Chapter 13 Valentina
VALENTINA
Breakfast feels like walking into a trial I didn’t agree to attend.
The kitchen is already full when I come down: chairs pulled out at strange angles, the island crowded with plates, mugs scattered across every flat surface.
Someone burned toast. Someone else made eggs.
There’s a pot of coffee that looks like it’s doing more work than any of us.
Conversations overlap and break apart in pockets—low male voices, a handful of women, the hum of people who know they should be eating and sitting and existing like normal, even though nothing is.
The second my foot crosses the threshold, the volume drops.
Not to silence, not completely, but to something thinner. Edged.
Heads turn.
Faces tilt.
Eyes land on me.
Some of them soften in recognition. Little nods, quick smiles, that “morning, Val” cadence people have been practicing ever since Xavier went down and I got pushed into his chair.
Others just… look. Measuring. A few pairs of eyes narrow slightly, not in open challenge, but in the kind of suspicion that comes from too many rumors and not enough answers.
I force my shoulders back and walk toward the coffee like I don’t notice any of it.
It’s impossible not to notice.
As I move through the room, I can feel people shifting their bodies around my path.
A prospect scoots his chair in a little too close to the table.
One of the older council guys smears jam over his toast with more pressure than necessary, his gaze flicking up from under his brows, then down again.
Cassandra is at the far end of the island in a silk robe like she owns the whole district, one manicured hand wrapped around a mug, eyes cool and watchful as she tracks my progress.
I’ve always known she doesn’t love me. Tolerates, respects, tolerates again. Today her mouth presses into a tighter line than usual.
Someone mutters, “Morning, boss,” near the fridge.
Another, younger voice adds, “Morning, Val,” with genuine warmth, then falls quickly quiet.
There’s too much awareness. Too much pressure. Too much of everything.
The mole is a girl.
That bit of information slipped out two nights ago, and it’s been eating through the house like acid ever since.
Too many men suddenly trying to remember every conversation they’ve had with a woman in the last month.
Too many women suddenly aware that when someone says “we’ve got a leak,” what they really mean is “we’re looking in your direction. ”
Cassandra.
Jackie.
Talia.
And, though no one has said it aloud, me.
I reach the coffee pot and pour myself a mug, trying to keep my hand steady. The black liquid streams in a thin arc. A tiny tremor runs through my fingers anyway. It feels like everyone can see it.
“Milk?” a voice asks behind me.
I look up. One of the older women—Lupe, who’s been here since before I knew what the Raiders even were—holds out the carton. Her eyes are kind, but there’s a searching quality there, too, like she’s trying to match the girl she’s seeing to the leader she’s been told exists.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it. “You doing okay?”
“Could be worse.” She shrugs one rounded shoulder and glances toward the hall. “Could be better. That’s how it always is.”
Her expression tells me she’s talking about more than breakfast.
I hand the milk back and turn toward the long table.
Zay’s already there, sprawled in a chair like he’s been poured into it, long legs kicked out, one arm slung over the back.
There’s an empty plate in front of him and a half-eaten piece of toast in his hand.
He looks like he owns the room and doesn’t care enough to command it, and people respond to that in a way they never did with Xavier. Or with me.
When I reach him, he hooks his foot around the chair beside him and drags it out, nudging the seat with his knee.
“Sit,” he says quietly.
I do. Not because he told me to, but because my knees wobble more than I’d like.
Around us, conversations start to slowly resume.
The initial tension loosens, but it doesn’t disappear.
Some of the young guys down the table drift into a discussion about last night’s game, voices rising and falling in an imitation of normalcy.
A pair of older council members argue softly over numbers, gesturing toward a phone screen.
Behind me, I hear one of the prospects say, “Look, I’m just saying—Isaiah understands us. You see the way he handled that Riverside shit? And Asher? People respect him. He doesn’t have to raise his voice. He just walks into a room and people shut up.”
His friend mutters something I can’t make out, but I catch the end of it.
“…been different if Zay or Asher were in charge before. Maybe… I don’t know. We’d be less of a target.”
My spine goes rigid.
Zay’s jaw ticks once. He doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t call them on it. He just chews his toast and stares into the middle distance as if he’s thinking about something else entirely. He has to hear them. I know he hears them.
