Jonathan doesn’t strike me as the type to guess. Everything since meeting him has been clipped, controlled…shortcommands, nothing wasted. Trey definitely didn’t inherit his silver tongue from his father.
Which means Jonathan already had information.
Which means he has someone inside Gideon’s circle.
He took me in the middle of the chaos.
The realization settles heavily in my chest, suffocating and cold, because if Johnathon has someone on the inside…
My skin prickles, a slow, sickening crawl of awareness spreading over me as another thought forces its way in, one I don’t want, one I try to push away, but it refuses to be silenced.
Johnathon has to have more information.
I am safe and sound in a room full of familiar faces… and still, I worry. I pick at myself. My hand presses harder against my stomach, instinctive and desperate, protective in a way that feels almost primal.
I won’t let them take me again.
A sharp panic claws its way up my throat, my chest tightening as my breathing turns shallow and uneven, my pulse racing so fast it makes the edges of my vision blur.
I can’t.
Not now.
Not when it’s not just me anymore.
Because this changes everything.
This raises the stakes in a way I don’t even know how to process yet, because it’s no longer just about surviving, no longer just about escaping, it’s about protecting something that hasn’t even had a chance to exist yet.
And Gideon…
Gideon would take that from me. Whether he calls it corruption or salvation, whether he names it sin or sacrifice, it doesn’t matter, because in his world everything becomes his to control, to shape, to destroy if it doesn’t fit the image he has built in his own mind.
A tremor moves through me, my fingers curling slightly against my stomach as fear coils tighter and tighter inside my chest, suffocating and relentless.
I can’t go back there.
I can’t fall into his hands again.
I won’t survive it this time.
And neither will this child.
The voices around me continue, low and urgent, plans being formed, strategies unfolding, but they may as well be happening in another world entirely, because all I can hear is the frantic rhythm of my own heartbeat and the single, unrelenting truth that refuses to loosen its grip on me.
I think of Trey—of Mac, Logan, Chace, of Sam—my guardian angels.
For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. —Psalm 91:11
Please, protect me, Lord. Watch over me… and my child.
Mac drifts toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, drawn by something none of us have quite registered yet, and for a moment the chaos in the room seems to still around her as the morning light pours in, catching in the soft fall of her blonde waves until they gleam like spun gold, each strand lit as though she’s been set in place deliberately against the glass, something almost ethereal about her as she squints down toward the strip below.
Her posture straightens just slightly, her head tilting as if she’s trying to make sense of what she’s seeing.
“What the hell is going on down there?”
Her voice cuts cleanly through the room, sharp enough to pull everyone’s attention, and the shift is immediate as bodies turn, conversation dies, and Niko moves without hesitation, long, controlled strides carrying him to her side as though he already knows what he’s about to find.
