He exhaled—slow, even—and the air around him seemed to settle. His shoulders rolled back with an ease that made my stomach tighten, as if slipping into this version of himself was more natural than staying in the previous one. Everything in him streamlined: his breath, his posture, the way he watched me with eyes that saw more than I wanted them to.
A killer’s focus.
And if I were being honest, I recognized something of it. That cold, necessary distance you stepped into when the world demanded you be harder than you felt. I’d come close to it once or twice in my career, but he lived there permanently.
He eased Marisol away from him, and for a split second I caught one of the twins—Bradley, I thought—watching him with wide, unsettled eyes, already sensing something was wrong, and Marisol stared up at him, confused and afraid.
“Get the twins. Secondary passports only, no electronics, no clothes. Get them and get in the car.”
“We’re leaving?”
“Get them in the car.”
“Alejandro,” I said quietly, as Marisol must have seen something in my face and hurried out of the kitchen. “Alejandro!” I shouted when he refused to look at me.
His gaze flicked my way, and the obsession I’d glimpsed there before was gone and completely gone. In its place was a watchful, precise calculation that made my pulse trip. He wasn’t deciding how to answer me. He was deciding whether answering me was a threat to his survival. And the sick churning in my stomach wasn’t just fear. It was something worse—because I hadno idea which version of him I wanted back. The unraveled one, the closed-off one, or the dangerous one standing in front of me now, who felt more honest than either.
“Ask your questions,Detective,” he said, each word hammered into something sharp. Detective, not Levi. A line drawn. A warning.
“Ortega—”
“IfRavensurvived what I did to him,” he said, voice lowering, “then every second I’ve spent trying to build something here was a fucking joke.” There was anger in him now—quiet, contained, but beneath it was fear that took me a second to recognize. The kind aimed not at himself, but at losing something he couldn’t afford to lose. Marisol and the twins. His family.
“He hurt her, Levi,” he said softly, then drew in a breath as if he was pulling it up from a long, dark place he’d bolted shut. “He hurt…people,” he said. “Tortured them. Took their kidneys, their livers, their fucking hearts! Then he killed them. And when he went after her, when he killed Momma, and then forced my sister…” He inhaled. “He had to die. They all did.”
He stepped back, bracing himself on the counter, and for the briefest moment—just a crack—I saw past the mask. I saw the boy he’d been—scared, outnumbered, pushed past every limit, making choices that no child should have had to make. His eyes flickered, were filled with pain, fury, and maybe something like shame—then vanished beneath the mask again.
He huffed out something like a laugh, but it was hollow. “Terrified isn’t useful right now. But that’s all I’m feeling.” He stared at me, still as a statue. Then he said, “It doesn’t matter what I feel.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“You want the truth?” he murmured, eyes on mine but not seeing me. He yanked at his shirt, revealing the inked bird I’dglimpsed before. “This isn’t a tattoo.” His voice went thin. “It’s ownership. He carved and tattooed a bird into me when I was nine. A raven. Said it meant I belonged to him.” He huffed out a breath.
“We find him,” I said. “Together.”
No reaction. No blink. No breath. Then, finally, quietly: “Don’t make me trust you if you can’t follow through.”
“I’m here.”
“Fuck! He’ll go for her if he can. If he’s here, I don’t know what’s holding him back. How did he know… how did he find us… what the fuck…” He carded his hands through his hair and gripped tight as if he was spiraling again.
“Where are you taking your family?” I asked, and when he didn’t answer, I gripped his arm again and shook him. He blinked at me—lost in his own world. I caught his wrist—steady, controlled pressure—because he was shaking and didn’t realize it. “Alejandro,” I said quietly, “look at me. Where are you taking them?”
“I’ll… I have a place,” he said.
I curled my hand around the back of his neck—warm skin, tight muscle, a pulse kicking hard under my thumb. And there was the smallest chink in that mask, as something in my chest pulled tight enough to hurt.
“Stay with me,” I said, voice low. “Don’t disappear on me right now.”
“I need to… think…”
Before I could push him for more, he was already moving—snatching his keys off the counter, heading for the door as if the ground beneath our feet was on fire. I followed because there was nothing else I could do. After all, whatever thin line existed between us had snapped into something sharper, and I wasn’t about to let him walk into this alone. Before we made it out of the door, Bradley and Molly hovered in the hallway—wide-eyed, confused, whispering to each other. Marisol tried to reassure them, but her voice shook, her hands trembling as she urged them to grab their shoes. Bradley kept asking what was happening, why Uncle Alli wasn’t talking, and why he looked like that. Molly clung to her mother’s arm, staring at Alejandro as if she didn’t recognize him. Alejandro didn’t answer a single question. He opened the door and told them to move. The confusion and fear in the house clung to all of us as we stepped outside.
I took shotgun in his car before he could tell me to back off, but when Marisol and the twins climbed into the back, no one introduced me. Alejandro didn’t speak as he started the car. His hand tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked, then there was a deadly stillness in him. Controlled. Focused. Terrified.
We pulled away from the curb fast enough that my shoulder hit the door. I had no damn business being in that car, but I stayed anyway. I stayed because the thought of him facing this alone made something ugly twist in my chest. Call it instinct or stupidity—didn’t matter. I’d already chosen my side, long before I said it out loud.
With Novak following in his van, halfway down the block, Alejandro made the first call through his EarPods—rapid-fire, precise. I caught enough to piece it together: shut it down, close it out, no more work. Whatever business he had running in the shadows—medical, cartel-adjacent, something between the lines—he was cutting it loose. I wanted to know what he was shutting down.
