Chapter Fifteen
Berkley
Several things happen at once, too fast to process in any logical order.
The moment I step into the hallway, familiar voices filter up from the front foyer—low, tired, and unmistakably them.
Rowen and Emerson are home. My heart jolts in my chest, a sudden spike of panic tightens my throat.
I freeze mid-step, pulse pounding in my ears as I weigh my options.
I can’t be seen. Not yet. Not like this.
I take two careful steps backward, keeping my breathing steady as I retreat toward Ronan’s door.
My fingers find the knob, and I ease it open just enough to slip inside, closing it softly behind me.
The lock clicks back into place with a quiet snick, and for a moment, I think I’ve bought myself time—just enough to stay unseen, to regroup before figuring out my next move.
But then I hear it—something shifts behind me.
A soft scrape of movement where there should be none.
My head whips around just in time to catch the outline of a dark-clad figure across Ronan’s room. Barely a shadow, blending into the early morning gloom, but I don’t need light to recognize the danger in his stance. The glint of metal. The intent of his posture.
Time stalls. A scream chokes in my throat as I lunge for the gun, heart clawing up into my chest.
“No!” The word rips out of me, sharp and panicked—louder than I mean for it to be, but it’s enough.
Ronan stirs. I see it in a flash—his muscles tense, his eyes snap open just as the shot explodes through the air. He rolls instinctively, but not fast enough.
It lands with a sickening thud, burying into his chest just below the collarbone. Blood splashes across the sheets as he lets out a brutal, ragged breath.
Pain hits me first—sharp and instant—but it’s rage that takes over.
Pure, blinding rage.
I launch myself across the room without a second thought, instinct overriding everything else. The figure holding the gun startles, clearly not expecting me to be there. They hesitate for half a second, only to realize they’re not alone.
Big mistake.
The gun swings wide in my direction, clumsy and undisciplined. Amateur.
I knock it away with a sharp slap of my hand; the metal grazes my skin as I drive my fist hard into their side. The sound that rips from their lungs is half-growl, half-wheeze—but what really satisfies me is the crack that echoes through the room. A rib, definitely. Maybe two.
But the moment of satisfaction vanishes the second my eyes flick to Ronan. He’s bleeding. Slumped and struggling. That split second of distraction is all it takes.
I don’t see the punch until it’s too late—until it slams into my face with bone-jarring force, detonating behind my eyes in a burst of white-hot agony.
The sickening crack of my nose fills my ears just before the pain blooms, sharp and searing, blinding for a heartbeat.
Blood gushes instantly, spilling down over my lips and chin, hot and metallic.
The hit sends me reeling, and I crash to the floor hard, dazed and gasping as the room tilts around me.
The bastard uses the opening, stumbling backward before launching himself out the open window—the same one he must’ve slipped through while I was in the hallway. Perfect fucking timing. He missed me by seconds, and he used the window as if it were a revolving door.
I drag the back of my hand across my mouth, smearing the blood that still runs freely from my nose and lips.
My chest heaves with the force of my fury, my heart pounding so violently I can feel it in my throat.
The bastard escaped, but that doesn’t matter right now.
Not when Ronan’s bleeding behind me. Not when the man I just got back might slip through my fingers all over again.
I start to move—half crawling, half scrambling—toward the bed when the door detonates inward, the crash loud enough to rattle the windows. I whip around and fall back hard, scrambling across the floor, heart slamming as I brace for another hit.
Then Rowen storms into the room, breathing like he tore through hell to get here. Emerson is right behind him, gun already halfway raised, eyes feral as they both take in the surrounding wreckage.
And then they freeze.
“What the—” Emerson breathes, the words trailing off like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
The room falls into a heavy, breathless silence. Their eyes sweep across the chaos—first to the blood-soaked sheets, then to Ronan, somehow still upright on the bed, his chest rising in shallow, strained bursts, slick with dark red.
His gaze jerks to me, sharp despite the pain—and that single movement redirects the attention like a magnet.
Rowen and Emerson both follow the line of his eyes.
Their shock is instant—raw, wide-eyed, and visible—just for a heartbeat. And then, like someone flipped a switch, it vanishes. Their expressions harden into stone, their jaws locking, eyes unreadable.
Whatever they were expecting… it wasn’t me. Made clear in Emerson’s next words.
“What the fuck?” Emerson exhales sharply, the sound tight and low, like the breath has been punched straight from his lungs.
Ronan tries to speak, the sound rough and choked as it scrapes past his throat.
His body trembles, chest heaving with effort, and a guttural grunt escapes him that instantly pulls all attention back to the bed.
He’s as white as the damn sheets he’s bleeding into—lips tinged blue, skin slick with sweat.
He’s slipping fast, consciousness hanging by a thread, and I know without a doubt that if he goes under now, we might lose him.
My body screams to move. Every inch of me is aching to throw myself at his side, to press my hands to the wound and do something—anything—but freeze.
If I rush in now, if I show them how much I care, how deeply I feel this, they’ll see me for who I am.
Not just a fighter or a shadow. Not just Cupcake.
Berkley.
And I’m not ready for that yet.
Not when I still don’t know how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Rowen and Emerson are on him now, voices sharp with panic as they press into the blood and bark orders at each other.
Neither one is looking at me anymore, too consumed with keeping their brother alive to notice the ghost of a girl watching from the corner of the room.
My heart is hammering, throat burning with the restraint it takes to stay put.
Ronan’s eyes flick toward me—barely open but focused enough. There’s recognition there. Trust. And something deeper that threatens to undo me completely.
He passes out a moment later—eyes rolling back, body sagging into the soaked sheets like every string holding him upright finally snaps.
