Chapter 16 Storm
Storm
I don’t think there’s anything more comforting or less forgiving than the ocean.
I sit with my father on the back deck while the tide slides under the pilings and the boards remember storms from years past. The island air tastes like salt and old wood. A heron ghosts the marsh like it owns the word quiet.
We don’t talk for a while. That’s our language.
I listen for the breath under his breath, the way he rolls tension out of his knuckles, the small crack in the porch railing he never fixed.
He takes his time with me, measuring his words before he says them.
I appreciate that, because it’s always been my way, as well.
“I missed you,” I say finally, claiming the smallest hill first.
His mouth tilts, not quite a smile.
“I missed you, too.” He sits forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “There are things you don’t know about why I left. The choices I made.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I correct. “I heard enough the night you left to fill a book.”
He studies my face like there’s a tell I don’t know I have. “What did you hear?”
“I heard her telling you to go or die,” I say, eyes on the water. “Her saying the next man wouldn’t miss. And if I happened to be with you, that I was an acceptable loss.”
Someone—Maverick, I think—drops something somewhere in the house and curses colorfully. My father doesn’t flinch.
“She meant every word,” he says.
“I know,” I say, and the words land like a weight I’ve been carrying since seventeen. “You left so I wouldn’t end up at the bottom of the wrong staircase or be the victim of a tragic hunting accident…or…something. I hated you for that for a long time. But I understood the why of it.”
“I know that, too.” He exhales. “I also knew you’d figure out why I did it, and I was counting on you to be the kind of man who doesn’t repeat my mistakes.”
I rub my thumb along the splintered rail, feel the rough give of the weathered wood. “Well, I definitely don’t plan to marry the bitch.”
He snorts—the first sound tonight that isn’t careful. “I’m sure you won’t marry anyone who thinks a son is negotiable.”
Silence again, softer this time. The marsh clicks and hums. Far out, a buoy dings—a tired clock unsure of the hour.
“She was right about one thing,” he says finally, voice lower.
“Not about you being expendable—that’s bullshit.
But she was right about the kind of people we’re up against. Phoenix was talking about the Broker and the man over him…
that’s what we’re dealing with. Your mother acted tough, but she was afraid of making someone else angry.
Those are the kind of people that run our world.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were someone in our circle. ”
I frown. The thought of that is chilling. “I’ve never known Mother to be afraid of anyone. And for what reason? What did she say that night…?”
“She was fixated on appearances. She always is.” His gaze drifts somewhere past the marsh. “She didn’t like that I’d moved on, or that I’d built a different life without her fingerprints on it. Image is lifeblood in Savannah.”
He shakes his head, then refocuses. “Anyway. That’s bygones.
Phoenix gave us some valuable information with what Danner revealed about the hierarchy of things.
And I know you and the guys have already talked about this, but take me through it.
Maybe I’ll see something you don’t. I know these people in a different way. ”
“Okay. We have the Broker, and we have the Boss, who has yet to show his face.”
“Men like that don’t risk exposure,” my father says.
“They’re methodical. Patient. They let others do the dirty work so their own hands stay spotless.
They’ll use what just happened to take your measure.
They’ll call it a test. Fail it, and they’ll rebuild the entire board with your bodies as examples. ”
My jaw tightens. “The thing that has us baffled is what he truly wants. It can’t be just Phoenix—her father’s debt, I mean. We offered to pay it.”
I’m not Atticus, but markets make sense to me. People don’t refuse guaranteed profit unless the return they want is something else.
My father exhales. “Debt collectors take money, so this guy isn’t a debt collector. Kingmakers take people. If you’re asking me, this feels less like a debt and more like…a claim.”
I don’t like that word.
He goes on. “It could just be leverage. Maybe it’s something personal. Maybe he wanted a seat at a table he already owns everywhere else. Men like that collect obedience. If they can’t buy it, they’ll breed it. If they can’t breed it, they’ll break it.”
A strange shiver passes down my spine. The kind that comes when a puzzle has too many edges that almost match.
Almost like deja vu.
I stare out at the place where the marshy dark stops being water and starts becoming sky. “If he wanted her alive on that ship, he wanted something from her. They didn’t get it. That makes her a debt someone is going to come for.”
“And a witness,” he adds softly. “She knows a face. A voice. Men like him don’t tolerate that. They don’t forget.”
