Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Eddie
I carry the wireless phone out of my office, fingers curled so tightly around it that my knuckles ache. Arthur could call at any moment. Every time I glance at the small screen, I imagine it lighting up, his name appearing, his voice finally bringing news.
The house is empty. The wilder brothers went hiking—poor Arlo went along. Kit, Dex, and Alec are in the studio with Barret. My man is obsessed about getting just the right song for . . . who the fuck knows.
Right now, all eyes are on Thoreau. They’re watching, waiting, following him with the patience of hunters who know their prey will eventually stumble.
He’s reckless enough—too arrogant to cover his tracks properly.
He’s already left a trail of mistakes wide enough to bury him a hundred times over.
There are at least three agencies breathing down his neck, closing in, tightening the circle around him.
It should only be a matter of time before he’s taken.
Still, time has a way of stretching when you need it to move fast. Each minute without word from Arthur feels like an eternity, the silence in the room pressing in until I can hardly breathe.
I tell myself to wait. To trust. To remember that this isn’t in my hands.
It isn’t in the Bradleys’ hands either. We’ve set things in motion, but the rest is up to people who don’t answer to us.
What I want—what I crave in the deepest, darkest part of me—is for Thoreau to be stopped for good.
For someone, somewhere, to end him before he can sink his claws any deeper.
Before he tries to look again for Cleo. But I don’t get to make that call.
Wishing doesn’t change the rules. Still, the thought simmers beneath my skin, refusing to fade.
The Bradleys believe jail will take care of him.
They’re convinced that if Thoreau winds up behind bars, his own people will handle the rest. That he won’t even have time to whisper a name to his lawyer before someone shuts him up permanently.
It wouldn’t be unusual—not in that world.
A man like him doesn’t survive long once he’s caged.
A slip on the stairs. A shiv in the yard. An accident no one questions.
But that won’t be on us. We won’t orchestrate it. We won’t pull the strings or give the order. That line has already been drawn, and I keep telling myself not to cross it, not to imagine what it would feel like if I could.
And yet I can’t stop. My pulse hammers with every possibility.
Every outcome. Every image of him silenced.
After what he did to Cleo, there’s a part of me that aches for vengeance so raw it frightens me.
I’ve watched those videos until they crawl under my skin—him small and calculated, twisting her words into shame, the way he laughed when she flinched.
Cameras that were meant for protection turned into evidence of how cruel he is. I replay the angles, the little breaths between his sentences, the way her hand trembles before she covers her face. The sound of her trying to hold herself together is a noise I can’t forget.
We brought her to therapy. She’s meeting with someone who knows how to hold the pieces without pretending they’re whole. She works through the tremors in her voice, lists the days like they’re items to be checked off: Monday, Tuesday, the time he cornered her by the sink.
Watching her learn to name what happened is both a mercy and a wound.
It should make me breathe easier—that she has someone to help her—but knowing she carried that alone for as long as she did turns the ache in my chest into something worse.
Loving her means the hurt is mine too, seeping into my bones until I’m only a collection of hot, dangerous thoughts.
I don’t want to be the one who crosses the line.
I tell myself I won’t. But the image of him, smug and sure he can break people and walk away, makes me want blood like an animal wants to tear.
It’s an ugly, filthy wish that scares me because it feels honest. I picture him on his knees, mouth open, pleading—and something inside me snarls.
I swallow the fantasy hard enough to taste iron.
I refuse to be the author of his end, even as a private, vindictive ghost writes scenes in my head where justice looks like violence.
The phone rings in my hand, the sudden shrill cutting through the silence like a blade. For a second, I don’t breathe. Arthur’s name flashes across my mind even before I lift it to my ear. My voice comes out rough, urgent, before his even fills the line.
“Tell me.”
“They got him,” Arthur says, clipped and efficient, like he knows I’ve been holding my breath for hours. “Tried to leave the country this morning. Fake passport. They flagged him at the gate.”
My knees almost give out, and I grip the edge of the desk to keep from sliding to the floor. Relief and fury collide inside me, a storm that doesn’t know which way to turn. “After yesterday?”
Arthur exhales. “Yeah. Interrogation didn’t go well for him. He has no alibi. Obviously, he panicked. The fucker thought he could run.”
The handset creaks under the force of my grip. I see him in my mind—Thoreau at the airport, moving too quickly, sweat soaking through his shirt, trying to blend into the crowd while knowing the walls are closing in. For once, fear had him by the throat. For once, he wasn’t in control.
And then the realization cuts through me: we almost lost him.
“What if he’d used a private jet?” The question slips out before I can stop it, raw, jagged. “What if he already has an escape route?”
Arthur’s reply is a growl, rough with offense, like I’ve just questioned his competence.
“You paid for efficiency, Reznor. Of course he tried. But there’s no jet available—we made sure of that.
The DEA grounded his plane the minute the drug rumor hit.
After this stunt, customs flagged every passport.
Interpol’s got his aliases, and Border Patrol is on alert.
There’s nowhere he can fly, sail, or crawl without someone waiting. ”
I press my teeth together, the edge of his reassurance slicing into me.
Arthur lowers his tone, almost reluctant to say the next part.
“The truth? If he does slip through, he won’t get far.
Not with three agencies watching. And if by some miracle he makes it past them .
. . Eddie, men like him don’t survive freedom when their own associates think he might talk.
If he walks out, it’ll probably be in a bag. ”
And it almost feels like justice. Almost.
