Page 7 of Fallen Empire (The Fallen Trilogy #2)

Jaxson

The hospital room was quiet except for the steady rhythm of the machines tracking her heartbeat. The machines that I was so exhausted of hearing and would have thrown them out the damn window already, if they weren’t the only thing keeping her here with me.

I still hadn’t moved from the leather chair beside her bed. The same one I’d been in since they admitted her, aside from when I was forced to leave. My elbows rested on my knees, hands clasped like I was praying. But there hadn’t been any prayers.

Just silence. Guilt. Rage. The kind that lives in your throat like broken glass.

And without the liquor, it all hit harder. Sharper. More violent.

I was coming down off a four-day bender—shaking, starving, haunted—and for the first time in days, I was sober enough to feel every inch of it. The hurt. The loss. The bone-deep terror that she might never open her eyes again.

Every emotion hit harder.

I was pissed at myself. Pissed at her for taking a bullet meant for me. Devastated because she might not come back. Hopeful that she would.

Because the alternative?

I wouldn’t survive it.

Thinking about it is why I took that first sip in the first place. And the worst part? Millie let me. When she stopped bringing the alcohol, Ben stepped in. Neither of them said a word—because deep down, I think they both knew if it were them, they’d be doing the same thing.

But I didn’t just drown in the liquor.

I fought.

The second her body hit the ground, something in me snapped. And when rage is all you have left, it demands a purpose.

I’d gotten kicked out of this very hospital for being too drunk to stand. And maybe for the gaping hole in the wall behind me. They didn’t have to drag me out—I left before security could get involved. But the shame? That stayed. The look in Millie’s eyes. The way Ben wouldn’t meet my gaze.

They thought I was just spiraling. That I was falling apart.

They had no idea I was already burning it all down. The damage started with a single phone call. One of Bruce’s old holding sites. A rural one, off-grid. Nic got a ping. A van left the grounds. Another transport. Another round of bodies that wouldn’t be found.

I’d made the call. Demanded action.

They told me it was too late.

That’s when I put the hole in the wall.

Everyone thought it was a drunken reaction to something one of the nurses said.

But the truth was that I knew what that van meant.

I’d seen what went on in places like that.

I’d watched a man rip a child from her mother’s arms and get off from her screams. Or maybe it was from the feel of what he was doing to an innocent soul.

And I’d stood there—pretending to enjoy it—because if I broke character, that little boy would’ve died right then.

Hard truth was I knew he’d die anyway.

I’d always shifted my gaze to take me anywhere but the moment I was in. A fly on the wall. A blood stain on the floor. Each time I’d distract my mind from the brutal evil that was happening.

Evil I could’ve stopped, but for the sake of the operation, I had to let happen.

So yeah, I knew what those vans carried.

I knew what Bruce’s empire was.

And while my world lay here—barely clinging to life—I started dismantling everything he built. One shell company. One laundering pipeline. One offshore account at a time. Between the haze of liquor and grief, I acted.

When Millie went to get coffee, I made a call.

When Ben stepped out for the night, I made another.

Every quiet moment became a window. They thought I was just sitting here… drinking.

But I wasn’t.

Even with blurred vision and bourbon breath, I pulled strings, demanded shutdowns, and burned what shitty reputation he did have to the fucking ground.

Not because I had to. But because I couldn’t live with the thought of Bruce still leaving fingerprints on her life.

He was dead, but his reach didn’t die with him. His accounts were active. His contacts still moved shipments. His assets were dirty, still working. And the deeper I dug, the more I realized this went higher than anyone knew. Bigger than Bruce.

And if I didn’t stop it now—if I didn’t erase every single tie—then when Savannah woke up, she wouldn’t just be a target.

She’d be a message.

So I’d kept going.

No one suspected anything. Nic sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell them after what she’d witnessed. Even though I’d left her in the dark on most of it.

To them, I was just a wreck.

The truth was, I knew how to do this. Because once—I was this.

Ten years ago, I didn’t just disappear from New York for the military. I went under. Deep. Embedded in a world where names were traded like weapons and silence was more valuable than blood.

I didn’t tell anyone—not even Ben—because I was never supposed to come back from it.

For two years, I’d danced the edge of darkness with some of the most disgusting and vile humans I’d ever known—if you could even call them that.

Men who walked this earth completely heartless.

