Chapter 8
REBEL
The air in the compound still smells like cordite and adrenaline. Divine’s sirens have gone quiet, but the walls still hum with residual tension, the kind that vibrates under your boots and settles in your lungs. The kind that seeps into your skin and doesn’t wash off.
After the breach, we locked it down like a fortress.
The bar doors stayed shut; the tattoo lights blinked off.
Calypso and a couple of prospects rescheduled clients.
Hang arounds and employees were sent home.
We sealed the shelter, bolted every door, and doubled the watches.
The women and kids inside had enough blankets to sleep like it was winter and enough fear to keep them awake anyway.
Carter stands in the rec room like a statue carved out of muscle and quiet danger.
Dried blood crusted at his collar, a confident bruise in his jawline.
He smells faintly of salt air and gun oil even from across the room.
He looks calm enough for a man who just dragged the Vultures to our front gate, and that pisses me off more than it should.
Allura’s pacing in front of him, barefoot but lethal, arms crossed over her tank top, voice smooth as cut glass. “You’re telling me,” she says slowly, “that you were followed here after tripping our firewall by a kill team that knows the name A. Slade Logistics?”
“Pretty much,” Carter answers, his voice low and even, measured the way it gets when he’s containing something bigger underneath.
Sloane’s leaning against the wall, arms folded, every inch of her screaming discipline and distrust. “You’re either brave or stupid walking in here after that.”
He doesn’t blink. “Depends on the day.”
Divine huffs from behind her tablet. “He’s not lying. Their signal was military-grade. Vultures ran a triangulated ping to track him. He just didn’t know he lit up my network when he did.”
“Lucky us,” I mutter.
Allura’s eyes shift to me, sharp enough to cut through the room. “Rebel. I assume there’s something you didn’t tell us.”
Every head turns toward me. The heat crawling up my neck isn’t from embarrassment, it’s exposure. “I traced the money. The ghost account is using Alex’s name. It led to Bishop.”
Sloane’s expression darkens. “And you didn’t bring it to Church.”
“Because I didn’t have proof,” I snap. “And I wasn’t about to drag the club into something that could’ve been smoke.”
“Smoke gets people killed,” she fires back.
Carter cuts in, tone even. “She wasn’t wrong. The moment she moved on that trail, the Vultures were watching. They’ve been reactivating dead accounts tied to Slade’s old network.”
Allura studies him. “And what do you want from us, Carter Bishop?”
“Nothing,” he says. “I want them gone. You want your ledgers clean. We can help each other.”
“Help,” Sloane repeats, like the word’s poison. “We don’t take help from strangers who drag heat to our doorstep.”
“Then don’t think of me as a stranger,” he says quietly. “Think of me as the reason you’re still breathing.”
The silence afterward is heavy enough to crack concrete. I can't decide whether to thank him or break his nose. The urge to do both sits equal in my chest.
Allura’s voice cuts through, soft but final. “He stays.”
Sloane’s head snaps up. “You’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about strategy.” Allura turns to me. “He’ll take the guest quarters behind the shelter. You’ll oversee his access and feed him what he needs. No more, no less.”
My stomach dips low. “You want me to babysit him?”
Her smirk is faint and dangerous. “You brought him here. You keep him on a leash, Treasurer.”
Divine hides a laugh behind her coffee mug. “Better buy a thick leash.”
I glare at her, but she’s already typing again, muttering about system sweeps and firewall repairs. Carter just nods, no argument, no ego, which is somehow worse.
After everyone leaves, I walk him to the guest quarters like a jealous captain escorting a pawn to his cell.
He trails behind me, the cut on his arm stiff under the fabric, the bandage dark where blood’s seeped through.
When the shelter door swings open, the air changes, quieter, softer, threaded with voices that don’t speak in threats.
The Haven is a whole other world of my kingdom.
Women dozing in donated sweaters, a little boy with a mop of hair curled against a stuffed bear, a woman with a scar across her eyebrow humming a lullaby she learned in Spanish.
The low light makes everyone look like angels at rest, which this world rarely allows.
The room where I tell people to sleep is small but efficient.
Cots line the walls in neat rows, and a donated bookshelf houses mismatched children’s books.
One wall is painted a bright sunflower by French when she had a paint day and a hangover.