I roll my shoulders until something pops, and the heat under my sternum finds somewhere to sit. “He’s not going to get another shot.”
“He’ll take every shot he can manufacture,” my father says, not warning me—just stating reality as he sees it. “Build a wall.”
“We’re building it,” I say. “All of us in different ways. Atticus is rewriting our digital security. Maverick’s ensuring we have the loyalty of key people who surround us. And Conrad—”
A faint smile touches my mouth. “Conrad’s a bullet with a name written on it—once we learn that name.”
My father studies me. “And you?”
I pull my knife from my pocket, flip it around, and let it drop, point down, into the wood of the rail. “I’m the blade with that name carved in it.”
He grunts like that answer was inevitable. A blessing disguised as indifference. “Good. Then listen—get her well before you get even. If you chase both ends of the rope at once, you’ll drop one. And whoever sits at the top of this ladder? He only needs one.”
I know he’s right.
“Put your hands where they matter,” he says.
“On her,” I say without shame.
“On her,” he echoes. “And keep your eyes focused on the rest.”
We sit with those words between us while the marsh writes a line, erases it, writes it again.
The screen door clicks behind us.
Phoenix hesitates in the doorway, feet bare, hair damp, a hoodie swallowing her tiny frame. She looks smaller in my father’s house and somehow still more dangerous to my mental health than anyone who’s ever walked through it.
Zeus pads past her and flops at my boots like we’re done talking.
“Hi,” she says to Spencer, polite but not deferential. “Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all, Ms. Jones,” he returns, with the smallest bow that would offend my mother in ten languages. Phoenix is just the help, she’d say. She doesn’t rate a bow. Or even acknowledgement. “I was just about to head in for the evening.”
Sometimes I don’t know how I managed to stay with her as long as I did.
Actually—yes, I do. It was because I stayed with the guys, and not in her presence, unless it was specifically requested. Those times she did request I show up for something felt like I was burning and drowning all at once.
Phoenix steps onto the boards, the lamp behind her throwing a square of warm light onto the decking at her feet.
“Storm,” she says.
“Phoenix.”
“Come walk with me for a little while?”
There’s no wobble in it. No apology. Just a choice, but not even a real one. We all know that given any time with her, I’m going to jump on it like a dog on a bone.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, enjoying the way the words roll off my tongue and the smile they bring to Phoenix’s face.
I stand, the chair creaking with the movement. My hands want to reach for her but I don’t let them. Instead, I wait. She closes the distance halfway and stops, like she’s writing this step down so she can underline it later.
The night drops quiet around us. Far out, the buoy dings again like a blessing with a sense of humor. I look at her, at the line of stubbornness set into her mouth, at the banked heat under her eyes that isn’t fear.
Something in my chest loosens. Then it just… gives up and surrenders.
“Shoes,” I say. “You good with those little sandals?”
She lifts one foot, wiggles it, sets it back down. “I’m not made of glass, Storm.”
“No,” I say. “You’re not.” My gaze does one more sweep over her, checking what I’ve already checked a dozen times since we brought her here. No missed bruises. No hidden flinch. No deadness in her eyes. “Still gonna pretend I don’t worry, though.”
Her mouth twitches. “You can worry while we walk.”
She reaches out like it’s nothing. Like she’s always done it. Her hand hovers for half a heartbeat, then lands in mine.
Heat. Soft skin. The faintest tremor she probably thinks I don’t notice.
I close my fingers around hers. Not tight. Just enough so she knows I’m here. It hits low and hard, my brain doing a quick reboot. For one wild second, I think about hauling her against my chest and refusing to let go.
Instead, I nod. “Come on then.”
We step off the patio and onto the path that runs down to the marshy side of the island. The house lights fall behind us. The air shifts—cooler, wetter, full of salt and mud and green things. The dock creaks under our feet. Somewhere out in the dark, frogs work on a messy chorus.
She walks beside me. Not behind me. Not hiding in my shadow. Beside me. It matters more than it should.
“You ever get used to it?” she asks.
“Used to what?”
She tips her head, listening to the soft rush and suck of water through grass in the distance. “The sound. The marsh.”
“Grew up visiting the other side of the island,” I say. “So yeah. This is the noise in my head when things are quiet.”
She smiles a little. The wind blows strands of hair across her cheek. My fingers itch to tuck them back. I keep them where they are.