13. Reva
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REVA
The war room smells like coffee, rain, and men who have not slept enough to trust their own tempers.
I sit at the metal table with Homer in my lap and my phone facedown beside my elbow, waiting for it to buzz with an update.
The screen has stayed dark for six minutes, which means Cal has not crashed, Shiloh has not sent an update, Nash has not called from the road, and Delia has not magically appeared on the dock.
The silence should be a good thing. It means nothing has gone wrong, at least.
It leaves too much space for worry, though.
Ever stands at the console on the far side of the room, one hand braced on the desk, the other moving between feeds.
He has the cabin perimeter on two screens, hospital cameras on another, and a map of the Garden District glowing beneath a net of colored routes, notes, timed camera sweeps, and red circles that all look like places someone I love could die.
He has been quiet for almost an hour. Not cold-quiet, but working-quiet.
The kind where every word has to fight its way past the part of him calculating angles.
I appreciate that, even while I want to rip every wire out of the wall and ask why none of his glowing maps can tell me whether my sister is afraid right now.
Homer kneads my thigh with one paw, claws catching through my leggings.
“Ow,” I mutter. He blinks up at me, deeply unrepentant, then curls tighter in my lap.
My phone buzzes, and I snatch it so fast Homer startles and digs in with both front paws.
“Son of a—” I hiss, lifting him with one hand while reading the screen.
Shiloh.
No change. Stable. Still sedated. Nash’s men outside the door. I’m here. Cal’s not alone.
I read it twice. Then a third time. The words do what they are supposed to do and still fail to reach the place in me that keeps imagining Cal waking alone, confused, with strangers touching tubes and machines.
Shiloh is there. Nash’s men are there. Deacon has already killed one of Isabel’s girls for trying to get too close.
Cal is not alone.
I place the phone on the table with more care than necessary.
Ever glances over. “Cal?”
“Stable.”
His shoulders relax. “Good.”
“Good might be stretching.”
He doesn’t argue.
A door opens upstairs. Low voices move through the cabin, then footsteps come down the hall. Two sets. One measured and heavy enough to be Nash. One nearly silent until the last few feet, when the floor gives him away.
Nash steps into the war room first.
He looks like the night wore him down and then thought better of finishing the job. Dark coat damp with rain. Hair pushed back. Jaw rough. His eyes find me immediately, take inventory, and move on only after deciding I am in one piece.
Deacon comes in behind him, in black from throat to boots, a folded piece of paper in one hand. His gaze moves to Homer, then to me.
“Little ghost.”
“Did you bring my sister?”
“Not tonight.”
My chest squeezes. “So you…found a way?”
Nash closes the door. “We found a way to get her. I think.”
Every loose, frantic thing inside me goes still at once.
Homer tries to climb higher, sensing the emotional weather and choosing self-preservation. I set him on the floor. He trots under the table and sits on Ever’s boot.
Traitor.
I stand. “Tell me.”
Nash looks at Ever. “Shiloh?”
“At the hospital. Cal’s stable. No new access attempts. Two of your men are outside the ICU, one in the stairwell, one near the nurses’ station. I have eyes on three angles and a trigger on his chart access.”
Nash nods. “Good.”
“Delia,” I say.
His attention comes back to me. “Sabine confirmed she’s alive.”
The first breath leaves me too fast. “Has she hurt her?”
“Might have bruised her a little. She’s being watched closely. No confirmed breaks or major injuries.”
No confirmed. Those two words make me feel sick. What the hell is Isabel doing to Delia—carefully, privately, where eyes can’t see?
Deacon lays the paper on the table and smooths it with two fingers. A schedule. I recognize none of the names, but the shape of it is familiar from every hospital and event board I have ever seen. Times. Routes. Initials. A luncheon. A foundation. Sainte Aurelia.
“Isabel intends to bring Delia out publicly,” Nash says. “A foundation luncheon at Sainte Aurelia. Old convent property. Donors, board members, some press. She has to make Delia visible after the gala or rumors start taking shape.”
