Ariel woke to the sound of rain.
Not the distant, halting patter from the depot roof, but a steady curtain against glass—closer, softer, as if the storm had moved just outside her window and decided to stay.
For a second, she didn't remember there was a window.
Then the ceiling came into focus: smooth white, uncracked, with a faint circle where a light fixture hummed quietly. No pipes. No exposed beams. No dangling wires.
Not the warehouse.
Not the clinic.
A bed cradled her instead of a plastic‑covered cot, firm but not unforgiving, with clean sheets that smelled faintly of eucalyptus and something sharper,antiseptic threaded through whatever passed for comfort here. A blanket weighed over her legs, tucked in too neatly to have been her doing.
She tried to move.
Pain flared along her side, sharp but contained, like someone had drawn a line around the worst of it and told the rest of her nerves to stand down. The ache was still there, but dulled, wrapped in cotton and something blissfully chemical.
Morphine, maybe. Or one of its less glamorous cousins.
A soft rustle came from her left.
"Don't sit up fast," a voice said. "You'll undo my hard work and I'll be offended."
Ariel turned her head carefully.
A woman sat in an armchair by the window, one ankle hooked over the other, a tablet balanced on her knee. She wore dark joggers and a loose gray shirt under a white coat that had seen enough use to have its own personality. A stethoscope lay coiled on the windowsill like a metal snake.
Her hair was pulled into a messy knot, a few curls escaping around her face. Sleep shadows smudged the skin under her eyes. There was a coffee cup on the floor by her chair, forgotten and half‑empty.
She looked more like a very tired grad student than someone who stitched people up for men like Arlo.
"Hi," Ariel rasped.
The woman set the tablet aside. "Hi," she said. "I'm Mara. You tried to bleed out on my table yesterday. We had words about it. You don't remember."
Fragments drifted back—bright lights again, gloved hands, someone muttering about idiots and arteries.
"I vaguely remember a lecture," Ariel said.
"That checks out," Mara said dryly. "You were drifting. Pain scale now?"
Ariel considered. "Six," she said. "Maybe five when I'm not trying to impress anyone."
"Good," Mara said. "We're in the tolerable zone."
She pushed herself out of the chair with a small groan and came closer, professional glance already scanning Ariel's face, the color of her lips, the line of her breathing.
"You got a solid eight hours," she said. "Which your body desperately needed, seeing as you've been running on fumes and adrenaline for… however long this particular circus has been in town."
"Feels like years," Ariel murmured.
Mara's mouth twitched. "You're in one of the safe houses," she said. "Far edge of the city, quiet street, elevation approximately 'no one's going to stumble past your window by accident.'"
"Arlo's place," Ariel said.
"A place Arlo has the keys to," Mara corrected. "Ownership is intentionally hazy. Trust me, you want it that way."
A flicker of unease ran through Ariel. "Is he here?"
"Not in this room," Mara said. "Not in the house yet, as far as I know. Chris is downstairs, trying to make bad coffee and even worse plans."
Ariel swallowed. "Chris stayed."
"Of course he did," Mara said, as if the alternative would've been absurd. "He delivered you to my table and glared at anyone who breathed wrong until I kicked him out."
"That sounds like him," Ariel said before she thought about why she could say that with any certainty.
Mara's gaze flicked to her, sharp and curious. "You two know each other from before this mess?" she asked.
"No," Ariel said quickly. "Just… intense few weeks."
"Mm," Mara said, clearly unconvinced but choosing to drop it. "Lift your shirt."
Ariel blinked. "Excuse me?"
"For the bandage," Mara clarified. "Not for fun. I'm not that kind of doctor."
Heat crept up Ariel's neck. She fumbled one hand toward the hem of the T‑shirt someone had dressed her in,a plain black one that probably wasn't hers—and lifted it carefully until the white of the bandage came into view.
Mara peeled the tape back with practiced hands, eyes narrowing at the incision line beneath. "Dry," she muttered. "Slight swelling, no angry redness. You're winning."
Ariel stared at the angry line of stitches marching along her side. "It's bigger than I thought."
"That's what happens when people put holes in you," Mara said. "You should see some of the others. You got off light."
Ariel swallowed. "Others?"
Mara's brows quirked. "You think you're the only one who's ever bled on Arlo Johnson's conscience? Congratulations, you're special, but not that special."
"Comforting," Ariel said faintly.
Mara taped the bandage back down with fresh strips, hands brisk but careful. "Before you ask," she added, "no, you're not going to die if you listen to me. Yes, you might if you don't. Simple rules: no lifting, no twisting, no sudden heroic lunges toward danger for at least a week. And… eat something."
"That last one sounds less medically critical," Ariel said.
"You'd be amazed what calories can do," Mara replied. "We pumped you full of nice things through the IV, but your body wants real food. Or what passes for it around here."
