Chapter 24
EVELYN
As the miles fell away under the car wheels, the silence grew more and more stifling.
It felt like everything was closing in on me from all sides.
Even the air felt too heavy. The guys had tried to talk to me a couple of times, but I just cut them off with a quick shake of my head.
I didn’t want to hear their comforting words.
I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to feel the weight of this mistake that I had made.
I needed to feel it. It was my responsibility to protect the Archers, not theirs.
I thought we were finally getting ahead of Drake, and it turned out he was three moves ahead of me this whole time.
It felt like I was watching the Archers crumble in real time.
The anonymity that protected us was gone.
And I needed to figure out how to mitigate the fall out, but my brain just wouldn’t focus.
My phone buzzed in my lap. I knew it was probably my lieutenants wanting to know what to do now, but I didn’t have any answers for them.
I tried to wrack my brain. Half-formed ideas came and spun away.
The bump of the car pulling into the garage jolted me out of my thoughts.
“We need to game plan our next move,” Alexander said once we all filed out of the car and into the elevator.
“I know,” I said. I tried to keep the snap out of my voice, but I wasn’t sure how successful I was. “I’ll meet you up at your apartment in a minute.” I pressed the button for my floor.
“Evie,” Sebastian started. “You’re not alone—”
“I know,” I cut him off. “I just need a minute.”
I did know they were there for me. But this was bigger than just us. My whole organization had just been thrust into the spotlight. I had to figure that out first, and then we could deal with Drake.
“A few minutes,” Marcus agreed as the elevator stopped at my and Adrian’s floor. His arms were folded across his chest as he leaned against the back wall next to Adrian.
Alexander caught my arm as I stepped out. His intense eyes stared into mine like he could read my thoughts. Of all of them, Alexander probably could. I braced myself for him to say something, but he just pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“We’re right upstairs.”
The elevator doors closed behind me, carrying them upstairs. Away from me and the shitshow I had to handle.
I stepped into my apartment and shut the door.
I leaned back against it, looking at the ceiling and blowing out a breath.
The apartment was dark. The stormy weather had followed us from the SID safehouse to the city.
Other than the occasional crack of thunder, the apartment was devoid of sound.
Usually, the silence would be comforting.
It had been in the past. But now, the lack of sound gave the perfect backdrop for my spiraling thoughts.
I slid down the door, my knees to my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my forehead into my knees.
The press conference played on a loop behind my eyes, whether I wanted it to or not.
The moment Drake blew our anonymity all to hell and accused us of trafficking women all in the same breath with the fucking police chief standing beside him.
The footage of us moving through the railyard.
The Archers symbol on the train car wall that I stupidly painted as a taunt was now on display for the whole city to see.
I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes.
I had built the Archers to move in the shadows.
It was how we kept people safe. It allowed us to move quietly around the city and save people.
It allowed the Archers who had day jobs to be Archers while still protecting their identity and their livelihoods.
If they couldn’t see us, couldn’t identify us, then we could keep doing the work that mattered.
Keep saving the people the system failed.
Get justice for those who would never had the chance otherwise.
I had been so freaking careful, and then in a moment of stupidity, thinking I could bait Kingfisher into making a move, I outed us.
I gave him ammunition to come after me and everyone in the Archers.
And now they were relying on me to get them out of this.
My phone had stopped buzzing sometime between when I got off the elevator and stepped into my apartment.
Maybe they weren’t relying on me to get it figured out.
I wasn’t sure if that thought made it better or worse.
A knock at the door pulled me out of my head.
It was probably one of the guys checking in on me.
It had definitely been longer than the few minutes I’d said I needed.
I still didn’t have any answers, but I had to stop burying my head in the sand and face this head on.
I stood and unlocked the door, swinging it open.
Izzy stood in the doorway, holding two bags of takeout.
From the logo on the bag and the delicious smells wafting from them, she had hit up my favorite Italian place on the way over.
Behind her, Maya had a bottle of wine in each of their hands.
Liam was carrying a third bag of takeout in one hand and his backpack slung over his other shoulder.
Danny had his arm around Grace, who was moving carefully, but had a stubborn look on her face that I recognized.
I blinked at them for a few seconds. What were they doing here?
“Are you going to let us in?” Izzy asked, raising her eyebrow at me.
I stepped back, and they filed past me. They moved through my dark apartment like they had done this a million times.
I suppose we had had a million meetings but not in this space before.
Not under these circumstances. Maya found the light switch while Liam started clearing space on the coffee table.
Danny steered Grace to the couch, fussing over her every step.
Grace took it with a resigned sort of look on her face, like she had been dealing with his hovering for weeks and just decided to accept it.
Everyone else took seats around the couch while I was frozen by the door.
“Sit,” Izzy said to me, firm but not unkind.
On autopilot, I sat, still wondering why they were here.
Izzy opened the first bag, and the smell of garlic and tomato sauce hit me. “Is that—”
“Lasagna,” Maya confirmed, already pulling out the containers from the other bags and passing them around. “And they gave us extra breadsticks because Liam told them it was an emergency.”
“I said it was an emergency adjacent situation,” Liam muttered from his place on the floor across the coffee table. “There’s a difference.”
