23. Lena
Lena
I stare at the monitor and at first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at.
The feed is grainy, angled down from the upper corner of my bedroom. My bed. My nightstand. The heap of clothes I left on the chair three nights ago. The stupid mug on the windowsill that says World’s Okayest Human.
Then my eyes catch on the lower right corner of the desk, below the screen feed.
The blood drains straight out of my face.
There’s a photograph tucked halfway in one of the drawers. A photograph that should not be here, in this house.
It’s small, old, bent at one corner, and I know it before my brain fully catches up because I’ve seen it exactly once in my life.
In the bottom of a storage box when I was sixteen, wedged between school forms and old foster paperwork I wasn’t supposed to have.
A blonde woman holding a little girl on her hip, both of them half turned away from the camera.
The girl was me.
I didn’t leave the photo out.
I know I didn’t.
I shoved it back in the box because looking at it made me feel stupid and sick at the same time. Then I lost the box in one move or another, or maybe it got thrown out, or maybe I told myself it had because that was easier.
But here it is.
My mouth goes dry. “No,” I say, and my voice comes out thin. “No.”
Vale turns toward me immediately. “What?”
I point at the drawer because I can’t seem to get my hand to do anything else. “That photo.”
Havoc’s voice loses its usual bite. “Who is she?”
I keep staring at it. “I don’t know.”
That’s not true. Not fully.
I swallow hard. “I think she might be my mother.”
No one says anything.
Vale says, quietly, “You remembered her.”
I nod again. “A little.”
Voss is watching me now, no longer annoyed that I’m here. Just still.
I look under the photo and see a folded map pinned beneath it. Voss pulls it free and opens it on the desk.
City map. Or at least a portion of it. It gives little away.
The room goes dead quiet.
I keep staring at the map like if I look long enough it’ll stop meaning what it means. It doesn’t.
My chest goes tight. Then tighter.
And before I can think better of it, I turn and walk straight into Knox.
I don’t ask. I just grab onto him.
My hands fist in the front of his shirt and I press my face into his chest like maybe if I can’t see any of this for a second, it won’t be real. He goes still under the impact, caught off guard for maybe half a heartbeat, and then one of his arms comes around me.
“Why me?” I say into Knox’s shirt, voice thin and too fast. “Seriously, why me? I make coffee. I complain about tips. I once cried because my landlord raised the rent by twenty dollars. I’m not a target, I’m an inconvenience.”
Nobody interrupts.
That only makes me keep going.
“I’m nobody,” I say. “I’m literally the kind of person people forget in group photos. I’m the girl who gets left off email chains. I’m human administrative error. There is no reason for there to be a murder Pinterest board about me.”
Havoc makes a sound that’s almost a laugh and then thinks better of it.
“What did I do?” I ask. “Did I jaywalk in front of the wrong cult? Did I unknowingly offend some ancient murder dynasty by ordering bad takeout? Is this karma for ghosting that guy from finance in 2022?”
Knox is looking down at me in that unreadable way of his, one hand still warm and steady on my back. His voice stays low. “Lena.”
“No, because I need someone to explain the math here,” I say, words tripping over each other now.
“How does a woman with one functional bra, no savings, and a deeply average life end up with a contract on her head? I don’t even have a good kitchen knife.
I have a peeling non-stick pan and unresolved abandonment issues.
That is not the profile of someone worth killing. ”
That one gets a short, involuntary laugh out of Havoc.
Even Vale looks like he might.
For once I’m not trying to be funny. That’s the worst part. The humor is just leaking out because if it doesn’t, I think I’ll scream.
My grip tightens on Knox’s shirt.
“I’m serious,” I say, and now my voice shakes in a way I can’t hide. “I’m nobody. I’ve always been nobody. Easy to move, easy to miss, easy to lose. So why am I on a wall? Why is there a contract? Why is there a camera pointed at my bed?” The last word cracks.
That’s the one that gets me.
Not the photos. Not even the contract.
My bed.
The place I slept. The one place that was mine, however shitty and temporary, and some stranger turned it into a frame.
My breathing goes wrong.
Knox’s hand spreads wider against my back. Still careful. Still solid. “Easy,” he says.
“That’s a terrible word right now,” I whisper.
“I know.”
Voss finally speaks, and there’s disapproval all through it, not just at me but at the whole shape of this. “She needs to step back.”
“No,” I say immediately, gripping Knox harder. The answer comes out so fast and raw it surprises even me.
Knox glances toward Voss but doesn’t move me.
Good. Because if he tried right now, I might actually lose my mind.
I drag in another breath and it goes badly again, too shallow, too fast. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with this.”
Vale says quietly, “You don’t do anything with it yet.”
Knox says, “Look at me.”
I do.
Reluctantly, because if I look at the wall again I’m going to come apart.
He waits until my breathing evens just enough to count as breathing and not drowning. Then he says, “You being overlooked doesn’t mean you’re unimportant.”
I stare at him. “That sounds fake,” I say.
“It isn’t.”
“It does though.”
A small shift in his face. Not a smile. The idea of one.
Beside us, Voss says, clipped and unhappy, “This is not the time.”
Knox doesn’t look at him. “I know exactly what time it is.”
That shuts the room up for a second.
I’m still holding on to him. I know it. Everyone else knows it too. At this point I’ve accepted humiliation as part of the atmosphere.
I close my eyes for one beat and say, quieter now, “I don’t know how to be this person.”
“What person?” Vale asks.
I let out a shaky breath. “The one somebody thinks is worth watching. Worth killing. Worth remembering.”
That hangs there.
Because that’s the real horror, maybe. Not just that someone wants me dead. That someone thought I mattered enough to build all this around. For a woman who’s spent most of her life feeling like background noise, that kind of attention is its own nightmare.