She stepped back, assessing. "You feel up to sitting with your feet over the side?" she asked. "With help."
"I can try," Ariel said.
Mara moved to the other side of the bed. "Swing your legs slowly," she instructed. "Use your arms, not your core. Think old lady on a cold morning, not action hero."
"Rude," Ariel muttered, but did as she was told.
Her abdominal muscles complained immediately. A sheen of sweat broke across her forehead. Mara's hand hovered near her shoulder, steady without smothering.
When her feet finally reached the floor, the contact with solid ground felt oddly reassuring—as if being upright again, even in this small way, anchored her back in reality.
"Dizzy?" Mara asked.
"A little," Ariel admitted.
"Normal," Mara said. "Breathe. You're in no rush. The storm will still be there when you're done arguing with gravity."
The word storm jolted through her.
Choosing the storm. Arlo's hand. Chris's promise.
"Is Chris really downstairs?" she asked.
"Yes," Mara said. "He's paced a groove into the kitchen tile. I haven't measured it yet, but I'm considering it as cardio data."
Ariel's lips twitched. "Is that… normal for him?"
"The pacing?" Mara said. "Only when someone he's decided falls under his job description scares him. You scared him, by the way."
"I didn't do anything," Ariel said, confused.
"You almost stopped doing everything," Mara replied. "People like him take that personally."
"He barely knows me," Ariel protested.
Mara gave her a look that said, sure, if that helps you sleep. "Relationships in this house don't follow normal timelines," she said. "Near‑death compresses acquaintance into something else."
"Is that your professional opinion?" Ariel asked.
"That's my been‑patching‑them‑up‑for‑years opinion," Mara said. "My professional one is: you're stable enough to sit in a chair for a bit. Want to see sunlight that isn't filtered through a clinic window?"
Ariel hesitated. Part of her wanted to curl back under the blanket and pretend the world could wait. Another part—stubborn, restless,needed to see where she'd landed.
"Yeah," she said. "I think I do."
Mara nodded. "I'll get Chris," she said. "He'll complain if you try to walk without him hovering like a badly trained bodyguard."
"He's not my bodyguard," Ariel muttered.
Mara's smile was small and knowing. "If you say so."
She slipped out, leaving Ariel with the rain and the hum of the light.
The room was simple but not bare,a dresser, a small desk, an armchair like Mara's by the window. Someone had set a glass of water on the nightstand, along with a blister pack of pills and a small, folded note.
Ariel reached for the note with careful fingers, unfolding it.
Two words, written in neat, precise handwriting:
You stayed.
No signature. None needed.
She knew whose pen had carved each letter.
Her chest tightened.
A shadow fell across the doorway.
"You're awake."
Chris's voice. Rougher than usual, like he hadn't used it for a few hours.
Ariel looked up.
He stood just inside the room, one hand on the frame as if anchoring himself there. His hair was damp, curling slightly at the ends. A clean shirt clung to his shoulders; the collar of a hoodie lay open at his throat. He'd shed the edge of gunpowder and adrenaline, but not the alertness in his eyes.
He looked… tired. And relieved in a way that made her stomach flip.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he echoed. "How's the war with gravity?"
"She's winning," Mara called from the hall, then added, "I'll leave you two to your very serious risk assessments. Shout if she keels over."
"Comforting bedside manner," Chris muttered as Mara's footsteps retreated.
He crossed the room, his movements automatically shrinking a bit near the bed, as if not wanting to loom. "Pain?" he asked.
"She says five," Ariel said. "I say it depends how honest you want me to be."
"Very," he said.
"Then five," she replied. "But a loud one."
"Okay," he said. "We can work with that."
He glanced at the note still in her hand. "He left that," Chris said.
"I figured," she said softly.
"You don't owe him anything for those two words," Chris added.
"I know," she said. "I owe myself something for choosing them."
He studied her for a moment, then nodded slowly,as if accepting that answer.
"You want to try the chair by the window?" he asked. "It's more comfortable than pretending the edge of the bed is a throne."
"Show me the view first," she said. "If it's just a brick wall, I'm staying here."
He moved to the window and tugged the curtain aside.
Outside, the city stretched in muted colors,row houses with small, fenced yards, trees dripping with rain, a narrow street where a single parked car glistened under the gray sky. No skyscrapers. No neon signs. Just an ordinary piece of town, washed clean.
"It's…" Ariel searched for the word. "Normal."
"That bothers you?" he asked.
"A little," she admitted. "It feels like it shouldn't exist on the same planet as warehouses and blindfolds."
"That's the trick," Chris said quietly. "It always has."
For a second, his profile against the rain‑streaked glass looked strangely distant, like he was remembering a different window, a different storm.
"How long have you worked for him?" Ariel asked.
