Chapter 28
AVA - PART OF THE PROBLEM
Remi had called frantically.
She was on the road, headed to speak at an event she didn’t want to go to but had agreed to anyway because it would keep the lights on for a solid year. So, she accepted.
She had almost turned back around when someone she had befriended at the precinct called her with a heads up that one of her patients had been picked up… again.
I knew the case. I was familiar with it. It had been sitting heavily with Remi for the past few weeks.
It wasn’t the worst case we’d ever seen.
Not the deepest bruises. Not the most broken bones. Not the most violent file.
But it was the one that cracked something in Remi. That hit a little too close to home.
Because she’d come to us, because she had nowhere else to go.
She’d asked for our help.
And we gave her everything we were supposed to: a safety plan, a shelter contact, transportation, and more.
And the system still ate her alive.
I walked through the precinct doors like I belonged there, like I hadn’t fought tooth and nail for every scrap of credibility, for every inch of space in a world that still thought I should sit down and be quiet.
The air inside was wrong.
Stiff. Tense.
It smelled of stale coffee and copy paper, the hum of fluorescents louder than any conversation. That’s how you knew, the way voices died the second you stepped close. The way posture stiffened.
I was tired of it.
Tired of being told I was too loud. Tired of being told I didn’t handle things the right way. Tired of being told to wait for the “big boys” to figure shit out.
Fuck that.
Remi had called hysterical, and Lia... Sweet Lia, who was sixteen, shaking, already branded as “combative,” was somewhere in here. Arrested while trying to run from the same fucked-up shit we’d clawed our way out of.
I didn’t stop at the front desk. Didn’t ask for permission. Didn’t acknowledge the pointed look from the clerk. I didn’t look at Erin Voss, though I felt her presence like a searing brand between my shoulder blades.
Predatory. Amused.
Like she’d been waiting for this.
I found Harlan in the hallway.
He was halfway to his office, folder in hand, when he spotted me. For a heartbeat, he froze. His eyes flicked left, right, calculating who was watching. His jaw tightened before he even opened his mouth.
What the fuck?
“Ava...”
“Don’t,” I snapped.
My voice cut through the hallway, sharp enough to earn heads turning, conversations halting.
His posture shifted, all calm command, but I saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand flexed against the folder. “Come into my office,” he said, calculated... to stiff.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I said, louder now, enough that the rookies at the corner desks leaned back, wide-eyed.
He extended a hand as if I were a bomb and he was picking the wire to cut. “Please. Inside.”
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to rip the goddamn walls down.
But more than anything, I wanted someone, anyone, to care that a sixteen-year-old had been thrown into a cell for panicking.
So, I let him guide me into his office, mostly because I refused to give Voss the satisfaction of watching me unravel in the middle of the bullpen.
Her eyes followed us. Amused. Taking notes.
Harlan closed the door behind us, shutting out the buzz of the bullpen, and turned. His office smelled faintly of cedar and paper. His sanctuary. His fortress.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“We’re handling it,” he said stiffly, like the old Harlan.
“Handling it?” My laugh was sharp, dangerous. “You mean re-traumatizing a girl who already thinks the world only listens to men.”
“She resisted, Ava.” He cleared his throat and lowered his tone, looked to the window that showcased the bullpen and back to me. “I thought she was Remi’s patient.”
The words hit me like a slap, like Remi’s involvement made it more legitimate.
More palatable. Like it mattered more if the girl was officially on her caseload, my blood surged hot.
Tears wanted to spring free, but I refused to let them.
Refused to acknowledge the literal hit Harlan had just delivered.
“She was terrified. She told the officer she knew Remi. She asked for the shelter. And she got cuffed.”
“We’re reviewing it…”
“No,” I said, voice breaking now, my chest tightening. “No more reviews. No more incident reports and reassignment bullshit. I want to know why the same officers keep showing up in these files, and I want to know why she wasn’t treated like a victim.”
He didn’t answer right away. That pause, God, that pause, felt like betrayal.
And all I could hear, all I could feel, was the echo of every man who had ever told me to calm down, to wait, to trust the system. Every man who’d let me bleed while they shuffled papers.
Outside, I felt the shift in the air—the quiet pressing against the glass. I looked.
And there she was. Voss. Arms crossed. Smiling.
Soaked in smugness like it was perfume.
And Harlan… he just looked tired.
“You can’t make a scene like this in the station,” he said.
The words froze me. Rage to ice in a second.
There it was.
“You’re more worried about optics than you are about her.”
“That’s not true.”
I stepped back as if he’d struck me. My throat burned. My chest ached.
Because God help me, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe the man who kissed me softly in the dark, who held me when I woke shaking, who made tacos with me in the kitchen like we were normal. Who made me feel safe when I thought I would never feel safe again.
But I’d been here before.
I’d been told I was too much, too loud, hysterical.
I’d been told to be smaller so a man could breathe easier.
And now the doubt pressed in, a suffocating weight.
“You want to help?” My voice cracked, but I forced the words out. “Then stop trying to talk me down every time I scream loud enough to be fucking heard.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
I pointed toward the hallway, to where Voss was still watching. “You think she’s the threat to me?”
He didn’t look. Didn’t need to. We both knew.
And suddenly the exhaustion in his face wasn’t just his, it was mine too. My hope was bleeding out.
“I’m not sure anymore, Harlan. Are you really trying to protect me… or are you trying to keep me quiet? Keep me in that neat little organized bubble you like to live in?”
My hand hit the doorknob. He didn’t stop me.
I turned once, voice raw. “Tell me you’re not part of the problem. Tell me I wasn’t wrong about you.”
The flicker in his face, guilt, shame, doubt, told me everything I needed to know.
I didn’t wait for an answer.
I walked out, head high, fire licking back up my spine.
The bullpen fell into silence as I passed. Every eye tracked me. Some pitied. Some judged. Some dismissed.
And Voss...
She smiled at me.
And I smiled back. Sharp. Feral.
Because she thought she was watching me break.
But all I felt was the fire sealing the cracks.