12. Savannah
SAVANNAH
The dark isn’t a blanket; it’s a throat.
I sink into the mattress, my muscles finally surrendering to a heaviness that feels like wet cement.
For a blink—a clean, beautiful second—there is nothing.
Then the scent of copper and stale marigolds floods my lungs.
I’m back in the crawlspace beneath the floorboards.
Above me, the wood groans under the weight of heavy boots.
My father’s shadow passes through the cracks in the floor, sliced into thin, flickering ribbons. Then comes the sound. A wet, bubbling gurgle that sounds like a drain clogging. Papá.
"Savannah! ?Corre, mija!"
My brother’s voice cracks, a high-pitched scream that snaps like a dry twig.
I try to move, but the air has turned to lead.
I’m glued to the dirt, my fingers clawing at the earth while the laughter starts—that rhythmic, mocking cackle of the Sombra lieutenants.
They’re dragging him. I can hear his fingernails scraping against the concrete, a desperate, screeching plea for a grip that isn't there.
I lunge. I have to reach him. I throw my weight against the invisible walls of my cage, my heart detonating against my ribs.
I hit the floor hard.
The world shatters. My bedside table splintered against the wall, the lamp flickering once before dying.
I’m on my knees in the cabin, the floorboards cold against my shins, my breath coming in jagged, wheezing hitches.
My right hand is a claw, white-knuckled around the hilt of the folding blade I keep under my pillow.
The door bangs open.
"Cruz, you’ve got ten seconds to tell me why you’re ignoring your?—"
Gideon stops. He towers in the doorway, his massive silhouette blocking out the moon, his face twisted into a snarl of Sergeant-at-Arms fury. He’s holding his radio like he wants to crush it.
I don’t drop the knife. I can’t. My hand won't obey. I look at him, but I’m still seeing the blood on the floorboards, still hearing the screaming. My face feels tight, wet. I reach up with my free hand, and my fingers come away damp.
Tears.
I stare at the moisture on my skin as if it’s an alien substance. Gideon’s anger vanishes, replaced by a stillness that’s more terrifying than his rage. He doesn't move. He just watches me break, the monster and the ghost staring at each other in the dark.
"Get out."
The words are a dry rasp, barely clearing my throat. I scramble backward until my spine hits the bedframe, the knife still shaking in my grip. I swipe at my face with my sleeve, desperate to erase the evidence of the nightmare. "I said get out, Thornton. Now."
Gideon doesn't flinch. He doesn't laugh or use this moment to remind me how "weak" I am. He steps into the room, moving with a heavy, deliberate grace that should feel like a threat but doesn't.
"Give it here, Cruz," he says. His voice is a low rumble, devoid of its usual jagged edge.
"I will gut you."
"No, you won't." He reaches out, not grabbing, just offering his hand.
I want to strike, but the heat of the panic is cooling into a hollow, shivering chill.
My fingers ache. Slowly, he closes the distance and wraps his hand over mine.
His skin is a map of scars and thick muscle, but his touch is unnervingly soft.
He doesn't pry my fingers back with force; he just waits until I let go.
The blade slides into his palm. He folds it shut and sets it on the floor, well out of reach.
Instead of leaving, he sinks onto the edge of the mattress. He doesn't really look at me. He stares at the door, his massive shoulders slumped. I wait for the interrogation, the pity, the shove. It never comes. He just sits there, an anchor in the dark.
Minutes pass. The silence should be suffocating, but it’s rhythmic.
I find myself matching my breath to the slow rise and fall of his chest. I notice the way his eyes track the window, then the door, then the vent—the same hyper-vigilance that keeps me awake.
He looks tired. Not the kind of tired sleep fixes, but something deep in the marrow.
"Foster care," he says abruptly, his voice scraping the quiet. "You learn quick that if you aren't the loudest thing in the room, you're invisible. And if you're invisible, you're easy to throw away. People stay until they find something that isn't broken. Then they're gone."
He turns his head, those pale grey eyes locking onto mine. There is no armor in them.
"I made myself impossible to ignore," he murmurs. "Easier to be hated than forgotten."
The confession affects me more than his fist ever could. I’ve known how to fight a monster for years, but I have no idea what to do with a man who is just as haunted as I am.
I pull my knees toward my chest, the cold of the floorboards seeping into my bones. Gideon shifts, his boots scuffing the wood as he reaches for the radio I knocked over during my descent. As he leans into the moonlight, the shadows retreat from his hands.