"Long enough to know better," he said. "Not long enough to stop trying."
"Trying what?" she pressed.
"Trying to keep things like you from being swallowed whole," he said. "You make terrible chewing gum."
Despite herself, she huffed a laugh that tugged at her stitches. "You're bad at this," she said.
"At what?" he asked.
"Deflection," she said. "You say things that almost mean something and then wrap them in jokes."
"Some people appreciate that," he replied.
"I'm not some people," she said.
"I'm noticing," he said.
Their eyes met. Something unspoken hovered there,questions she didn't know how to phrase, answers he didn't seem ready to give.
She broke the connection first, glancing toward the chair by the window. "Help me?" she asked.
He was at her side before the last syllable left her mouth, offering his arm the same way he had in the depot.
This time, she took it without hesitation.
"Okay," he said. "Same rules as before. Small movements. No heroic flailing. If you feel like you're going down, tell me before the floor does."
"Bossy," she muttered.
"Efficient," he corrected.
They shuffled the two steps between the bed and the chair, each one measured and careful. When she sank into the armchair, exhaling shakily, the cushions swallowed her with a softness the hospital cot had never offered.
Chris adjusted the small pillow behind her back without touching more than necessary. "Better?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "This I can work with."
He dropped into a crouch in front of her rather than taking the bed or standing over her. It put his eyes just below hers, an angle that felt less like interrogation and more like… conversation.
"Arlo will be here in a couple of hours," he said. "Maybe sooner. He had things to tie off."
A small knot formed in her stomach. "Things like what?"
"Informants, loose ends, one particularly loud lieutenant who thinks he's braver than he is," Chris said. "Nothing you need to worry about unless they start knocking on this door. And they won't."
"You sound sure," she said.
"I am," he replied. "I made that very clear."
"How?" she asked.
His mouth twisted. "You don't want the specifics."
"I do," she said. "I want to know what 'clear' means in your language."
He studied her, then gave her the courtesy of an honest answer.
"It means I told them," he said slowly, "that if anyone comes within ten meters of this room without my say so, I will personally break their trigger fingers and feed them their own guns."
Her eyes widened. "That's… graphic."
"That's effective," he said. "All they really heard was: if you scare her, he will turn you into a cautionary tale."
She swallowed. "You'd do that. For me."
His gaze didn't waver. "Yes," he said simply.
"You don't even know me," she whispered.
Something flickered in his eyes, a quick flash of pain and something like longing.
"I know enough," he said.
"Which is what?" she asked, frustration and confusion tangling. "What do you see when you look at me, Chris? A job? A liability? A bad decision you're stuck with?"
He inhaled slowly, as if weighing each word before letting it go.
"When I look at you," he said, "I see someone who keeps choosing the hard thing even when every easy exit is screaming at her. I see a girl who wears guilt like a second skin because someone told her a wildflower killed her parents and she believed it. I see someone who should have been allowed to stay in a bookshop and recommend love stories forever, and instead is sitting in a safe house planning revenge."
Her throat closed around the sudden rush of emotion.
"How do you know about the flower?" she asked, voice thin.
His jaw tightened. "Arlo briefed me," he said. "More than he should have."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because he wanted me to understand why you flinch the way you do when cars screech," Chris said. "Why certain words shut you down. Why certain kinds of silence are worse than shouting."
"That's… specific," she said.
"Arlo's an observant man," Chris replied. "He notices your ghosts. He just doesn't know what to do with them without breaking more things."
"And you do?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But I've seen enough of my own to recognize the shape of yours."
Silence stretched, thick with things that weren't being said.
Downstairs, a door thudded faintly. Mara's voice floated up, indistinct.
Ariel drew in a careful breath. "What happens now?" she asked. "Really. Not the poetic version. The list version."
"List version," Chris said. "Okay."
He sat back on his heels, shifting into that planning posture she'd seen in the depot.
"Number one," he said, holding up a finger. "You rest. You think. You decide how far you're willing to go before you start losing pieces of yourself you won't get back."
"Optimistic start," she said.
"Number two," he continued, undeterred. "Arlo comes. We put actual names to 'them.' Call records. Account numbers. People who made money off Harry's mistakes and Berry's fear."
Her chest clenched at Berry's name, but she nodded.
"Number three," he said, "you hear the tapes. The messages. The proof he's been sitting on."
She stiffened. "Tapes."
"He had Reed pull everything that touched your name," Chris said. "He's been… reluctant to show you. For reasons that are half self‑preservation and half some twisted idea of mercy."
"And you?" she asked. "Do you think I should hear them?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that living with questions can rot you from the inside out. I also think some answers scar. So we go through them with you. Not you alone in a room with his voice in your ear."
"Whose voice?" she whispered, though she already knew.
"Harry's," Chris said. "And others. But mostly his."
