Chapter Twenty
Berkley
As if Emerson and Rowen have some built-in sixth sense—some invisible radar for exactly when I’m about to do something reckless—their voices suddenly echo from the hallway above.
The sound halts me cold at the top of the basement stairs.
My breath catches in my throat, and every muscle in my body goes rigid.
One more step and they would’ve seen me—out in the open, caught halfway through my escape, exposed with nowhere left to hide.
Not done like “caught and gently escorted back.” No. Toast. And not the golden, buttery kind that makes you feel warm and loved—the kind that’s blackened to hell, curling at the edges, and tossed straight into the trash. That kind of toast.
I press my back against the wall just beyond the stairwell, heart hammering so loudly I’m convinced they’ll hear it over their footsteps.
I clench my eyes shut for a moment, just long enough to steel myself for what I’m pretty sure is about to happen next.
They’re going to find me out of my restraints.
They’re going to freak. And I’m going to go tumbling back down these stairs like a sack of broken bones and bad decisions.
I brace myself, half expecting the door to slam open, heavy boots pounding down toward me. Instead… they stop. Right outside the door.
Their voices rise and fall, the cadence too casual for two men who might’ve just uncovered a jailbreak. They’re annoyed, but not with each other. The tension in their voices is sharp, pointed, laced with frustration—but it’s directed elsewhere. At someone else.
Their fathers.
They bicker, rapid-fire back and forth, like two men who’ve had this same conversation too many times.
Names are tossed around—business partners, associates, friends of their dear old dads.
Then places. Warehouses, buildings, clubs—properties hit recently, burned, bombed, or otherwise dismantled in a string of calculated attacks.
It takes a second to catch up, to realize what they’re really saying.
They’re losing control.
A slow, wicked smile curls across my lips, sharp with satisfaction—because they have no idea who’s pulling the strings. Not even a hint. And that makes it all so much sweeter.
Then the conversation turns. Emerson’s voice cuts in, wondering out loud if I could be behind it—if I’m the one playing both sides, dismantling their empire from the inside. The room goes quiet, and cold seeps through my veins. My muscles lock, breath stalling in my chest.
That idea hadn’t crossed their minds before. Not really.
But now?
Now it has.
They wonder aloud if they should ask me directly. Put me in the hot seat. Shake some answers loose. I press harder against the wall, my hands curling into fists as I try not to breathe too loud, too deep. My chest aches from the effort.
I can feel the weight of their decision gathering in the air, thick and electric, like a storm about to break. They’re close. Too close. And then—
Rowen speaks.
He wants to check on me, sure—but not yet.
Not before he checks on Ronan. There’s something in his voice I don’t hear often—a softer edge buried beneath the grit.
Guilt, maybe. Concern. Whatever it is, it slows them down.
It buys me time. Rowen reminds Emerson that it’s been over a day since they last checked on me, but even that isn’t enough to pull them toward the door.
My heart slams so hard I swear it knocks something loose inside my chest.
Ronan’s alive.
I know it now—not because I’m hoping, not because my instincts are reaching for comfort, but because of the way they speak about him. Because of the worry threaded through their voices.
Their footsteps start to recede, measured and purposeful, moving down the hall toward Ronan’s room. They don’t say much, but they don’t need to. Just hearing his name spoken like he still belongs to this world—like he hasn’t slipped into the past—is enough.
He’s alive.
Relief washes over me in a quiet, unexpected wave.
It doesn’t erase the danger or the pain still waiting on the other side of this moment, but it lifts something heavy from my chest. If Ronan’s survived this long, if he’s still breathing after everything that went down, then maybe—just maybe—he’s strong enough to make it through the rest.
And that thought alone gives me enough strength to face whatever comes next.
I wait. Motionless. Listening until I’m sure they’re gone.
Only then do I let myself breathe again.
But just barely.
Because whatever happens next, I know I’m on borrowed time.
The door clicks open with the softest sound, but in the heavy, oppressive stillness of the hallway, it might as well be a gunshot.
My breath catches, and for a moment, I don’t move, heart thudding wildly in my chest as I wait for the guys to notice.
But the house remains still, wrapped in silence, the kind that presses in around you, listening.
I ease the door shut behind me, careful to guide the handle so it doesn’t make a sound.
The latch slips into place with a gentle snick, and I exhale slowly, grounding myself before I take the first step.
This house may be thick with ghosts and buried secrets, but in a strange, twisted way, it’s still partly mine. I grew up in these halls just like they did. I know which steps betray you if you put too much weight on them, which floorboards complain if you don’t move just right.
