Chapter Forty-One
Riven
Nadia kept guns in the weirdest fucking places. Under floorboards. Inside air vents. Taped beneath drawers. One time I found a knife duct taped behind her showerhead, and when I asked why, she looked me dead in the eye and said,
“Home intruders never check the plumbing.”
Psychotic. Hot, but psychotic. Now I stood alone in her garage at three in the morning, surrounded by pieces of her life while she lay unconscious in a hospital bed because somebody wanted to send a message.
Nadia’s garage felt haunted without her in it.
Not haunted like ghosts, haunted like memory.
Every inch of the place was unmistakably her.
The walls lined with tools arranged in terrifyingly perfect order.
Half-taken apart engines sprawled across workbenches.
Racing maps pinned beside old polaroids.
Burn marks in the concrete from nights she got too impatient welding shit together.
The air smelled like gasoline, cigarettes, and her perfume.
It made my chest ache so violently I had to stop moving for a second.
Three days.
Three fucking days she’d been unconscious.
Three days of machines breathing for her.
Three days of hearing doctors say words like swelling and internal bleeding and critical condition.
Three days of imagining what her funeral would look like before immediately wanting to put my fist through something for even thinking it.
I braced both palms against her workbench and lowered my head.
Get it together. Falling apart wouldn’t help her.
Finding the bastards who did this would.
The burner phone sat disassembled beneath the desk lamp beside my laptop.
Tiny screws and wiring scattered around it alongside Nadia’s notes.
Most people would look at the mess and see chaos.
I saw obsession. Because Nadia didn’t fear.
She did fixation. When something got under her skin, she chased it until she either got answers or burned herself alive trying.
And whatever she found in those archives?
It consumed her. The laptop screen flickered before Kendra’s face appeared in the corner.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“You sleeping at all?”
“No.”
“Figured.”
Kendra adjusted her glasses and started typing again, multiple monitors glowing behind her somewhere in Colorado. Nadia once told me Kendra could hack into federal databases before finishing her morning coffee. I believed it.
“You sort through the rest of Nadia’s notes yet?” She asked.
“Trying to.”
“Good luck. She writes like a conspiracy theorist with a nicotine addiction.” A humorless laugh escaped me. That sounded exactly like Nadia. Kendra’s expression softened briefly.
“She’s gonna kill us both if she wakes up and finds out we touched her stuIf the word "hit" was wrong immediately.tely. I ignored it.
“She told you about Olympus?” I asked. Kendra nodded once.
“The basics.”
“Same here.”
The room fell quiet except for typing. Olympus, even thinking the name too long, made my skin crawl now.
A hidden organization. Old money. Control.
Bloodlines. Nadia told me enough to understand it was dangerous, but never enough to fully see its shape.
She never explicitly told me about it until that night at the clocktower.
Every conversation about her past, her father, ended the same way: with her getting frustrated, pacing around, chain smoking cigarettes while muttering about Stonebridge and her father and things not adding up.
At the time, I thought it was trauma talking.
Now? Now I knew better.
“She was getting worse before the crash,” Kendra muttered. I looked up sharply.
“Worse how?”
“Obsessive.” That tracked.
“She stopped sleeping.” Kendra kept typing as she spoke.
“Would call me at four in the morning ranting about mining routes and shipping paths and old town maps.” I frowned.
“Why?”
“She thought Stonebridge was connected to Olympus somehow.” The words settled heavily in the garage.
“She already knew Olympus had ties here.” I pointed out.
“No.” Kendra shook her head.
“Not gang ties. Foundational ties.” My stomach twisted slightly.
Foundational. Like the town itself. I glanced down at the maps scattered across the desk. Old territory lines. Mining roads. Handwritten notes in Nadia’s sharp, messy handwriting. North side. West side. East. South. The original routes.
“She thought the gangs were puppets.” Kendra continued quietly.
“What does that mean?”
“She thought somebody wanted Stonebridge divided.”
