Chapter 32
ROWAN
Iclose the front door and twist the deadbolt, then slide the chain into place. The scrape of metal doesn’t kill the itch under my skin, but it buys me something small, a half-breath.
Cassian’s keys hit the bowl hard enough to rattle. He’s still riding that raw, hot edge—anger sitting under his skin like a live thing. His shoulders are locked; the black-pepper undercurrent of him bites through everything else.
Jess stands in the middle of the room in her mermaid costume, hands trembling as she fumbles with the zipper. She’s been apologizing since the car…sorry she didn’t move fast enough, sorry Blake saw her, sorry we had to step in.
I want to tell her to stop, but my jaw’s too tight to trust my voice.
Eli drops into the armchair, tablet already open, fingers moving through the Nexus portal like he can file the night into neat little boxes.
“We’ll submit before midnight,” he mutters. His tone is steady, but his free hand flexes against his thigh—pissed, just buried deeper.
I take the spot beside Jess, close enough that our knees almost touch. She needs room, but she also needs to feel we’re here, that none of us are going anywhere.
Behind the couch, Cassian paces, boots keeping a steady rhythm that winds him tighter each lap.
When Eli swears under his breath, something about the form auto-filling wrong, Jess flinches, a quick, sharp inhale that grinds against my teeth. She’s still scared. Still shaking. And Blake’s smug face won’t leave my head.
“Hey.” My voice comes out rougher than I want. Her eyes flick up, wide and wet. “You fought back. You made him bleed.”
Her lip trembles. “I shouldn’t have...what if Nexus…”
“Stop. He put his hands on you. That’s on him. You don’t apologize for that.”
Cassian halts, fists curling before he forces them open. He drops onto the other side of the couch, elbows braced on his knees, close enough that she’s bracketed between us.
“We got you out,” he says quietly. “And if he tries again, we’ll do worse than embarrass him.”
Eli still doesn’t look up, but keeps typing. “Next time,” he says, “punch him harder. Bastard deserves it.”
“Next time,” I echo, letting her hear the promise in it, “we don’t let him get that close.”
Jess exhales with a small, shaky breath she’s been holding since the parking lot. She leans into my shoulder.
The air conditioner kicks on, a low hum that fills the silence. Cassian drapes an arm across the back of the couch, touching her shoulder, and she edges closer anyway. She knows where the safe spots are—with all of us.
Eli flips on the TV to drown out the tension. A movie menu loops, and he scrolls until he lands on some old monster flick. “This time, no monsters.”
Cassian snorts, dragging a hand down his face. “Speak for yourself.”
Jess’s mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s the first crack in the tension since Blake.
“I’ll make popcorn,” Eli says, pushing to his feet. He disappears into the kitchen, and somehow the popcorn comes out perfect—no burnt pieces, no un-popped kernels.
I bring out an armful of water bottles and sodas. The blue glow from the screen spreads across the room as we eat.
“They’ll come after me for this, won’t they? Nexus?” Jess asks, glancing at each of us.
Eli shakes his head before I can answer. “You defended yourself. We requested the Security log every frame from the feed before we left.”
“Still.” Her fingers twist the fabric, and she stares down at her mermaid skirt. “Blake knows people. He’ll spin it.”
Cassian huffs—low, dangerous. “Let him try.”
I hook a finger under her chin until she meets my eyes. “We’re not letting Nexus distort this. Or you.” The truth steadies something in her; she nods once, and her shoulders drop a fraction.
For a few breaths, the only background noise is the movie—some hammer-fist hero stalking the woods—and the hum of the air conditioning.
“Did you find anything?” she asks after a moment. “About my friends?” Her voice lifts, a trace of hope. “Or Eli,” she smiles at him weakly, “...about my sister?”
Eli’s gaze meets mine over her head. He doesn’t need to say it.
“Not yet,” I tell her. “But we’re not done looking.”
She nods, mouth tightening like she expected that. “Okay.” A heartbeat later, softer: “Thank you.”
Cassian lays a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need to thank us for that, Jess.”