Pain flared sharper than her stitches.
"Okay," she said, her voice barely audible. "Okay."
"Number four," Chris went on, his tone gentler now. "We decide targets. You get veto power. If there's someone you can't… sign off on, we find another way."
"And if you disagree?" she asked.
"Then we fight about it," he said. "And you win more often than you think you will."
Her lips twitched despite everything. "You sound sure."
"I am," he replied. "You underestimate how stubborn you are when you're not sedated."
"Number five?" she asked.
"Number five," he said, "we try to carve out pieces of normal where we can. Short ones. A book by the window. A walk in the yard when Mara clears it. Coffee that doesn't taste like punishment."
"So I don't lose myself completely," she said.
"So you remember there's a self beyond all this," he corrected.
She looked down at her hands. They were steady, for once.
"You say 'we' a lot," she said quietly.
"Yes," he said.
"You could have stood in that depot, handed me back to Arlo, and walked away," she said. "Why didn't you?"
"I did stand in that depot," he said. "And watched you put your hand in his and not flinch. That's when I realized if I left, you'd still run toward this. You just wouldn't have anyone whose only job was making sure you lived through it."
"Arlo wants that too," she said.
"Arlo wants you alive," Chris agreed. "He also wants things you can't always afford to give. My only agenda is air in your lungs."
"That's a lot," she said.
"That's enough," he replied.
Their eyes met again. The weight of his words settled around her, heavy and strangely stabilizing.
Footsteps creaked on the stairs. A familiar, measured tread.
Ariel's pulse jumped.
Chris heard it too. He glanced toward the door, then back at her.
"You ready for him?" he asked.
"No," she said honestly.
"Do you want me to send him away?" he asked.
She thought about the note. You stayed. About his hand, palm up. About the promise she'd made in the depot—to aim her anger where it belonged, not just at the man in front of her.
"No," she said. "I want to see his face when he plays those tapes."
Something like grim approval flickered in Chris's eyes.
"Then you will," he said.
The door opened without a knock.
Arlo stepped in, bringing the smell of rain and cold air with him. He wore a dark sweater now, sleeves pushed up, damp curls clinging to his forehead. His eyes went first to the bed, then tracked to the chair by the window, finding her there.
For a moment, something like surprise flashed across his features,she looked smaller in the chair, but also more upright, more present than the last time he'd seen her unconscious and bleeding.
"You're up," he said.
"You're late," Ariel answered.
Chris's low huff of amusement sounded somewhere just behind her.
Arlo's mouth curved. "Traffic," he said. "And one stubborn lieutenant."
"Is he breathing?" Chris asked.
"Barely," Arlo said. "He'll remember this lesson."
"Good," Chris said. "We have better uses for bullets."
Arlo's gaze shifted back to Ariel, the banter dropping a notch. "How's the pain?" he asked.
"Manageable," she said. "Mara threatened me into being honest."
"Excellent," he said. "Her threats are much more convincing than mine these days."
"Don't be so sure," Chris muttered.
Arlo ignored him. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thin, black device that looked like a cross between a phone and a recorder, setting it on the small table beside Ariel's chair.
Her throat went dry.
"What's that?" she asked, though she knew.
"Proof," Arlo said.
"Of what?" she pressed.
He met her gaze without flinching. "Of why you hated me in the warehouse for reasons that weren't entirely my fault," he said. "And of why some of that hate is still fair."
The rain outside intensified, drumming against the glass.
Chris moved closer to her shoulder, not touching, but close enough that she could feel the heat of him.
"You don't have to listen to all of it today," he said.
"I want to start," she said. "I'm tired of ghosts."
Arlo inclined his head once. "Then we start," he said.
He tapped the device. A small light blinked to life.
Somewhere in the tangled archive of betrayal and survival, Harry's voice waited.
Ariel drew a breath, the safe house suddenly feeling both too small and exactly the right size for what was about to happen.
"Play it," she said.
Outside, the storm raged on.
Inside, Ariel Smith leaned into the choice she'd already made—
to walk into the heart of it with her eyes open, two dangerous men at her shoulders, and her own hand on the switch that could finally, truly, turn the lights on.
Harry's voice filled the room like a ghost that had never really left.
At first, it was just noise. Static, the hiss and crackle of a cheap recording pulled from a line that should never have been tapped. Then a familiar laugh cut through,warm, soft, the one Ariel had heard in cafes and dress shops and late‑night calls when Berry shoved the phone into her hand.
"She won't suspect anything," Harry's voice said. "It's a bookshop. She thinks the whole world runs on paper and coffee."
Ariel went very still.
Arlo had angled the small speaker on the table so the sound spread toward her. Chris stood just behind her chair, a solid presence, arms folded tight across his chest. His jaw was already set.
