21. Nash
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NASH
By the time Ever sends the drone report, I already know the cabin is dead.
Not structurally. The glass held. The walls held.
The security systems did what I paid an obscene amount of money for them to do.
But a safe house only works while it’s unknown, and Isabel has seen the shape of this one now.
She has tested the windows, counted the response time, confirmed both sisters’ presence inside, and reminded every person under my protection that walls are only as useful as the enemy’s ignorance.
The cabin bought us time.
Now time is over.
I stand outside Cal Boudreaux’s ICU room with my phone in one hand and his latest labs in my head, already building the next move while a ventilator hisses behind the glass.
Shiloh left less than an hour ago after three arguments, two threats, and one attempt to charm a charge nurse into violating hospital policy.
He had not wanted to leave Cal. He had wanted to leave Reva even less.
I ordered him back to the cabin because the cabin had become a moving target, and Shiloh protects best when the thing he loves is in front of him.
Now he is at the penthouse with the others, or close to it, and I am still here, looking at a man who saved Reva’s life and wondering how I am going to tell her his body is making decisions none of us can command.
The doctor stands beside me with a tablet tucked against her ribs. Dr. Mehta is competent, direct, and tired enough not to waste comfort where facts are needed.
“His pressure dropped again twenty minutes ago,” she says. “We stabilized him, but his liver enzymes are climbing, and the repeat imaging shows more fluid than we’d like. Not catastrophic yet, but concerning.”
“Bleeding?”
“Possibly slow. Possibly inflammatory response from the initial trauma and surgery. We’re watching both.”
Watching.
I have developed a deep hatred for that word.
“What are next steps?”
“If he destabilizes again, we take him back to surgery. For now, we keep him sedated, support his pressure, monitor his labs, and repeat imaging in four hours.”
The urge to demand more is both strong and useless. I can buy specialists, equipment, security, and silence. I cannot buy Cal’s body into obedience. That truth sits poorly with me.
“He has family asking to come,” I say.
Dr. Mehta’s eyes soften by a degree. “The daughter?”
“Yes, Reva.”
“It would be best if she waited until morning.”
“She’s not going to like that.”
“I assumed.” A pause. “Then let me be clear. If she comes here tonight, it will be for her, not him. He’s heavily sedated and medically fragile. Any movement around him increases infection and security risks. You already know the second part better than I do.”
I look through the glass. Mehta is well aware of all of the cartel…infringements…we’ve had to take care of while her staff has done its best to rotate around us, business as usual. It’s not fair to them to do anything to drive that threat factor up by even the smallest amount.
Cal lies pale and still beneath a tangle of lines, the man reduced to breath sounds, monitors, numbers.
He should be at the cabin telling Reva not to glare at him and threatening to come down here himself with a weapon he has no business holding.
Instead, he is in a bed while I decide which truths will hurt her least and fail before choosing one.
“She needs him alive,” I say.
Dr. Mehta is quiet for a moment. “Then keep her alive long enough for him to wake up.”
I almost smile. It would have been better if she had given me medicine. Medicine has instructions.
I thank her, confirm the private security rotation, replace one man whose fatigue has started to show in his eyes, and send three more to the hotel before I leave.
One books the penthouse under a corporate account unrelated to Blackwood or Noir.
One takes the service elevator before the rest of the team arrives.
One walks through the lobby twice, once as a guest and once as a courier, to see who notices.
No one place is safe now, so I choose the most public one.
A swank hotel with too much staff, too many cameras, too many witnesses, two private elevators, a concierge level, underground parking, controlled service access, and enough wealthy guests to make a loud attack inconvenient for a woman like Isabel.
The penthouse is ridiculous. Five bedrooms, private terrace, reinforced entry, elevator access that can be locked down from both ends, and a floor plan Ever can turn into a trap if he has ten minutes and a bad mood.
I send the coordinates in a dead-drop file.
I do not text the address.
Delia was right. Isabel prefers people over systems, and I have no intention of giving her either if I can help it.
By the time I reach the hotel, the lobby is all polished marble, low gold light, orchids, and the quiet glide of money pretending it has never been afraid.
Two of my men are stationed near the bar as if they belong there.
Another reads a newspaper by the elevators, which is absurd but effective.