“Rumors that Delia helped me.”
“Yes.”
My throat tightens. “So Isabel dresses her up and parades her around to prove she’s still obedient.”
Deacon’s eyes stay on the paper. “That is the public purpose.”
“And the private one?”
Nash’s jaw shifts. “To show Delia she’s still Mother Superior’s puppet, I would imagine. That she can still be put on display and made to do whatever Isabel wishes, even after she’s corrected her behavior.”
The word corrected hits wrong.
It is too tidy. Too soft. The kind of word people use when they want cruelty to look like parenting or discipline or faith. It belongs in Isabel’s mouth. That alone makes it vile.
“What does that mean, corrected?”
Deacon answers, shifting restlessly. His eyes refuse to meet mine. “I’ve seen it before, but not with Delia. It depends on who is watching.”
“I’m watching now.”
His gray eyes lift to mine. “It will mean pain. Humiliation. Sometimes ritual. Isabel likes to make a punishment feel earned.”
The room tilts for half a second.
I put a hand on the back of the chair. “And you were going to wait for this luncheon?”
“We were going to use the movement,” Nash says. “Not the punishment.”
“She’s being punished right now.”
“Likely not yet. I think Isabel is saving it.”
“Likely.” My voice rises, and I force it lower because yelling will not move Delia one inch closer to me. “You said there is a way to get her.”
“There is.” Nash taps the schedule. “House extraction is a losing move. Isabel’s property is too controlled, and if we hit it blind, Delia becomes collateral before we reach the room.
The luncheon gives us vehicles, timing, witnesses, staff movement, and a route Isabel will hesitate to turn into a bloodbath. ”
“Isabel did not hesitate to turn a masquerade into one.”
“She controlled the terrace and meant to control the chapel. Different conditions.”
“I don’t care about conditions.”
“I know.” His voice holds, steady and maddening. “You still need to hear them.”
I stare at him.
The command under the words reaches me before my anger decides whether to fight it.
That is Nash’s gift and curse. He can put structure around panic without making it feel like pleading.
I hate needing that. I hate how my body responds to the part of him that says stay with me, listen, breathe, survive.
“You may hate the plan,” he says. “But you need to hear it before you fight it.”
My fingers tighten on the chair, and Ever’s gaze flicks between us. Deacon goes very still.
Nash holds out his hand. “Come here.”
The room changes.
My pulse kicks once, then harder. “We’re discussing my sister right now, Nash.”
“We are.”
“And you want me to come over there.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re three seconds from bolting; now, come here.”
I swallow. He is not wrong.
I walk to him because refusing would look too much like proof.
He sits on the edge of the table, knees slightly apart, and pulls me between them with one hand at my waist. His palm is warm through my shirt.
His other hand comes to the back of my neck, thumb resting just beneath my ear, not squeezing. Holding.
My breath catches. He feels it.
“Look at me.”
“I am looking at you, jackass.”
“Not like you want to bite through my throat.”
“Just get on with it, already.”
His mouth barely moves. “Try.”
I meet his eyes.
Blue. Cold, if someone does not know better. I know better now. The cold is discipline. The heat lives underneath it, banked and dangerous and turned toward me with a focus that makes the rest of the room recede.
He lowers his voice. “If you come with us and Isabel sees you, Delia becomes a knife at your throat. You understand that?”
I want to deny it, but I can’t.
“In other words, she’s going to use my sister against me either way.”
“Yes. But if you’re not in reach, Delia gets men coming for her who can move without having to worry about you at the same time.”
My eyes burn. “You’re asking me to trust that while I sit here twiddling my thumbs, she won’t get hurt. That she won’t disappear for another fifteen years.”
“No.” Nash’s thumb moves once against my neck. “I am asking you to trust that we know she may get hurt trying to get her out, and we’re still making the move that gives her the best chance of leaving alive.”
I drop my head forward.
The truth is brutal enough that I almost prefer comfort.
I pull back, but his hand tightens at my waist just enough to keep me there.
“Stay.”
The word goes through me low.