Mara had quietly disappeared. Maybe she'd seen this kind of scene before, the moment when truth stopped being hypothetical and started cutting.
There was a pause on the recording. Then another voice, male, bored and sharp.
"You sure she doesn't know you're running drops through her place?"
"I keep them small," Harry said. "People come in for rare editions, special orders. I use the back room. She's too busy recommending love stories to notice a package coming and going."
Ariel's stomach lurched.
She saw it, suddenly, in vicious clarity: the men in suits who'd made her uneasy but always left with polite smiles, the sealed envelopes slipped between thicker books, the cash payments that never went through the register because Harry had insisted they were "under the table, tax thing, you wouldn't understand, Ari."
Her hand, resting on the armrest, clenched.
Arlo watched her face, but he didn't say anything. He didn't flinch either.
On the recording, Harry kept talking.
"She's good cover," he said. "Nobody questions a girl who can't say no to a sob story. You send in a courier looking tired with a half‑baked tale about rent or sick kids, she'll give them a discount and a free bookmark. Meanwhile, we get what we need in and out."
A choked sound caught in Ariel's throat.
He'd used that. Her softness. Her stupid, stubborn desire to make people feel seen and safe. Every free cup of coffee, every extra ten minutes she'd spent helping someone pick a book. All of it had been camouflage in someone else's operation.
"You okay?" Chris's voice came, quiet, near her ear.
She couldn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the device, on the shifting light as the file played.
The second man spoke again. "And if she ever notices?"
There was a pause. When Harry answered, his voice lowered, hardening in a way Ariel had never heard.
"Then Arlo will handle it," he said. "That's what he's for."
Silence slammed into the room like a door.
Ariel felt something inside her crack. Not break cleanly,fracture. Splinter.
"You can stop," she whispered.
Arlo tapped the side of the device. The recording paused mid‑static.
The quiet that followed was worse.
"He used my shop," she said, the words tasting like ash. "Every day. For… what, months?"
"Longer," Arlo said, voice even. "A little over a year."
He didn't gloss it. Didn't soften.
"A year," she repeated. "A year of me… what? Handing over love stories with one hand and laundering his deals with the other?"
"You didn't know," Chris said immediately.
"Does that change what happened?" she shot back.
His mouth tightened. "No," he said. "It changes what you did."
Her heart hammered so hard her stitches twinged.
"How many calls are there?" she asked Arlo.
"Dozens," he said. "Some short. Some like this. All of them with your name in their mouths when they thought you'd never hear it."
"Play the next," she said.
"Ariel—" Chris began.
"Play it," she snapped.
Arlo's jaw flexed, but he obliged. His thumb brushed the device. Another recording slid to life.
This time, the background was louder,street noise, a bus exhaling, the clink of cups. A cafe. One she recognized. The one near the dress shop where she and Berry had met for cake.
"You can't keep doing this there," a woman's voice said. Tired. Worried.
Ariel's heart stumbled.
Berry.
The sound of a spoon against ceramic. Harry's sigh.
"We're careful," he said. "Ariel's careful without realizing it. She labels everything. You should see the back shelves—every spine, every box has its place. If anyone touches something they shouldn't, she notices."
Berry made a quiet, pained noise. "That's exactly why this is wrong, Harry," she said. "She thinks she's building her dream. You're turning it into a… a drop point."
"I'm keeping the lights on," he shot back. "You think books pay for themselves? You think those renovations last year were magic? You think the landlord's going to give her a break because she smiles when she talks about plot twists?"
The knife twisted.
The new ceiling. The repainted front. The fancy coffee machine he'd insisted they needed to "keep up with franchises."
Ariel had cried when the renovations were done. She'd thought it was because her dream finally looked like reality.
Berry's breath hitched on the recording. "You said this was temporary," she said. "You promised."
"It is," Harry said. "One more quarter. Maybe two. I clear what I owe Johnson, and we shut it down. No more shipments, no more calls. Ariel never has to know."
"And if she finds out before that?" Berry asked. Her voice dropped. "If Arlo decides she's a loose end?"
A beat. A clink. Someone set a cup down harder than they meant to.
"I'll handle it," Harry said, quieter. "I won't let him touch her."
"Like you didn't let him touch me?" Berry asked, a tiny tremor under the words.
Ariel's lungs forgot how to work.
"You knew," she whispered, staring at the speaker as if she could reach through it. "You knew he was dangerous, and you still stayed in it. You still brought it into my walls."
On the recording, there was a long pause. Then Berry again, in a voice that sounded older than Ariel had ever heard it.
"If this goes wrong," Berry said, "if that voice on the phone is right and he's not coming back… promise me something."
"Don't say that," Harry snapped.
"Promise me," she insisted.
Another pause. Cutlery. A chair.
"All right," Harry said, reluctant. "What?"
