Chapter 59 #2
“There’s too much to unpack.” I lean back along the sofa, air leaving my lungs. “None of it happens with Russians on board.”
“Then start with the past ten days.” He softens his tone. “Tell me about the kill room.”
The engine hum fills the space between us. I close my eyes for a second, seeing concrete and chains and torture that never turns off.
Then I open them and meet his patient gaze.
“All right.” I shift on the couch and open my arms.
He moves in, careful at first. We adjust without speaking, twisting our too-big frames in the narrow space.
I stretch along the seats with my back to the wall, and he settles on his side against my chest and between my legs.
His head fits just right in the crook of my shoulder, and I rest my arm around him.
Dove is the only person I’ve ever held this way. That long-lost familiarity burrows inside my chest, old and warm and quietly devastating.
Christ, I miss her.
Closing my eyes, I let myself sink beneath the heat of Wolf’s body. Then I tell him about the kill room.
I don’t linger on the beatings. Those were crude and predictable. I move past them and go straight to the part that mattered.
“The screen never turned off. They unhooked the rig sometimes so it wouldn’t damage my eyes. But when I closed them, she was still there. That was part of the torture. Let me think I escaped for a minute. Then find her again inside my head.”
Wolf stays still, breathing steady, listening.
“I refused to cooperate.” I run the backs of my fingers along his arm. “I told Crowe I’d do nothing until I saw her in person. Not on a feed or through a camera lens. Something felt wrong. I couldn’t explain it, but my gut kept telling me the video wasn’t right. How did you know it was a fake?”
“Mikhail said the shadows didn’t line up. So I looked closer.”
“That’s when you noticed the missing beauty mark.”
“One of my favorite parts of her.” He smiles.
My chest flutters. Not with jealousy. With contentment.
“I couldn’t see that detail from across the room.
The distance was deliberate. No audio, either.
Crowe wasn’t taking any chances. He knew I was suspicious.
Thought he could frighten me enough to override that instinct, and maybe, if he pushed hard enough, I’d do anything he asked.
” My hand tightens in the fabric of Wolf’s shirt.
“I was close. Closer than I want to admit. Maybe a day. Maybe only hours. I don’t know how much longer I would’ve held. ”
“You held longer than I did. When Frankie killed Denver and sealed our fates, I didn’t last a day before I broke and chose the cliff over starvation.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You’re right. Lasting ten days in a kill room? That’s brave. Jumping off a cliff? That was weak.”
The anger slams into me fast and unbidden.
“No.” I tighten my arm around him and lean down, mouth close to his ear. “You don’t get to say that.”
He stiffens.
“It’s unacceptable.” I pull back enough to look at him. “You didn’t fail. You survived. That isn’t weakness.”
“Jag…”
“You walked into a den I spent twenty years circling and took down the most protected predator on the planet in one night. You did what governments, vigilantes, and criminals like me couldn’t do. You ended him. Completely.”
He lifts his head, eyes finding mine. The praise settles through him, and his body leans in without permission. His hands travel to my shoulders. Mine mold along his spine.
We hold each other’s gaze.
There’s too much in it. Respect, hunger, things neither of us are ready to say, and gravity that pulls and pulls until resisting takes monumental effort. The air between us ignites, charged with the impulse to close the final inch and claim the moment.
We don’t.
Dove exists in this space with us, and loving her means not crossing lines that would hurt her. Whatever this is between Wolf and me, it will wait. Or it’ll die unfinished.
I drop my forehead to his, a controlled retreat. He exhales, and the urge to kiss him hardens my stomach. He senses it, fights it, and returns to his position against my chest.
“Sometimes I forget how old you are.” He traces a finger through the dusting of hair on my forearm. “You reminded me just now.”
“How so?”
“Commanding as hell. Dangerously confident. Older and knows it. You’re checking a lot of my boxes, kitten.”
“Wolf…” Blood rushes south, and I groan with frustration. “Knock it off.”
“Not until you tone down the dominating daddy energy.”
“I’m not that much older than you.”
“I’m twenty-four, and you’re… Forty?”
“Yeah.”
“Fun fact. You’re ten years older than my oldest brother. That makes you older than everyone in my family except my old man.” He snorts. “And holy shit, it’s working for you.”
“Moving on.”
“You’ve been watching Adrian Crowe for twenty years.”
“You’ve been digging through my encrypted files.”
“How do you think I found you?”
“I know how you found me.” I rest my lips on the top of his head. “And I’m grateful, Wolf. More than you know.”
“How did you know Crowe was behind the murder of your parents?”
That’s a history I can share, considering Mikhail probably already scraped it from my servers.
Pulling in a breath, I say the words I’ve never spoken out loud. “Celeste told me about Crowe before she died.”
My throat dries, but the words keep coming.
“Celeste and my dad were together for six years. Never fought. Not once that I can remember. Until the last few months.” I stare past the cabin window, back into that house.
“Dove was eight. She hated the arguments and always hid under the bed when they started. I’d sit with her, make up games, and distract her until it was over.
But one night, it went longer than usual.
I heard them talking when I went to check on them.
I didn’t mean to listen. But I heard Celeste say someone was hunting them.
