26. Nash
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NASH
NASH
I know because I am watching the numbers climb on the security feed with my phone in one hand, a gun on the table beside me, and a cup of coffee gone cold near my wrist. Ever stands at the dining room console with his laptop open, one earbud in, tracking the path he built for Shiloh through the city.
He has not sat down since the call came in. I haven’t asked him to.
Neither of us would listen if the other tried.
The private elevator slows. My hand closes around the gun, more habit than anything else.
Ever glances at the screen. “It’s them.”
Shiloh comes through first, jaw set hard enough to change the shape of his face. He has one arm around Reva, guiding her without making it look like she needs help. That is for her pride, not mine. I can see the state she’s in before they take three steps into the room.
Shaking. Badly.
Her hair is coming loose from its braid.
The hood of her sweatshirt hangs back, damp along the edges.
Her face is pale beneath the bright penthouse lights, eyes too large, mouth locked around whatever she has not let herself say.
There’s no blood on her that I can see, but I look anyway, carefully.
Hands. Sleeves. Throat. Waist. Legs. No obvious injury.
No glass. No red flowers blooming through fabric.
Alive.
Beside me, Ever exhales through his nose, sharp and quiet.
Reva’s eyes find mine.
For half a second, everything in the suite stops.
The hotel, the men posted beyond the door, Delia standing barefoot in the hallway with one hand on her doorframe, the scattered remains of room service no one finished.
All of it fades down to the girl in front of me, trembling after bullets and hospitals and a dead mother who’s no longer dead.
Something in me settles into an ancient kind of calm.
This is done. Over with.
Not so much the clock or Isabel’s threat—those things continue. But the way we’ve been handling it.
Moving after Isabel moves. Guarding what she targets. Patching holes after she opens them. Waiting for her to choose the next move, the next wound, the next person Reva has to watch bleed.
No more.
If Isabel wants a war played by rules, I’ll be writing new ones before breakfast. Reva was right.
Reva takes one step toward me. “Nash—”
“Delia.”
Her sister straightens in the doorway.
“Get her into bed.”
Reva’s head jerks. “What? No.”
I cross the room before she can build anything more around the word. Shiloh’s arm drops away from her, but he stays close enough to catch her if her knees make different plans. Reva’s chin lifts, anger trying to climb out from under shock.
I put two fingers beneath her chin and tip her face up to mine. The protest dies in her throat.
Her eyes search me. Wet. Furious. Exhausted. Past the anger, fear keeps moving, small and frantic, looking for a place to go.
“Sleep first,” I say. “Planning after.”
Her lips part.
She wants to argue. I can see the exact shape of it. Cal. Marisol. Deacon. Shiloh’s conversation. The car that followed her from the hospital. Every reason she should be awake, armed, and setting fire to the city with her bare hands.
I keep my fingers beneath her chin.
“I’m not dismissing you. I’m not cutting you out,” I say. “I just want you to get some sleep.”
Her breathing catches.
“You rest. Then we plan. I give you my word.”
She stares into my eyes for a long time, the circles beneath hers dark and haunted.
A full minute, maybe more. Long enough for Ever’s computer to beep softly behind me.
Long enough for Shiloh to shift his weight from one foot to the other and stop himself from speaking.
Long enough for Delia to watch us with the guarded attention of a woman who understands promises only matter when they cost something.
Reva weighs me. I let her. Then she nods once, small and barely there, the tiniest of concessions.
I press a lingering kiss to her forehead and release her chin. “Thank you, little wolf.”
Delia moves first, stepping from the hall with care for her knees. She does not reach for Reva at once. Smart girl. She comes near enough to be chosen, and after one ragged breath, Reva turns toward her without another sound.
Together, they move down the hall toward the bedroom Reva and I used earlier. Delia says something low that I do not catch. Reva shakes her head, then leans a fraction closer anyway.
The door closes behind them, and only then do I look at Shiloh.
He looks like a man who has used every joke in his body as kindling and now has nothing left to burn. Rainwater drips from the hem of his jacket onto the stone floor. His mouth is flat, eyes darker than usual, one hand still curled like it wants a steering wheel or a throat.
“Talk to me,” I say. “Then you can grab a few hours of sleep too.”
“I’m fine.”
“No one in this room is fine.”
Ever does not look up from the laptop. “Fact.”
Shiloh scrubs both hands over his face and follows me into the kitchen.
