Chapter 23 Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
REVA
Nash’s fingers move slowly up and down my spine, the drag of his callused fingertips a steady, absent rhythm that should feel soothing.
It doesn’t. Not really. It feels like waiting. Like the quiet before something shifts.
The room is dim, curtains pulled tight against the morning light, the air still heavy with heat and sweat and everything that just happened between us.
Everything that started on a street in New Orleans and just kept going.
My body is loose in that boneless, sated way I haven’t felt in…
I don’t even know how long, but my mind is already racing ahead, chasing the thing that brought me here in the first place.
Revenge doesn’t sleep just because I did.
His hand pauses at the base of my neck, thumb pressing once before sliding back down.
“I read your letters.”
The words land softly. Too softly for something that should be a detonation. I go completely still.
For a second, I think I imagined them. That I’m still half-dreaming, caught somewhere between exhaustion and the aftershocks of him. But his hand doesn’t move again, doesn’t soften or distract, and the silence stretches just long enough to make it real.
He said it. He read them. There’s no taking that back.
“You what?”
My voice comes out in a rasp, rough around the edges. I don’t know if I’m angry, embarrassed, or something worse.
“I read them,” he repeats, like we’re discussing something inconsequential. Like it doesn’t matter. “All of the letters in your bag.”
That slow, steady warmth drains out of me in an instant.
I roll onto my side, then push up onto my elbow, turning to face him fully. The sheet slides down my back, but I don’t bother pulling it up. Modesty feels irrelevant compared to the sharp burn crawling up my chest.
“You went through my things.”
It’s not a question, but he answers it anyway.
“You brought a man tied to my past into my house,” Nash says, his gaze steady on mine. “You expect me not to look?”
Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know.
“That doesn’t give you the right,” I snap, heat flashing quick and bright. “Those are mine. You had no business—”
“It gives me every reason,” he cuts in, not raising his voice, not pushing—just stating a fact. “And every fucking right, Reva. You don’t get to walk into Noir, start asking about Deacon, and try to keep secrets from me.”
The name hits harder now, because now I know he knows…everything. All the little parts of me I’ve tried to keep hidden.
“You don’t get to decide what I keep to myself,” I shoot back, even though my pulse has already kicked up, my body betraying the tension I’m trying to hold in place. “You don’t get to read something that—”
“That what?” His gaze sharpens, just slightly. “Matters to you?”
Yes. That’s the problem. It mattered.
My jaw tightens. “That’s not the point.”
“It is the point,” he says, his voice dropping just enough to shift the air between us. “Those letters are the only place you’re honest. The only place you don’t posture. That makes them important. So you’re damn right I read them. And I don’t care if it pisses you off. I’d do it again.”
The words land too close, with too much accuracy. I hate that he sees me so fucking clearly.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say, but it sounds thinner now, less certain than I want it to.
Nash watches me for a long moment, then reaches out, catching my wrist before I can pull back. His grip isn’t rough, but it’s not gentle either—firm, grounding, holding me in place when everything in me wants to either bolt or push harder.
“I know enough,” he says quietly. “Enough to know that whoever this Ash is… he’s been in your head for a long time.”
My stomach twists. Don’t say his name like that. That’s not for you.
“You don’t get to talk about him,” I snap, sharper now, something defensive and instinctive rising up before I can stop it. “You don’t know who he is, what he—”
“I know exactly who he is.”
That stops me. My chin angles toward him, a question rising to my lips.
The words don’t come out loud. They don’t need to. Their presence sits tangibly between us, cutting straight through everything else. I stare at him, lips parted.
“Then tell me,” I finally say, and this time there’s no heat in it. No snap. Just something tight and focused and dangerously close to breaking. “Tell me who he is.”
Nash holds my gaze for a beat, then reaches behind him, grabbing his shirt from the floor and tossing it at me.
“Put that on,” he says.
I don’t move.
“Reva.” The order is clear in his use of my name, and that just prickles against my skin in the worst way.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I know I sound like a child, but he holds all the cards and I need to prove to him…to myself, really, that I still have a choice here.
His eyes flick down—slow, deliberate—taking in the way the sheet has slipped over the swell of my breasts, the way I’m still bare in his bed, in his space.
Then he looks back up, completely unfazed.