I see them clearly for the first time.
The "FEAR" and "GOD" tattooed across his knuckles are bisected by white, jagged lines.
Some are straight—blades or glass. Others are knotted and raised, the kind of messy healing that comes from bone hitting bone until something shatters.
His wrists are a roadmap of trauma, old rope burns layered under the newer, angry scar tissue of one who has spent his entire life swinging at the world.
My hand moves before my brain can veto the impulse. I reach out, fingers trembling slightly as I catch his wrist.
Gideon freezes. He doesn't pull away. I shouldn't be touching him—not after the way we’ve snarled and bled for weeks—but I find the pads of my thumb tracing a thick, ropey scar that runs from his thumb down to his pulse.
His skin is hot, radiating a scorched-earth warmth that makes my own blood hum.
The callouses on his palms are like mine, the product of holding onto things too tightly and refusing to let go.
The air in the room thickens, turning from stagnant air to something electric and heavy. The silence isn't a weapon anymore; it’s a confession.
"I’ve seen a lot of men die in the desert," I whisper, my thumb still circling that pulse point. "I’ve seen the way they look when they've lost everything. I never thought I'd find that same look in a mirror."
Gideon frowns, a muscle leaping in his cheek. He turns his hand over, lacing his thick fingers through mine. It’s a clumsy, desperate anchor.
"I know how to take a bullet," he says, voice a low, gravelly rasp that vibrates in my chest. "I know how to stay upright when my ribs are dust. But this?"
He looks down at our joined hands, his pale eyes searching mine with a terrifying, raw honesty.
"Sitting here like this... without a knife between us. This is worse. It’s more terrifying than any cartel hit. I have never survived wanting someone like this, Cruz. It feels like a trap I'm walking into on purpose."
A cold spike of fear pierces my ribcage.
This is the one thing the handlers said would kill me.
Attachment is a death sentence in the field.
But as I look at Gideon—this mountain of a man who is as broken and jagged as the glass I just shattered—I realize I’ve already crossed the line.
I’m not just surviving anymore. I’m wanting.
And that is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done.
The predawn light is a bruise, lilac and sickly gray, creeping over the jagged peaks of the mountains.
It bleeds through the gaps in the heavy curtains, illuminating the dust motes dancing between us.
Gideon hasn't moved. He sits in the wooden chair he dragged to the bedside, his frame too large for the spindly legs of the furniture.
He looks like a gargoyle carved from granite and spite, guarding the entrance to a tomb.
Every time his eyelids droop, he jerks his chin up, his knuckles cracking as he flexes those scarred hands. He’s fighting sleep like it’s a physical adversary, someone trying to slip a blade between his ribs the moment he drifts. I know that fight. I’ve been losing it for eight years.
"Go to bed, Thornton," I murmur. My voice is thin, stripped raw by the remnants of the scream I choked back.
"I'm fine where I am." He doesn't look in my direction. He stares at the door, his jaw set in a hard, uncompromising line. "You're still shaking."
I look down at my hands. He's right. The tremors are deep, a vibration of the nerves that no amount of willpower can steady. I should feel exposed. I should be calculating how to use this moment of his vulnerability to gain an edge, to find a way out of this compound and into the wind. That’s what a survivor does.
But as I study the way he keeps his body positioned between me and the window—the most likely entry point for a breach—the calculation fails.
The silence of the compound isn't the silence of a graveyard anymore. I hear the distant, mechanical thrum of a motorcycle being tuned in the garage. I hear the muffled bark of a dog behind the main clubhouse and the rhythmic clinking of the perimeter fence in the wind. These are the sounds of a fortress, yes, but they’re also the sounds of a life I’ve forgotten how to live.
A terrifying heat pools in my chest, more suffocating than the nightmare. I recognize the layout of the kitchen by the smell of the coffee Malachi brews. I know the exact creak of the floorboard outside Dante's office. I know the weight of Gideon’s presence without having to look.
My eyes heavy, I finally let my head sink back into the pillow. The realization hits me with the blunt force of a high-caliber round, silent and devastating: I’m not looking for the exits anymore. I’m looking for them.
Hell Court isn't my cage. It’s my skin. And as I slip into a dreamless haze, the horror of it settles deep: I don't want to leave. For the very first time since the blood dried on my father's floor, I feel like I'm home.