The concierge gives me a practiced smile and a key card he does not look at.
“Mr. Valiant,” he says. I don’t blink at the pseudonym, although I’d like to strangle whichever of my men thought it’d be cute.
“Any issues?”
“None, sir.”
Lovely.
I ride the private elevator alone and use the time to put my face back where it belongs.
Reva will see through it anyway.
The doors open into the penthouse foyer, and voices reach me before the suite does. Shiloh, low and amused. Ever, less amused. Delia, dry enough to scrape paint. Reva’s voice beneath them all, not laughing exactly, but close enough that something locked in my chest shifts.
For three seconds, I let myself stand in the entry and listen. Then I walk in.
The penthouse is exactly what money buys when subtlety gives up.
Floor-to-ceiling windows with a view to the city.
Pale stone floors. Dark wood. A living room large enough to hide a firing squad in good tailoring.
Room service covers the dining table: silver domes, white plates, baskets of bread, fruit, steak, pasta, enough coffee to float Shiloh and Reva through a minor apocalypse.
The terrace doors are locked. The curtains are half drawn.
Ever has already moved furniture to improve sight lines.
Reva sits at the table between Shiloh and Delia, holding a fork like she forgot what food is for.
Homer is in a soft carrier near her chair, judging the suite through mesh.
It’s open; he’s clearly decided against emerging just yet.
Deacon leans against the wall, pale around the mouth, one hand near the bandage at his ribs. He looks at me first.
Then Reva does. She’s up before I can say her name.
She crosses the room fast, no hesitation, no performance. When she reaches me, she puts both hands on my face and kisses me. Hard. Too brief. Too full of all the things she has been holding back since I left the cabin.
I catch her around the waist and pull her in.
For one second, the room falls away. My face goes into her hair. I breathe her in, shampoo and rain and stress, the faint clean bite of hotel soap from whatever shower she used here, and beneath it Reva. Warm skin. Fury. Home, though I have no right to put that word on a woman.
“I was worried,” I say.
It comes out rougher than I mean it to.
Her arms tighten around my neck. “I noticed.”
She pulls back enough to search my gaze. “We’re okay.”
I kiss her again, softer this time, because if I do not, I may tell her about Cal in the foyer with everyone watching, and I refuse to do that to her.
She sees it anyway.
Her expression shifts. “What?”
“Eat first.”
“No.”
“Reva.”
“Don’t use the voice. What happened?”
The room goes quieter behind her.
I look past her to Ever, then Shiloh. Shiloh’s face loses what little ease it had. He knows. Not the details, but the direction of them. He spent enough hours at Cal’s door to recognize bad news by the space around it.
Reva follows my gaze and goes still.
“No,” she says.
“He’s alive.”
The words come first because they must.
Her hand grips my jacket.
“He’s alive,” I repeat. “But he had a complication.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. “What kind?”
“Blood pressure dropped. Labs are worse. They’re watching for slow bleeding or a post-surgical inflammatory response. If he destabilizes again, they may take him back to surgery.”
She steps away from me as if the floor moved under her.
Delia rises halfway from her chair, then stops. Shiloh stands fully. Deacon shifts from the wall. Ever stays still because he knows movement can crowd a panic before it has somewhere to go.
“I need to go see him,” Reva says.
“No.”
The word leaves me before she finishes.
Her eyes come to mine. “Nash.”
“Not tonight.”
“He’s in the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“He’s alone.”
“He is not alone. He has two of my men in the hall, one by the elevator, one near the stairwell, and a nurse I trust more than most priests watching his room.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know.”
Her breath turns ragged. “He could die.”
“Yes.”
It is the truth. I hate giving it to her, but lies will only make me another person trying to manage her fear with pretty poison. Her face crumples for half a second before she locks it down. That almost kills me.
“Then I should be there.”
“You cannot help him by walking into Isabel’s best chance to take you.”
The color in her cheeks rises fast. “So this is another cage.”
“No.”
She gestures at the penthouse, at the windows, the table, the security men visible in the hall beyond the open door. “Really? Because it’s prettier, sure. Better view. Better sheets, I’m guessing. But I’m still being told where I can go and when I’m allowed to see the people I love.”
Shiloh says, “Yank—”
She whips toward him. “Don’t.”
He closes his mouth.