Chapter 38 Revan
Revan
Lexi slams the door so hard the walls shake, the sound reverberating through the cabin like a gunshot. A picture frame rattles on its nail.
Koa’s already moving, halfway through the threshold before I even take a step. He’s been wound tight since we extracted them from the warehouse, guilt eating him alive from the inside out.
Atticus doesn’t move—just watches from his position, arms loose at his sides, head tilted in that way he does when he’s deciding whether something is entertaining or pathetic. Calculating. Always calculating.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, insistent and demanding. I pull it out, already knowing who it is before I see the name.
Gilbert.
I swipe to answer, stepping away from the door. “Gilbert.”
“Where are they?” His voice comes through raw—rage wrapped in the thinnest veneer of control. “Where are Lexi and Axel?”
I can hear the desperation underneath his panic. Desperation makes people stupid, makes them reckless, and I need him thinking clearly.
“I have them safe,” I say, keeping my tone neutral, professional.
“Okay.” He exhales hard, the sound crackling through the phone. “I’m coming. Where are you?”
I step onto the porch, pacing toward the far end where the wood creaks under my boots. The night air is cold, sharp enough to clear my head. “No, you’re not. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
His tone drops, going low and venomous in a way that reminds me exactly how dangerous Gilbert Kane really is. People forget that—they see the years of hiding, the domesticity, and they forget he used to run with wolves. “You don’t give me orders, Rev. I’m going to find them myself if I have to—”
I hang up.
The screen goes black. My reflection stares back from the darkened glass—tired eyes with shadows underneath, blood still crusted under my nails from the fight. I look like my father, and the realization makes my stomach turn.
Atticus leans against the doorframe, watching me with those too-knowing eyes. “What’d he say?”
I pocket the phone, feeling its weight like an anchor. “He’s getting restless.”
“And?”
“And he’s not coming here.”
Atticus exhales through his nose, sharp and dismissive. “Then what’s the plan? We keep babysitting them while your daddy issues work themselves out?”
I glare at him. “You think I like this?”
“I think you like her.” He says it flat, matter-of-fact, like he’s commenting on the weather.
The silence after that line is heavy enough to crack bone.
He’s not wrong—that’s the worst part. I do like her. More than I should, more than is smart, more than makes any strategic sense. Lexi is a complication I don’t need, a vulnerability I can’t afford, and yet here we are.
Before I can formulate a response that doesn’t sound like a confession, the front door opens again.
Koa walks out, shutting it quietly behind him.
His arms are crossed tight over his chest, jaw clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping.
He looks like he’s one bad thought away from violence, one wrong word from snapping completely.
“They need a moment,” he says, his voice rough.
I don’t ask what happened in there. Don’t ask if she screamed at him, if she cried, if she told him she never wants to see him again. I don’t care right now.
“So––” I start, testing the waters.
Koa cuts me off immediately. “Fuck no.”
I nod once. “Didn’t think so.”
For a second, no one talks. The only sound is the clock ticking on the wall inside, slow and taunting, marking time we don’t really have.
Somewhere deeper in the house, Lexi’s voice carries through the walls—muffled, breaking, something between a cry and a curse.
The sound of someone’s world falling apart.
Koa’s fingers tap against his bicep in a nervous rhythm I don’t think he realizes he’s making. It’s the only tell he ever gives when he’s stressed, this unconscious percussion against his own body.
“You think you can protect her from this?” I ask quietly, genuinely curious about his answer.
He looks up at me, and his eyes are flat, unreadable. Defensive. “I already did.”
I laugh—short, humorless, bitter. “You delivered her to the man who sold half this state’s soul. That’s not protection. That’s business.”
“Watch it.” His voice drops to a warning growl.
“Just saying what everyone’s thinking.”
Atticus speaks without turning around, his British accent clipping the words. “You two done measuring whose guilt’s bigger?”
We both look at him.
He keeps staring outside, tracking something in the darkness only he can see. “Because she’s not staying here. She’s not safe with either of you. And if Gilbert’s moving pieces already, he’ll burn us all just to make his point.”
I lean back against the couch, jaw tight.
He’s not wrong—Gilbert Kane is desperate, and desperate men with nothing to lose are the most dangerous kind.
They don’t care about collateral damage.
They don’t care about strategy. They just care about getting what they want, consequences be damned.
When he contacted the Reapers for this mission, I wasn’t head of it because of the familial relations, but the second Lexi got involved, I knew it couldn’t be anybody else.
Koa stands abruptly, pacing across the porch, his boots heavy on the wood. “You want to run her again? Hide her somewhere else? What’s the point? Eventually, someone finds her. Eventually, this catches up.”
“The point,” I say carefully, watching both of them, “is leverage.”
He stops pacing, turning to face me fully. “Leverage for what?”
“For when Gilbert and Vincent finally kill each other.” I say it plainly, laying the truth bare. “Someone’s going to be left standing when this war ends, and I plan for that someone to be us.”
Koa shakes his head, scoffing, and there’s disgust in the sound. “You sound just like him.”
That stings more than it should. More than I want to admit.
Because he’s right—I do sound like Vincent.
Strategic, calculating, using people as pieces on a board.
When did I become this? When did I stop being someone who cared about right and wrong and start being someone who only cared about winning?
Atticus turns finally, a slow pivot that brings his full attention to the conversation. He’s smirking, that half-smile that says he knows something we don’t. “Then maybe it’s time we act like him.”
The three of us stare at each other in the dim light—quiet, calculating, measuring.
There’s no real alliance left here, just temporary convenience.
We’re not friends. We’re not even really partners.
We’re just three guys trying to survive in a game none of us fully understand, using each other until we can’t anymore.
From down the hall, I hear a door open. Lexi’s footsteps are slow, uneven, still weak from the drugs. She walks into the living room where we can see her through the window, and she’s pale, silent, her eyes darting between the three of us with wariness and confusion.
“What?” she asks, her voice hoarse but defiant. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
Koa doesn’t answer. Atticus smiles faintly, that predatory curve of his lips. I just glare.
She shakes her head and walks into the kitchen. The three of us watch those long legs move. I catch Koa’s eyes first and then he stares at me, daring. Then Atticus glares. I realize we’re in deep shit with each other. We all want her.
The silence that follows is worse than shouting. It’s heavy with implications, with the weight of decisions none of us are ready to make. The air feels thick, charged with tension that could snap at any moment.
I glance down at my pocket, feeling the phone still warm against my thigh. One name sitting behind glass could end all of this, could change the entire game.
Gilbert Kane.
And for the first time since this started, I’m not sure whose war I’m actually fighting. My father’s? My own? Gilbert’s? Or am I fighting for something else entirely—something I don’t want to name because naming it makes it real, makes it vulnerable?
I look at Lexi walking back to her brother with a bottle of water and chips, exhausted and terrified and still somehow defiant, and I realize with uncomfortable clarity that the answer might be simpler and more complicated than I thought.
Maybe I’m not fighting for territory or revenge or power.
Maybe I’m just fighting for her.
And that realization terrifies me more than anything my father ever did.