Chapter 2 Wolfe #2
Even after the blood started drying against my arms. Even after she was wheeled behind those fucking doors. I just stood there. Hands flexing at my sides like they didn’t understand what not holding her felt like anymore.
I sat down eventually. Couldn’t remember when. Couldn’t feel the chair under me. Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Thumb hovering. Not shaking. Just—deliberate.
I didn’t send a voice note. Didn’t call.
Just typed:
She sent me a pin. I found her in an alley. Broken. Breathing. Barely.
Saint Mercy Hospital. West Wing.
Come now.
I sent it to three people.
Barron.
Royal.
Loyal.
Then I dropped the phone face down on the chair beside me and leaned forward, elbows on my knees, fingers laced tight like prayer wasn’t something I did but was doing me.
The door opened twenty minutes later.
Barron walked in first—
Like he owned the fucking building.
Just like he always did.
His coat was still half-buttoned, boots loud against the tile. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask. Just scanned my face once and nodded. Royal followed close behind, jaw tight. Loyal came last, quiet as a blade.
None of them said they were sorry. None of them asked what happened. Because they knew. Barron didn’t look at me. He looked at her. And stopped walking.
I saw it hit him. The bruises. The blood. The curve of her shoulder where the fabric stuck to her skin. He didn’t speak right away. Didn’t step forward. When he did, it wasn’t to help. It was to witness. To remember. So he could bury whoever did this the right way.
“I told her this city would eat her alive,” he muttered. Not to me. To her. Like she could still hear. “Maybe she’ll listen now.”
My hand clenched into a fist. Rage flared for a second. But it was long enough. He set something on the metal tray beside the bed.
A folded piece of silk. Pale. Soft.
Camille’s scarf.
“She wore this the last time she felt safe.”
I didn’t look at it. I didn’t need to. The weight of it settled over the room like a curse. The doctor returned. Cleared his throat.
Barron didn’t move.
“She’s not to be touched without gloves,” he said flatly. “If she wakes up and finds strange hands on her again, you’ll answer for it.”
The doctor nodded.
Barron added without even looking at him, “You don’t speak to her. You speak to me.” He nodded at me, voice sharper. “Or him. If you’re braver than you look.”
The doctor froze. Didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe. Smart man. Barron folded his arms.
We both stood there, saying nothing. Watching her breathe. Like we were timing it. Like we weren’t sure how many she had left. And if one more breath was stolen—someone would pay.
The doctor returned twenty minutes later. I hadn’t moved. Neither had Barron. The room was too quiet. Too heavy. The kind of quiet that coats your teeth. That makes everything taste like metal and finality.
He stood just inside the door. Clipboard in hand. Hesitant. Like he knew there was a right way to speak—and a thousand ways to die. Cleared his throat once. Then again. The second time wasn’t for volume. It was for courage.
“She’s got three cracked ribs,” the doctor said without looking up. “One of them’s fully broken.”
His voice was too calm. Too practiced. Like he was reading it off a chart instead of listing the damage done to her.
“Nasal fracture. Left shoulder dislocated. Four fingernails torn out.”
A pause. A breath.
“Deep bruising along her spine, her left thigh… and her wrists.”
Another pause.
“Where she was restrained.”
My jaw clenched. Hard enough I felt something shift. I didn’t speak. Didn’t trust what would come out if I did. But the words found their way anyway.
“Motherfuckers.”
His voice thinned. “We’ll monitor for internal bleeding.”
Barron’s jaw ticked, his arms crossed tighter.
Still, he didn’t interrupt.
The doctor hesitated. “There’s evidence of... repeated impact. Systemic trauma. We’ll need to run a scan—”
“She conscious?” Barron asked.
A beat.
“In and out.”
“When she’s in—does she scream?”
The doctor flinched. Just a flicker.
“No. She... she doesn’t speak. But she…hummed.”
That part hit harder than anything else. The fractures were flesh. But this? This was soul-deep. She wasn’t mute from shock. She was holding something. Or trying not to lose it.
She didn't scream. Screaming was a gift. They didn't want answers. They wanted a message. They didn’t take the book. They took her silence. And for that? There would be consequences.
I didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. I stepped closer to the bed, slow enough that my coat whispered across the floor. Her hair was plastered to her cheek. A smear of dried blood at her temple. Her lip was cracked, split open like it had been chewed.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t stir.
Just lay there, wrapped in my hoodie. Breathing like it cost her something she didn’t have left to give.
I didn’t touch her. Not yet. Touch would make it real.
Touch would be too much. I stood at the foot of the bed and made a list. Not of names.
Not of men. But of methods. Of bones that would break.
Eyes that would never open again. Of the sound their kneecaps would make when they fell to the floor begging me for a mercy I’d never show them.
She gave them nothing. Not a name. Not a scream. Not a goddamn breath. So now? They would lose everything.
The room was dark now. No voices. No footsteps. No questions. Just machines. The monitors hummed low—too low. Her breathing stuttered between shallow pulls, each one like it had to claw its way out of her.
Barron had left an hour ago. Royal never came.
Loyal didn’t knock. He didn’t have to. When the door opened, he was already inside—like he’d always been here.
Sitting in the corner. One leg crossed over the other, arms folded.
Silent. There was no lamp on his side of the room.
No flicker of movement. Just shadow. Just him.
I didn’t speak to him. He didn’t speak to me. He knew why he was here. I stood at the foot of the bed, hands in my pockets, head slightly bowed—not in reverence.
In restraint.
The girl who once looked at me like I was both damnation and sanctuary lay there in a bloodstained hoodie, her fingers twitching through dreams I couldn’t reach.
She moved once in her sleep. A flick of her ankle. A twitch in her hand. Her mouth parted. A sound caught there—but didn’t escape.
I didn’t reach for her. Didn’t brush the hair from her cheek.
Didn’t kiss her temple like I used to in the moments between pain and surrender.
I just stood there. Watched her. Breathed with her.
Felt the war curling back through my ribs like it never left.
This wasn’t forgiveness. This was possession.
She gave them blood. And I? I left her with Loyal.
He was already watching. Already waiting. His nod was enough. He wouldn’t leave. Not until she woke. And even then—only if I told him to.
I parked three blocks from the apartment. The city didn’t look the same anymore. The alleys were quieter. The streetlights more distant. Everything I touched tonight felt like it had already died.
I didn’t hesitate. Just walked down the stairs, past the cold hum of the dryer still spinning in the corner, into the basement where she made her decision.
The panel in the wall was exactly where she said it would be. Cracked at the edge. Sealed, but rushed. Like regret had tried to cover its tracks.
I peeled it open with two fingers. There it was. Black cotton. Familiar weight. Still faintly warm. She hadn’t just hidden it. She’d buried it. Inside something that used to belong to me. Inside something I gave her the night she told me the dark didn’t scare her—only the silence after.
I unwrapped the bundle slowly.
The shirt folded tight around the ledger, like a body wrapped for burial. I pulled it free. The cover was smooth. Unopened since she took it.
She could’ve brought it to me. Could’ve placed it at my feet and asked for mercy. She didn’t. She left it in a wall and sent me a message with the photo.
A map. A breadcrumb. A dare. She gave me silence. So now? I would give her what silence earns.
I took the book. Took the hoodie. Left the wall open. Let the space gape like a wound. Let anyone who passed see how she tried to hold both sides—and lost.
She gave them secrets. She gave me war. And now? She would get exactly what she earned. No leash. No forgiveness. Just me.
And the consequences.