"Promise me," Berry said, "that if someone comes for her because of this, you won't run."
Static crackled. The call clipped out.
The recording ended.
Ariel didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until it came out in a ragged sob.
"Berry," she gasped. "She knew. She knew and she… she was—"
"Torn," Chris said quietly. "In over her head. Trying to stop him, failing, still hoping she could bend the math."
"She should have told me," Ariel said, voice rising. "She should have walked into my shop and said, 'Ari, your shelves are dirty with blood,' and we could have—"
"Done what?" Arlo cut in, his tone not unkind, but brutally direct. "Gone to the police with a story about how your best friend's fiancé used your romance section for money drops? They would have laughed you out of the station or buried you where no one could."
"She could have given me a choice," Ariel cried. "She didn't. None of you did."
The room blurred. The chair tilted. Her hand shot out for the armrest and missed.
Chris moved as she slipped, but Arlo was closer.
He caught her before she hit the floor, arms closing around her with a precision that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with reflex and fear. One hand braced her back, the other cradled the back of her head, shielding her from the edge of the table.
Her knees hit carpet instead of wood. Her breath left her in a harsh, broken sound.
"Easy," Arlo murmured. "I've got you."
She wanted to shove him away. To scream at him. To make him hurt the way the words on those recordings hurt.
Instead, the sob that tore out of her ripped through her ribs and set fire along her stitches. Pain exploded white‑hot. Her fingers twisted in his sweater, clutching for something solid as the world dissolved.
"She used me," Ariel choked. "My shop, my hands, my… my stupid heart—"
"I know," Arlo said softly.
"Don't say that," she sobbed. "You knew. You knew, and you let it happen."
His grip tightened. "Yes," he said. "I did."
Another sob hit, deeper, dragging sound out of her she didn't know she could make. Her body shook in his arms, every breath a tremor.
Chris took a step forward, jaw clenched, fists balled at his sides. Instinct screamed at him to haul Arlo away, to pull her into his own arms, to put himself between her and anything that made her cry like that.
Arlo's gaze flicked up, locking onto his.
A small, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
Not yet.
Chris froze.
It went against every wire in him. Every instinct that had formed years ago in the shadow of a different accident, a different hospital, a different girl who'd cried like this.
He swallowed hard.
A tear slid, hot and unwanted, down his cheek.
He let it fall.
On the floor, Ariel's sobs broke into hiccuping breaths. "Berry," she managed between gasps. "She… she was my safe place. She was the only one there when the dreams—when the car—how could she—"
Arlo's hand moved in slow, grounding strokes along her back, careful of the bandage. "She loved you," he said. "Wrongly. Imperfectly. With too many secrets. But she did. You were the only part of that mess she was trying to protect."
"She helped him," Ariel cried. "She let them use my home. I trusted her more than anyone. I—"
Her voice broke.
Chris's vision blurred. He saw not just the woman on the floor, but a little girl in an oversized hoodie, clutching a wilted hospital flower, asking when she could see her mom again.
He closed his eyes. It didn't help.
Arlo held her through it—through the wailing sobs, the half‑formed curses, the muffled apologies to ghosts who couldn't hear her. He didn't shush her. He didn't tell her to calm down. He just absorbed the storm, jaw tight, eyes gone distant and dark.
Minutes blurred. Or hours. Time narrowed to breathing and breaking.
Eventually, exhaustion did what words and hands couldn't.
Ariel's sobs dulled to whimpers, then to shuddering inhales. Her grip on Arlo's sweater loosened. Her head, tucked under his chin, grew heavier.
Her lashes fluttered once against his throat.
Then she went limp.
"Asleep," Mara's voice said quietly from the doorway. "Body finally pulled the plug."
Arlo didn't move for a second. His arms stayed around Ariel, as if afraid any shift would wake her back into the nightmare.
"Her stitches?" he asked, voice low.
"Holding," Mara said. "Barely. I'll check them when you put her back on the bed. Which should be now, before your legs forget how to cooperate."
Arlo exhaled, a long, slow breath that seemed to scrape his ribs on the way out.
Carefully, he adjusted his grip, sliding one arm under Ariel's knees, the other under her shoulders. He lifted her with a care that would have looked absurd on anyone who didn't have blood on his hands. Her head lolled briefly against his chest, then settled.
"Chris," Mara said, softer now. "Come help."
He blinked, swiping a thumb hastily over the tear track on his cheek.
"I'm fine," he muttered.
"You're not the one I'm worried about dropping her," Mara said. "Just… make sure he doesn't bang her foot into the nightstand. Men like him are great with gunshots. Toes, not so much."
Arlo shot her a dry look but carried Ariel to the bed with steady steps. Chris moved ahead, tugging the blanket back, shifting the pillow, clearing the note and the recorder from the way.
