“I’m no better than my dad.”
“Bullshit,” Killian muttered.
“Yeah, bullshit,” Caleb snapped.
“Agreed,” Sonya added.
Caleb’s expression softened in that way he hated anyone noticing. “And Doc killed this man?”
“No, he watched. He said the person who was killed tonight sold someone—I assume he sold Rourke—who was under Doc’s protection.”
Killian huffed, his eyes steady on me. “Doc is the last person to feel responsible for anything. This has to be more about Doc hating it, making him look bad?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? He said the man who was killed a few hours ago sold Rourke to someone else, and if we have any chance of finding the person who carved up Rourke for his organs, then I need to know who Doc really is.” I paused. “There’s more.”
“What?” Killian asked. He likely thought that, having heard the story twice, he’d had everything covered, but I’d left one part out.
“He kissed me. I kissed him. I don’t know.”
Silence, and I waited for the team to clutch their pearls, but Sonya shook her head, and Caleb huffed a laugh. Only Killian reacted.
“Don’t get too emotionally invested,” Killian warned.
I waved a hand. “Like you didn’t with Jamie?”
He did that half-shrug thing, meaning he’d seen my point, and then silence.
“I’ll see what I can find on the victim,” Caleb murmured. “And push harder on what’s out there for Doc.”
“I have to work,” I mumbled, not sure where I’d get the energy from. Somehow in the space of one night, my world had changed, and I didn’t like it one little bit.
EIGHT
Doc
Novak had connections.
Not the kind that came with money or power, but he had… people. Invisible strings I’d never seen him use before. Whispers. Favors. Quiet nods that shifted the room in ways I didn’t like, but meant he had a track on the surgeon who’d purchased Rourke from Rufus. The surgeon who’d bought the body—Alex Dryden-Wells—had gone missing. Well, not missing exactly, but he’d taken a vacation, and no one knew where.
I hadn’t asked Novak to look into the other thing twisting up my thoughts—the cartel Levi had mentioned, and that goddamn name that kept scraping at old scars. Águilas. I didn’t know if Levi was right or intent on stirring up ghosts, but it was enough to pull me back into memories I’d spent years trying to bury. Every time it surfaced, it dragged up flashes of memories I didn’t want—noise, fists, orders shouted in the dark.Stay still. Don’t fight. Breathe when you’re told.I was tired of the loop—of waking with my heart in my throat, the same dread tightening around my ribs no matter how far I thought I’d run from it. My shoulders tensed as if I were already bracing for the next blow,and digging into it now wasn’t a door I wasn’t ready to open—not with everything else already burning around me.
I researched a little, making sure my office door was shut, because no one needed to see the shit I was digging through. My Águilas research was thin—too thin. No clear hierarchy on the new iteration of the old Hell, no confirmed leader, just scraps collected by cops, feds, and anyone who thought they could make sense of a ghost. Whoever ran the cartel stayed so deeply buried that every report I found on the dark web contradicted the last. Some said it wasn’t a cartel like it used to be, but a front for something bigger, but no one knew what. Others claimed it was nothing but a name people used when they needed fear on their side. And Raven and the rest of them? Nothing. Not a whisper. The only mention was the fifteen-year-old footnote marking them all as massacre victims. Dead. Gone. Raven had been burned with the rest. I told myself that meant it was over—that whatever hell I’d crawled out of wasn’t coming back.
Would I ever feel safe? The thought hit hard, dragging up a wave of self-pity so familiar it made my teeth clench. I wasn’t proud of it. It was the kind of thinking that crept in when I was tired, hungry, stretched too thin. Useless. Circular. The type of weakness that used to hurt kids like me.
I knew better. I’d built a life on knowing better.
But there it was anyway—that quiet, pathetic question about safety, about whether I’d ever outrun the things that made me. I hated how easy it was to slip into that mindset, like muscle memory, like falling back into an old stance I swore I’d outgrown. I saw it for what it was immediately: self-indulgent, corrosive, a luxury I didn’t deserve.
I shut it down. Cold. Efficient. I wasn’t a kid anymore. No one was coming to save me, and I didn’t need saving anyway. I had work to do. People were depending on me. I couldn’t afford to fall apart, not even in the privacy of my own head.
So, I cycled right on to thinking about Levi Rosen. His name sat there on the public police site, neat and official, while the memory of kissing him replayed in my mind like a loop I couldn’t break. Why the hell did I kiss him? I’d never kissed anyone before because a kiss had always been a test, a claim, a way to take something from you. Letting someone that close was a fast way to lose control, and I’d learned young to keep my mouth and my choices to myself.
It wasn’t innocence. It was a strategy. The people who hurt me never wanted to kiss, and people like me didn’t get soft moments. Not without paying for them. Wanting anything made you a target, and I’d watched kids get torn apart for less. I built walls, shut every door, and made sure no one could reach me.
Leaning into Levi was stupid. Exposure. A breach in protocol I shouldn’t have allowed, and it dragged up a version of me I’d stripped down to the studs years ago. Wantinganythingwas a liability. Wanting someone was a threat vector. I identified the feeling, classified it as compromised judgment, and shut it down.
And for a second, that old shame tried to rise—the pathetic kind, the kind that whispered I wanted a kiss, I wanted affection. I shut it down immediately. No hesitation. No indulgence. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t that kid anymore. I hadn’t survived this long to start craving things that could get me killed.
