Page 106 of Carrick
“It looks like a breach. It looks like a kidnapping. It looks like you flipped.”
“I didn’t flip.”
“Then what the fuck was this?”
“It was a choice,” I said. “I made a call.”
“Acall?” Niko’s voice spiked. “You made agoddamn command decision, and you’re not the one wearing the bars here.”
“She asked you first,” I said, motioning to Bellamy. “And you all ignored her.”
“She’s not cleared?—”
“She’s not a fuckingasset,Niko!”
That silenced the room.
I turned to Bellamy—her hands trembling at her sides, lips pressed together so tightly they’d blanched with the effort of holding everything in.
She still hadn’t said a word.
I reached for her hand.
She let me take it—like she was handing me a thread to keep her from unraveling.
“She asked to go home,” I said. “To touch the life she left behind. She wasn’t asking for a field trip. She was begging for oxygen.”
“You don’t just get to play savior,” Jax growled.
“I’m not,” I said, voice low. “I’m just the only one who didn’t pretend her mental health was a footnote.”
“She’s a witness,” Niko said, colder now. “She has a target on her back.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not fucking standing here!”
That came from Bellamy.
Her voice cracked with fury on the last word, but she didn’t look away.
“You want to be angry, fine,” she said. “But don’t you dare stand there and act like I’m not even in the room. You got something to say, say it to my fucking face. I’m tired of feeling fuckinginvisible.”
Maddy moved forward then, standing beside her like a shield. “She’s not wrong.”
Jax scoffed. “This isn’t about feelings.”
Maddy turned on him. “Fuck you. Of course it is. What the hell do you think loyalty is made of?”
Deacon raised a hand. “Mads?—”
“No.” She stepped past him, eyes locked on Niko now. “You shut her down. You shutmedown when I was in her position, and I let it happen. But I’m not doing it again.”
Niko looked at her.
He didn’t speak.
Bellamy’s shoulders shook once. Just once. Then she straightened again.
“If Carrick hadn’t taken me,” she said, voice quiet but deadly clear, “I would’ve found a way to go alone.”