She was scared. My dad was, too. She wanted all four of us to go into witness protection. Change names. Disappear.”
Wolf shifts, listening with his whole body.
“My dad didn’t believe the threat was that bad. He thought they could manage it, thought they had time. Celeste saw me around the corner, and she knew I’d heard.”
“You were sixteen?”
“Yeah. Old enough to understand danger. Too young to control it. After everyone went to bed, she came into my room, woke me up, and told me the truth.” My voice cracks.
“About Adrian Crowe. That he got her pregnant, sold her to a rich man, and she escaped. She made me promise never to tell Dove. Never.”
“Why?”
“She was terrified of him. She said if anything happened, I couldn’t go to the police. Crowe owned badges in every city, and if I told the wrong person, he’d take Dove.”
“She knew Dove was too young to hold that information.” His jaw hardens. “One slip from an eight-year-old’s mouth…”
“Exactly.”
“So she put it on you. Made you carry it.”
“She was the only mother I knew.” I release a shuddery breath. “I loved her. So I promised to keep her secret, never go to the cops, and never tell Dove.”
“Of course, you kept that promise, you loyal asshole. And that loyalty almost killed you. More than once. I’m pissed she put you in that position. You were fucking sixteen.”
“Celeste was only six years older than me. Practically a kid herself.”
“Does Dove know how young she was?”
“No. She doesn’t remember.” My chest constricts.
“All those years in our cardboard forts and tents, moving from place to place, Dove never stopped asking about our parents. She wanted descriptions, stories, any scrap I would throw her. I was so afraid I would slip and reveal too much or say something she would piece together later. So I gave her nothing.”
“You have to tell her.”
“I know. I will.”
“Wow. That explains… Way too much.” He makes a humming sound. “So let me get this straight. Crowe sent a hitman to take out your whole family, but he didn’t count on you, a sixteen-year-old kid, escaping with Dove.”
“Dove wasn’t part of the hit that night.”
“She was supposed to be taken alive? To be trafficked? His own daughter?”
“Yeah. He hunted her for the next couple of years, but as I honed my hacking skills and Dove grew older, I became his target.”
“And Dove was the leverage.”
“Yes.”
“You said she’s safe.” He eases back into me. “I’m taking you at your word and staking everything I am on it.”
“She’s safe.”
Adrian Crowe is dead. House of Crowe will follow. But I’m not finished.
I don’t want him gone. I want him exposed on the world stage.
Him and every fixer, buyer, and polished monster who fed at his table.
I want the money trails lit up, the shell companies cracked, and the quiet men who signed checks and looked away dragged into daylight where they can’t hide behind titles or philanthropy.
I’ll plan it properly, use the cartel, and hunt every Crowe associate, every predator who trafficked flesh through him, every coward who profited from silence.
Then I’ll end them.
This isn’t revenge anymore. It’s cleanup.
But for now, I keep my arm around Wolf and let the past settle where it belongs, spoken but not forgiven.
Wolf’s heavy frame grows even heavier against me, the sharp edges of him softening as sleep takes hold. His head rests solid against my chest, his body slack with trust, every exhale slow and even.
I hold completely still, worried any sudden movement might wake him and break whatever fragile truce his nervous system just signed.
I’ve been alone a long time. Long enough that sharing space like this feels foreign and dangerous. My body remembers holding Dove this way, her tiny hands, the soft silk of her hair, and the adoring way she looked at me. That memory stings, but it doesn’t hurt the way I expect.
Because this is different.
This is Wolf, choosing to rest against me without question.
The feeling settles into my circulation, quiet and earned. I didn’t realize how starved I was for this simple thing, another human trusting me with their unconsciousness, their vulnerability.
I’ve never had a partner. No girlfriend. No boyfriend. Sex has always been a transaction, a source of income, leverage, or a role to play and discard. I know how to perform, and I know how to be a protector for Dove. I don’t know how to belong to someone, how to be a significant other.
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like a solitary structure braced against collapse. With Wolf, I feel aligned, bonded, and fiercely aware of how much it means that he’s at my side, breathing and safe.
So I stay awake, guarding his sleep the way I once guarded Dove’s.
Midway through the flight, Kodiak comes back without a word. He lowers himself beside the sofa, careful as a mountain settling, and studies Wolf where he snoozes against me.
The look on Kodiak’s face is pure love, vast and fathomless.
The kind of love that survived things no one should.
The journal graphically illustrated what they endured together.
Years of hunger, cold, and abuse, with one another as their only constant.
Seeing that history reflected in Kodiak’s eyes reshapes things in my chest.
Then his gaze lifts to me.
He scrutinizes my arm around Wolf, the way I’ve angled my body to shield him from the aisle, and the calm soaked into Wolf’s sleeping face.
After a long, assessing perusal that measures intent and outcome, he gives a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Approval.
“I’ve never seen him like this,” he whispers so softly it barely sounds like him. “Not once. Never saw peace on him. Never saw hope. Nothing even close to happy. Not until you and Dove stormed into his life.”
Then he straightens, all bulk and gravity returning, and lumbers toward the front without looking back.
I relax into the couch, breathing in time with Wolf, as the plane carries us north through the dark, toward debts still due, promises not yet made, and the single most important priority. Taking back our little bird.