At the center is a table with the legal binders, our emergency cash box, and the ledger I sleep with in my head.
Divine’s security panel is tucked near the door, flat, dark, humming like a beast.
I tell Carter about the patrols, lock schedules, and the noise discipline at night. He listens, nodding, but there’s something softer in his tone when he says, “You did good building this.”
I don’t answer. Compliments are dangerous coming from him.
Carter stays in a spare room near the far wall, where the night sounds won’t slap him awake.
I sleep in the small office under the guise of keeping an eye on donations.
The truth sits heavy in my chest. I hate the idea of him alone in a room that isn’t mine.
I hate how much I want him to be mine, or at least to stay put.
The night stretches long, elastic with small noises. The creak of cots, a rain gutter tapping like a metronome, the quiet shuffle of a volunteer checking on pills. Every sound folds into my grief, sharpening it.
I flip through the ledger A. Slade Logistics entries in neat, deliberate handwriting, dotted transfers to shell companies, the same pattern repeated like a prayer. The numbers line up. The intent is uglier. Whoever resurrected Alex’s name knew exactly what they were doing.
I trace the lines with a thumb that doesn’t stop trembling.
Memory comes like a reflex. Alex smiling over a busted engine, the crease at the side of his eye when he was about to tell a joke.
The way he used to call me “Vic” when he was too tired to be formal.
The way his hands smelled of grease and cigarettes and home.
The funeral scene plays in reverse. Me standing at the edge of the cemetery, him lowered into the ground, and the silence that followed.
I promised him I’d keep the numbers clean.
I promised him that no one would use his name as a shovel.
Here I am, watching his name move through dirty money like I didn’t promise to do better.
A noise jars me, soft footsteps near the door. I pull my eyes away from the ledger like I’m ashamed of being caught reading it in the dark. Carter moves with a quiet people don’t see coming, his shadow cuts across the doorway.
“You okay?” he asks, voice low enough to be private in the hush.
“Fine.” I don’t sound fine. He knows this, and instead of pressing, he crosses the room and sits on the edge of the couch, boots whispering against the hardwood floor.
“Want me to watch the perimeter?” Carter offers.
“No,” I say too quickly. “I want you here.”
He looks at me, surprised. “Because of the shelter?”
“Because of you.” The confession is small and jagged. I hate sounding needy. I hate that it’s true.
He looks at my face, noticing the hard lines where grief lives. “You shouldn’t carry it alone.”
“I don’t want you to carry it.” I keep looking at the ledger as if I keep my face down, the past won’t look back. “I want you to help close the books.”
Carter reaches out and rests a warm, calloused hand on my forearm. It feels like both a promise and a threat.
We sit here, side by side, listening to the shelter breathe. Around midnight, Carter gets up, and I don’t ask where he’s going.
I hear one of the volunteers stirring, and I walk quietly down the hall to watch as they soothe a child with a fever. The scent of eucalyptus wipes lingers in the air. I watch the little boy’s chest rise and fall, and my ribs feel like they’re pressing against an empty space.
When grief hits properly, it crashes like a tide, sudden and soaked to the bone, impossible to outrun. I find my boots by the door, slip them on, and step outside. I tell myself I’m getting fresh air, but really, I’m escaping the softness that makes me think of Alex.
The night is thick with fog and tension, and the coastal wind feels cool against my skin.
Beyond the shelter, the training yard glows under a single floodlight.
Carter is there, shirt off, muscles shadowed and moving in a steady rhythm.
The sound of leather hitting the heavy bag echoes across the backyard.
Sweat beads down his skin and catches the light.
He moves like someone who understands violence and keeps it under control.
For a moment, I just watch him. The ache under my ribs from seeing him move, the same way Alex used to move when he did the same thing. Different, yet the same kind of focus that used to make me feel like the world was organized.
He pauses, sees me, and his expression softens. He nods and returns to the bag. We stay silent. We don’t have to say anything.
The night drags on. The past drags with it a heavy, familiar weight.
I lie awake in the office, ledger on my chest, the shelter murmuring like a sea.
At some point, Carter’s footsteps, muffled, pass the door.
I hear the quiet thunk of dumbbells. The methodical thud is a metronome that keeps me honest.
I tell myself all the things that make sense. Carter’s here for protection, for leads, for the math. I tell myself I’m only watching him because I can’t afford another lie.