Chapter 39 #2
Garcia glances at me, apology flickering in his eyes. “Ms. Mancini was en route to Nexus when her transport crashed. Security footage and recovered comms show Vincent Torrance attempted to subdue her with a taser, acting on direct orders from Mr. Callighan.”
My pulse hammers in my ears. The rain. The smell of burning metal.
Blake wanted me gone, too. Just like Sabrina.
But I got lucky because Eli and I had a connection when we first met, and he got me on the trial with him, Cassian, and Rowan before I’d even been at Nexus two full days.
He saved me. They all did. I blink back tears, wishing someone had been able to save my sister.
“What happened next?” Delgado asks.
“Ms. Mancini was transported to Nexus after the crash,” Garcia says.
“Shortly after, she was reassigned from general intake to a closed compatibility 90-day trial under Beta, Eli Mercado’s supervision.
Based on the intercepted communications we recovered, that reassignment likely saved her life.
Callighan and Torrance were already arranging to have her transferred off-site. ”
If Torrance had gotten me off-site with that diluted suppressant running through me… I would have gone into heat in the hands of the last man I ever wanted touching me.
And it wasn’t random. Blake had already been trying to pull strings.
I see it now—the counselor at the Nexus banquet, the one who kept pressing about my “placement.” The way she’d smiled when she mentioned a single-Alpha pack, someone “more traditional.” She’d never said his name until I did, but now I hear it—threaded through every question she asked me.
The way she pushed the “transfer option.” The way she lit up at the idea of a single-Alpha pack.
The way she kept circling “structure” and “clarity,” like she was reading from someone else’s script.
God. She wasn’t evaluating me. She was grooming me for him. Testing to see if I’d break the right way.
Blake was behind all of it, testing the line, seeing if I’d take the bait.
Rowan shifts behind me. I feel him there, close enough to touch.
Delgado thanks the detective and sits.
“Detective Garcia.” The defense attorney stands smoothly, smug, voice dipped in money. “Much of this so-called evidence was obtained through unauthorized digital channels, wasn’t it? Mr. Mercado used a backdoor hack to access corporate data. Would you call that admissible?”
Garcia doesn’t blink. “Mr. Mercado’s discovery of the tampered files led to the court-approved warrants that are admissible. Without him, we wouldn’t know half of what these men did. I’ll take justice over etiquette any day.”
The courtroom ripples with quiet approval.
“We have witness statements, financial trails, and digital communications linking Mr. Callighan directly to Torrance. We have cruise footage. We have the pattern,” Garcia’s tone rises.
The defense team’s table looks like a luxury-brand parade—three attorneys, two paralegals, and a consultant whispering behind a glossy tablet. They’ve objected to everything short of gravity this week. But even they’re running out of air.
The lawyer pauses, letting silence build. Then he delivers it with surgical precision: "But you have no body, Detective. No remains.” He glances at the jury, holding out his palms. “Isn’t that the cornerstone of reasonable doubt?”
The words detonate in the quiet courtroom. A hush rolls across the jurors, a mix of disgust and dread tightening the air.
Mom makes a strangled sound—raw and animal. Dad's hand clamps on my knee hard enough to bruise, the only thing keeping him in his seat. Behind me, Rowan shifts forward, and I feel Cassian's hand on my shoulder, grounding me.
Garcia doesn't flinch. When he speaks, his voice could freeze blood.
"No body, Counselor, because your client had five days at sea and an entire ocean to hide what he did.
We have surveillance footage of Ms. Mancini boarding.
We have her bracelet in the ship's lost and found.
We have witnesses who saw her with your client.
And we have eight other women who vanished using the exact same pattern.
" He leans forward slightly. "The absence of remains isn't reasonable doubt. It's evidence of premeditation."
The judge’s voice cuts through before the lawyer can recover. “Enough. Step down.”
Garcia nods and leaves the stand.
And then Blake turns his head. Slowly. Deliberately.
His eyes find mine across the courtroom.
