Chapter 37
thirty-seven
Elijah
By the time she falls asleep, the apartment has gone quiet in the kind of way that should feel peaceful and doesn’t.
There is food still cooling in the kitchen, a mug half-finished on the bedside table, a soft lamp burning low in the corner because Jackson insisted the room felt too clinical in the dark, and her body is finally still beneath the blankets after the effort of getting her home, getting her settled, getting enough into her that Zach was satisfied she wouldn’t wake up nauseous and shaking in the middle of the night.
All of it should feel like progress. It should feel like relief.
It should feel like we brought her back here and that means something good.
Instead, all I can think every time I look at her is that walls did not save her last time.
A locked door did not save her. A known space did not save her. Being loved did not save her.
She is home now, and that should matter more than it does, but all it really does is sharpen the reality that I have brought her back into a world where the danger has not actually ended.
Jackson sits on one side of her, half-turned toward the bed, one forearm resting near her pillow, his fingers moving through her hair every now and then in slow strokes that look absentminded until I watch him too closely and realize there is nothing absentminded about them at all.
He is touching her because he needs the proof of her there under his hand, because the second he stops, his mind will go back to that car, to her body going still, to whatever part of himself has not stopped panicking since.
Zach is on the other side, closer to her waist and legs, seated but not relaxed, his shoulders still carrying that rigid edge that tells me he’s monitoring even when he looks still.
He has already adjusted her pillows twice, checked the angle of her body three times, refolded the blanket because it was pressing too closely against her stitches, and moved her water within reach even though she is asleep and won’t touch it for hours.
Every part of him is directed at her body, at what it needs, at what might make it heal faster, easier, smoother.
If I didn’t know him, I would say he looked calm.
I do know him, and I know this is not calm. This is obsession redirected into care.
And me, I can’t sit.
I’ve tried once already. I lasted less than a minute before the pressure under my skin drove me back up again.
So I stand by the windows, then by the door, then at the end of the bed, then near the dresser, moving only enough that I don’t feel like I’m vibrating apart, because if I sit still, all I can hear is the clockwork of my own thoughts and none of them are fit to live with.
She’s asleep. She’s breathing. She’s home.
And I still don’t trust any of it.
Not the locks. Not the street below. Not the man at the building entrance. Not the cameras Christian had installed before she even left the hospital. Not the silence from the Vargas family. Not the way quiet can be strategic.
Most of all, I don’t trust myself with the fact that she is here and vulnerable and carrying something inside her now that changes everything.
That thought still lands like a blade every time it comes back to me.
Not just her.
My child.
Our child.
What sits in my chest when I think that is not softness first. It should be. It should be some kind of wonder, some kind of peace, some moment of stunned gratitude that life still found its way through all of this.
What I feel first is fear.
Raw, immediate, ugly fear.
Because she was bleeding with my child inside her.
Because she stopped breathing with my child inside her.
Because I didn’t know, and now that I do, every mistake I made before feels ten times worse.
I turn away from the bed and look out through the narrow gap in the curtain, down toward the street where one of Christian’s men stands at the entrance like a sentry and another car idles half a block over, dark and unobtrusive and obvious only if you know what you’re looking for.
It still doesn’t feel like enough.
My phone vibrates in my hand.
Christian.
I answer immediately, keeping my voice low so it doesn’t carry back across the room.
“Talk.”
His tone is clipped in the way it gets when he’s tired and hiding it. “Still nothing. No obvious movement, no retaliation, no direct contact from Vargas.”
That should reassure me. It doesn’t.
“They’re not done,” I say.
“No,” he replies. “They’re not. But they’re not stupid either, and what happened with Luis changed things.”
Changed things. It’s a careful way of saying what we both know.
Luis wasn’t just a body. He was a signal.
An escalation. A message that went far beyond the walls of that warehouse, and now everybody with any sense is watching to see whether this turns into open war or gets handled the way families like ours prefer to handle it, quietly, thoroughly, and without inviting the wrong kind of attention.
“They’re keeping a tight ship,” Christian continues. “No one’s talking. No one’s moving in a way we can catch cleanly. Either they’re waiting us out, or they’re trying to figure out whether you’re going to make the first public move.”
I glance back toward the bed.
Toward Lia.
Toward the small rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket.
“I don’t care what they’re waiting for.”
“I know you don’t.”
There’s a pause, and when he speaks again his voice loses some of its edge.
“You need to stay where you are tonight.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t tell me what I need.”
“I’m telling you what’s useful,” he says evenly. “You’re no use to her if you go charging at shadows because you can’t bear being still.”
The words hit clean because they’re true.
I hate that they’re true.
My gaze settles on her again, and this time I don’t look away quickly enough.
I see the way her face is softer in sleep, the way the shadows under her eyes are still there despite everything, the way she looks younger when she’s not bracing herself against pain, and something in my chest twists so sharply I have to dig my fingers harder into the phone just to keep my voice even.
“She’s home and it still doesn’t feel safe.”
“That’s because it isn’t safe yet,” Christian says. “Not fully. Which is exactly why you stay focused. Let me work the problem. You stay on her.”
I let the silence sit for a second.
“And if they move?”
“I’ll know,” he says. “And so will you.”
I close my eyes briefly, the weight of that not even slightly comforting.
“You need to sleep at some point,” he adds.
“No.”
A soft breath comes over the line, almost amusement, but not quite. “Fine. Then don’t. But don’t do anything stupid tonight.”
