Chapter forty-four
Riven
Hospitals made people honest. Not verbally. Emotionally. You could always tell who actually gave a shit once somebody ended up in intensive care. The fake people disappeared fast. The ones who stayed looked half-dead themselves. The waiting room outside Nadia’s ICU looked like a warzone.
Abby pacing. Isla curled into Deck’s side, trying not to cry. Shane chugging an energy drink while Skylar picked at her nails. Pop sitting perfectly still in the corner like if he moved even slightly he’d fucking shatter.
And me? I was losing my goddamn mind. One week.
One fucking week since the crash and Nadia still hadn’t opened her eyes.
Every time the doctors said “stable,” I wanted to put my fist through a wall because stable didn’t mean awake.
Stable didn’t mean okay. Stable didn’t mean she’d ever be the same again after being launched through a windshield at nearly ninety miles an hour.
Her skull fracture was healing. Her internal bleeding stopped. She still had three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a concussion severe enough to keep her unconscious. But she was alive. Barely. The ICU doors opened behind me. I looked up instantly, expecting another doctor.
Instead, Dion Hattori walked into the waiting room looking like he’d crawled through hell to get here.
Mud covered his boots and jeans. Blood soaked through one shoulder of his black jacket.
His knuckles were split open and bruised.
Every LBC and Phantom in the room immediately went tense. Shane stood first.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Dion ignored him completely. His eyes locked onto me.
“We need to talk.”
“Not interested.”
“It’s about the crash.” Silence slammed across the room instantly; even Pop looked up. Dion reached into his jacket slowly. Deck immediately pulled a gun.
“Easy,” Dion muttered tiredly.
“If I came here looking for a fight, I wouldn’t have come alone.”
“Then spit it out.” Abby snapped.
Instead of answering, Dion unfolded a large yellowed sheet of paper across the coffee table.
A map. Old, hand-drawn. Everybody crowded closer instinctively.
My stomach tightened the second I saw it.
Stonebridge. Not current Stonebridge. Original Stonebridge.
Lines cut across the town in strange overlapping sections stretching from Greyveil Summit all the way down to the river docks. Pop went pale instantly.
“Where did you get this?”
“Near the SUV wreckage.” Dion wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Somebody tried to kill me for it afterward.” Nobody spoke. Pop leaned forward slowly, staring harder at the map.
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?” I demanded. His finger traced one of the thick black lines cutting across the page.
“The South side.” Then another.
“West.”
Another.
“North.”
Realization hit all of us at once. The territory lines. Not gang territory. Mining and distribution routes. Stonebridge had been divided long before the gangs ever existed. Abby frowned.
“So what? The founders used routes underground?”
“No.” Pop’s voice turned darker.
“The gangs inherited them.” The room fell quiet again. Pop looked disturbed now. Actually disturbed.
“When I was younger, there were rumors about tunnels beneath Stonebridge. Old mining access roads. Smuggling routes.” He shook his head slowly.
“Everybody thought they were abandoned.” Dion laughed humorlessly.
“They’re not.” That got everyone’s attention. I stepped closer.
“What do you mean?” Dion looked directly at me.
“I followed the SUV tracks after the race.”
“You found the SUV?”
“No.” His jaw tightened.
“I found where it disappeared.” The air in the room shifted instantly. Dion pointed toward one section of the map cutting beneath the South Side.
“There’s an access road hidden behind one of the old quarry sites. Fresh tire marks. Somebody used the tunnels after the crash.” Kingsmen territory. Every eye in the room shifted toward him immediately. Dion noticed.
“Oh, fuck off.” He snapped.
“If my people hit Nadia, why would I be here?”
“Could be cleanup,” Shane muttered. Dion’s temper flared instantly.
“I got shot at trying to leave with this map.” He shoved his jacket aside roughly.
Bullet graze. Fresh, not deep, but still real.
The room quieted again. My eyes dropped back to the map.
Everything Nadia found in the archives suddenly started making horrifying sense.
The founders built Stonebridge around trade.
Olympus took over, buried the history, then turned the old routes into gang divisions.
Not to stop violence, to encourage it. Because the gangs kept Stonebridge unstable.
Crime kept investors away. Drugs kept people desperate.
Racing kept police distracted. Territory wars kept everyone focused on each other rather than on what was happening beneath the town.
Olympus didn’t rule Stonebridge despite the gangs.
They ruled it through them. Pop leaned heavily back in his chair.
“All these years…” Nobody answered him.
Because what the fuck were you even supposed to say to that? The town was designed to fail. Every dead kid, every overdose, every shooting, every race. They found a way to make it profitable. Dion crossed his arms tightly.
“There’s more.” I looked at him sharply.
“What?” His expression darkened.
“The tunnels are active.” Silence.
“I heard vehicles moving underground.” Abby scoffed nervously.
“You expect us to believe there’s some massive secret operation under Stonebridge?” Dion stared at her flatly.
“Nadia almost died because she started digging into the town’s history.”
That shut her up immediately. Because he wasn’t wrong. The threats, the sabotaged brakes, the crash, the hospital attack. Olympus escalated every single time Nadia got closer to the truth. Pop looked toward the ICU doors.
“They wanted her dead.”
“No,” I said quietly. Everybody looked at me. I stared at Nadia’s room through the glass window.
“They wanted her silent.” That was worse somehow. Because it meant Nadia knew something even she didn’t fully realize yet. Dion rubbed tiredly at his face.
“One of the guys who attacked me said something before they opened fire.” The room sharpened instantly.
“What?” His jaw flexed.
“He said heirs shouldn’t be raised so far from home.” A cold feeling crawled slowly down my spine. Nobody spoke for several seconds. Then Deck frowned.
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” Dion snapped.
“But the guy had the same tattoo as the people from the hospital.”
Olympus. Three pillars and an olive branch. The symbol Nadia found buried in the archives. Abby looked shaken now.
“You think they were talking about Nadia?”
“No,” Dion said quietly. That surprised everybody. His gaze shifted toward the map.
“I think they were talking about Stonebridge.”
The room went still. Suddenly another realization hit me hard enough to make my stomach turn. Olympus wasn’t operating beneath Stonebridge. Stonebridge itself was Olympus. Not physically, but structurally. This town was built by them. Controlled by them. Profiting them. And the gangs?
We were just generations of idiots fighting over scraps while they sat above us getting rich. I looked back at Dion.
“Take me there.” Pop immediately stood.
“No.”
“I’m going.”
“The hell you are.” I stepped closer to him.
“Somebody put my wife in a hospital bed.”
Pop’s expression cracked slightly at the word wife. Most people here still didn’t know. It didn’t matter anymore.
“I’m done waiting around while they keep moving.” Dion looked between us, then toward the storm raging outside.
“If we go now,” He muttered.
“We go armed.” Deck stood instantly.
“So are we.”
“No.” Dion shook his head immediately.
“Too many people and they’ll hear us coming.”
“Since when do I take orders from a Kingsmen?” Shane snapped.
“Since your fearless ice queen is unconscious and I’m the only one here who knows where the tunnels are.” Tension exploded through the room again. Pop finally spoke before it could boil over.
“You got one hour.” I looked at him.
“One hour to get in and get out.” His voice turned deadly serious.
“Because if Olympus is really operating beneath this town,” He glanced toward Nadia’s ICU room.
“Then whatever’s down there has been hidden for a reason.”