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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

MYSTIC DIDN’T SPEAK for a long time last night after our conversation. We just lay down in bed and held each other.

And maybe that was what I liked about him most.

He didn’t fill silence with noise.

I watched as he put on his boots, and stood to start his morning, he almost leaned down, and I swear he was going to kiss me but pulled back. “I’m going to get some coffee, you want anythin’?”

“No, I’m good,” I replied watching him walk out the door. He knew I wasn’t big on eating breakfast, a habit of drawn from captivity under Big John Ricca. Eating was a privilege under his care, meals were few and far between.

I try never to think of my time there, but the memories sometimes surface in the oddest moments.

Like right now.

I swallowed hard, the memories already turning bitter on my tongue. My fingers clenched the blanket as my mind pulled me back to that first night in America. The way the air felt—too cold, too bitter. Everything smelled different, like motor oil and cigarettes and something sour.

They shoved me into a room that locked from the outside. No windows. Just four walls painted in peeling gray. I remember the light bulb above flickering like it couldn’t make up its mind. I sat in the corner, knees to my chest, too afraid to cry because crying made them laugh.

I didn’t understand what they said, not all of it. Just the tone, the cruelty in their voices as they shoved at me. They barked orders, kicked the door when I didn’t respond fast enough. The man they called Ricca smiled when I flinched. He liked that.

The food—when it came—was thrown on the floor. Sometimes just a piece of bread. Sometimes nothing for days. I learned fast not to ask questions. Learned faster how to disappear in plain sight.

That’s why I don’t eat in the mornings.

It’s not just habit. It’s memory. It’s fear. It’s the sound of that first door slamming shut behind me, and the scream I bit down so hard I tasted blood.

And maybe… maybe it’s why I cling to Mystic the way I do.…because even in silence—he never slammed the door.

He just sat in it with me.

A soft knock pulled me from the memory like a hand tugging me out of cold water.

I blinked, the room coming back into focus, and I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders as I stood. My feet hit the floor lightly, quietly—always quietly—and I moved to the door, heart still thudding with echoes of the past.

When I opened it, Spinner stood there, looking tired and edgy, like he hadn’t slept much.

“Hey,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry to bother you… have you seen Lucy?”

My breath caught.

“She’s gone again.”

***

I COULDN’T REST . Hadn’t been able to sleep since Lucy left a week ago.

Even with the door locked. Even with Mystic’s voice still playing in my head— “She’s gonna be okay, sweetheart. I swear it.” —my body wouldn’t rest.

My bones still remembered fear. My skin, the way cold metal feels pressed against it. My heart, how it races when footsteps stop outside your door and you don’t know if this time… they’ll come in.

I laid there in the dark, my eyes wide open, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling like silent predators. My mind paced the room all night, whispering what ifs like ghosts under the floorboards.

And then finally—Brenda let me know. Lucy was back. Alive, but bruised and bloody. Broken in ways that only she knew.

She hadn’t come to me, and I understood.

God, did I understand.

Some wounds needed silence to breathe. Some pain was too raw to name. There was no way she escaped Fang without pieces of herself left behind.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach, sitting at the edge of the bed. The room felt too big. Too quiet. Like it was waiting for something.

The door opened softly, the light from the hallway cutting through the dark, and Mystic walked in. His hair was still damp, curling at the ends. Freshly showered. Exhausted.

I rose from the bed without thinking and went to him, wrapping my arms around his broad, scarred chest. I pressed my cheek against his shirt, still warm from the dryer, and breathed him in, soap and cologne, and something that had started to feel like home.

“I was getting worried,” I whispered, holding him tighter. “You’ve been back for a while.”

He rested his chin on the top of my head and let out a breath. “Devil called Church,” he said. “Then I had to wash the night off.”

I pulled back slightly, just enough to search his eyes. They carried shadows.

“Was it bad? Did anyone get hurt?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not seriously.”

But something flickered across his face. That quiet storm that brewed when he was holding something back.

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

He hesitated, and then sighed. “Fang got away. And Drago wasn’t there.”

I stepped out of his arms, the words settling into my chest like stones. I turned to the window, staring out at the dark. The night beyond was thick, silent, unforgiving.

We both knew what those words meant.

Lucy and I… we weren’t safe. Not really.

“They always disappear,” I murmured. “Right when you think you’ve won. Like cockroaches scattering when the light hits.”

He came up behind me, his body heat steady and grounding. But his eyes were on me, not the shadows outside. “We’ll get him,” he said quietly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

I shook my head, lips pressed tight. “Sometimes I think it wasn’t meant to be. Me… being free.” My voice cracked around the last word. A confession I hadn’t meant to say aloud.

He grabbed my arm gently and turned me to face him, his jaw tight. “Don’t ever say that again.” His voice was low. Fierce. “You aren’t going back to him.”

I looked up at him—this broken man who kept trying to hold all my shattered pieces together while his own were barely hanging on. “You’re right,” I said.

And it was the biggest lie I’d ever told.

“Let’s go to bed.”

Because if I didn’t stop talking, the fear would swallow me whole. And tonight, I didn’t want to remember how it felt to belong to monsters.

I just wanted to feel his arms around me.

And pretend, if only for a little while, that I was safe.