29. Savannah
SAVANNAH
"It’s encrypted," Dante says, his hand hovering over the keyboard. "It bypassed the external firewalls by using a frequency we haven't seen since the border raids."
"It's for me," I say. I don't need to see the file name to know. I feel it. My skin feels like it’s shrinking, pulling tight over my ribs. "Open it."
The file isn't text. It’s a single waveform. Dante clicks play.
Static hisses for two seconds—a sound like dry leaves skittering over a grave—and then the voice fills the room.
It’s elegant, melodic, and devoid of the jagged edges of a common killer.
The moment the first syllable hits the air, my knees nearly buckle.
My nervous system reacts before my brain can process the words; my lungs seize, and the old scar on my collarbone begins to throb with a phantom heat.
“Querida,” El Espectro says.
The word is a caress, a soft breath against my neck. I can almost smell the expensive tobacco and the ozone of his private office.
“I watched the footage from the Seattle safehouse,” his voice continues, thick with a terrifying, fatherly pride.
“You move with such economy now. Such grace. The way you anticipated the breach... it was poetry. I am reminded of why I spent so many nights teaching you how to breathe through the recoil. I am reminded that even when you ran, you took my soul with you.”
Gideon let’s out a low, guttural growl, his knuckles cracking as he balls his fists.
I don't move. I can’t.
“The men you are with,” the voice muses, the tone shifting into something pitying, “they see a woman to protect. Or perhaps a weapon to wield. But they look at your eyes and they see a tragedy. They think you are broken, Savannah. They think there is a light inside you that just needs to be coaxed out by their simple, biker loyalties.”
He chuckles, a dry, papery sound that makes me want to scream.
“They are wrong. You and I know the truth. I didn't break you—I excavated you. I peeled away the soft, useless girl until only the obsidian remained. No one else will ever truly know the weight of the dark behind your ribs, because I am the one who put it there.”
“They think they can save you,” the voice continues, dripping with an intimacy that makes me feel exposed, like he’s watching me through the very screen.
“They hold you at night and imagine they are washing the blood from your skin. But you know the truth, Mija. You didn’t survive the mountains because you are a victim.
You survived because you are a predator.
You killed those snipers in the rain without a single heartbeat of hesitation.
You felt that familiar thrill, didn’t you?
The precision. The silence. The godhood of the scope. ”
Dante’s hand moves toward the stop button, but I catch his wrist. My grip is iron. I need to hear the end. I need to know the depth of the poison.
“You belong to the darkness that created you,” El Espectro whispers, the recording ending with a sharp, digital click that rings like a hammer on an anvil. “You will always belong to me.”
The silence is heavier than the mountain itself.
I can feel Dante’s heavy stare, see the way Gideon’s jaw works in the periphery.
They want to say something. They want to tell me he’s wrong, that he’s just a ghost in a machine.
I don't give them the chance. I turn and walk out of the war room, my boots echoing like gunshots against the floorboards.
I don’t go to the main house. I can’t breathe in there. I head for the northern watch cabin, a stripped-back shell of wood and glass that hangs over the valley.
The cold night air hits my face, but it doesn’t help.
His words are a parasite, burrowing into the soft parts of my mind.
I look at my hands in the moonlight. Calloused.
Purposeful. I remember the weight of the rifle, the way my pulse slowed to a crawl as I centered the crosshairs on a human chest. El Espectro didn't lie about that.
I haven't just been surviving; I’ve been thriving in this war.
Every kill felt natural. Every tactical maneuver felt like coming home.
I sink onto the floor of the cabin, my back against the rough-hewn wall.
I’ve been pretending that the Hell Court could change me, that the love of three men could stitch the jagged edges of my soul back together.
But as I notice the fog roll through the pines like a shroud, the terror takes hold.
What if there is no girl left to save? What if I am just a weapon that finally found a hand big enough to hold it?
The door creaks. Boots heavy and deliberate on the boards announce Dante before his shadow stretches across the floor. He doesn't crouch or pull me into a frantic embrace. He leans against the doorframe, his presence a solid, unmoving wall against the night.
"He knows how you think, Savannah. He’s the one who mapped the minefield in your head.
" Dante’s voice is low, stripping the drama from the air.
"But a map isn't the terrain. He talks about obsidian and predators because he needs you to believe you’re a thing.
