Page 32 of Damian
She curled into me like human need has no language, her hands clutching at my shirt, a weight that made everything else fall into place. Her inhale was sharp and newborn; her eyes wet and unbelieving.
“Is she hurt?” River asked, cautious, professional.
The officers were efficient, getting the children registered and taken to a medical tent set up by the yard. Medics moved with the economy of people who know how to make small wounds into nothing and fear into a warm blanket. I watched Morgan as she sat with Ruby, the little girl half-buried in her arms, and thought that for all the maps and names and ledger lines, this was why we did it—this exact, unfinished, messy kindness.
I watched as Raven pulled up with Morgan.
Morgan looked up at me once, eyes slick but lucid. “You brought her back,” she said, not a question.
“I promised,” I said, and the word was simple and heavy. I meant every count of it.
She inhaled like she was trying to fill the space I’d made for her with breath. “Thank you,” she whispered. It was a small thing. It had the weight of everything. She held Ruby in her arms as both of them cried.
We stayed on the perimeter until the container yard gave up what else it had: names to follow, a list of routes, a truckmanifest that pointed toward a recurring vendor in the harbor district. Cyclone extracted a dozen leads and handed them over like contraband mercy. Hemsley’s patterns unspooled across a dozen accounts; Luthor’s signature sank into the paper like a stamp.
The officers would take them from here — arrests and processing and the slow teeth of the law chewing through paper trail. We’d done what we said: clean, tethered to the law so the names we gathered couldn’t vanish into the dark again. But a ledger is never a full stop. It is a comma that leads you on.
Inside the tent, Ruby drifted asleep in Morgan’s arms, Morgan’s hand lay across her back like a promise.
Morgan met my eyes, and there was something fierce and gentle in them both. She leaned forward and kissed Ruby’s damp forehead, then turned and grasped my face with both hands. Her fingers were warm and slightly trembling. She closed the gap between us deliberately, like a tide, not like a scrape or a stumble. When our lips touched, it was quieter than the kiss we’d stolen in the kitchen — not less fierce, just different, layered with the smell of diesel and rain and the raw intimacy of a shared fight. It was the kind of kiss that promised stubbornness: that we would keep trying, keep pulling at threads, until the last name was cleared.
“Stay,” she breathed against my mouth.
“I will,” I said.
We broke apart because there were still papers to read and a world to fix, but the kiss left a bruise-soft certainty between us: we were no longer just two people orbiting a job. We were two people who had braided their small mercies together and would keep them safe.
We left the yard with children in ambulances and paperwork in our pockets and a manifest that smelled like answers. Cyclone had already started mapping Luthor’s shellcompanies like they were constellations. River drove with an old, tired satisfaction.
I thought of the map and the names and the ledger that still bled out. Luthor hadn’t been arrested. Holloway Trust still hummed in the background like a dangerous tune. But for one beating, exquisite moment, a girl who’d been traded and hidden was home.
And when the world is a ledger and a list and a war, sometimes you get the right kind of miracle: the one where you find a bead with a name and follow it all the way back to the one who waits.
38
Damian
The ride out to the cottage was hushed, the kind of silence that presses on your chest. Ruby leaned against Morgan, her head tucked under her sister’s arm, while Morgan stared out the window like she was memorizing every shadow on the road.
When we finally pulled into the gravel drive, the sight of the little cottage eased something inside me. White shutters, a porch light glowing warm—it looked like the kind of place where nightmares weren’t supposed to reach. I wished like hell that were true.
I helped Ruby out first. She was too tired to argue, her hand sliding into mine as I steadied her. Morgan followed, keys already in her hand, but her eyes lifted to mine before she turned the lock.
Inside, the place smelled faintly of lavender and old books. Ruby trudged down the short hall without a word, disappearing into her room. Morgan watched her go, then set her purse on the counter with trembling fingers.
“I don’t like leaving you here,” I said quietly. “But whenLuthor’s locked up—when this is over—I’ll be back. That’s a promise, Morgan.”
She blinked up at me, eyes glassy in the lamplight. For a second I thought she’d push back, tell me she didn’t need promises from men like me. But instead, she let out a shaky breath and whispered, “I’ll hold you to that.”
The weight of it hit me square in the chest. This wasn’t just about missions or takedowns anymore. It was about her. About Ruby. About keeping a promise that mattered more than any order I’d ever taken.
Ruby’s soft voice carried from down the hall. “Don’t forget us.”
I met Morgan’s gaze, steady and sure. “Never.”
And I meant it with everything in me.
I forced myself to turn and leave before the weight of that goodbye rooted me there for good.