That made too much fucking sense. The gangs spent decades bleeding each other dry while somebody else profited behind the scenes. Kingsmen, Phantoms, LBC, all too busy fighting to notice who actually owned the damn board. I rubbed a hand over my jaw.
“She find proof ?”
“That’s what she was trying to do.”
“And the burner phone?” Kendra’s face darkened slightly.
“That thing’s weird.”
“How weird?”
“The signal routing makes no sense.” I leaned closer.
“Explain it in English.” She rolled her eyes.
“Whoever sent those messages masked them through old relay systems buried beneath Stonebridge.”
“The mines.”
“Exactly.” A cold sensation crawled slowly down my spine. Nadia had been right. The mining routes mattered.
“They’re piggybacking off infrastructure that technically shouldn’t even still work.” Kendra continued.
“So, somebody maintained it.”
“Bingo.” Silence settled between us.
Because that meant money. Power. Planning. Not random gang violence. Something older, more organized. I looked back down at Nadia’s notes again. One page in particular kept bothering me. A symbol sketched repeatedly in black ink. Three vertical pillars wrapped in a circle. I picked it up slowly.
“Kendra.”
“Yeah?”
“You recognize this?” She stopped typing immediately. The shift in her expression was subtle but noticeable.
“…where’d you find that?”
“In Nadia’s notes.” Kendra leaned closer toward her screen.
“She found this?”
“Apparently.”
“Fuck.” That got my attention fast.
“What?”
“I’ve seen versions of that symbol attached to Olympus accounts before.” Every muscle in my body tightened.
“What kind of accounts?”
“The kind rich people use when they don’t want money traced back to them.” Fucking hell.
“She thought it represented the founders,” Kendra muttered mostly to herself.
“Founders of what?”
“I don’t know.” That part sounded genuine. Which somehow made it worse. Because if even Kendra didn’t know what Nadia stumbled into-
- then whatever this was went deep.
“She said Stonebridge was built like a maze,” Kendra added quietly. I frowned.
“What?”
“She kept saying the original routes weren’t just for mining.”
Before I could ask more, headlights suddenly swept across the garage windows. Both of us froze. A
car engine hummed outside. Slow and deliberate. Kendra’s expression sharpened instantly.
“You expecting company?”
“No.”
The engine outside stayed running. Not leaving, not moving. Waiting. Every instinct in my body immediately went feral. I left the laptop and killed the overhead light in one motion. Darkness swallowed the garage except for thin streaks of moonlight bleeding through the windows.
Outside, a car door opened. Then, another.
More than one person. Fuck. I moved silently toward the wall beside Nadia’s tool chest and reached underneath automatically.
Of course she kept a gun taped there. I wrapped my fingers around the pistol just as footsteps crunched across gravel outside, slow and measured.
Not drunk. Not reckless. Intentional. Like whoever stood outside already knew exactly where I’d be. Kendra’s voice lowered through the laptop speakers.
“Riven.”
“I know.” Another crunch of gravel. Then three knocks hit the garage door. Calm. Controlled. A strained voice suddenly called through the metal.
“Devereaux.” I froze. Because I recognized it instantly. It was Naoya Hattori. My grip tightened around the gun automatically.
“What the fuck?” Kendra muttered through the speakers. Outside, Naoya spoke again, voice tighter this time.
“You need to open the door.”
Something felt wrong immediately. Naoya never sounded uncertain.
Ever. I moved toward the garage slowly and cracked it open just enough to look outside.
The sight waiting for me made my stomach drop.
Naoya stood beneath the streetlight in a dark overcoat with a gun pressed against the side of his head.
The man holding him wore black tactical gear and a mask covering the lower half of his face.
Another stood slightly behind them near a black SUV idling at the curb.
Professional. Not Stonebridge. Naoya’s expression stayed calm despite the gun digging into his temple, but his eyes met mine sharply.
Warning me. The masked man smiled slightly when he saw me.
“There he is.” I raised my gun immediately.
“Who the fuck are you?” Instead of answering me, the man leaned closer to Naoya’s ear almost mockingly. Then, he spoke loud enough for me to hear.
“Hades sends his regards.”