The penthouse kitchen is all marble counters and soft under-cabinet lighting, absurdly polished for the hour and the circumstances. Someone has left a silver tray near the sink with coffee service, half-empty cups, and a plate of untouched pastries.
I pour coffee because the ritual gives my hands something to do that’s not violent. The pot is fresh—courtesy of Ever, if I had to guess.
I lift the mug slightly toward Shiloh, but he shakes his head.
I take mine black and lean back against the counter. “Start with the hospital.”
Shiloh rests both hands on the island and lowers his head for a second. When he looks up, the performer is gone. No smile. No teasing glance. Only the man beneath, tired and angry.
I don’t think Isabel knows what she’s done in stripping Shiloh back to this.
“Reva found a woman in Cal’s room,” he says. “Marisol Hart.”
The name sits between us.
I knew it was coming. Deacon’s message after the chapel had been brutally short: Reva discovered Marisol. Alive, with Cal. Explain later.
Even prepared, hearing the name spoken aloud changes the air. Ever’s fingers pause on the keyboard in the other room, then resume.
Shiloh continues. “She didn’t recognize her at first. Saw her with Cal. Holding his hand. Talking to him like…” He stops, jaw flexing. “Like she loves him.”
“She does.”
His eyes cut to me, and I hold his stare.
The question comes silently, sharp and betrayed, because Shiloh has always hated secrets more than he hates danger.
Secrets make a fool of charm. They turn good intentions into traps. They make every man standing in front of the lie look complicit, whether he meant to be or not.
And I have been standing in front of this one for a long time. But it was never my secret to reveal.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I know it for the lie it is. When Reva gave me her trust, her love, shouldn’t I have stopped keeping the faith for anyone else? Isn’t that how this is supposed to work?
Deacon too, though I can’t judge him for the same sin I’m standing in.
Jesus, this is complicated.
And Reva will probably uncomplicate it for both of us in spectacular Reva fashion.
I scrub a hand across my forehead, suddenly weary.
“I did not know she would be there tonight,” I say.
“That’s a careful answer.”
“It’s an accurate one.”
“But you knew she was alive?”
“Not until recently.”
Some of the heat in his face eases.
I do not deserve full credit for ignorance, so I move him along before either of us gives it weight. “What did she say?”
Shiloh looks toward the hallway where the girls disappeared. “After Reva saw her, Deacon took her to Cal. I went to the chapel. Marisol was still there.”
“You left Cal?”
“With Deacon and Reva, yes.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Isabel had Delia after the massacre. Cal had Reva. Deacon made the opening and protected the lie that Isabel’s orders had been carried out.
Isabel believed Reva had been killed, at least at first. Marisol had a choice: go with Cal and Reva and leave Delia completely under Isabel, or stay where she could soften whatever she could.
” His voice goes rough. “She chose the daughter who didn’t have Cal. ”
Silence moves through the kitchen.
A pipe ticks somewhere in the wall. Rain taps against the terrace glass. Outside the suite door, one of my men shifts his stance.
Ever steps into the kitchen doorway. He has the laptop tucked under one arm, eyes grim. “That tracks, and honestly…I can’t altogether blame her.”
“Yes,” I say.
Shiloh’s gaze drops to the coffee I am not drinking.
“Marisol said Deacon carried messages when he could. Proof of life, never place. Cal sent school photos with backgrounds cut away. Coded notes. Pieces. Enough for her to know Reva lived, but never enough for Isabel to trace her if the messages fell into the wrong hands.”
I stare into the mug.
I think of Reva as she arrived here tonight, shaking in Shiloh’s hands because the floor of her entire life had shifted under her. I think of Delia on a hotel bed trying to coax her sister into sleep. I think of Cal in ICU, silent with the truth locked behind sedation and a tube.
This family is an open wound.
“And the attack?” I ask.
Shiloh’s face hardens. “Tail picked us up after the hospital. Dark sedan. I tested it. It followed. I called Ever before it got messy.”
“It got really messy,” Ever says.
Shiloh gives him a look. “That’s one way to describe a man leaning out a window and shooting at us.”
Ever ignores that. “The sedan had been waiting two blocks from the hospital. Not directly outside. Smart enough to avoid our static team, close enough to catch an unscheduled exit.”
“Isabel?” I ask.
“Likely,” Ever says. “The men we pulled from the vehicle are being identified. One dead. Two left for police with the right items missing. My people got plates, prints, weapons photos, and phones before disengaging, but it’s obvious who it was, what their goal was.”