Chapter 19 #3
Memory broke open without warning. A little girl sitting beside me beneath the compound’s laundry awning, her dark curls escaping from two uneven braids while she watched my fingers weave scraps of colored thread.
She had been too old for the children’s dormitory and too young for the Choosing, caught in the dangerous space where girls began disappearing from lessons and returning with lowered eyes.
“Her name is Ruth.”
Cipher’s fingers began moving again. “Age?”
“She would be seventeen now. Maybe eighteen.”
“Was she at your compound when you escaped?”
“Yes.”
The guilt struck so hard I had to brace one hand against the table.
I had left her.
Not because I had forgotten her, but because the night of my escape had given me only minutes, one unlocked service door, and no way to reach every child I had promised to save.
Ruth had been sleeping in another wing beneath the watch of a woman loyal to the elders.
I had whispered goodbye through a wall she could not hear and carried her name into every year that followed.
Malachi knew.
He had chosen the bracelet deliberately.
The recording resumed before I was ready.
“The girl will remain unharmed if Sunshine returns before the third sunrise. She comes alone to the place where obedience is restored. If the motorcycle club follows, the girl’s blood will belong to them.”
The screen went black.
For several seconds, the only sound in the room was my own breathing.
Restoration.
He wanted me at Restoration.
The property we had only just identified.
“He has Ruth,” I whispered.
Remedy turned me toward him. “Look at me.”
“I left her.”
“No.”
“I promised—”
“You escaped.”
“I promised I would come back.”
“And now we know where she may be.”
The word may cut through the panic.
“Could the feed be false?” Toxic asked Cipher.
“Possible. The video could be staged, prerecorded, or transmitted from another location.”
“The bracelet is real,” I said.
“That doesn’t prove Ruth is at Restoration,” Remedy replied gently. “It proves Malachi has access to something connected to her.”
My mind raced through every possibility. Ruth could have been held for years. She could have escaped and been recaptured. The Order might have preserved the bracelet after taking it from her. None of those possibilities changed the sound of the frightened breath behind the camera.
“I have to go.”
The room hardened.
“No,” Remedy said.
I pulled my hand from his.
“He said she’ll remain safe if I return.”
“He also photographed Charlie and threatened children,” Toxic replied. “Nothing he says is trustworthy.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“We find her,” Cipher said.
“In three days?”
His silence answered.
I looked toward Remedy. “You know what he’ll do.”
“I know what he wants you to believe he’ll do.”
“And if he’s telling the truth?”
Pain moved across his face. “You walking into Restoration alone doesn’t save Ruth. It gives him two prisoners.”
“I can’t let her die because I was too afraid to go back.”
“You aren’t afraid to go back,” he said, his voice roughening. “You’re willing to sacrifice yourself because the Order taught you everyone else’s life mattered more than yours.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“It’s true.”
Anger rose through the grief. “You said my choices mattered.”
“They do.”
“Until you disagree with them?”
His jaw tightened. “Until your choice is to surrender to a man who has already threatened my daughter.”
The words struck between us.
Silence followed.
Remedy closed his eyes briefly, regret already moving across his expression.
I stepped away.
“Sunshine—”
“No. You don’t get to use Charlie to make me feel selfish for wanting to save Ruth.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
The pain in his face deepened, but he did not defend himself. “You’re right.”
The immediate admission stopped my anger from finding somewhere easier to land.
He drew one breath before continuing. “I’m terrified. Malachi wants you, and the idea of watching you walk toward him makes every rational part of me disappear. That fear does not give me permission to weaponize Charlie or decide your life matters less because you’re willing to risk it.”
My eyes burned.
“But I’m still asking you not to go alone,” he said. “Not because your choice doesn’t matter. Because Malachi built the choice to trap you. Returning on his terms is not freedom. It’s coercion with a deadline.”
The distinction cut through the chaos inside me.
Toxic leaned against the table, giving us space without leaving the conversation. “We are not abandoning Ruth.”
I looked toward him.
“We use the next three days,” he continued. “Cipher traces the signal. Autumn and Knight verify the property. Mace examines every route in and out. If Ruth is at Restoration, we bring her home.”
“And if you can’t find her before the deadline?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Toxic’s gaze did not waver. “Then we make the next decision with every fact we have. Together.”
Together.
The word had become the answer to every threat Malachi believed would isolate me.
I looked toward the blank screen.
Ruth’s bound hands remained burned into my mind. The promise I had made years earlier rose again, no longer a ghost but a responsibility with a living name.
“I won’t go without telling you,” I said.
Remedy’s shoulders eased only slightly.
“That isn’t the same as promising not to go,” Cipher observed.
“No,” I answered. “It isn’t.”
Remedy accepted the boundary even though fear sharpened his expression.
“Then promise one more thing.”
“What?”
“You don’t leave this building alone.”
I hesitated.
The request was practical, not possessive. Malachi already had photographs proving how closely he had watched me. Leaving alone would not be courage. It would be recklessness.
“I promise.”
Remedy nodded.
Toxic immediately began assigning tasks.
Cipher traced the transmission path while Lilith searched Rebecca Hayes’s files for every reference to Restoration.
Mace and Steel prepared vehicles, Bishop contacted Carson, and Daisy quietly left to make sure no child wandered downstairs into the storm gathering beneath adult voices.
I remained beside the screen.
Remedy did not touch me again until I reached for him.
When my fingers closed around his hand, he turned immediately.
“I’m angry with you,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“I still love you.”
His eyes closed briefly, the admission affecting him as deeply as it had upstairs.
“I love you too.”
“I don’t know what happens if we can’t reach her.”
“We reach her.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“No.” His hand tightened around mine. “But I can promise we won’t stop because it becomes difficult.”
I looked again at the dead screen and remembered Ruth’s dark curls, her cautious smile, and the bracelet I had woven from stolen thread because she once told me yellow looked like sunshine.
Brother Malachi believed he had found the one promise capable of dragging me back into the Order alone.
He was almost right.
What he had not understood was that I no longer carried my promises by myself.
For the next three days, he would be waiting for one frightened woman to surrender.
Instead, an entire family was coming for Ruth.