26. Ethan
Ethan
Cassie won't let it go, not even wrapped up safely in our own bed the night after Ashford, and by morning I understand why.
"We can't just leave her there, Ethan. She helped me.
Rafael will know exactly who fed me that guard schedule, and I am not going to be the reason a woman who was kind to me pays for it. "
"I hear you, babe." I press a kiss to her temple. "Let me make a call."
Dante picks up on the second ring, and when I lay it out, plain and fast, there's a pause on the other end long enough that I wonder if I've overstepped something. Then he exhales, and there’s no annoyance in it. It's something closer to respect.
"Her name's Marisol." He says it as if he's writing it down somewhere permanent.
"I know the house. Rafael's already been stripped of everything, but some of his people are still loyal enough to be a problem for anybody left behind who isn't. I can get us in cleanly, but I'm not sending my own men in without knowing exactly who we're pulling out and why. "
"She helped my wife survive two days in that house. That's every reason you need."
"That's all the reasons I need." Something in his voice settles. "I'll meet you at the state line. We do this together."
We ride out within the hour, just me and Dante this time, no crews trailing either of us, which feels strange and right in equal measure. Two men who started this whole thing pointing guns at each other, riding side by side toward a house neither of us has any business walking into alone.
"You didn't have to say yes to this," I tell him somewhere on the highway, our engines too loud for real conversation until we stop for gas.
"Cassandra vouched for her." He shrugs, leaning against the pump. "That's enough for me these days. I used to only move for my family. Lately I'm finding the definition's gotten a lot less narrow than it used to be."
"Yeah. I know that feeling." I study him for a second. "You ever think about what you actually want, outside all of this? The business, the Famiglia, all of it?"
He's quiet for long enough that I think he's not going to answer.
"Some nights. Watching my sister at your wedding, watching the way your whole club moves for each other without anybody keeping score of who owes who.
That's not a life I ever thought was available to a man like me.
" He caps the tank, doesn't look over. "Doesn't mean I know how to get there from where I'm standing. "
"You start by doing exactly what we're doing right now." I clap him on the shoulder, same as Brick does to me, same as Knuckles does to anybody who needs steadying. "Showing up for somebody who needs it, not because it profits you, just because it's right. The rest tends to follow, if you let it."
He doesn't say anything else, but something in his face shifts, and I file it away the same way I file away everything these days, understanding I don't need to have the whole answer today for the seed to matter.
The house looks smaller, less like the fortress it felt like the day of the rescue, more like an old building already forgetting the man who used to run it.
Dante's men clear it fast, they’re professional, no wasted movement, and we find Marisol in the kitchen exactly where Cassie said she'd be, packing a single bag with hands that are shaking too hard to fold anything properly.
"You're safe." I keep my voice easy, hands visible. "Cassie sent us. She wouldn't rest until she knew you were out of here too."
Marisol's whole face crumples, relief breaking over exhaustion in a wave. "I didn't think anybody would come back for someone like me."
"That's the whole point of coming back for you." Dante steps in, his voice gentler than I've heard from him before. "Nobody who helps my sister gets left behind to pay for it. Not on my watch."
We get her settled in the truck Dante brought for exactly this reason, and she holds my hand a moment before letting go, tears flowing in eyes that have clearly seen too much for too long. "Tell Cassandra thank you. Tell her I'll never forget what she risked, asking after me at all."
"I will." I mean it all the way down.
Dante and I ride back separately from the truck, giving her space, and somewhere on that long stretch of highway, side by side, engines eating up the miles toward home, I understand something has shifted between us permanently.
It’s not a friendship exactly, not yet. But the beginning of it, the kind that gets built one honest afternoon at a time, the same way everything worth having in this life gets built.
"Same time next crisis?" I call over to him at the next light, and he actually laughs, real and surprised by his own sound.
"God, I hope not." He shakes his head, still grinning. "But if it comes to it, yeah. Same time."
I ride the rest of the way home thinking that maybe Cassie's brother isn't just somebody I tolerate for her sake anymore. Maybe he's somebody I'd actually go to war with, if it ever came to that again.
Family's a strange thing, the way it keeps finding new doors to walk through once you stop guarding all of them so hard.