They laid her down together,Arlo lowering her, Chris guiding a pillow under her head, adjusting the blanket so it didn't press against her side.
She didn't stir.
Mara descended on the bandage with efficient hands. "No fresh bleed," she said. "Good. Emotions are rough on stitches. Rule one of recovery: no dramatic breakdowns. Unfortunately, no one ever listens."
"She had a right to this one," Chris said hoarsely.
"I didn't say she didn't," Mara replied. "I said the sutures didn't appreciate it."
She brushed Ariel's hair back from her damp forehead, her touch unexpectedly gentle. "She'll sleep hard for a bit," Mara said. "Shock on top of everything else. Let her."
Arlo stood, staring down at Ariel's face. His own expression had gone carved and still.
"Stay with her," he told Mara quietly.
"Where else would I be?" she said.
He nodded once, then looked at Chris. "Come on," he said. "We need to talk."
Chris's spine stiffened. "If this is about the tear—"
"It's not," Arlo said.
He was already heading for the door.
Chris cast one last look at Ariel,small, exhausted, cheeks still blotchy from crying. Something twisted so hard in his chest it hurt.
Then he followed Arlo out into the hallway.
The door clicked shut behind them, muting the sound of rain and Mara's quiet movements.
Arlo walked down the short corridor and turned into a small sitting room—a place with two chairs, a low table, and a view of the same rain‑slicked street from a different angle. He stopped in the middle of the room, hands flexing once at his sides.
Chris lingered near the threshold. Years of working under men like Arlo had taught him that closed rooms after emotional scenes rarely went well.
"You going to tell me to get over myself?" Chris asked, half‑defiant, half‑resigned. "To stop letting it get to me when she—when people we use as leverage cry?"
Arlo turned.
What Chris saw in his face wasn't anger.
It was something older. Worn. And, to his surprise, not entirely directed at him.
"No," Arlo said. "I'm not going to tell you any of that."
He stepped closer.
Before Chris could parse what was happening, Arlo's hands came up,not in a blow, not in a shove, but in a brief, fierce pull.
He dragged Chris into a hug.
For a second, Chris didn't move. His whole body went rigid, shock slamming into him harder than any reprimand would have.
Arlo had hugged him once before,years ago, after a job gone wrong when Chris had taken a bullet that wasn't meant for him. That one had been quick, almost clumsy, more of a brace than an embrace.
This one was deliberate.
"I know you care for your sister, Chris," Arlo said, voice low near his ear.
The words blew whatever air was left in Chris's lungs.
He froze.
He'd been so careful. So precise. Years of keeping that particular truth locked behind his teeth, hidden under layers of professional distance and carefully chosen pronouns.
Slowly, he tried to pull back enough to see Arlo's face. "You—"
"Of course I know," Arlo said, letting him go, hands dropping but his gaze steady. "You think I hand my operations to people I can't read?"
Chris's heart hammered. "How long?"
"Since the file crossed my desk," Arlo said. "You think the resemblance goes away just because you change your last name and your passport?"
Chris swallowed hard. The room felt smaller.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he demanded. "Why did you let me—"
"Because," Arlo said, cutting him off, "it's not the right time for her to know."
Anger flared, sharp and instinctive. "You don't get to decide that," Chris snapped. "She has a right to know who—"
"Who what?" Arlo said, voice snapping too now. "That the parents who died in that car when she was little aren't her parents? That the people she's built her entire grief around were strangers who loved her anyway? That the brother she thinks doesn't exist has been standing in her doorway watching her bleed and pretending he barely knows her?"
The words hit like body blows.
Chris staggered back a step. "She's strong," he said. It came out raw. Defensive. "She can handle—"
"She can't," Arlo said, blunt as a hammer. "Not now. Not on top of this."
He jerked his chin toward the ceiling, where Ariel lay asleep under Mara's watch—the girl who'd just had her best friend's half‑betrayal ripped open in front of her, who'd heard her shop and her kindness turned into punchlines on recordings.
"You just heard her break over Berry," Arlo went on. "You saw what Harry's voice did to her. You want to pile another avalanche on top? Tell her that the one memory she's used to justify all her guilt—that one innocent wish for a wildflower,belongs to parents who weren't even hers by blood?"
Chris's throat worked. "Those people were her parents," he said fiercely. "They raised her. They loved her. That's not—"
"I know," Arlo said. "You know. She doesn't separate 'blood' from 'blame' that neatly. Not yet."
He took a breath, reining some of the sharpness back.
"You've spent your whole life trying to shoulder her pain," Arlo said. "Even when she didn't know your name. This is one weight she doesn't need on the same day she finds out her best friend ran numbers through her dream."
Chris's hands curled into fists.
"You're asking me to lie," he said.
"I'm asking you to wait," Arlo corrected. "There's a difference."
