Page 9 of Carrick
Maddy nodded like she respected that answer more than any lie I could’ve offered. “I’ll let you settle in. Holler if you need snacks, a meltdown buddy, or more towels.”
“Or earplugs,” Carrick added. “Sully snores like a dying walrus.”
“Hey,” Maddy said, laughing. “He has a deviated septum. Be nice.”
Carrick just smirked and gave me a slow nod. “Seriously though. Try to relax, Bellamy. You’re safe here.”
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one with two strangers showing him to a strange room in a strange house. Neither one of them was making me feel any more at ease, either. She was far perkier than I could handle right now. And he was too unreadable to trust. But neither of them felt overtly dangerous.
Not yet.
I managed a nod and stepped back into the room. My fingers brushed the edge of the door before I closed it. The soft click of it shutting echoed louder than it should’ve.
Silence. Stillness. No more voices. No more watchful eyes. No more pretending like I was fine.
For the first time in days, I let myself breathe. Really breathe. The kind of inhale that expanded my ribs and scraped the bottom of something hollow in my chest. But even in the quiet, my heart wouldn’t stop racing. It thundered in my ears like it was trying to outrun something.
Rayden.
His name slammed through me like a freight train. A prayer. A plea. A scream trapped behind my teeth. He was out there, somewhere. In the dark. Some part of this twisted web of mafia bullshit I barely understood.
And I was stuck here, in a house full of armed strangers and polished weapons and rules I hadn’t agreed to. A gilded cage with some pretty set dressing.
I sank onto the edge of the bed and stared at the far wall, but I didn’t see it. All I could see was his face. Younger, scrappier. Eight years old, tugging on my hand and whispering, “Don’t leave me.”
Twelve, when I taught him how to lie convincingly to social workers.
Fifteen, when he gave me half his paycheck from the gas station to help cover rent. And now—twenty-three and in over his head.
I was supposed to protect him. I’d always protected him. But I hadn’t been fast enough this time. I’d seen the signs. Heard the things he wasn’t saying. And still, I let him go. I let him smile at me with that same cocky tilt of his head and tell me not to worry.
God, I was such an idiot.
Now I was here. Trapped. Safe, apparently. But it didn’t feel safe. Not really. It felt like being buried alive.
Everyone walked on eggshells around me like I was some fragile thing wrapped in caution tape. Like if they said the wrong word, I’d shatter into screaming, sobbing pieces. But I wasn’t going to break. Not yet.
I wrapped my arms around my middle and squeezed until it hurt, like maybe I could hold myself together through sheer pressure.
They could call me a liability. Lock every door, speak in code, look at me like I was something broken they were forced to carry. Let them. They didn’t know me. Not really. I’d bled in silence. Learned to read danger like a second language. Survived things that would have gutted softer girls. I didn’t need their protection, and I sure as hell didn’t need their permission.
What I needed was time—time to listen, to watch, to peel back the layers of the bulletproof brotherhood and see what hid beneath their armor. Because Rayden was still out there, and I wasn’t going to wait for someone else to save him. I’d find the crack. Wedge it open. And if I had to light a match and burn this whole place to the ground just to drag him out of hell—so be it.
4
Bellamy
If I’d hopedfor a quiet first morning in witness protection, I was a fool.
I woke to the sound of chaos—loud, unfiltered bickering that rolled down the hallway like thunder. This wasn’t polite disagreement. It was battle-grade banter, voices clashing like swords, and Maddy shouting something about “coffee crimes against the un-caffeinated masses.”
Pain radiated through me—not from injury, but from something deeper. A bone-deep weariness that nested under my ribs, hollowing me out. I hadn’t really slept. Not the kind of sleep that restores. I’d drifted in and out, caught in that half-conscious place where memory hijacks you and won’t let go. The package. The look in Quinn’s eyes. The truth I hadn’t been ready to hold.
My brother’s finger.
Severed. Sealed in plastic. A note scrawled in red ink like a threat and a promise:
YOU’RE ON THE HOOK NOW.
