Page 200 of Carrick
Niko took a slow sip from his mug before he spoke. “I couldn’t help but overhear a bit of… what you went through last night. You didn’t break.”
I didn’t look at him. “Feels like I did.”
“You screamed,” he said. “You begged. You bled. But you didn’t break.”
I tried to shrug it off, but it landed too hard. “That doesn’t make me strong. It just makes me stubborn.”
“No,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly. “It makes you a survivor. And that’s not the same thing as being lucky or angry or reckless. That’s something built. Something earned.”
My throat tightened. Niko rarely gave compliments. And he never gave them for free.
I glanced down at my hands. “I thought maybe if I gave everything—if I screamed loud enough, or took enough pain—I could make the grief smaller. Shrink it down. Trade it for something I could hold.”
“You did,” he said. “And you still are.”
I turned to him slowly. “Do you think he knew? That Rayden knew he was going to die?”
Niko exhaled through his nose. “I think he knew the game he was playing. I think he told himself he’d get out before it got too dark. But those lines blur fast when you’re in survival mode.”
“I keep thinking I could’ve stopped him.”
He shook his head. “You couldn’t.”
“I don’t want that to be true,” I whispered.
“But it is.”
The words settled between us like stone.
“I think…” I said slowly, “I think the worst part is knowing that he loved me, and it still wasn’t enough. For him to stop. For him to choose something different.”
Niko nodded. “That’s not your fault. That’s not your burden. Love isn’t a lifeline if someone refuses to grab it.”
I blinked hard, trying to keep the sting at bay.
“And what now?” I asked. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
He finished the last sip of his coffee and set the mug down on the porch railing. “You live. You get stronger. You hold the grief when it comes, and you build something with it instead of against it.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“It is,” he said. “Right until it isn’t.”
I swallowed. “You really think we can bring them down? The Dom Krovi?”
His face hardened. The soldier in him rose to the surface. “Yes. Eventually. They’re bigger than we thought, more connected than we hoped. But they’re not untouchable. And we’re not fucking done.”
Something about the way he saidwemade something inside me settle. Just a little.
“You’re part of this now,” he said. “Whether you planned to be or not. And none of us want you on the sidelines.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’re not supposed to,” he said. “That’s why we have each other.”
I looked at him, really looked this time, and said, “Thank you.”
His eyes softened just a fraction. “You earned it.”