No smirk. No charm. No mask. Just cold, flat emptiness—the void where a conscience should be. The same look he probably gave Sabrina before she disappeared under the waves. The look that says I'm not done with you.
But this time, I'm not alone on a cruise ship or trapped in a transport van.
And I know without a doubt if we don’t win this, he’s going to come after me. Bad news for him, I know how to protect myself, my dad made sure of that. And I’ve got my men with me.
I meet his eyes and don’t look away. He can see exactly what he didn’t destroy.
The gavel drops. “Court will recess until the verdict.”
The room erupts—reporters rushing, murmurs breaking like waves. I stand on shaky legs.
Mom pulls me into her arms, trembling. “She fought,” she whispers. “Your sister fought.”
“I know,” I breathe. “I know.”
Dad’s arms wrap around us. His breath shakes against my shoulder, ragged like he’s been holding it for years.
For a long time he doesn’t say anything. Then he pulls back, tears in his eyes. Nothing’s ever scared him. Never seen him cry except when Sabrina went missing.
His jaw works the way it always does when he’s trying to swallow something hard. “I failed her,” he says, and the words tear out like they’ve been chewed. “I didn’t teach her how to fight. Thought family meant safety and my connections would keep all of you safe.”
Mom’s shoulders shake against his chest. She’s crying in that flat, steady way that’s less noise than grief.
“After she disappeared I… I buried myself. Work. Business. Anything to keep from looking at you, because every time I saw you I saw her. Saw what I didn’t do.”
All those years I blamed him in half-formed ways. Now I see the weight he carried.
He breathes out something that could be anger or apology. “I made sure whatever happened to her wouldn’t happen to you. That you’d be prepared. Paid for the best instructors who would hammer how to defend yourself into you until you could take a man twice your size down and still run.”
I remember. The bruises that looked like training marks, the classes he paid cash for, the old man who taught me to throw a blade until my wrist bled. He did it because he couldn’t fix what had already happened.
“You did what you could,” I tell him. “You got me ready. And it did save me.” I think about the bad boyfriends and guys that didn’t take no for an answer. How I was able to bloody Blake’s nose when he tried to grab me at the anime convention.
His laugh is a rasp. “Not enough.” His hands clamp the sides of my shoulders like he’s holding me so I won’t fall through the floor. “Not enough to save her.”
“She fought dad,” I whisper. “So much so that Blake told me I was a wildcat like her. She made him have to have surgery to cover it up.” Saying it loud makes the room tilt a little less.
“Not enough,” he repeats, but this time his voice hardens into something that sounds like a contract.
The shift is small—an old muscle tightening—but I know it.
The look in his eyes is not courtroom-threat; it’s the cold business edge I’ve seen a hundred times.
“He will pay.” His voice drops to something quiet and absolute.
"If the courts fail us, there are other ways to balance scales.” His eyes are dry now, but they hold something harder than tears.
"No one touches my daughters and keeps breathing. Not anymore."
The promise hangs between us, heavy and inevitable. I should be afraid. Instead, I feel a fierce, ugly relief. My dad won’t let this stand. That is both terrifying and exactly what I need right now.
I lean into him and let myself be kid-Jess for a minute: held, forgiven, small. Safe, if only for now.
Even if it’s seven years too late for Sabrina.
Rowan, Cassian, and Eli wait for me to untangle from my parents. Cassian’s voice reaches me, low and certain. “Blake will have this follow him the rest of his life, no matter the outcome. That’s what matters.”
“He won’t live long,” my father whispers, his Italian accent thick.
I nod, unable to speak.
Through the courthouse windows, the press vans parked like vultures, the flash of cameras catching the first ripple of justice. Blake and his father will face sentencing soon. Nexus will burn for what it did.
For Sabrina. For Meredith. For all of us.
Rowan’s hand settles at the small of my back. “Let’s get some air.”
Outside, cold air hits my face. Clouds break open above the courthouse dome, light spilling through like something finally giving way.
It’s not peace. Not yet.
But it’s close enough to breathe.