Her eyes glisten in the TV light. “I can take care of myself. You don’t have to keep protecting me.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “We do.”
She almost argues, but the movie shifts—the hero facing the monster—and she lets it go.
An hour later, the credits roll, and she’s asleep against my chest. Cassian stretches but doesn’t move her. Eli collects the bowls and empty cans, and bottles, taking them to the kitchen.
Her breathing deepens into the easy rhythm of sleep. I slide my arm free and stand. Restraint has its own kind of bruise. I need motion, something to grind the edges off. The others can switch off. I can’t. Not when Blake’s name keeps crawling through the back of my skull.
Part of me wants to get back in the car and finish what Cassian and I started the night Meredith died. I never got to pay him back for that. His daddy’s lawyers made sure of it.
But if he comes for Jess? There won’t be any lawyers. Just us.
And I’ll make fucking sure he never walks again.
I grab Eli’s laptop from the coffee table and open a new search window.
Cold light spills across my hands. Blake Callighan. Even his name looks wrong in clean black font—too neat for the rot underneath.
Two years after Meredith’s death and the trial that let him walk, I’d tried to stop checking his name. My therapist called it an obsession, said closure wasn’t going to come from stalking him, either in person or online. So I stopped for almost ten damn years until today.
Most of the headlines are boring shit, parties with celebrities, and entrepreneurship at one of his dad’s companies, then a headline catches:
Billionaire Richard Callighan’s son was rescued after a shark incident aboard the Celestial Dawn.
The article says he fell overboard, bitten during rescue; a surgeon promises no lasting scars. Happened seven years ago.
I keep digging, but there’s no photos. Not a single fucking one. For a high-profile case with paparazzi circling, that’s impossible. Which means it’s deliberate.
The Callighans scrubbed everything—hospital logs, cruise-line press statements, even social posts from that week. The few surviving cached links all redirect to the same corporate statement: privacy of the victim respected.
Bullshit.
I motion Eli closer, careful not to wake Jess. “Pull every file you can—surgeon’s database, insurance claims, anything tied to that cruise. If the photos exist, they’re buried and I want to see them.”
“On it.” He moves like someone born for this. Before Nexus, he’d been a hacker in everything but name—taught himself code, cracked open what corporations tried to hide. He said he joined Nexus to help Omegas from the inside. Tonight, that impulse makes his fingers fly.
Carefully, I lift Jess and carry her upstairs. She doesn’t stir when I unzip the mermaid costume and ease it off, leaving her in her underwear. I tuck her under the covers, press a kiss to her forehead, and close the door behind me.
I want to stay. Instead, I grab a beer and head back down, the need to do something burning through the exhaustion. Cassian’s at the counter, shuffling cards. I sit opposite him, the weight of waiting settling in my shoulders, and we play poker even though my mind’s on everything else.
An hour later—second beer halfway gone—Eli walks in with the laptop.
“Got the photos from the surgeon’s database. Before and after.” He turns the screen.
Cassian leans in, squinting. “What the hell?” He drags a thumb along the edge of his old surf scar, the one a tiger shark left when he was nineteen.
Three surgeries later, it still looks like someone dragged barbed wire across his thigh.
“None of those match any shark bite I’ve ever seen. They look...more like claws or nails.”
I stare at the image until the pixels blur. The before shows torn flesh in parallel lines—too deliberate, too uniform. The after shows surgical neatness, edges closed with precision that speaks of money and silence. Not luck. Intent.
“Find out who else was on that cruise,” I tell Eli. “Crew, passengers, anyone connected to medical. And pull the passenger manifest—cross-reference it with any Omegas reported missing around that time.”
Eli’s fingers are already moving. “You think—”
“I think Blake doesn’t get attacked by random sharks.” I lean back, rolling the tension from my neck. “And I think whoever did that had a reason.”
Cassian’s jaw tightens. “If someone fought him off, maybe they’re still out there.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they didn’t make it off that ship.”
Seven years ago, someone on that cruise made Blake bleed—and I want to know who.