Chapter 31 #2
"My father called. Told me the hospital needed me.
I went up, and she was on a table with an IV in and monitors beeping.
Nurses I'd never seen, a doctor who never charted anything.
They were talking about flight plans, security logistics, and how much time before the handoff.
They were doing it in the same flat, procedural tone I use when I'm coordinating a patient transfer. As if it was routine."
Ruby has stopped fidgeting entirely, which might be the most unsettling thing in the room. East is forward with his elbows on his knees. Darla presses her lips together. James covers Maggie's hand with his own.
"I panicked. Ran to Tobias, her security guard. He'd been with her for years. He believed me without a single question, grabbed his keys and his gun, and we went back. She was gone. Bed stripped. Room clean. As if she'd never been there."
My throat burns. I swallow past it.
"My father found me. Dragged me into his office. Told me I was overreacting, that Anna was fulfilling her purpose. That this is how things have always been done, just cleaner now."
A sound tears out of East, low and obscene. James mutters something that sounds as though a prayer and a promise got braided together. Nash's jaw flexes hard enough that I can see the muscle jump from across the room.
"He told me it was time I became useful.
Walked me into another room where a girl sat on a table, younger than me, terrified.
I had a chart in my hands and a syringe.
The doctor told me what to do: dose, protocol, beautification schedule.
" The word tastes of poison. "I stood there trying to talk myself into it the way I've talked myself into hard procedures before, telling myself if not me then someone worse, if I did it I could at least make it hurt less. "
"My hand shook," I whisper. "I dropped the syringe and ran." I take a breath that scrapes on the way in. "Later that night I heard him on the phone. He thought I'd gone to bed. He said I'd become more trouble than I was worth. That he'd sell me instead."
The clubhouse is silent, the kind of silence that roars. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips the way I feel it when I'm running a code and waiting for the monitor to tell me whether someone lives or dies.
"I knew he meant it. So I left. Grabbed cash, keys, a bag.
I drove into the city and got a hotel room where the clerk didn't care about my last name.
" My gaze flicks toward Knox. His eyes are on me, hot and steady.
There's hunger and fury and love all tangled in a look that nearly knocks me sideways. "That's where I met him."
No one says anything. I check my breathing. Shallow but functional. My hands have stopped shaking, which surprises me until I realize I've been gripping my hem so hard my knuckles ache.
"I didn't stop my father." The quiet words land heavier than everything before them. "Those girls still went where they were sent. Anna never made it back. I was there, and I tried, but not enough. While I ran, more girls were brought in, scrubbed, dressed, and flown away."
My vision blurs and I blink it back, because if I start crying now I won't be able to finish.
"You all keep getting hurt because of people who operate the way he does.
Candace. Darla. Olivia. Girls at the docks.
And I used to stand in rooms where those deals started.
I was part of it." I suck in a shaky breath.
"So if you want me to leave, if you don't want your patch associated with whatever stain my name carries, I get it. I won't fight you."
The words hang in the room, raw and ugly, while I wait for the verdict the way you wait for lab results you already know are bad.
Then Candace moves.
She sets her mug down with quiet precision and steps forward, stopping across the table from me. Her shoulders are relaxed, but her eyes are anything but. Flint and fire, with an edge that looks inherited.
"So your father and Alice Brighton swim in the same muck," she says, cool and stripped of surprise.
"Candace—"
One hand lifts, a clean interruption. "Don't apologize to me for him."
The room holds its breath.
"We're clear on one thing. Alice is my problem.
My blood. My ghost. Yours is your father.
They did business in the same rooms, but we're not confusing who's responsible for what.
" Her mouth tightens. "You signed forms because a man who was supposed to protect you put a pen in your hand and called it duty.
That's coercion. That's his crime wearing your initials.
You walked away from it before he could make you into something worse. "
The way she says we has weight, and I feel it settle into my chest, a hand pressing down on a wound to stop the bleeding.
"You got out. Now you're standing in this room handing us the map to burn it all down." Her chin lifts. "We don't leave our own."
Heat pricks behind my eyes, and I stare at a gouge in the table so I don't burst into tears just from her claiming me.