"For how long?" Chris demanded. "Until you decide she's… what, acclimated to betrayal? Until she stops crying over people she thought were her family so you can break the rest of her foundations?"
Until you decide, he didn't add.
Arlo's gaze hardened, but there was something like empathy under the iron.
"Until she can hear it without it becoming another reason to blame herself for things she couldn't control," he said. "She already thinks she killed them with a flower. You want to hand her the added guilt that they weren't even biologically hers? That some desk in some adoption office made a decision that put her in that car instead of someplace else?"
Chris's chest squeezed until breathing hurt.
"I've imagined telling her," he admitted, voice barely above a whisper. "A thousand times. Every scenario. Every word."
"I know," Arlo said.
"She deserves the truth," Chris said.
"She deserves to survive long enough to live with it," Arlo replied.
The room hummed with the rain outside and the quiet hum of the safe house's HVAC. The world beyond these walls was still full of people who wanted Ariel dead or gone or useful.
Inside, two men stood in the narrow space between protecting her and drowning her in truths.
Chris swiped at his face again, irritated to find his fingers came away damp. "She's going to hate me when she finds out," he said. "Not just for not being there then, but for standing here now and agreeing to wait."
"She might," Arlo said. "She might also understand in a way you can't yet. She's more forgiving than either of us deserves."
Chris let out a strangled sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't hurt so much.
"You're very calm about this," he said. "Given that you just admitted you knew and still… used both of us the way you did."
"I'm not calm," Arlo said. "I've spent the last forty‑eight hours watching the one person who makes me question every rule I built my life on bleed because of choices I made. I'm… recalibrating."
He stepped closer again, not to intimidate this time, but to be heard.
"Listen to me," Arlo said. "I didn't pull you in because you're her brother. I pulled you in because you're good at this and you care more than is strategically sound."
"Nice to know my emotional instability is an asset," Chris muttered.
"It is here," Arlo said. "Because when I get tunnel‑vision, when I start seeing the board instead of the pieces, you're the one who's going to look at her and remember she's not a pawn. She's a person. Your person."
The words sank in, heavy and undeniable.
"And as for the secret," Arlo added, "I will not tell her. Not now. Not unless you're in the room and you say the timing is right. That's your call. Not mine."
Chris blinked. That, he hadn't expected.
"You're… handing me that?" he asked.
"Yes," Arlo said simply. "I've taken enough from both of you."
The admission hung between them.
Chris exhaled, shaky. "If she asks," he said, "if she looks at me and says, 'Who are you to care this much?'—"
"Then you tell her whatever you can live with," Arlo said. "Guardian. Idiot. Friend. The man who makes her walk slower so she doesn't tear her stitches. But not brother. Not yet."
"And if she figures it out?" Chris pressed. "She's not stupid."
Arlo's mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. "Then we deal with that when it comes," he said. "And you get to take the hit you've been rehearsing in your head since they pulled her out of that wreck."
Chris flinched.
Silence settled again, thick with rain and regrets and the strange, fragile trust of shared secrets.
Arlo looked toward the hallway, toward the room where Ariel slept.
"She's going to wake up and go back to that recorder," he said. "You know that."
"I do," Chris said.
"She's going to ask you to sit with her through the rest," Arlo said. "Not me."
Chris swallowed. "You sound very sure."
"I am," Arlo replied. "She trusts you in ways she doesn't trust me yet. Maybe ever."
Chris didn't know what to do with the mix of relief and ache that brought.
"I can't take away what she heard today," Arlo said. "I can't make Harry's voice disappear. But I can promise you this: I won't add 'you lied about being her brother' to her list of fresh wounds this week."
He held out his hand—not for a deal this time, but something quieter.
"Help me get her through this first," he said. "Then we can decide how much truth her heart can bear on top of everything else."
Chris stared at the hand for a moment.
Then, slowly, he took it.
"Fine," he said. "We do it your way—for now."
Arlo's grip was firm. "For her way," he corrected. "Even if she doesn't see it yet."
They let go.
In the room above, Ariel slept unruly in clean sheets, tear‑tracks drying on her cheeks.
She dreamed of the bookshop. Of Berry's laughter. Of Harry's hand on hers as he spun stories about future renovations and loyal customers.
Somewhere, underneath all that, the shape of a different truth waited—siblings separated by paperwork and accidents, a brother holding his breath at a doorway, a man made of bad decisions learning how to stand aside and let someone else be the net.
For now, she didn't know.
For now, the storm she'd chosen had narrowed to one small, merciful thing:
a brief, exhausted peace, held together by two men who, for the first time in a long time, wanted the same impossible outcome—
for Ariel Smith to walk out of this alive, not just in body, but with enough of her soul intact to face the rest of the truths still waiting in the dark.