“You can sit there naked and argue with me,” he says evenly, “or you can put that shirt on before I fuck you raw and make you scream. Because your anger makes me just as hard as everything else about you, little wolf.”
Asshole.
I snatch the shirt and drag it over my head, the fabric warm from his body, smelling like him. It settles over my thighs, too big, too intimate, and I hate how much that bothers me.
“Now talk.”
He doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he shifts, then moves in one smooth motion, pulling me into his arms and standing like I weigh nothing. I barely have time to react before he’s carrying me out of the bedroom, my hands bracing automatically against his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Answering you,” he says, already moving down the hall.
His terms. It’s always on his terms.
He doesn’t slow down.
Doesn’t give me time to think, to regroup, to decide how I’m supposed to feel about any of this before he’s already through the doorway and into his office.
The shift from bedroom to workspace is jarring—cooler air, sharper lines, everything in here clean and controlled in a way that makes the intimacy of a few seconds ago feel almost unreal.
Like I imagined it.
He doesn’t set me down.
Instead, he drops into his chair and pulls me with him, settling me across his lap, one arm braced around my waist to keep me from shifting too far away. The position is deliberate—too close for me to pretend distance, contained enough that I can’t escape him.
My attention snaps immediately to his hands, settling on the keyboard as he strokes out his password.
I watch. Carefully.
He types without hesitation, fingers moving in a pattern I try to follow—counting keystrokes, tracking rhythm, filing it away.
He’s fast, but he types like a typical man, one blunt peck at a time, and his password isn’t fast enough to miss entirely, and when the screen flickers to life, I force myself not to react.
That’ll be for later, if I ever need it.
The desktop loads, organized into folders that look exactly how I expect—clean, labeled, efficient. No clutter. No wasted space. It feels like him.
He clicks one open. A file loads, and a photograph fills the screen. The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp.
There it is. The rosary tattoo.
Red ink winding around black, stark against skin, unmistakable in its shape and placement. It’s clearer than it ever was in my memory, sharper, more real—and somehow that makes it worse.
Because it’s attached to him.
The man in my living room. The man I see every time I close my eyes.
My fingers curl into the fabric of Nash’s shirt where it hangs off my body, gripping it tightly.
“That’s him,” I say, my voice barely more than a breath.
There’s no question. No doubt. Nash’s arm tightens a fraction where it’s banded across my waist.
“This is Deacon Cross,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure he’s the one whose letters you have.”
The name settles heavy in my chest. Deacon.
Ash?
My stomach twists again, something sharp and disorienting cutting through the clarity of the moment before I can catch it. I push it down immediately, focusing on what matters.
“I don’t understand. Why would you think this Deacon Cross…is my Ash?” The screen burns into my retinas. “Deacon Cross killed my family. It would be…so…fucked up for him to start writing me.” My breath hitches.
Behind me, Nash’s chest rises and falls in a steady breath. He takes his time answering.
“I can’t answer that for certain. There’s a familiarity to his letters—”
My hands dig into the hair at my temples, and I shake my head a little. “Okay, skip that for the moment. I can’t…I just can’t. What is he? Who is he, to you?”
Nash’s arm tightens slightly around my waist—not restraining, just…present.
“He’s what we all were, once upon a time. A soldier,” he says. “In an organization called the Syndicate.”
The word sounds wrong. It’s too big. Too vague. Too loaded with meaning I don’t have yet. “A soldier? What the fuck does that mean, a soldier…who the hell is the Syndicate?”
“They’re the ones who killed your family.”
The room tilts, just enough to make everything feel off-balance. It’s not just him. It’s more than him.
Bigger than him.
“But why? Why my family? Why us?” I ask, the words quieter now, pulled from somewhere deeper than anger.
Nash exhales slowly, his gaze shifting from the screen to me for the first time since we sat down.
“I can speculate,” he says. “But I don’t really like to guess.”
“Speculate,” I snap, sharper now. I don’t care about careful. I don’t care about measured. I care about answers. “You owe me that much.”
He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t owe me a damn thing, and we both know it. His eyes narrow slightly, not in anger, but in consideration. Then—
“Your family was either in their way,” he says, “or involved in something they shouldn’t have been.”
The words sting.
“No,” I say, shaking my head before he even finishes. “That’s not—no. That’s not true.”
“You don’t know that,” he replies evenly.
“I know my family.”