Emerson is already on the phone, barking demands at someone on the other end. I hear snippets—coordinates, urgency, blood loss. His voice is sharp, focused, but I can feel the tremor under it. They’re terrified. They should be.
I must have been standing here, frozen, eyes locked on Ronan as if staring hard enough would anchor him to this world.
I don’t know how long I stand there—silent, still—until the sound of approaching footsteps shakes the floor.
But I don’t move. Not even as the room fills with people, medics swarming in like a tide, barking orders of their own.
There was plenty of time to run. To disappear out the same window the phantom who shot him vanished through. To become smoke again, like I always do. But something deeper than fear roots me in place.
I can’t leave.
Not him.
Not like this.
I stay until they lift Ronan from the bed, blood-soaked bandages pressed tight to his chest. I stay as Emerson moves aside to give them space, still yelling at his phone. And I stay just long enough for the one person I’ve avoided the longest to turn toward me.
Rowen.
His gaze slams into mine with all the force of a wrecking ball. Fury ignites like gasoline, roaring behind his eyes. He’s Ronan’s twin, his mirror in almost every way—but right now, he’s the darker half. The one made of sharp edges and barely buried pain.
When his eyes drop to the floor—to the gun still resting inches from my foot—I see it. The instant shift.
Something inside him snaps.
He sees the weapon. Then me. And something terrible locks into place.
His face goes cold. Mouth tightens. Jaw clenches.
And then he moves.
Stalking toward me like a storm with one target. His fists are clenched, every muscle pulled tight. I don’t need him to say a word to know what’s behind those eyes.
Hatred.
Rage.
And the unmistakable promise of retribution.
He snatches me by the upper arm with a force that sends a jolt through my shoulder, his grip unrelenting, punishing.
But I don’t fight it. Not right now. My limbs hang loose at my sides, and I let him drag me closer like dead weight.
He knows who I am—or at least, who I’ve pretended to be in the ring.
The fighter. The ghost with fists. Cupcake. He knows I’m not helpless. Not fragile.
But he doesn’t seem to care.
His face is carved from stone, jaw tight, muscles tense beneath his shirt like a coil ready to snap.
I don’t dare meet his eyes. Even with my colored contacts firmly in place and my hair drastically different, there’s always a chance.
One wrong look, one breath too familiar, and it’ll click.
And I can’t afford for it to click. Not yet.
“Who sent you?” he growls, voice low and sharp like a knife sliding between ribs.
I shake my head slowly, carefully, keeping my eyes just low enough to avoid the full weight of his stare. If I speak—if he hears my voice—there’s a risk. A sound is harder to disguise than a face. A memory can be shattered by time, but a voice can haunt forever.
His grip tightens; fingers dig into the meat of my arm until I know it’ll bruise. That old ache I used to feel around him and his brothers stirs—but it’s laced now with something new. Something colder.
“No one attacks my family and gets away with it,” he snaps. “You better hope he lives, or this is going to be extremely painful.”
His words cut deeper than he knows.
Still, I stay quiet. Torn between protecting my cover and screaming at him for not seeing me. For not knowing. For not recognizing.
Ronan did—from across a room, in the dark, with nothing but instinct and whatever connection we’ve always had between us. Or maybe just a well-timed erection. Either way, he saw me.
Rowen? Emerson?
Nothing.
It shouldn’t sting.
But it does.
Because beneath all the blood, the shadows, and years of loss—I still wanted them to know.
Rowen drags me from the room and down the hall, his grip iron-tight around my arm.
He’s so much taller now, broader too—nothing like the boy I remember.
He moves with lethal confidence, his strides long and angry, and I’m nothing more than dead weight in his hold.
He hauls me like I’m a rag doll, as if I weigh nothing at all.
In another life, under different circumstances, I might’ve found that strength intoxicating—might’ve teased him for it, used it against him.
But this? This isn’t flirtation. This is fury.
We stop in front of a door I don’t recognize—one that’s never existed in the house I grew up in—and my skin prickles.
The hair on my arms stands on end, and a whisper of dread curls around my spine.
He opens it without hesitation, revealing a narrow staircase descending into shadow.
I dig my heels in for just a second, instinct telling me not to go down there, but he yanks me forward and starts dragging me again.
Down we go.
With every step, the air thickens. It’s colder here, damper, the walls sweating with condensation.
I can hear the creak of each stair beneath our weight, can feel the stone closing in.
The deeper we go, the less it feels like a basement and more like a tomb.
Eventually, we reach the bottom and step onto a stone floor, a rock walkway that stretches ahead, lined on one side with old iron-barred cages.
Cages. Real ones. Like something ripped from a medieval dungeon or a nightmare.
I freeze for a second, stunned. What the hell is this place?
My mind reels. This… this isn’t just some forgotten corner of the house. This was built, planned. A place meant to hold people. A place meant for pain.
And my boys—my sweet, broken boys—have lived above this all along?
Suddenly, everything feels a little heavier.
I shouldn’t be shocked, not really. Not after everything I’ve uncovered about Dean and Bryce and the rot that festers beneath their empire. Still, a part of me hoped the poison hadn’t seeped this far. That it hadn’t infected their sons—my guys—the ones I once loved more than air.
But I see the hardness in Rowen’s eyes. The way he doesn’t even flinch as he pushes me toward a cell. They’ve changed. Hardened. Shaped by this place. And I wonder how deep the damage runs.
And this is exactly why I can’t tell them who I am. Not yet.
Because if they’ve become what I fear… if the love we shared really died the night I disappeared… then telling them the truth might get me killed. In their eyes, I abandoned them. Betrayed them. Vanished without a word, left Reign, left all of them to drown in questions and grief.
They wouldn’t see a friend.
They’d see a traitor.
And traitors don’t get forgiveness. Only judgment.