terrified. He’d seen Papa hurt Mama—heard everything that the adults pretended wasn’t happening in our house.
And instead of protecting him, Papa blamed him for being quiet. ”
My heart twisted. “Marisol…”
“He was the one who protected me,” she continued, her voice cracking. “Even when he was shaking, even when he was so scared he couldn’t speak. He’d stand in front of me when Papa got angry. He’d take the hits. He learned early how to make himself look bigger than he was, so he became the target.”
She wiped at her eyes angrily, refusing to cry. “Then Raven killed Papa, after Papa told him my brother was clever. Raven told him he was strong. Told him fear was proof he was alive. Gave him purpose. Twisted him into something useful and cruel.”
Her hand tightened around mine. “But that’s not all he is. And it’s not all he came from. He’s been protecting his family his whole damn life, Levi. Even when no one protected him.”
My throat closed. I looked at him—the burns, the bruises, the scars old and new—and saw, for the first time, the child she was describing. The one who stepped between danger and the people he loved, even when it cost him everything.
Marisol whispered, “So if you say you love him… then you better mean it. Because he won’t survive losing someone he cares about. Not again.”
“I do,” I whispered back. “I mean it.”
A low sound pulled me out of my thoughts—rough, broken, dragged up from somewhere deep. At first, I thought it was the machines acting up, but then Alejandro’s fingers twitched against the blanket.
I was on my feet instantly.
His eyelids fluttered, breath hitching under the oxygen mask. He tried to move, winced, then sucked in a shaky inhale as though his lungs didn’t know how to work yet.
“Alejandro?” I said, leaning over him. “Hey. I’m here.”
His eyes cracked open—a sliver of dark brown, unfocused, frantic. His gaze skittered around the room before landing on me for half a second.
His voice came out destroyed. “Raven… dead?”
My chest clenched. Burned, broken, drugged to hell—his first thought was whether the monster who’d shaped him was gone.
“Yeah,” I said, brushing soot from his cheek with my good hand. “He’s gone. You stopped him. It’s over.”
He swallowed, eyes closing briefly as if he was trying to piece the world back together. When he opened them again, there was something sharper—fear.
“Anyone… left?” he rasped. “Did I… miss anyone else?”
Jesus. Even now, he thought he’d failed.
“No,” I said firmly, right in his face so he couldn’t look anywhere else but at me. “The Cave cleared it all. You didn’t miss anyone else from back then. No lieutenants. No old ghosts. It’s done. You did it.”
His breath trembled. A tear—not from pain, but from something heavier—slipped from the corner of his eye.
“You’re safe,” I whispered. “Your sister. The twins. All of them. Safe.”
His eyes focused—really focused—on me. “How… get… out?” he whispered. He thought he’d die alone in that fire.
“Jamie was… he… we’ll always come,” I said, voice breaking despite my best effort to hold it steady. “And, I’m not going anywhere.”
His hand twitched as if he were trying to reach me. I caught it before he had to strain.
He blinked slowly, once, twice—then his lips moved again. “Don’t… leave.”
My throat tightened violently. “I’m right here,” I promised. “I’m not leaving.”
Marisol crossed the room quickly, brushing his hair back and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Mijo,” she whispered, voice breaking. “You scared us. You scared your sister half to death.”
Alejandro’s eyelids fluttered open again, unfocused until they found her. His brow pinched, panic flickering beneath exhaustion.
“The kids—” he rasped. “Are they… are they okay?”