Page 39 of Breeding Justice

"We will be." I glanced over at him.

"Will we? Because right now it feels like we’re charging in blind."

Bash’s jaw tightened, and for a moment I thought he might explode. Instead, he slumped back in his seat, deflated.

"I dragged her into this, you know," he said, almost softly.

I knew who he meant, but I stayed silent, letting him work through it.

"Justice wanted out years ago. She probably wanted to take SJ and start fresh, somewhere far from all this, but by then, it was too late. I convinced her to stay, to keep fighting." He paused, and I could see the conflict in his eyes, the war between duty and regret.

"Convinced her, or forced her?" I asked, knowing the answer but needing him to say it.

“Don’t be coy. You were there. You enjoyed the spoils just as much as I did. You’ve fucked her just as much as I have,” she said. “This concerned citizen shit looks very fake on you.”

I supposed he had a point, but I was worried. Worried about Justice, worried about Zane.

Worried about Hassan.

Worried about the baby.

Worried about every single person it felt like I had ever loved.

I shook my head. "You didn’t drag her into anything, Bash. She’s here because she wants to be. Because she believes in what we’re doing."

We fell back into silence, the kind that comes after hard truths. I focused on the road, on the twists and turns that would keep us hidden. The city was a maze, and we were the rats trying to find our way out. In the backseat, Justice shifted in her sleep, murmuring something unintelligible. Bash turned to check on her, and I saw his features soften again, the hard lines of his face giving way to something more human.

"We’ll get them out," he said, as if making a promise. "All of them." I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road.

"Yeah," I said. "We will."

The night stretched ahead of us, long and uncertain, but we drove on, propelled by the fragile hope that we could still set things right.

***

The moon hung low in the sky, casting a silvery glow over the open road. The old sedan’s engine droned, a constant, hypnotic hum that threatened to lull us into a false sense of security. I kept my hands tight on the wheel, my eyes flicking between the road and the rearview mirror. Justice still slept in the backseat, her body shifting with the car’s gentle sways.

Bash had his arms crossed, staring out the window at the passing landscape. We were in farm country now, a patchwork of fields and orchards that looked desolate in the moonlight. “We need a phone,” he said. “I need to call Zane or Hassan.”

“I think there are burners in the safehouse in Naples.”

“That’s so far away,” Bash said.

“I’m not stopping—not if there’s a chance they catch her and kill her.”

It was the kind of place where time seemed to stand still, where the modern world’s troubles felt miles away. But our troubles were closer than ever.

Every mile we put between us and the city felt like a mile deeper into the unknown. We had no idea what we were driving into, only that we had to keep moving.

Bash exhaled sharply, the frustration evident in the rigid set of his jaw. "Fine," he said. "Naples it is. But we need to get there fast. If Vito’s men are on us, they’ll expect us to head for the obvious places. We need to stay one step ahead."

I nodded, pushing the sedan harder. The engine whined in protest, but it held. The road stretched out before us like an endless ribbon, flanked by fields that seemed to glow faintly under the moonlight. The silence inside the car wasn’t uncomfortable—it was heavy, filled with the weight of everything we were running from and everything still ahead of us.

Justice stirred in the backseat, her brow furrowing as though even her dreams couldn’t escape the chaos we’d left behind. Bash turned to look at her again, his hand resting on the seat near her shoulder, though he didn’t touch her.

“She needs more than a safehouse,” he muttered, almost to himself.

“She’ll get what she needs,” I said. “Once we’re out of this, we’ll find Zane. We’ll get her stable. She’ll pull through.”

---