“Do you? You were seven years old. You knew sunshine and rainbows and a family that loved you. But you know just as well as I do, that the world is full of different types of monsters. Different mistakes. A million paths of good intentions just paving the way to Hell.”
The words wedge themselves beneath my ribs. They’re not dismissive or cruel. They’re just honest. And that’s worse than anything else.
My chest tightens, something defensive rising fast and hot to cover the crack forming underneath.
“No. They weren’t like that,” I insist. “They weren’t involved in anything—”
“You were a kid,” he cuts in. “You didn’t see everything.”
No. I didn’t. But—
“They were mine,” I say, subdued now but no less certain.
That’s the part that matters. That’s the only part that matters.
Nash watches me for a moment, then shifts slightly, his hand sliding along my side and over to my belly, not distracting, not soothing, just…there.
“They were,” he says. “But that doesn’t change what happened. And their murder doesn’t take away the love they had for you. Both things can be true.”
The finality in his tone shuts something down in me. The anger’s still there. That’ll never leave.
But the argument weakens and draws down to a close, because arguing with him doesn’t get me closer to anything I need.
“How do you know him?” I ask instead, dragging the conversation back where I want it. “How do you have this information?”
Nash leans back in the chair, one hand resting loosely on the desk, the other still anchored at my waist.
“I worked with him,” he says. “A long time ago.”
“What do you mean, worked with?” I press.
“We were on the same side once upon a time.”
My stomach twists again, sharper this time. “And now?”
A brief pause. Then—
“We had a difference of opinion.”
I tip my head a little, eyes narrowed on him. That’s not the whole story. I can hear it in the space between the words. There’s more.
“And now he’s a silent partner in Noir Night,” Nash adds.
I go still in his lap.
“That’s why you won’t kill him,” I say, bitterness creeping in before I can stop it. “Because you do business with him.”
His grip tightens, just slightly.
“Careful, little wolf,” he says, voice low.
“Am I wrong?”
“No. But be careful all the same.”
I huff.
“It’s more complicated than that,” he continues. “We were close.”
I let out a humorless breath and squirm. “Close.”
He tightens his grip on me. “Like brothers.”
That stops me. Not because I believe it, but because I do. I’ve witnessed the dynamic between him, Shiloh, and Ever. It’s easy to imagine a fourth man being a part of their tribe at one time.
And then cutting him out of that…that couldn’t have been easy.
I look at him then, really look, trying to see past the man in front of me to whatever history sits behind that statement.
“Even now,” he says, “even with everything that’s changed…that’s not a cut I’ll make. Not a sin that I’ll carry on my cross.”
“Of course you won’t,” I murmur, snapping the rubber band on my wrist. “Why would you choose me over someone who was there first?”
He’s giving me the truth, and it shouldn’t sting as much as it does. He’s not mine. None of them are mine.
“It’s not just that,” he says, lifting his hand to punch the computer into sleep with frustrated motions. “Deacon still works for the Syndicate. I don’t have the manpower to take them on.”
He gestures at himself slightly, like the explanation is simple. “It’s me. Shiloh. Ever. That’s it.”
Three men. Against something big enough to erase entire families with security teams. To erase lives and follow them for decades afterward.
To erase me.
I go quiet, because what am I supposed to do with that? I nod once, slow. “I understand.”
I don’t. Not completely.
All I hear is: You’re on your own.
All I feel is: They’re protecting him.
His hand slides up my side again, slower this time, deliberate in a way that pulls my attention whether I want it to or not.
“I answered your questions.”
“I have more.”
“You’ll survive for now. You need to process and not spiral.”
He stands, wrapping my legs around his waist and lifting me with him before I can react, and carries me back toward the bedroom like the conversation we just had didn’t change anything.
Like it didn’t crack something open that I can’t close again.
Like I didn’t just get everything I needed, and none of what I wanted.
Like nothing shifted between us with his admission.
Like I didn’t just hear the name of the man who destroyed my life spoken in the same calm tone he uses to order coffee.
What was I thinking? Asking these men to help me kill someone they’ve called brother. Asking them to choose me. Someone they don’t know.
Someone they definitely can’t trust. Because even through all of this, I know nothing has really changed.
I’m still going to kill Deacon…or he’s going to have to kill me.
Revenge is the only thing I have left, and I refuse to let it go.