I look back to the window, to the reflection of myself in the dark glass, to the man I barely recognize now that I’ve had a few hours without blood on my hands to understand what I’ve become.
“That depends what you count as stupid.”
“You’ve already crossed that line,” Christian says dryly. “I’m trying to preserve what’s left of the useful parts.”
Despite myself, something almost shifts in my chest. Not humor. Not relief. Just recognition. My brother is still my brother, no matter how ugly everything gets.
“I’ll keep you updated,” he says.
The call ends.
The room goes quiet again.
I don’t move for a second. Then two.
Then I hear it.
It’s not loud. That’s what makes it worse.
A torn little sound from the bed, too thin to be called a cry and too full of pain to be anything else, and my head turns so fast the world narrows instantly down to her.
“No… please…”
The words come out slurred by sleep, trapped in whatever dream has hold of her, but I hear them perfectly.
My heart slams once, hard enough that it almost hurts.
Jackson is moving before I am. He’s already there, leaning over her, his hand at her face, his voice low and soft and shaking under the surface.
“Sweetheart, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re here.”
Zach shifts closer too, one hand settling lightly over her forearm, the other adjusting the blanket where she’s started to twist under it.
“Lia,” he says quietly. “Nothing’s happening. You’re home.”
She whimpers again, smaller this time, her brow pulling tight.
“Help me…”
Everything in me stops. Because she was calling for us.
Because somewhere in that place she was waiting for us, needing us, believing, hoping, that we would come for her, and all I can hear inside that tiny broken plea is the truth of how long she had to wait.
I should move.
I should be the one at her side.
I should be touching her, pulling her out of it, giving her my voice, my hands, my body, something to anchor herself to.
I don’t.
My body locks halfway through the impulse because the second it rises, so does something else, that terrible violent need to grab and hold and crush her into me until I can feel every inch of her and know beyond doubt she’s here, she’s safe, she can’t disappear.
And I can’t do that to her.
Not like this.
Not with the stitches, not with the soreness, not with the baby, not with the sheer brittle fragility of her body after everything it’s survived.
I stand there with my hands hanging uselessly at my sides, wanting to touch her so badly it feels like a physical ache and being more afraid of my own hands than I have ever been in my life.
Jackson keeps talking, voice rougher now, the fear in it barely concealed. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’m right here. Look, you’re here with us. You’re okay.”
Zach’s hand makes one slow pass down her arm, steady, controlled. “Just breathe. Come on, baby. There you go.”
Her breathing catches once, twice, then starts to even out.
The tension slowly leaves her face.
Her body stops straining against the dream.
And then she settles again, not waking, just sinking back into sleep while the rest of us are left standing in the wreck of what she carried there.
Jackson sits back, dragging a hand over his face, and I see the shine in his eyes before he looks away.
“Jesus,” he says under his breath, the words scraped raw. “She was still… she was still asking for us.”
Zach doesn’t answer immediately. He keeps his hand on her for another second before he pulls it back, carefully, like even that small loss of contact matters.
When he does speak, his voice is flat with effort. “I know.”
I don’t say anything at all, because if I open my mouth right now, I don’t know what will come out.
The room has changed.
Not physically.
But whatever illusion of safety had started to form in here is gone now. I can feel it in the way Jackson can’t settle back into his chair properly, in the way Zach’s shoulders have tightened, in the way the air seems to carry the echo of her voice long after she’s gone quiet again.
And I know then, with a kind of clarity that doesn’t feel like a decision so much as an unveiling, that I cannot stop halfway.
There is no partial answer to this. There is no version where I tighten security, stay close, play defense, and wait for the world to leave her alone. There is no safe life for her while the people who fed this thing are still out there, still breathing, still capable of reaching in.
The Vargas family needs to end.
Not be managed. Not be contained. Ended.
Because I can’t stand in this room and listen to my wife beg for help in her sleep, knowing that somewhere out there are people who helped make that a reality, and pretend there is any future in which I leave them standing.
I look at her again.
At the line of her body beneath the blanket. At the hand Jackson still holds. At the soft lamplight over her face.
And then, because the thought arrives whole and undeniable, I finally let myself name what I have been circling all night.
This is who I am now.
Not the man trying to stand with one foot inside this world and one foot outside it. Not the man pretending he could keep the violence compartmentalized, useful, temporary, separate from the rest of his life. Not the man who thought he could choose when to step fully into Bellandi power.
That man is gone.
He ended the second I saw her on that floor.
If she is going to be safe, if they are going to be safe, then I become exactly what my family always knew I could be and exactly what I spent years refusing to become.
Bellandi. Head of Houston. Enforcer when it needs enforcing. Executioner when it needs ending.
Whatever name they put to it later means nothing to me.
What matters is that nothing like this ever happens to her again.
I move at last, crossing the room slowly until I stand at the edge of the bed, close enough now that I can see the tracks of tears dried at her temple from earlier, close enough to smell her shampoo under the antiseptic and warmth of sleep.
I don’t touch her.
I want to.
God, I want to.
But wanting and allowing are not the same thing anymore.
So I stand there instead, looking down at my wife, at the child she is carrying, at the life that almost slipped through my hands, and I make the promise without speaking it aloud.
Everything that can reach for her will burn.
Everything.
No hesitation. No restraint. No second chances.
Jackson glances up at me eventually, reading something in my face that I don’t bother trying to hide.
“What are you thinking?”
I keep my eyes on her.
“That this ends.”
He goes still.
Zach does too.
Neither of them asks what I mean.
They already know.
And the worst part is, so do I.