Chapter Twenty-Three
Callum
The bat’s light in my hand.
My fucking girl.
Didn’t call any of us.
Sent me to babysit a grown-ass man while she brought a bat to a gunfight.
And won.
One-on-one with Oksana.
I step over the body, barely looking at it.
My eyes flick to the others.
Men who had Juliet dead to rights.
We could’ve lost her today.
If I’d been one second slower noticing her tracker jump like that. If traffic had stalled. If…
The bat snaps through a crate’s corner with a crack like a gunshot.
Then another.
Splinters spray.
I can’t stop.
Next it’s my foot to ribs. Gunman’s body.
Time slips.
When it comes back into focus, there’s a mess on the floor and a lightness in my chest that wasn’t there before.
Heart still thudding, but slower now.
We didn’t lose her.
I didn’t show up late.
Didn’t fuck this up.
Not like everything else I touch.
She’s with Noah and Vitaly now.
Safe.
Loves me. Every jagged, rusted part of me.
I glance down at Oksana’s blank face.
Madness did that.
My Madness.
The woman who sees me. Matches me.
I pull out my phone and text Orion and Reid.
Me: Got an issue. Three. Bring snacks.
While I wait, I clean up. Crates get restacked. Guns get wiped. Bullets pried out and dropped into a Ziploc. Zip ties go on the wrists. Tarps down. No blood trails.
Less than an hour and they’re here.
Orion tosses me a lollipop.
I catch it without looking.
Reid whistles low. “Thought you were babysitting Vitaly?”
“Yeah,” I say, already bagging shell casings. “Talk while we clean?”
We fall into rhythm. Reid starts lifting bodies. Orion flicks open a blade and starts stripping anything traceable. Tattoos, jewelry, burner phones.
While we work, I tell them what happened.
“She fucking what?” Orion barks mid-wrap. Rage and panic behind every syllable.
“She acted,” Reid says, voice calm but not soft. “Like any one of us would’ve if we saw her, or each other, in danger.”
“Fucking bat,” Orion mutters, dragging the bigger of the bodies toward the back bay doors. “Goddamn baseball bat.”
“Is this it?” I ask Reid. “You’ve been tracking the case. Was Dmitry her only inside? Are we done?”
Reid pauses, flicking a flashlight over the room. “Yeah. She dealt with others, but none of them were linked. Dmitry was the only one with full access.”
“Will someone come looking for him?” Orion asks, yanking open the truck doors. “Or her?”
“Eventually,” Reid says, pulling a burner out of her jacket and snapping the SIM. “But I’ll torch her records. Clear Vitaly’s name from everything she had. No one’s coming for him.”
“So we can breathe?” Orion leans against the doorframe, stretching his back with a crack.
“Better than that,” I say. “We fucking celebrate. We’ve got a family business now. I’ll sign on. Make an honest living baking shit.”
“Fuck no,” Orion says instantly. “You stay out of the goddamn kitchen.”
“Asshole. I can make shit too.”
Reid wipes down a weapon and drops it into a duffel.
“We are celebrating though,” Orion says. “Vitaly’s free. Juliet’s still breathing. We’ve got two new family members.” He turns to Reid. “Yeah?”
I glance at him. “Yeah.” Offer my half-sucked lollipop. “He’s in.”
Reid shrugs, but there’s something almost shy in it. “Haven’t survived the group dinner yet. Elliot, Noah, Vitaly. They might not vote me in.”
I laugh. “Nah, man. Family dinner’s just a trial by fire to see if you can keep a bone while we roast the shit out of you.”
“Oh, and the new rule is Vitaly gives you a nickname that no one understands,” Orion adds. “We all have to Google our own names now.”
“No matter what it means,” I say, grinning. “That man could say booger in Russian and Juliet’d come.”
We all laugh.
We’re almost done. Two bags zipped, the third waiting. Reid’s hunched over it with his black light, methodical as hell.
Orion’s dragging a crate to block the loading bay camera.
Everything feels almost normal.
Too normal.
My grip tightens on the bat. Knuckles pop.
Orion notices. Of course he does. Man’s a battering ram with the emotional perception of a wolf.
