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“No,” I said. “No, it hasn’t.”
The sound of a door opening echoed faintly on her end.
“They’re telling me I have to hang up,” she said. “But I want you to come brush my hair again. Remember how you used to?”
“I remember.”
“You had little fingers. So careful. You were always so careful.”
I closed my eyes. “I’ll come, Mama. Soon.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
Then the line went dead.
I held the phone to my ear long after the click, listening to the hum of emptiness, to the absence of a mother I’d already lost in pieces.
The guard knocked once on the glass.
I stood slowly and walked back to my cell without a word.
The napkin Norton had given me was still there on the bench.
I looked at it.
Then sat down beside it and cried like a child who just wanted her mother to come find her in the dark.
26
ELIAS
Vivi’s arrest was a blade in my gut, Jessa’s death the twist that made it bleed. I tore through Charleston’s streets, the SUV’s engine roaring as I raced to the police station, my mind a storm of panic and rage.
The imagesShadyLadyhad posted—Vivi’s red curls on that platform, Jessa’s terrified face—burned in my memory, proof of a hijacked account and a shadowy force orchestrating this nightmare. I needed to get Vivi out, to hold her, to shield her from the fallout of her friend’s death and the trap closing around her, around all of us.
The station loomed ahead, a squat brick building under a bruised sky. I parked, grabbing my laptop bag, stowing my pistol in the glove box. Inside, the air was thick with stale coffee and decades of perps. The desk sergeant, a wiry man with a mustache, barely looked up. “Name?”
“Elias Dane,” I said, voice tight, leaning in. “Here for Vivienne Laveau.”
He typed slowly, eyes narrowing. “She’s in holding. You her lawyer?”
“No, but I need to see her. Now.”
He snorted, unimpressed. “Take a seat. Someone’ll get to you.”
I bit back a curse, my demon snarling, but arguing wouldn’t help. I found a corner in the waiting area, cracked open my laptop.
If they were giving me the runaround, I’d use the time to trackShadyLady. Vivi was caged, and every second she spent in there was a failure I couldn’t stomach. I had to unravel this, find Department 77’s hackers, and stop them before they hurt her more.
My spiders were still crawling, chasingShadyLady’s trail through the dark web. The account’s activity—posting real-time images of Jessa’s fall—didn’t add up. Jessa was dead, her burner app tied toShadyLady, but the posts continued, taunting with a precision no amateur could manage.
I dug into the forum’s logs, searching for the source. The photos’ metadata pointed to a server in D.C., a hub I’d seen before. Department 77 had gone quiet after a battle with my family recently, one that somehow dodged national news. They’d been biding their time, waiting in the shadows, and now they were back, using Vivi to get inside Dominion Hall.
Well, fuck that. They thought they could play her like a pawn, exploit her fire to crack our defenses? I’d send a message of my own.
My brothers and I had fought off threats before, but this was personal. Vivi was mine, and no one touched her without paying a price.
I had an idea.