Havoc’s voice is lower when he speaks next, stripped of most of its usual mockery. “Maybe you were never as invisible as you thought.”
I let out a shaky breath and look over Knox’s shoulder at him. “Wow. Horrible timing for a self-esteem speech.”
That gets the corner of Havoc’s mouth to twitch. Then he says, “Look at me, Lena.”
I don’t want to.
“Lena.”
Knox lets me go. Not abruptly. Just enough that I feel the loss of him at once, the absence of that steady hand at my back. I straighten on instinct, wipe my face quickly, and turn to Havoc because apparently the universe has decided dignity is off the table for today.
He’s watching me with that same intent look, but there’s less amusement in it than usual. More focus.
“What?” I ask.
He crosses the distance before I can brace for it and cups my face with one hand.
Then he kisses me.
Not long. Not deep enough to drag me under. Just one hard, startling kiss right on the mouth, warm and solid and completely inappropriate in every possible way.
I blink at him when he pulls back.
The room goes dead still.
Havoc looks down at me and says, “If some creep put cameras in your bedroom, the least we can do is give him a better show next time.”
For one beat I just stare at him.
Then the shock hits.
Then the absolute insanity of it.
A laugh punches out of me before I can stop it. Half outrage, half disbelief.
“Havoc,” Vale says, flat and warning.
“What?” Havoc says without looking away from me. “It worked.”
It did. God help me, it did.
The panic loosens just enough that I can think around it again. My breathing is still uneven, but it’s no longer trying to climb out of my throat. My chest still hurts, but less like I’m dying and more like I’ve just been scared out of my skin.
I drag a hand over my face. “You’re deranged.”
“Yes,” he says. “Stay with me.”
I take one more breath and look around the room again. The contract. The photos. The map. The corkboard. The monitor.
Actual things.
Actual evidence.
My voice comes out flatter now, more like myself. “Okay.”
Knox watches me closely. “You with us?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Havoc smiles. Vale says nothing, but some of the tightness goes out of his face.
I step away from Knox fully this time and force myself to look at the desk, not the wall. “So what do we do?”
Voss folds his arms. “We secure everything.”
I nod once. “Right. Okay. Fine.” I drag in another breath and start sorting the chaos into pieces I can live with. “Photos, contract, the map, the feeds, whatever storage holds the camera footage. We take it all.”
Havoc’s eyebrows go up slightly, approving.
Without really thinking, I say, “And then we call the cops.”
The room changes immediately.
Voss’s reaction is instant and vicious. “No.”
The word cracks through the room hard enough to stop me in place. I turn toward him, and whatever is in his face now is not irritation. It’s anger. Real anger. Controlled, but only just.
“You do that,” he says, voice low and dangerous, “and you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
I freeze. “Are you threatening me?”
His eyes hold mine. “Yes.”
The honesty of it chills me more than if he’d dressed it up.
“She needs to understand,” Voss says, still looking at me. “what the consequences of her actions are.”
I don’t really get a chance to be scared of him.
One second Voss is looking at me like he’d actually follow through on the threat, and the next the room changes around me so fast it feels physical.
Knox steps in first, quick and silent, putting himself between us without seeming to move much at all.
Vale shifts a half step after him, not dramatic, just there, shoulder angled toward me, body turned toward Voss.
Havoc doesn’t bother with subtle. He comes off the desk like he’s been waiting for a reason.
It happens so fast I barely register it.
Suddenly all three of them are between me and the Shepherd.
Knox’s voice is low and lethal. “Try that again.”
Voss doesn’t move. But his expression changes. Not fear. Not surprise. Just disgust sharpening into something colder.
Vale says, quieter than Knox but no less dangerous, “You do not threaten her.”
Havoc tilts his head, grin still there, eyes dead now. “Actually, go ahead. I’d love an excuse.”
I stare at him.
That should horrify me.
Part of me thinks it does.
Another part is too stunned by the fact that all three of them moved without hesitation. No discussion. No weighing options. Just immediate, brutal alignment.
Voss looks disgusted. Not scared. Not even surprised. Just deeply, openly disgusted. His gaze moves over all three of them like they’ve confirmed something he was already afraid of.
“You know the rules of the Brotherhood,” he says.
Nobody answers.
Then Knox turns slightly, just enough to look back at me over his shoulder. “You all right?”
It’s such a stupid question in a room like this that I almost laugh.
Instead I nod.
Havoc glances back too, quick and sharp, checking, then turns to Voss again like he’s already bored of not doing violence.
Vale doesn’t look back at all. That somehow says the most.
Voss exhales through his nose like the whole room has become tiresome. “You have the contract. The surveillance. The map. That’s more than I intended to give you.” His gaze lands on Knox. “Use it.”
Then on Vale. “Keep your head.”
Then on Havoc. “You won’t.”
Havoc grins. “Nice talk.”
Voss ignores him. He looks at me one last time, and whatever’s in his face then is harder to read. Still disapproving. Still distant. But not entirely cruel. Then he says, “If you involve police now, you’ll die before the paperwork settles.”
And that’s apparently the closest he comes to concern.
He steps back.
The air doesn’t ease, not really, but the shape of it changes. The immediate threat goes out of the room, leaving behind something worse: the knowledge that all of them meant exactly what they said.
Knox waits until Voss is half a step farther away before he relaxes at all.
Vale’s shoulders loosen by degrees.
Havoc doesn’t loosen. He just keeps staring until Voss finally looks away first.
I stand there behind them, breathing too hard, and realize I still haven’t moved. Not because I’m frozen anymore. Because some selfish, frightened part of me liked having them there. Liked being the thing they stepped in front of.
That should probably worry me more than it does.
Voss says, “Decide quickly.”
Then he leaves the room, and none of them turns their back on him until he’s gone.