The world stopped. Naoya’s expression didn’t change. Not even slightly, but something cold slid violently down my spine anyway. Because for the first time since this nightmare started, I saw genuine anger flash through Naoya’s eyes. Not fear. Anger.
The masked man suddenly shoved Naoya forward. Everything happened at once after that. Naoya stumbled. The second attacker raised his weapon. And every survival instinct in my body screamed the exact same thing:
Trap. Gunfire exploded through the street.
I fired instantly as Naoya hit the gravel hard beside the garage entrance.
Bullets tore through the metal around me as the attackers opened fire without hesitation.
Not warning shots. These were professional.
Kill shots. One advanced while the other covered him, forcing me backward behind the garage wall as glass shattered beside my head.
“Riven!” Kendra shouted through the laptop speakers.
“I’m aware!” Naoya rolled behind the concrete divider near the driveway with surprising speed for a man his age. His coat darkened slightly near the shoulder. He was hit. Shit. The masked man nearest the SUV suddenly shouted:
“Move!” Not kill him. Move. My stomach dropped instantly.
Because suddenly none of this made sense. Why bring Naoya here? Why use him as bait? Why say Hades sent them? Unless…
Unless this wasn’t about Naoya. Unless this wasn’t even about me. Then one of the attackers yelled,
“Clear the hospital team!”
Every cell in my body went ice cold. Hospital. Oh fuck. Kendra realized it the same second I did.
“Riven.” I was already moving.
The attacker closest to the garage lunged toward me as I bolted for my car, but I slammed the pistol into his jaw hard enough to hear bone crack before firing directly into his chest. He dropped instantly.
Another bullet tore through the windshield of the car behind me.
Naoya shouted something sharp in Japanese from behind cover.
The second masked man instinctively turned toward him, and Naoya moved.
Fast. Way too fast. He ripped the fallen attacker’s knife free and drove it cleanly into the man’s throat without hesitation.
Efficient. Precise. Like he’d done it before. A lot. The attacker collapsed, gargling blood. Naoya looked up and our eyes locked. And for one strange, horrifying second, he didn’t look like the leader of the Kingsmen. He looked like something much colder, much more dangerous. Then he barked,
“Go!” I didn’t hesitate.
The engine screamed violently the second I threw the car into drive. Tires burned against pavement as I tore through Stonebridge at reckless speed, heart trying to rip itself out of my chest. They weren’t here to kill me. They weren’t even here for Naoya.
This was a distraction.
_____
Roxy
The hospital hallway felt wrong; I noticed it immediately.
It was too fucking quiet. No nurses arguing.
No phones ringing. No exhausted staff dragging themselves between rooms. Just silence.
Riven was MIA. Abby and Isla hadn’t come back yet.
Pop and Deck were with Shane in the cafeteria.
Skylar was patrolling the West side and Daredevil track in case whoever was responsible for the crash came back looking for more trouble.
I sat up slowly in the waiting room chair as a nurse in blue scrubs walked calmly down the hallway toward Nadia’s room.
At first glance, nothing looked off. She had a clipboard, gloves, and a hospital badge.
She seemed normal. Except, she didn’t check the chart outside the room.
Didn’t scan medication. Didn’t look tired. The woman moved with calm precision.
Like she belonged everywhere. My stomach twisted.
Then, I noticed her shoes. They were too clean.
No real hospital worker had shoes that clean.
The nurse disappeared inside Nadia’s room.
I stood up immediately, stalking closer to the room.
Then came the sound. A metallic click. Sounded too much like a syringe cap; I would fucking know. My blood ran cold.
“Oh fuck.”
I sprinted down the hallway just as inside the room, the fake nurse calmly injected clear liquid into Nadia’s IV line. She wasn’t rushing. The bitch wasn’t even nervous, as if this was routine for her. Just another day in her fucked up life.
The woman looked up the second I burst through the doorway. No panic crossed her face, only mild annoyance. Like I had interrupted something boring. Then, the fake nurse smiled slightly and reached beneath her scrub top for the gun hidden underneath.