I’m not sure what hurts more—that they’re saying it, or that I almost agree.
Asher isn’t in the kitchen. He’s never here for the morning gossip.
He’s usually in the gym or on the phone or outside checking the perimeter before anyone else has wiped sleep from their eyes.
People would follow him into a burning building without question.
They already do; they just call it a Tuesday.
Zay is different. He slips into people’s lungs.
Into their laughs. Into their stories. He has charm Xavier never learned and I never wanted.
Men who used to side-eye, and wish death upon Xavier are suddenly talking about how they’d follow Isaiah if push came to shove, because he “gets it,” because he’s “one of us.”
I sip my coffee and try not to choke on the way that feels.
The mole is a girl, but it’s the boys they’re all looking to now.
“Don’t listen to them,” Zay murmurs.
“I’m not,” I lie.
His eyes flick to me. There’s a knowing there that makes me want to look away. I don’t.
“You know people talk when they’re scared,” he says. “They’ll say anything to convince themselves they’re still safe. That some other version of leadership would have magically prevented all this.”
His tone is light, but underneath it is something harder. Something that sounds like anger on my behalf.
“Doesn’t change the fact that they’re thinking it,” I say.
He tears his toast in half. “No. But knowing the way they think is better than being blind to it.”
I push my mug away, appetite gone. “Knowing doesn’t mean I can fix it.”
“Not overnight.” He leans back in his chair, watching the room with the lazy, hooded gaze that makes people underestimate him. “You’re doing the right thing. You’re looking at everyone. You’re making people nervous. That’s good. Nervous people slip up.”
Nervous people also shoot preemptively. But I keep that to myself.
Across the table, Jackie appears in the doorway with her baby balanced against one hip, dark curls escaping from a loose bun.
She’s in leggings and an oversized T-shirt that says NO SLEEP CLUB, hair wild, eyes sharp.
She looks like she could take on ten men while burping her daughter, and I’ve seen her do something close.
She surveys the room like a queen deciding who to punish today, then jerks her head toward the hall when she catches my eye.
“V,” she says. “Upstairs.”
Zay’s brows lift. “You in trouble?”
“Probably,” I say, standing.
He smirks. “You want backup?”
“Absolutely not.”
He taps the edge of my coffee mug with one finger as I go, like a silent promise that he’s still here. That he’s watching. That he’s not going anywhere.
I hope the mole isn’t listening.
Upstairs, the house feels like a different world. The noise from the kitchen fades into a low, distant murmur. The hallway is lined with doors cracked open, a few voices drifting out—someone talking on speaker, a TV playing a muted show, the clack of keys from someone’s laptop.
Jackie’s room is near the end of the hall. She’s already inside when I knock once and push the door open.
The space is warm and cluttered, clothes draped over a chair, a pile of clean laundry half folded on the dresser.
A crib sits near the far wall, filled with soft blankets and a mobile that looks like it was assembled at three in the morning on no sleep.
The bed is unmade, covers rumpled. It feels lived in, chaotic in a way that’s almost comforting.
Jackie is perched at the head of the bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched in front of her.
Her shirt is pulled up on one side, her baby latched to her breast, small fingers splayed against her skin.
Jackie doesn’t flinch when I enter. She doesn’t cover herself or rearrange anything.
Breastfeeding, like everything else, is just another thing she does in a day full of harder tasks.
Talia is at the foot of the bed, cross-legged, hunched over, arms wrapped around her own knees like they’re all that’s holding her together.
She stares at some fixed point on the carpet as if the pattern there is more interesting than the people in the room.
Her hair falls forward, partially hiding her face.
“Sit,” Jackie says. It’s not a request.
I sink onto the floor near the dresser, leaning my back against it. From here, I can see the side of Talia’s face—the faint bruising under her eyes, the tightness in her mouth. She looks like she’s here, but not really. Like she left some part of herself outside and forgot where.
“You look like shit,” I say softly.
She huffs out a small, humorless sound. “Love you too.”
Jackie adjusts the baby, one hand cupping the tiny skull, the other pressing gently at the back to keep the latch secure. Her fingers move with a practiced confidence that makes something twist in my chest—a mix of admiration and a quiet, aching envy I don’t have time to examine.
“Sleep?” I ask Talia.