Arthur’s words hang in the air long after he stops speaking. If he walks out, it’ll probably be in a bag.
Relief cuts through me first, swift and merciless, like fresh air hitting lungs that had been starved too long. We caught him. He’s grounded. He’s cornered. For once, I’m not the one chasing ghosts or imagining Cleo’s face every time I close my eyes.
But right behind the relief comes the rot.
The truth of what Arthur is really saying.
That justice, here, isn’t about trials or verdicts.
It’s about fear, leverage, blood. If Thoreau doesn’t crumble under the system, his own people will erase him.
They’ll strangle the words out of his throat before he has the chance to speak.
Not for morality, not for her, not for me—but to protect themselves.
I sink into the nearest chair, the handset pressed so hard against my ear it might fuse with my skin.
My breath is uneven, breaking in shallow bursts I can’t control.
I should be grateful. This is what I wanted: Thoreau in custody, stripped of power.
Instead, my stomach twists because none of it feels clean. None of it feels like enough.
Cleo deserves better than this ugly compromise. She deserves a justice that isn’t stained, whispered, or smuggled through back channels. But that’s not the world we live in, and the sickest part is how easily I accept it—how much I want it if it means he’ll never get near her again.
She comes in with a worried crease between her brows. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her smile falters. In that exact moment I remember I have to take what I can get.
She needs to be free, and I don’t know what that freedom looks like.
Unless he’s finished—ended—she can’t step back into the life she had before.
I can’t live with that. Could I get her a new identity?
Yes. Immediately. But it would be unfair to make her vanish for the rest of her life, to ask her to trade one kind of prison for another.
The choice shouldn’t rest entirely on her shoulders, and yet I’m the one who has to try to fix a world that refuses to be clean.
I tell Arthur to keep me updated and not to move on the girl’s ID yet—no paperwork, no names in a file.
“Keep her a Jane Doe for now,” I say, forcing the words into something like calm.
“Don’t let anyone leak it’s fake or release that it’s Cleo.
Not unless we have to and then . . . fuck, we’ll have to plan. ”
He agrees, voice clipped. “Understood. We’ll hold everything.”
We say goodbye and I lower the handset. The room hushes around me like an audience waiting for the next act.
Officially that body—which is fake—is still a Jane Doe, even if we made sure the whispers carried Cleo’s name and the Wilder family released a statement to respect their privacy.
Let them talk. Let them think—that’s how we need it so that Dorian keeps panicking.
I pull Cleo onto my lap. She comes without hesitation, her brow still creased. I wrap my arms around her, holding her close, needing to convince myself that all of this—the lies, the danger, the compromises—is worth it.
I press my face into her hair, breathing her in, grounding myself in the reality of her here, alive, within reach. My lips brush her temple, and the words tear out of me before I can stop them. “I love you,” I whisper, desperate, unguarded.
I tilt her face toward mine and kiss her like it’s both confession and surrender—slow at first, tender, then deepening until I’m pouring every fractured piece of myself into her mouth.
It feels endless, breathless, like if I let go, I’ll lose her to the shadows that still try to claim her.
The world outside ceases to exist; there is only this moment, this woman, this fragile miracle pressed against me.
When I finally pull back, just enough to breathe, my voice cracks against her lips. “Thank you for loving me back. You’ve given me something I didn’t think I’d ever deserve.”
And that’s when the guilt rushes in. Because part of me knows I don’t deserve it.
Not after the blood I’ve wished for, not after the rage I’ve nursed in the dark corners of my mind.
Loving her feels like salvation, but it also feels like punishment—because every time I touch her, I’m reminded of the pain she’s survived, of the way her scars have been carved into both of us.
She strokes my cheek as if she can erase the turmoil; her touch gentler than I deserve. Her eyes, wet and fierce, tell me she isn’t giving up on me—even when I’ve thought about giving up on myself.
I kiss her again, softer this time, a promise against her lips. I don’t know if I can give her the life she deserves, but I know I’ll tear the world apart before I let it take her from me again.
Her hand cups my jaw, her thumb brushing over the stubble as though she’s memorizing me. When she finally speaks, her voice is quiet but certain, each word sinking straight into the hollow places inside me.
“You don’t have to deserve me, Eddie. You just have to stay. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The breath leaves me in a shudder, my forehead dropping to hers. Her words cut through everything—my guilt, my fear, the endless what-ifs that gnaw at me. She isn’t asking for justice or vengeance or impossible absolution. She’s asking for me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur, and this time the kiss I give her isn’t desperate but sure, sealing the promise I’ve been too afraid to make until now. The future doesn’t look like a battlefield. It looks like her and him.
Then a hand settles on my shoulder, firm and sure. I look up, and Barret’s voice cuts through the quiet.
“You’re not doing this alone, Eddie.” His gaze holds mine, fierce and unwavering. “I’m here—for you. Not just for her. I love you too.”
The words hit harder than I expect, something hot and relentless tearing through my chest. Cleo shifts in my arms, reaching for him, but my eyes stay on Barret, searching, needing to believe him.
Cleo’s hand finds his, binding us together in a way words never could. “Both of you,” she whispers, her voice breaking with a hope that feels like salvation. “That’s all I need. Just . . . both of you.”
Barret bends, brushing a kiss to her hair before leaning closer to me, his forehead almost touching mine. The three of us caught in the same fragile moment, the same impossible promise, and today I let myself believe it’s real.