Danny pressed a glass of wine into my hand without asking and dropped into the armchair next to Grace. “Eat something first,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”
I opened my mouth to argue.
“Evelyn.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Eat.” The tone was one he had used on me many times over the years, particularly when he thought I was teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. He probably wasn’t wrong in this case.
I stifled my sigh and dug into my lasagna. It was good. It always was. But it wasn’t as good as Alexander’s. I wrinkled my nose.
“What’s that face?” Danny asked. “You love their lasagna.”
“It’s nothing. The lasagna is great.”
“That was not a nothing face.”
“Danny.”
“Evelyn,” he shot back.
I rolled my eyes. He was like a dog with a bone, and I knew he wasn’t going to let it go. “Fine. Alexander’s is better. That was the face.”
Danny screwed up his face, and the others laughed at him.
“Awww that’s so sweet,” Maya said. “I could vomit.”
Liam dramatically scooted away from them, and Maya threw a breadstick at him.
The familiar banter eased something in my chest. Not all the way, but enough that it felt like I could breathe.
“Okay,” Grace said once the laughter settled. Her voice was quieter than the others; it always had been, but the edge of command in it had me sitting up straighter. “Talk to us.”
I sighed, placing my fork on my plate. “I fucked up.”
“Bullshit,” Grace cut me off. “You didn’t fuck up. No one could have guessed that would have been his next move.”
“I should have seen it coming, though,” I argued.
“Why? With your powers of telepathy?” Grace argued back. “You’re not omnipotent, even though you want to act like you are.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t act like I’m omnipotent. I know I’m not.”
Danny grimaced, and I narrowed my eyes at him. He shrugged off my glare like he always had. “Sorry, but I have to agree with Grace. You take on too much, Eve. You always have.”
“The Archers are my responsibility. That’s part of the job,” I argued, but it sounded weak even to my ears.
“But they’re not just your responsibility,” Danny said. “You’ve taken it on, but we’re in it with you. We chose this. Every single person in the Archers chose to be here because we believe in the mission. That’s not exclusive to you.”
“He’s right,” Maya said. “We all chose to get involved. We knew the risks going into this. Hell, you saved me from the exact situation we save others from. This wasn’t like you hid the mission from us and pulled the wool over our eyes. Our eyes were wide open.”
Danny nodded. “You’ve spent years absorbing everything so the rest of us didn’t have to.
Every hard decision, every risk, every consequence, you put it all on your own shoulders, and we let you.
And that’s our fault, but none of us said anything because we could see you needed to do it that way. That you needed that control.”
“He’s right,” Grace said, rolling her eyes when Danny grinned at her. “And you know what that costs me to say that. But I’m also not going to sugarcoat it for you. You don’t get to decide what we can handle. That’s not protecting us. That’s just control with better intentions.”
Those words landed hard in my gut like someone had punched me in the stomach.
I had carried the mantle of leadership for so long, not letting anyone else in until the guys.
Even my lieutenants, my friends—well, my chosen family, actually—had tried.
But I hadn’t let them. I called it leadership, but it was really just my attempt to grasp at control.
When everything had felt so out of control in my life, I had started the Archers.
And as it grew, I held onto that control tightly.
I looked at Izzy. She was the only one who hadn’t spoken yet, but I knew from experience she probably had something to add. She smiled gently at me, reaching over to grab a breadstick before she spoke.
“Margaret Mead said something once. I’ve said it to you before, but I don’t know if you remember. Or if you remember, I don’t know if you heard it.” She held my gaze. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I blew out a breath. I had heard it before, but I understood what Izzy was trying to say to me now. A group of citizens. Not me. It wasn’t my job to change everything. It wasn’t only my responsibility.
“You didn’t build a criminal organization,” Izzy said. “You build a community, whether you see that or not. And communities don’t survive because one person holds everything together all the time. They survive because everyone does.”
I looked down at my hands. The lasagna was growing cold in the container in front of me, and my glass of wine was mostly untouched. Outside, the storm was still rolling in off the city, but inside the apartment, it felt like the atmosphere had lightened.
The Archers always felt like my mission.
Mine to carry and my job to ensure its success.
That made it my responsibility. I carried the weight of that responsibility.
Asking anyone else to carry that responsibility felt wrong.
But I wasn’t the only one who had been hurt.
They were right. They had chosen this too.
I had started the Archers after what happened to me, but the others had joined because they believed in the mission and the cause.
Our organization was full of stories like mine, and somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that.
This community, as Izzy called it, may have started with me, but every person believed in it.
They understood the risks, and it was time I started trusting them with the truth.
The full truth. If we were going to face Drake, we had to do it together.
The others had let me sit in silence, processing while they ate. I looked back up at Izzy and nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “So what do we do now?”
“You go get your guys,” Izzy said simply. “And then we make a plan. Together. All of us.”
I looked at each of them, and they all nodded in agreement.
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “Thank you, all of you.”
“This is what we do,” Grace said simply. “You’re not alone. You never have been. It’s our fight too.”
They had always been there for me. I just hadn’t let them in. But if we were going to face Drake and come out on top, I had to start, and that began now. My friends had given me the push I needed. Now I had to get my men and let them in after shutting them out tonight.