He straightens, wipes his hands on his jeans, and gives me that look. The one he only gets when he’s about to pry open a lid I’ve nailed down.
“You good?” he asks.
“Peachy.” I don’t look at him. Start wiping down the bat that’s already spotless.
Reid clicks his light off. “Callum.”
My name hits me like a shoulder check.
I swallow. Hard.
“She could’ve died,” I say. “I saw her blip on that tracker jump three blocks in under a minute. I didn’t know if it was her running or someone dragging her. I didn’t know if I’d get to her before…”
My jaw locks.
Words jam.
I shake my head.
“If I’d been two minutes later, we’d be zipping her into this bag.”
Orion’s quiet for a beat. Then he crosses the room and grips the back of my neck hard enough to ground me. Forehead to mine for half a second, just breathing.
It’s the kind of thing you don’t joke about after.
“You got here. You stopped it. That’s the only part that matters.”
“It’s not,” I snap. “She didn’t call me.”
Reid’s gaze sharpens. He’s cataloging. Understanding. “She didn’t call any of us. She wasn’t choosing you out. She was choosing the bat.”
Orion huffs a dry laugh. “Classic Juliet.”
“That’s not the point,” I say, but it is.
Reid tilts his head. “You were scared you’d get there and she’d already be gone.”
The words land too clean. Like he carved them out of me.
I stare at the floor.
“I got stuck at a red light,” I say. “Watching that dot move away from me. I’ve never… I’ve never felt that kind of nothing before.”
“You made it,” Orion says.
“I might not next time.”
“Then we don’t give her a next time,” Reid says. “We change the rules.”
“You think she’s gonna follow rules?”
“No,” Orion says. “But we will. We don’t let her go in alone again. Ever.”
Reid nods. “This isn’t about letting her fight. She’ll always fight. It’s about making sure she doesn’t do it alone.”
I nod. Swallow hard. The floor’s blurry for a second but I blink it back.
Orion swears under his breath. Steps in and knocks his shoulder into mine. “Hey. We’re not losing her. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not fucking ever.”
Reid joins us, folding his arms. “And we’re not losing you either.”
I blink at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” Reid says. “Then stop acting like you have to carry the whole family alone.”
I step back, wipe my face on my shoulder, and look at the warehouse.
One woman with a baseball bat.
The math doesn’t work.
“She walked in solo,” I say. “Armed guards. Oksana with a gun. And she came out the other side like she was fucking born for this.”
Orion’s jaw tightens. “She did what needed doing.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But that’s not the point.” I turn to them. “The point is she knew she could do it alone.”
Reid understands first.
I can see it click.
The same realization I just had.
“She was protecting him,” he says. Not a question.
“All of us,” I correct. “She didn’t want any of us carrying that. Didn’t want blood on our hands that wasn’t necessary.”
Orion laughs, sharp and bitter. “She’s so fucking ours.”
“She always was,” I say. “We just didn’t know how much.”
I look at the bat one more time. Think about her swinging it like it was nothing. Like she didn’t just change the entire equation.
“We’re gonna have to be better,” I say. “All of us. Because she just showed us what she’s capable of when she decides she doesn’t need us.”
“Then we make sure she wants us,” Reid says. “Not needs. Wants.”
Orion nods slow. “She wants us. But yeah. The wanting’s not the same as the needing.”
I slip the bat under my arm, wipe my hands one final time, and head for the door.
“Come on. We got a family to tell about this. Elliot’s gonna lose his goddamn mind,” I say.
“Noah too.” Orion points at me with his chin. “It’s like the goddamn Three Musketeers. But times two.”
“You good?” Reid asks. Tone serious.
I breathe out, slow. Shaky. “Yeah,” I say. “Good.”
“Hell yeah.” Orion smirks. “Because if you die of stress, I’m stuck taking Reid to family dinner alone. Look at him. He’s brittle. He’ll break under Juliet’s bullshit in five minutes.”
“That’s rich,” Reid says.
I like the sound of them bickering.
Reid’s a good fit.
Who’d have thought a cop would slot right in.
Juliet always knows best when it comes to us strays.
For the first time since her tracker blipped, my chest doesn’t feel like it’s being wrung out by a fist.