I slip through the darkness like a memory, my body recalling every hidden path, every childhood game of hide-and-seek, every late-night escape. The muscle memory never left. It carries me forward in silence, shadows wrapping around me like a second skin as I glide down the corridor.
I pass Ronan’s door with my breath caught in my throat.
I don’t need to press my ear against it; I can hear the low rumble of voices bleeding through the wood.
Rowen and Emerson. There’s no edge in their tone now, no anger, just quiet insistence.
Words meant for someone who hasn’t spoken back.
Maybe they’re telling him to hold on. Maybe they’re offering apologies they’ll never have the courage to voice once he wakes.
The murmur is soft, almost reverent, and it guts me in a way I don’t expect.
My feet falter, just for a second. Everything inside me screams to turn the handle, to throw the door open, to run to his side and demand answers.
To shake them until they give me the truth.
To see him. Touch him. Know that he’s still in there somewhere.
Not just another casualty in the war they keep dragging me into.
But I don’t stop. I can’t. If I go in there now, I won’t come back out.
I’ll crumble. And I can’t afford to fall apart when I’m this close to uncovering what they’ve been hiding.
What she might have known. Reign’s absence is too convenient, too perfectly timed, and if there’s even the slightest chance that her room holds the truth, I need to find it before someone finds me.
I pass his door like it doesn’t tear something open inside me—like it isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
My fists clench as my pace quickens.
The door to Reign’s bedroom opens with a soft, reluctant sigh, and clicks closed behind me with a whisper of finality that somehow still echoes through my bones.
I barely register the sound, though my senses are heightened to everything else—every creak of the floor beneath my bare feet, every faint shift in the air, every beat of my pulse hammering in my ears like a warning I can’t interpret fast enough.
My back stays to the room, my body locked in place, one hand still curled around the doorknob like letting go might cause me to come apart.
I didn’t give myself time to prepare—no steadying breath, no grounding thought, no quiet mantra to hold on to.
I just slipped inside, pretending this was any other room, any other night, any other version of my life.
But now I’m here.
The door is closed. The silence presses in. The space wraps around me, thick and haunted, and my body simply… stops. My mind does the same.
I try to breathe—slow, controlled—but my lungs stall halfway through.
It feels like something unseen has coiled tight around my chest, squeezing with every second that passes.
The air is heavier here, weighted with memory, as if the walls themselves remember what I’ve tried so hard to forget.
I know I’m not ready for this. I know I never would be.
Still, there’s no turning back.
I close my eyes, force myself to gather the scattered pieces, and brace for whatever comes next.
It’s the first time I’ve stepped foot in Reign’s room since that night.
Even thinking the words is like inviting a blade to my throat.
My entire body tenses instinctively, a full-body flinch that ripples from the base of my spine up to my jaw.
My thoughts fracture, break apart, reorganize into jumbled flashes that make no coherent sense—just fragments.
Screams. Shadows. Blood. The scent of iron.
.. fire. The sting of betrayal. And in that instant—right there—I understood that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
My hands are trembling, and I don’t bother trying to hide it. No one’s here to see. But the shame still burns hot beneath my skin. It’s always there—this sharp-edged guilt that I survived and left her all alone. That I still walk around carrying secrets and memories I can’t bear to say out loud.
The panic creeps in slow, steady, methodical.
Like it knows the way. Like it’s been here before.
It wraps around my ribs and coils in my throat, my breath shortening, pulse racing, chest tightening with a sick familiarity.
My vision tunnels, and I brace one hand against the wall just to stay upright.
The coolness of the paint bleeds into my palm, but it doesn’t help much.
I want to move—I need to—but my feet feel nailed to the floor.
I’m not just walking into a room. I’m walking into a graveyard of memories, and the worst part is, I’m not even sure what I’m hoping to find.
Clarity. Closure. Maybe some sliver of truth that proves what I felt that night wasn’t just paranoia spinning out of control. Maybe something that tells me Reign was more than missing—more than simply gone. Maybe an answer to why none of this fits together no matter how hard I try to force it to.
Instead, all I feel are ghosts crowding in from every corner, memories crawling over my skin like vines with teeth, trying to drag me under.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes and count. Breathe. Ground myself. Survive this second so I can make it to the next. Because whatever this room is hiding can’t be worse than the version of it that’s been living in my head.
Eventually, I turn around.
Slowly.
When I finally face the room, it takes everything I have not to fold in on myself.
The space is untouched, unnervingly still.
Too perfect. I feel the damage everywhere—unseen but heavy—like grief has seeped into the walls, soaked the carpet, clung to the drapes.
The room feels like it’s holding its breath.
And maybe I am too.
But I made it through the door. I survived the hardest part.
Now I just have to find the truth I came here for—before this place breaks me all over again.