Fear comes later than I expect, but when it does, it’s complete. They know who I am. They know where I work. They know my brother. The understanding doesn’t spiral or overwhelm me. It clicks into place, reshaping what safety means without offering any comfort to soften it.
Guilt comes next. Not because I made the wrong choice, but because closeness always has consequences. I invited someone into my life whose reality operates on power and leverage, and that reality has now brushed up against mine in a way that can’t be ignored. I don’t let the guilt linger. It isn’t useful, and it doesn’t get to take up space. What remains instead is clarity.
This wasn’t about Ethan as an individual. He was a conduit. A route. A voice meant to carry a message without distortion. They wanted me to hear it secondhand. They wanted me to understand what happens when distance is mistaken for protection.
I straighten slowly and reach for my phone. I stare at the screen before selecting his name. The call connects on the first ring.
“Is he alive?” Kiren asks.
No greeting. No reassurance. Just the question that matters.
“Yes,” I reply.
There’s a pause on the other end, brief enough to notice, long enough to tell me he’s already processing what I’ve said.
“Good,” he answers.
The word hits in a way I recognize immediately. There’s relief in it, yes, but there’s also logic. As long as someone is alive, there are still choices. Death ends all of them.
I tell him everything. The call. The reroute. The voice that stayed calm and close. The interruption. The injuries thatstopped just short of killing. The sentence wasn’t meant to scare me. It was meant to stick.
I keep my tone calm and my words simple, leaving out anything that doesn’t belong. No guessing. No embellishment. Just what happened, laid out the way I know, because facts are easier to hold onto when everything else starts to blur.
He doesn’t interrupt.
When I finish, the line goes quiet. Not empty, just still. I know he’s not at a loss for words. He’s taking it apart, detail by detail, and putting it somewhere in a framework I can’t fully see. His world runs on patterns I wasn’t raised to recognize.
“This wasn’t escalation,” he finally says. “It was instruction.”
“I know,” I reply.
“They won’t touch you again,” he continues, his voice low and certain. “Not without consequence.”
I close my eyes briefly, my forehead resting against the edge of the table. “They already touched my family.”
The pause that follows is shorter this time.
“That changes things,” he responds. “And it will be answered.”
I don’t ask how or when. We end the call without ceremony.
I go back to Ethan’s room as the night stretches on, the fatigue in my body heavier than anything sleep will fix. The machines hum the way they always do, consistent and almost forgettable.The hospital sounds exactly as it should. It just doesn’t feel the same. It used to feel secure and protected. Now it feels exposed.
I pull a chair closer and sit beside his bed, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest under sedation. The anger I’ve kept in check pushes forward now, stripped of panic and confusion. This wasn’t about distance, and it wasn’t about pushing me away. It was about making sure I understood that space doesn’t equal safety. Safety comes from knowing exactly what world you’re standing in and refusing to pretend it’s something softer.
I see it now. And I heard them.
18
ROWAN
The hospital room smells faintly of antiseptic and over-laundered sheets, cleaner than the trauma bay but never completely free of the metallic trace that lingers in places like this. The overhead lights are dimmed, leaving the room in a muted glow that suggests rest without ever fully delivering it. The monitor beside the bed gives a soft, periodic tone, quietly tracking his heart rate.
Ethan lies propped at a slight incline, his shoulder secured in a structured brace that keeps his fractured clavicle immobilized. The strap cuts diagonally across his chest, securing him in a position he will despise the moment he is fully alert. It’s a clean break. It’ll heal with patience and compliance, which he won’t enjoy.
Deep bruising spreads along his ribs, dark and mottled beneath the hospital gown. The tissue will ache for weeks. Every breathwill remind him. The damage is significant enough to hurt but not enough to collapse a lung or rupture an organ.
His face is swollen on the left side. The cut above his eyebrow is closed with neat sutures I placed myself, each stitch aligned carefully to minimize scarring. I remember the feel of the needle passing through his skin, the steadiness in my hands when I refused to let anger guide them. I focused on closure, precision, and the fact that he was breathing.