A tool. Because tools don't make choices. Tools don't decide who they love."
I look up, my throat tight. "He saw me kill those men, Dante. He saw how easy it was."
"It was easy because you’re good at it. Being skilled at violence doesn't make you his.
" He moves closer, his dark eyes level and certain. "Morality isn't about being soft. It’s about what you do with the edge you have. You used it to save my brothers. He uses it to feed his ego. That’s the choice he’s terrified you've already made. "
He leaves as quietly as he arrived, but the space isn't empty for long. The floor groans under Gideon’s massive weight.
He doesn’t say a word. He just sinks onto the floor beside me and hooks a thick arm around my waist, hauling me flush against his side.
He is hot, smelling of motor oil and cold wind.
My hands are still twitching, a nervous tremor I can’t suppress, until he catches them in his scarred palms. He squeezes, the sheer pressure of his grip grounding me until the shaking subsides into a dull ache.
He is a mountain, and for once, I let myself be the stone tucked into his side.
Malachi leans against the glass of the window, his silhouette elegant against the rising mist.
"Classic psychological fragmentation," he says, his voice a smooth, analytical hum. "He’s attempting to re-establish the hierarchy of your trauma. By convincing you that your darkest instincts are your only truth, he reclaims ownership. If you believe you’re a monster, you’ll naturally return to the man who groomed that monster.
It’s not a message, Savannah. It’s a leash. "
I look at the three of them—the logic, the strength, the insight. They aren't looking at a weapon. They’re looking at me.
"I used to think the only thing left of me was the ghost of my family," I whisper, the admission raw and jagged. "I thought I was just waiting for the day I could take El Espectro to hell with me."
I take a breath, letting the warmth of Gideon’s chest and the steadiness of Dante and Malachi fill the small cabin.
"But I don't want to die in a pile of bodies anymore," I say, my voice finally finding its edge. "I want a future. I want to see what happens after the war."
The silence is heavy, charged with the sudden, terrifying weight of hope. We all know the cost. Wanting a future means giving the world a way to hurt us. It means admitting that we finally have something we can't afford to lose.
The light bleeding through the cabin windows is thin and gray, the color of cold ash, but it’s enough to illuminate the three men surrounding me.
We’ve shifted into a tangled knot of limbs and shared breath on the floorboards.
Dante sits with his back to the wall, my head pillowed on his thigh, while Gideon remains an immovable anchor at my side, his arm a heavy, protective bar across my chest. Malachi is crouched near our feet, his long fingers tracing the laces of my boots with a restless, grounding rhythm.
“He’s a man of symbols,” Malachi says, his voice a low vibration in the quiet air.
“He uses words like obsidian and shadows because he wants you to view your survival as a form of corruption. It isn’t.
You didn’t become a predator because you enjoyed the dark, Savannah.
You endured what should have leveled a city. That isn't a stain. It’s a testament.”
I look at the small wooden bird I carved yesterday, sitting forgotten on a nearby crate. For years, my hands have only known how to dismantle or destroy. Now, they feel the rough callouses of Gideon’s palms and the steady, rhythmic heartbeat beneath Dante’s ribs.
“He spent years trying to map out your soul,” Dante says, his hand sliding into my hair, his touch possessing a quiet authority that lulls the screaming in my head.
“He thinks because he saw the beginning of your story, he gets to dictate the end. He’s wrong.
You aren't his creation, Savannah. You’re your own.
And you’re ours. He doesn't get to define a single breath you take inside these walls.”
Gideon’s grip tightens, his voice a guttural rasp near my ear. “Let him come. Let him bring every weapon he’s got. I’ll peel the skin from anyone who tries to put a hand on you. You’re never going back into that hole. Not while I’m breathing.”
The hypervigilance that serves as my skin begins to soften.
The counting of exits slows. The phantom heat in my collarbone fades, replaced by the literal heat of the three men who have rebuilt my world from the wreckage.
I’ve spent eight years believing I was a hollowed-out shell, a weapon waiting for its final discharge.
But as the sun finally breaks over the jagged peaks of the Pass, I realize the truth.
I don't just want El Espectro dead. I want to live.
I want to see these men in the sunlight when there are no more rifles to clean and no more blood to wash away.
Revenge is a dying art. This—this terrifying, fragile belonging—is a reason to fight.