Chapter thirty-nine
Roxy
Hospitals smelled like bleach, death, and bad decisions. I hated all three. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as I walked down the ICU hallway with a coffee I had no intention of drinking. Every pair of eyes in the waiting room tracked me immediately.
LBC and Phantoms alike. Exhausted. Bloody.
And above all, angry. The atmosphere felt like somebody tossed a lit match into a gas leak and told everyone to stay calm.
I almost turned around right then. Because this?
This was exactly how people ended up dead.
But then I saw Riven sitting outside Nadia’s room.
And fuck, he looked awful.
Not physically. Physically, he always looked a little fucked up.
Brooding and mean. Like he crawled outta somebody’s nightmare and decided to stay.
But there was usually something controlled about him.
Restrained. That restraint was gone now.
Completely. He sat hunched forward in the plastic hospital chair, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor with his head in his hands. Not moving. Not blinking much either.
Like if he stopped focusing for even one second, he’d shatter. Shane noticed me first. His expression immediately darkened.
“Why’s she here?” Riven looked up slowly. The second his eyes landed on me, the hallway temperature dropped ten degrees.
“Leave us.” He said quietly. Nobody moved.
“Now.”
That got them moving. Shane lingered the longest, visibly uncomfortable, before finally walking toward the elevators with Skylar muttering under her breath beside him. Pop remained at the far end of the hallway pretending not to listen. Cute. I leaned against the wall across from Riven.
“You look like shit.”
“You know what Olympus is.”
Straight to it, then. No greeting. No warning. No nothing. As if I was some stranger. As if we didn’t have history. As if we were the only reasons the other survived that mental hospital. I stared at him for a second. Then, I laughed once, short and humorless.
“Well. You certainly know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
“Answer me.” He glared.
The thing about Riven Devereaux was that most people thought his anger was the scary part. It wasn’t. It was the emptiness. Right now there was almost nothing behind his eyes except exhaustion and violence. I crossed my arms tighter.
“You should lower your voice.”
“You should start talking.” He retorted. The words cracked like broken glass. I glanced toward
Nadia’s room involuntarily. Still no movement, still asleep. I looked back at him carefully.
“How much did she tell you?”
“Not enough.”
“Clearly.”
That earned me a murderous look. Normally I’d push him further just for fun.
Not today. Because despite everything, despite how much I hated Nadia Slade for leaving him the way she did, seeing him like this made something ugly twist in my chest. He looked exactly like he did in the psych ward after his suicide attempt. Half-dead already.
“You need to understand somethin’ first,” I said quietly.
“I really don’t.”
“Yes. You do.” His jaw tightened.
“You think this is gang shit.” I gestured vaguely.
“Territory. Retaliation. The Kingsmen.”
“Isn’t it?” He asked.
“No.” That got his attention. Fucking finally. He leaned back slowly in the chair.
“Then what is it?” I rubbed my thumb against the coffee cup lid absently. A nervous habit. One I hated.
“Have you ever wondered why Stonebridge never changes?” He frowned.
“What?”
“No matter who runs what side. No matter who dies. No matter how many gangs rise or fall.” I tilted my head.
“This place stays rotten.”
“What does that have to do with Nadia?”
“Everything.”
He went still. And suddenly I wasn’t talking to the leader of the Phantoms anymore. I was talking to the patient from two years ago. The one sitting on the hospital roof at three in the morning, chain smoking cigarettes because he couldn’t feel anything and that terrified him more than death did.
“You know my uncle’s Naoya Hattori,” I continued.
“Yeah.”
“He funded the hospital I met you in.” Riven frowned harder.
“I know.”
“No,” I said quietly.
“You don’t.” His expression darkened instantly.
“Explain.” He demanded.
I looked down the hallway again instinctively. There was nobody nearby. Still, my pulse started climbing. Because saying too much about Olympus always felt dangerous. Like they could hear you somehow.
“My mother was connected to dangerous people.” I started carefully.
“The kind who believe blood matters more than anything.” Riven stayed silent.
“She struggled with addiction. And eventually, so did I.” I shrugged slightly.
“Olympus didn’t like damaged things.” Something flickered across his face at the word Olympus. Good. At least Nadia managed to say the name, tell him the basics before she got herself nearly killed.
“So Naoya dumped you in a psych ward?” He asked flatly.
“Basically.”
“And Olympus?” I hesitated. That alone told him enough. His eyes sharpened instantly.
“What is it?”
“It’s not one thing,” I explained.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not.” I snapped.
“It’s people. Power. Money. Control.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“Because you’re askin’ the wrong questions.”
“Then enlighten me.” He was irritated now.
I stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide how much to say. How much I even knew. Because the truth was? Most people connected to Olympus only saw fragments. You weren’t supposed to see the whole machine. Just your part in it.
