CHAPTER 11 #2
I pushed a stray heavy-barrel pen back into its designated tray so it sat exactly where he’d left it. I was looking for the inconsistency. In medicine, you don't look at the healthy tissue; you look for the anomaly. That’s where the rot lives.
My eyes snagged on the bottom-right drawer of the desk. It was open. Just a fraction of an inch. In a room where the guns and pens were aligned with laser precision, a cracked drawer was a screaming red flag. It was a mistake. Or a test.
Don't be a fool. Close it.
I stared at the sliver of dark space. No. I need to see.
Using the hem of my oversized, blood-stained shirt, I gripped the metal handle to avoid leaving a fingerprint.
I pulled gently. It didn't glide on smooth tracks; it ground slightly against the wood.
The faint scrape sounded deafening. Inside, the obsessive order of Damon Locke vanished entirely.
It was absolute chaos. A graveyard of old, yellowed manila folders bound with cracked rubber bands, stuffed with hand-written notes and faded paper.
Look at all this paper. The things you can't throw away.
I smelled cedar and decaying paper. Carefully, using just my pinky finger, I flipped through the edges of the folders.
I lifted one from the bottom of the pile, the paper brittle and dry.
The header bore a faded stamp of the cartel insignia currently funding half the violence in this city.
The date was fifteen years old. It was an internal incident report. Classified: High Priority.
Fifteen years ago. I kept the folder pressed to my chest, shooting a paranoid glance back at the bed. His breathing hadn't changed. What were you back then?
I flipped the cover open, the stark white light from the security monitors reflecting off the faded type.
...operative Damon Locke, age 19... failed extraction... secondary detonation... warehouse fire... presumed KIA... casualty list below...
My breath hitched. Nineteen. You were just a kid.
Presumed Killed In Action. They left you.
The bureaucratic, sterile breakdown of the event made my stomach turn.
It detailed the accelerants. The estimated temperature of the blaze.
The structural collapse. My brain instantly filled in the blanks—the searing heat melting through the dermal layers, the toxic smoke charring his lungs, the sheer, unimaginable panic of being abandoned in an oven.
How did you crawl out of that? I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself, my palm slick with cold sweat. Fire... it changes everything.
A single piece of loose paper slipped from the back of the folder and drifted onto the desk. It was a handwritten witness statement. I zeroed in on the jagged scrawl of the signature at the very bottom.
Garrison Locke.
The name hit me square in the chest. Garrison. His brother.
Garrison Locke. Your own brother left you to burn.
The betrayal wasn't just cartel politics.
It was blood. It was family. The hollow, terrifyingly isolated core of the man sleeping ten feet away suddenly made total sense.
If the people who share your DNA leave you to melt in a warehouse, you don't ever trust anyone again.
You own them. You lock them in concrete fortresses and you strip them of their autonomy because if you control everything, no one can ever leave you behind.
We’re the same, aren't we? I wiped a tear off my cheek before it could ruin the ink on the page. I had been discarded too. Cut off and left to operate in the underground because of one bad call on the table. Both of us... discarded.
The empathy I felt was a massive liability. It was a dangerous, stupid thing to feel for a man who kept me prisoner, but I couldn't un-see the trauma.
Just one more page... I started to fold the statement back into the manila cover, completely sucked into the void of his history. I need to know the rest.
I was so hyper-focused on the yellowed paper that I didn't hear the sheets rustle. I didn't register the sudden shift in the room's air pressure, or the absolute absence of that heavy, rhythmic breathing. I let my guard down for sixty seconds.
A massive, incredibly warm hand snapped around my left wrist like a steel manacle.
"Oh god!" I gasped, a strangled sound ripping out of my throat as my whole body violently jolted.
"Let go!"
The file fluttered from my right hand, fifteen-year-old cartel secrets scattering across the freezing concrete floor like dead leaves. I looked up. Damon wasn't in the bed. He was standing right next to me in the shadows, his dark eyes wide awake and entirely black in the monitor light.
Damon, wait! I can explain.
He didn't say a fucking word. He just yanked my wrist hard, pulling me completely off my feet. I stumbled backward, tripping over the edge of the thick rug. I hit my knees, but he hauled me right back up by my arm, dragging me across the floor with terrifying, effortless momentum.
You were watching me. You let me find it.
He threw me onto the bed. The impact knocked the oxygen straight out of my lungs.
Before I could even scramble backward toward the headboard, he followed, landing half on top of me.
His weight pinned my legs into the mattress.
He slammed his hands down on either side of my head, locking me in place, his bare, scarred chest hovering inches from my face.
I pushed frantically against his thick shoulders, but it was deadass like trying to shove a concrete pillar. The sheer physical dominance was absolute. I dropped my hands to the sheets, my chest heaving.
I looked up into his face, expecting the rage of a warlord who just caught a rat in his files. But his eyes weren't angry. They were utterly unhinged with a raw, dangerous vulnerability. It was the look of a predator who had just let a bomb go off and was waiting to see who survived the blast.
I saw. I looked straight into the dark abyss of his stare. I know what he did to you.
"Find what you were looking for, Doctor?" His voice was a low, rough gravel that vibrated through the mattress and straight into my spine.
He didn't wait for me to formulate a lie. He reached down, grabbed the back of my neck, and pulled me flush against his chest. He shoved my face directly into the puckered, ruined skin of his ribs, holding me against his scars with a desperate, suffocating strength.
Look at me, Margarita. Tell me what you see. You aren't leaving this room. Not now. Not ever.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my cheek pressed flat against the physical evidence of his total destruction, breathing in the smell of his sweat and the phantom ash. I stopped fighting, mostly because his grip was unbreakable, but mostly because I realized there was literally nowhere else I wanted to be.