Soulless. As if humanity had been stripped from them at birth.

Sociopaths that would put any known serial killer to shame.

Because at least those murderers were caught, eventually. These men didn’t hide in the darkness.

They were the dark.

So when Nic said that name the day Savannah went missing, I knew exactly who he was. And I knew, right then, that the only way out of this was to finish what I started years ago.

Gavriel Costa.

I’d walked side by side with Costa for months. Ate with him, laughed with him, mirrored his habits until his world became something I could map blindfolded. He was the ringleader of the Italian Mafia, and I was buried deep undercover as part of an off-the-record black ops initiative.

No digital records existed. These files were tucked away in a classified vault nested within layers of clearance so deep, even the servers didn’t know they existed.

Handwritten. Coded. Locked behind initials, not names.

Because anyone looking would need more than a password.

They’d need clearance… and a damn good reason.

To Costa, I was Knox. A loyal foot soldier with no name, no past. Just blood on my hands and an appetite for chaos.

My mission was clear: learn everything, burn it all down.

Because while the government can turn a blind eye to drugs, to gambling, even to murder… when a Senator’s grandchild goes missing, all bets are off.

That was the tipping point. The moment they stopped looking away and called in men like me.

And when a whisper reached Costa’s ear—someone tipping him off that Knox wasn’t who he said he was—I vanished before he could slit my throat as I watched in a mirror. He wasn’t a coward. He was the type that wanted you to witness your own death firsthand.

The man he knew as Knox disappeared, swallowed by a shadow network of classified files and a government name I hadn’t used in over a decade.

If I hadn’t left when I did, I would’ve been forced to become the very thing I swore to take down.

But now? I was pulling those skills from the grave.

Because Savannah’s last name came with a price.

And there were men infinitely more lethal to watch for.

The ones that ranked far above Bruce. The ones who tolerated him because he was profitable.

The ones who now thought the woman who’d helped ruin their chain was dead.

And if they found out she was alive?

They’d come.

And this time, they wouldn’t miss.

The daily deposits into her accounts were dwindling.

Someone noticed.

“I’ll take everything from you.”

A soft knock at the door pulled me out of the spiral. The nurse stepped in quietly, her steps practiced, calm. The same nurse that had just scolded me earlier.

She checked Savannah’s vitals with the kind of clinical detachment that made my skin crawl. I knew it wasn’t personal. She was just doing her job. But I still wanted to rip the damn clipboard from her hands and launch it across the room.

“We’ll be taking her for a CT scan in the next fifteen minutes,” she said, her voice low. I nodded, barely glancing up. “Thank you.”

She turned to leave but paused at the door, glancing back at me. “Mr. Westbrook,” she said softly. “Thank you for sobering up. She’s going to need you when she comes out of this.”

Then she was gone. And I was left staring at the door, her words had punched straight through my chest.

Because she was right.

Savannah didn’t even look real lying there. Too still. Too pale. Like if I blinked too long, she might disappear entirely.

I was supposed to protect her. That was the promise—to her, to her mother, to myself.

And yet here she was.

Tubes in her arms.

Broken bones.

A bullet that missed her heart by an inch.

And a heartbeat trapped in a machine instead of in my arms.

My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

Nic .

I swiped to answer, keeping my voice low. “What’s up?”

“I need to see you,” she said. No greeting. Just straight to business.

“They’re taking Savannah for a scan any minute. Come to the hospital. I’m not leaving her.”

“I’m already in the parking lot,” she replied.

Of course she was.

Not much time had passed before the heavy door slung open like it weighed nothing.

Nic stepped inside, her energy sharp and loud, despite her silence. There was a look on her face I hadn’t seen in years.

Accusation.

Fear, maybe. But mostly rage.

“What the fuck did you do?” she snapped, not waiting for the door to close behind her.

Her tone cracked through the quiet like a whip.

“Shhh. What’s wrong with you? Savannah is—”

“She’s in a fucking coma, Jax.”

She cut me off like I wasn’t even speaking.

“She can’t hear me. So I’ll ask you again. What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Do?”

I looked past her to the nurse lingering just outside the door, hesitant, clearly waiting for a break in the tension.

“Ma’am,” I called, my voice steel. “You can come in. My friend here was just leaving.”

That should’ve been Nic’s warning. She didn’t budge.