“I heard the name growing up sometimes.” I finally admitted.
“Usually whispered. Usually right before somebody disappears.” Riven’s expression didn’t change, but his hands clenched slowly.
“My mother used to say Olympus owned cities before governments did.”
“That sounds insane.”
“Yeah?” I laughed bitterly.
“And yet somehow they always know where people are.” Nadia. The burner phone. The crash. I saw the exact moment those connections hit him. His face drained slightly.
“She knew,” He muttered.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.” That part was true, and I think he realized it. Because the anger faded briefly, only to be replaced by something worse. Fear. Real fear.
“She came back to Stonebridge looking for somebody.” I continued carefully.
“I figured that out after the cathedral.”
“The archives.” He surmised. I nodded.
“She was digging into the town’s history.” I paused.
“She found something.” He stood abruptly, the chair screeching backward loudly enough to make me flinch.
“What?” He snapped.
“I. Don’t. Know.” The hallway went silent. Even Pop looked over now; I lowered my voice immediately.
“We weren’t exactly best friends. I thought she was working with them; she thought I was one of them. It’s not like she trusted me enough to tell me everything.” Riven laughed once.
“Join the club.”
That stung more than it should’ve. Because despite how much I sometimes hated Nadia, I understood her. Secrets were survival. People like us learned that young.
“I know enough to tell you this,” I said carefully.
“Whoever hit Nadia? They’re bigger than the Kingsmen.”
“Then why use South side roads?” He asked in aggravation.
“Because somebody wanted you lookin’ there.” His eyes narrowed instantly. Good. He was smart when grief wasn’t drowning him.
“You think this was staged.”
“I think somebody very powerful just made Stonebridge blame the Kingsmen for something bigger.”
The silence afterward felt heavy. Complicated. Dangerous. Then quietly, Riven asked,
“What aren’t you telling me?” Too much. Not enough. I looked toward Nadia’s room again.
“The night her brakes were sabotaged.” He started. That got my full attention. I hadn’t expected him to mention it.
“Somebody was warning her.” He said.
“Of course they were warning her. Trying not to kill her. Yet .” I replied. Riven went deathly still.
“Whoever was after her wanted her scared first.” Saying it out loud made it sound even worse.
“Why?” He asked.
“Control.”
That word hung between us. Heavy and familiar. The same way abusive people controlled addicts. The same way gangs controlled neighborhoods. The same way Olympus controlled bloodlines.
“You’re still not telling me everything.” He said quietly.
“I can’t .” My voice cracked.
“Can’t?” I met his eyes finally.
“No. I mean literally can’t.” Something in my face must’ve convinced him, because for the first time since I got here, his anger faltered.
“You’re scared.” He realized. I laughed shakily. I wasn’t scared. I was petrified. I couldn’t go back to that fucking hospital. I couldn’t go back to them.
“Congratulations. You finally fucking noticed.” I sardonically smiled.
“Of who?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Because I genuinely didn’t know. That was the terrifying part. Olympus never had one face. Just whispers. Money, influence, violence. And somewhere inside all of it:
Nadia Slade.
“She told me something once.” He continued.
“What?” I asked curiously.
“She said her father spent her entire childhood turning her into a weapon.” I swallowed hard.
“Well, he did a good fucking job,” I muttered, recalling the pain I was in after the diner. That was my own, hot-headed self ’s fault; I should’ve never provoked her like that.
“She also said the people he worked for considered her unfinished business.”
The blood drained from my face. He was finally understanding this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t about territory disputes, race rivalries, or gang retaliation. This was something ancient. Personal.
“And now she’s lying in there because she came back.” He muttered.
“Yes,” I confirmed. The hallway fell silent again. Then softly,
“Why would she come back if she knew all this?” I knew the answer immediately.
For him.
For the LBC.
For Stonebridge.
For closure.
For revenge.
Because Nadia Slade loved too hard for someone who pretended not to feel anything at all.
And now she was paying for it. Riven scrubbed both hands over his face roughly.
“What do I do?” The question caught me off guard. Not because he asked it, but because he sounded genuinely lost. Like he finally realized brute force alone wouldn’t solve this. I thought carefully before answering.
“Find out what she learned.”
“How?”
“The archives. The burner phone. Whatever’s in her garage.” I hesitated before adding,
“And talk to Kendra.” His head snapped up.
“You know about Kendra?”
“She came looking for me. Nadia asked her to look into my past. Nadia trusted her.”
That meant something. In Nadia's language, trust was practically a marriage proposal. Riven looked toward Nadia’s room again. And for the first time since I arrived, I saw it. Not anger and not violence either. It was helplessness. Raw and ugly helplessness.
“What if she never wakes up?” He asked quietly. The question hollowed out the entire hallway. I looked at him for a long moment before answering honestly.
“Then Stonebridge burns with you.”