“Nash.”
“Breathe first.”
“I don’t want to breathe.”
“Do it anyway.”
Anger flares, hot and automatic, and beneath it something else opens. A channel my body knows too well now. Nash giving an order. Me wanting to resist because resistance feels like freedom. Me obeying because, with him, obedience gives the panic somewhere to go.
I breathe in.
“Again,” he says.
I do.
His hand slides from my waist to my hip. Heat unfurls where his fingers press, slow and unwelcome and exactly where my body needs it.
“You have a job,” he says.
“Fuck you, Nash.”
The words come out low and tired, with no real heat behind them.
He kisses my forehead. “You’ll stay with Ever. You’ll monitor Cal updates. You’ll keep Homer contained, if such a thing is possible.”
Under the table, Homer chirps like he understands slander.
“And,” Nash continues, “you will not become Isabel’s second hostage because you are too stubborn to let the first one be rescued properly.”
The words cut.
I try to step back again.
His grip becomes iron.
“No.”
Every nerve in my body wakes.
Deacon turns his head away, granting privacy in the only way he knows how.
Ever stays at the console, but his attention returns to the screens with pointed intensity.
They know this part of Nash and me. They know the shape of it.
Control as care. Command as a hand around the part of me that wants to come apart.
Nash leans closer. “You can be angry. You can hate every second. You can curse my name while I am gone if that helps. What you cannot do is confuse staying behind with doing nothing.”
My throat works.
“When?” I ask.
“Within forty-eight hours,” Deacon says from the table. “Sabine confirms the morning of the luncheon. Until then, we prepare.”
Forty-eight hours.
Two days where Delia stays in that house. Two days where Isabel breathes near her. Two days where every clock in the world gets a little crueler.
I close my eyes.
Nash’s hand presses once at my hip. “Tell me the plan.”
I groan, and then I dutifully tell him the plan.
“You and Deacon use the luncheon movement,” I say. “Public place. Witnesses. Route already mapped.”
“Good.”
“Sabine gets you access before Delia is presented.”
“And your job?”
My jaw tightens. “I stay with Ever. Monitor Cal updates.”
“And?” Nash asks.
I look up at him. “Don’t put myself in Isabel’s path.”
His gaze holds mine. “Good girl.”
The praise hits low and hard, but he does not push it. He only rests his forehead against mine for one second, then lets me go.
That breaks me more than if he hadn’t.
“I am leaving soon,” he says quietly, “but not tonight. Tonight we sleep in shifts, reinforce the cabin, and prepare for the confirmation.”
“I really don’t want to wait.”
“I know.”
“I hate waiting.”
“We all know that.”
I look at Deacon. “And Sabine? She’s sure Isabel won’t move Delia before then?”
“No,” he says. “She’s sure Isabel wants an audience. That works in our favor.”
“Unless she changes her mind.”
“Then Sabine calls.”
That is the best answer anyone has.
It is nowhere near enough.
Ever turns one of the monitors toward me. “Hospital feed. Cal’s room. Hallway. Nurse station. I’ll keep them up.”
Cal lies small and still inside the tiny square of the screen. My chest aches.
Delia is somewhere else, behind walls I can’t see through. My father is dead because of this family. My mother is a ghost with a name I am not ready to say.
And Isabel is still alive.
I wrap my arms around myself.
Nash watches me for a moment, then says, “We make use of the time.”
“By doing what?”
“Learning the routes. Reviewing Sabine’s intel. Setting contingencies.”
“Cleaning weapons,” Deacon adds.
Ever says, “Sleeping.”
I laugh once. It sounds awful.
Nash’s expression softens for half a second before the war room takes him back. “Tomorrow, we prepare. The morning after—”
He breaks off as his phone chirps with a notification, his expression shifting, changing.
“What is it?” Whatever it is, it isn’t good. “Nash? Is it Cal? Is Cal okay?”
He looks up, his gaze meeting mine, then the others’. “Cal is okay. It’s Noir. That was Sonny…Noir is on fire.”