Darla shifts, expression soft but iron-backed. "You were a kid. Raised in a world where monsters wore suits and called it charity. You got out. That counts for more than you think."
Maggie makes a small, indignant sound. "If you think for one second we're letting you run off because of what some power-drunk bastard did with his money, think again. You belong here. End of story."
"I—" My voice catches. I nod instead, because speaking through the tightening in my throat will choke me.
Frankie has gone still in that way that makes the hairs on my arms stand, the way a room freezes right before a patient crashes.
Pen forgotten, hands folded, eyes narrowed as though she's listening to something only she can hear.
"He thinks he owns the story," she says finally.
"Men with that kind of money always do. Hospitals, officials in his pocket.
He thinks he's holding the script." Her gaze pins me.
"He doesn't. You stepped out of his shadow and rewrote something he doesn't even know has changed yet. "
Ruby, who's been vibrating with contained commentary, explodes. "Okay, first of all, your dad is absolutely on my personal smite list now. Second, if that man ever steps foot in this town, I am biting him."
Despite everything, a broken sound slips out of me, half laugh, half sob. "Ruby—"
"I'm serious. Full dentition. I will leave a mark. Then I'm stealing his car and making Nash dump it in the river."
Nash's mouth curves, barely. "Please stop volunteering my clean record for your bullshit," he says, mild in the way that hides sharp edges.
Then his attention shifts to me, and the mildness drops.
"If he does step foot in this town, you won't have to lift a finger.
Point us to him. That's it." His gaze flicks to Knox, Malachi, East, James.
"You are not short on men willing to get their hands dirty on your behalf. "
Heat rolls up my chest, thick and overwhelming. It feels wrong for them to promise violence for me, and it feels necessary at the same time. The dissonance between those two truths makes the room tilt on its axis.
My knees threaten to give out. I can feel the wobble starting in my calves, the same pre-syncope warning I've watched a hundred patients ignore before they hit the floor.
Knox closes the distance in two strides and steps into me from behind, hand bracing at my hip.
His chest presses warm and solid against my shoulder blades.
"You're not going anywhere," he murmurs against the shell of my ear. "Not from this room. Not from me."
Frankie's phone buzzes on the coffee table. Just vibration against wood, but the way her whole body goes taut makes me notice. She glances at the screen, and urgency flashes across her face before she locks it down, jaw tightening, eyes going flat.
She stands abruptly, notebook forgotten. "I need to step out."
Malachi's eyes narrow. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah." Already moving toward the hallway. "Just need to check on something."
Arden pushes off the wall and follows without asking permission, as though it's already decided, and there was never a question.
Ruby watches them disappear. "That was suspicious."
"That’s Frankie," Candace says, settling back. "Everything she does looks suspicious."
But I caught the rest of it. Frankie's fingers white-knuckled around her phone before she pocketed it, and Arden's posture shifted from relaxed to alert in half a second, shoulders squaring as though he was bracing for something he'd been expecting.
For a woman who just lost someone she clearly had feelings for, whatever those feelings were, Frankie's urgency looks less as though it comes from grief and more as though it's a crisis she's managing in real time.
I file it where I file everything: in the back of my mind behind the patient charts, vital signs, and patterns I can't stop tracking even when I'm the one falling apart.
Knox's hand settles more firmly on my back. "You notice that?"
I nod, still watching the empty hallway. "That wasn't a casual phone call."
His thumb strokes my spine once. "We'll keep an eye on it."
The room settles back into motion. Ruby mutters about emotional labor. East shifts Darla closer. Maggie squeezes James's hand.
"You should know," I manage, "there's more. Not just my father. His connections. Men who operate the way Donovan did. Donors. Judges. If you start digging, you're going to kick up things that could get you hurt."
"Newsflash," East drawls, nothing lazy in his gaze. "We're already getting shot at and blown up. The bar for 'dangerous' is pretty high."
Malachi pushes off the table, stepping opposite me. His hand finds Candace's waist with an ease that speaks of muscle memory, and he draws her into his side. His eyes are darker than usual, storm-heavy, fury aimed past me at the men I've just named.