I couldn’t. My body vibrated with the urge to move, to hunt, to finish this. Waiting felt like choking.
Levi saw it. He always did. And so did Novak, who stepped out of the room with a nod to say he’d be outside if I needed him.
But Levi stepped close, his hands came up to my face, grounding me.
“Hey,” he murmured. “Look at me.”
I did. I couldn’t look away even if I’d tried—something in him pulled me in and held me there.
“You’re not alone in this,” Levi said, brushing his thumb over my jaw. “I’m here. I’m helping you. Breathe.”
I didn’t breathe. Not until he kissed me—slow, steady, a kiss meant to quieten the chaos snapping in my skull. And it worked. My thoughts unknotted, my pulse slowed, and the terror that always lived under my ribs eased enough for me to feel something else.
Him.
The kiss deepened, Levi leaning back against the wall and pulling me with him. I slotted between his legs without thinking, as though my body already knew where it belonged. His hands rested on my hips, anchoring me, drawing me in until our chests pressed together.
I felt so fucking helpless—rage, fear, everything twisting inside me—but he kissed me as if he could hold all of that forme, as if he wasn’t afraid of any of it. His mouth opened beneath mine, slow but certain, guiding me, steadying me, pulling the panic out of my lungs with every breath we shared.
His forehead touched mine, his breath warm. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “We’ll get through this. You’re not alone.”
We stayed like that until Caleb’s voice cut through the haze. “Got something.”
I opened the door and gestured for Novak to join us—I owed him a huge fucking bonus for not leaving—and the three of us focused on the screen to see a man’s face—Caleb, I assume.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, Nazario Ortega is Raven, agreed?”
“Agreed.” I managed when the panic at just hearing his name gripped me.
“He’s been in the US at least three months, working with Iron Bulls MC, and Alex Dryden-Wells, trying to reopen an existing organ pipeline network,” Caleb said. “I’m guessing the body part trafficking isn’t new to you.” He kept talking, but all I could do was nod. Fucking useless—I needed to get my head straight.
Caleb returned the nod. “Alex’s father, also deceased, is likely to have been the original carver for the Águilas Cartel. This is Oscar Dryden-Wells…”
The screen changed, and a hospital promo photograph popped up. An old man, ill, and next to it an older photo of him in a white coat, younger.
My throat closed, a rush of old terror hitting me so hard the room warped. For a second, I wasn’t in the room—I was a kid again, barefoot on concrete, the stink of bleach and rot in my nose, metal scraping against metal. The air tasted like blood. Everything inside me shifted, unmoored, and I felt sick.
And his eyes—God, his eyes. I saw them as if they were inches from my face. Cold. Eager. Hungry. A kind of empty that didn’t belong in a human skull. That stare crawled under myskin, hollowed me out, stripped me of time. I wasn’t twenty-something. I wasn’t grown. I was small, silent, trapped in that echoing space again while he opened people like puzzles.
That look lived inside me, carved into bone, a thing I could never scrape out. A thing that never let me go. “That’s him,” I forced out. “The man who used to take the organs.”
The words barely left my mouth before the floor seemed to disappear under me.
The concrete was wet. My feet were cold. Someone was crying—maybe me. Maybe the man strapped to the chair. Raven’s voice drifted through the dark like smoke, soft, amused, the way he talked when he was teaching. The surgeon stood beside him, gloved hands steady, scalpel gleaming under a single swinging bulb. They weren’t in a hurry. They never were. The lesson was always the same: watch.
The sound came back next—the first cut, the wet glide of skin parting, the breathy hum Raven made when he was pleased. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe. I was nothing but eyes and terror and the metallic taste of fear on my tongue.
I don’t know how long I fell into it. A second. A minute. A lifetime.
Then—
“Alejandro.”
Levi’s voice sliced through the memory. A hand cupped the back of my neck, warm, real, pulling me forward.
“Hey. You with me?”
The room came back in pieces, Levi’s breathing in my ear, and his thumb brushing the side of my jaw, anchoring me.
