I lean back in my chair, a savage satisfaction spreading through my chest. Someone put a blade in Roman Miller's gut and left him to bleed.
“Good girl,” I whisper to the empty trailer.
But satisfaction curdles quickly into something darker. If Nova put Miller in the hospital, he survived. He's still out there. Still her legal husband. Still a threat she's running from.
I screenshot the medical report and save Miller's photo to my phone. Forty-four years old, graying hair, soft around the middle.
This man needs to disappear permanently.
My phone buzzes. Elias.
Meeting in ten. Malachi update.
I close the laptop. The hunt for Nova's deadbeat husband will have to wait, but I have my target now. He hurt her, and I'll find him.
The meeting trailer smells like stale coffee and Logan's cheap cologne. My brothers sit around the fold-out table. Elias stands at the head, a printed photo in his hand.
“Malachi's security cameras caught us,” he announces without preamble. “Not our faces—we were careful.”
Cole leans forward. “Good. Let the bastard sweat.”
“There's more.” Elias slides the photo across the table. “This was taken at his front door this morning.”
The image shows Malachi in a bathrobe and slippers, gray hair disheveled, reading what looks like a handwritten note.Even in the grainy security footage, his face appears pale, stricken.
“What's the note say?” Marek asks.
Elias's smile holds no warmth. “An invitation to Friday night's show. Personal delivery.”
Jonah cracks his knuckles. “He coming?”
“Oh, he'll come. Men like Malachi can't resist the urge to confront their past when it comes calling. His ego won't let him hide.”
I study the photo, noting the way his shoulders curve inward like he's trying to make himself smaller. Good. Let him feel a fraction of the fear he instilled in dozens of terrified children.
“Security?” I ask.
“Increased. But nothing we can't handle. The man's scared, not smart.”
The meeting continues—logistics, timing, contingencies. I nod and contribute when required, but my mind keeps drifting to Nova. To missing persons reports, wondering what she went through away from home at fifteen. To the way she flinched when I touched her shoulder yesterday, like she expected violence instead of comfort.
Roman hurt her, and he is still out there. Still a threat. And Nova's here with us now, in Malachi's crosshairs, carrying secrets that could destroy her if they surface at the wrong moment.
I make a silent promise to the girl in that missing persons photo: I'll find the truth. I'll find who hurt you. And when I do, they'll wish they'd never been born.
The meeting ends, my brothers filing out into the late-night air. I head for Nova's trailer. Whatever nightmare she's running from, I'll know the truth soon enough. And then I'll make sure it never touches her again.
Nova's light is still—already?—on, but I resist the urge to go to her and demand answers tonight. Once I win her trust, she'll spill her secrets, and then I'll spill the guts of Roman fucking Miller—make good on the job she didn't finish.
13
NOVA
The knock on my trailer door comes at seven sharp, and I open it to find Silas holding a bottle of wine and wearing an expression I can't quite read.
“Ready for dinner?”
I grab my jacket and follow him across the lot to his trailer, which is larger than mine and smells like garlic and herbs. The space feels intimate—soft lighting, a small table set for two, food simmering on the stove that makes my mouth water.
