35. The New Warren
The New Warren
The apartment was small and sparse and absolutely mine.
I'd found it three weeks after the fire, in a city where no one knew my face or my name or the things I'd done to survive.
The building was old, the kind of place where neighbors didn't ask questions and landlords didn't check references, and the rent was paid in cash six months in advance.
The windows faced east, catching the morning light, and the door had three locks—two that came with the apartment and one I'd installed myself.
It wasn't home. I wasn't sure I'd ever have a home again. But it was safe, and it was quiet, and it was mine.
The walls were covered in paper.
I'd spent the first week just organizing—sorting through the files I'd taken from Gabriel's study and Nathan's server, cataloguing the evidence, identifying the threads that still needed to be pulled.
The network was crumbling, but it wasn't dead.
Elena Vasquez's exposé had made headlines across three continents, triggering investigations and arrests and the kind of public outrage that forced politicians to act.
But the roots went deep, and some of the branches had survived.
Safe houses still operating. Buyers still looking for product.
Assets still being held in facilities that hadn't been identified.
I'd mapped them all. Every name. Every location.
Every connection that still pulsed with the dark lifeblood of the trafficking trade.
The wall above my desk was a web of red string and photographs and handwritten notes, a mirror of the wall I'd built in Nathan's apartment—but this time, the hunt was mine.
The targets were mine. The justice was mine.
I didn't hum while I worked. The lullaby had gone quiet, buried beneath layers of grief and purpose and the slow, painful process of becoming someone new.
I wasn't Bunny anymore. I wasn't Lilah. I wasn't Gabriel's perfect creation or Nathan's broken doll or any of the other masks I'd worn to survive.
I was something else. Something that didn't have a name yet.
But I was getting closer to finding one.
The first call was the hardest.
I'd been planning it for days—researching the organization, vetting their leadership, making sure they were legitimate.
There were so many groups that claimed to help trafficking victims, and so many of them were fronts for the very networks they pretended to fight.
Gabriel had taught me to be thorough. Nathan had taught me to be paranoid. I'd learned both lessons well.
The number was for a hotline based in Chicago, operated by a non-profit that had been rescuing women from trafficking rings for over a decade.
They had a good reputation. They had connections with law enforcement that didn't ask too many questions.
They had safe houses and counselors and the kind of infrastructure that could actually help the women I'd located.
I dialed the number at 3:47 AM, when the city was quiet and my hands were steady and the voice in my head that still sounded like Gabriel told me I was doing the right thing.
"Midwest Rescue Network," a woman's voice answered. She sounded tired but professional, the voice of someone who'd taken a hundred calls like this and would take a hundred more. "How can I help you?"
"I have information about a trafficking operation.
" My voice was calm, measured, the voice of someone who'd learned to control every syllable.
"A facility outside Indianapolis. Twelve women, mostly Eastern European, being held in a warehouse on the east side of the city.
The address is 8427 Industrial Parkway."
A pause. I could hear the sound of a keyboard clicking, the woman typing rapidly. "Can I ask who's calling?"
"No."
"Can I ask how you came by this information?"
"No." I adjusted my grip on the phone. "But I can tell you that the security rotation changes at 4 AM. There are four guards, two at the front entrance and two at the loading dock. The women are being held in the basement. They haven't been fed in two days."
The typing stopped. "How do you know all this?"
"I know a lot of things." I looked at the wall above my desk, at the photograph of the facility and the notes I'd compiled over three days of surveillance. "The information is good. If you act quickly, you can get them out before the next shift change."
"We'll need to verify—"
"Verify it however you need to. But do it fast." I paused, weighing my next words. "There's more where this came from. Facilities all over the country. Women who need help. If you're willing to work with an anonymous source, I can give you enough information to keep your teams busy for months."
The silence on the other end of the line stretched long enough that I thought she might have hung up. Then: "Who are you?"
The question hung in the air like a blade.
Who was I? I'd been Lilah, the angry girl who signed a contract she didn't read.
I'd been Bunny, the broken doll who called a monster Daddy and meant it with every atom of her reconstructed self.
I'd been Nathan's fiancée, Gabriel's masterpiece, the hunter and the prey and the weapon they'd both tried to wield.
All of those women were dead now. All of them were ash.
But something new was rising from the ruins. Something that didn't have a name yet. Something that belonged to no one but itself.
I thought about the collar still warm against my throat.
I thought about Mr. Hoppy, sitting on my bed in the next room, his glass eyes watching the door.
I thought about Gabriel's voice saying you were always perfect and Nathan's voice saying I love you and both of them lying and both of them telling the truth in their own twisted ways.
I thought about all the women who'd been broken and discarded, all the girls who'd been sold and silenced, all the victims who'd never gotten justice because the system was too slow or too corrupt or too indifferent to care.
"Call me the Rabbit," I said, and hung up.
The phone went into a drawer, and the drawer stayed closed.
I'd buy a new burner tomorrow, with a new number, and I'd make another call to another organization, and I'd keep making calls until every facility on my wall was empty and every woman in those photographs was free.
It wasn't enough—it would never be enough to undo what had been done—but it was something.
It was a start. It was the first step on a long road I was only beginning to walk.
I stood at the window and watched the city lights blur into constellations.
Somewhere out there, women were suffering.
Somewhere out there, traffickers were counting their profits and guards were making their rounds and buyers were browsing catalogues of human beings like they were shopping for furniture.
They thought they were safe. They thought the network would protect them.
They thought no one was coming for them.
They were wrong.
The Rabbit was coming. And she was very, very good at what she did.
I turned away from the window and went back to my desk, my fingers finding the next photograph, the next file, the next target.
The hunt was not over. It would never be over, not really, not as long as there were monsters in the world who thought they could own other human beings.
But I was no longer hunting for revenge.
I was no longer hunting to prove something to the men who'd tried to break me.
I was hunting because it was right. Because I could. Because the skills they'd given me—the conditioning, the training, the terrible precision of violence—could be used for something more than their egos and their empires.
I was hunting because I chose to.
And that made all the difference.