Page 96 of Carrick
Bellamy exhaled slowly through her nose, unfolding her arms with a controlled kind of rage. She stepped forward—not aggressive, but intentional. Measured. Her voice stayed level, but there was something coiled behind it. A warning.
“I left everything. My laptop. My notebooks. My fuckinglife. I have barely anything here that belongs to me. Quinn grabbed some essentials, sure, but none of the things that really matter.”
“You’re safe. That’s what matters,” Niko replied without looking up.
That did it.
Her gaze snapped to him like a strike. “Safe?” she hissed. “You think I’msafe? I don’t even know who Iamanymore. I can’t write. I can’t breathe. I don’t even have the necklace Rayden gave me when I was thirteen. That’s how far gone I am. I’m begging for a piece of cheap metal and thread because it’s all I have left of the life you erased.”
Jax cleared his throat, finally breaking the tension. “Sentimental items aren’t worth risking your life,” he offered, voice hesitant.
Bellamy’s head snapped in his direction. “It’s not aboutsentiment,Jax.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She swallowed hard, forced it down, and tried again.
“It’s about identity. Control.Agency.” She pointed to her chest, her own body. “I didn’t choose to be cut off from everything I know. I didn’t choose to wake up in someone else’s clothes in a house I never asked to stay in. I didn’t choose to disappear. That choice was madeforme.”
Niko stood suddenly, the scrape of his chair echoing like a threat. “We’re not debating this,devochka.”
“Why the fucknot?” she snapped, eyes blazing now. “Because you’re in charge? Because you’ve decided I’m a risk to manage, instead of a person to protect? Newsflash, Niko—Idon’t take orders. I didn’t enlist. You don’t get to run my life like a military op just because you slapped a protection label on me.”
Deacon shifted near the wall. His arms were crossed over his chest, eyes sharp and unreadable, like he was watching for the moment someone crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
Niko pointed a finger at Bellamy. “You leave this property, and you open a door we can’t close. You blowyourcover, you blowours. That includes every single man in this room. It includes Quinn. It includes Maddy. You want that blood on your hands?”
Her nostrils flared. “So I’m a liability now. Just say it.”
“You’revulnerable,” Sully interjected, his tone soft but firm. “That’s not an insult. It’s a fact. And they know that. They’ll exploit it the second you step into the open.”
Bellamy’s mouth twisted. “Then don’t let me go alone. Come with me. One of you. All of you. I’ll wear a vest, I’ll keep my damn head down, I’ll stay in the car. Justget me thereand back before I lose my mind.”
Niko dragged a hand through his hair. “We are not running a ghost mission because you miss your goddamn socks, Bellamy.”
Her hands were shaking now.
Not from fear. From fury.
From something deep and molten breaking wide open inside her chest.
Her fingers twitched at her sides, as if her body didn’t know whether to lash out or fold in. Her breath hitched once, twice—and then she exploded.
“It’s not about socks, you asshole!” she shouted, voice cracking like a whip through the room.
Jax flinched. Sully stiffened. Even Deacon’s posture shifted, subtle but alert.
Bellamy took another step forward, and this time her composure was gone. She was trembling with the kind of ragethat came from grief left to rot in silence. Her eyes were wet and blazing. Her voice was a weapon.
“It’s about thepart of myselfI left behind in that apartment! The version of me who hadn’t yet watched her entire world collapse. The woman who still had a rhythm. A routine. A goddamn toothbrush thatwasn’t borrowed!” Her breath caught. “I need somethingrealto hold on to, or I swear to God, I am going tolose myself completely.”
“Then we’ll help you find a new anchor,” Sully said carefully, his tone soft—like he thought he could calm her. Like she was an animal on the verge of snapping her leash.
Bellamy’s head whipped toward him.
“I don’twanta new one!” she screamed, chest heaving. “I want the one Ichose! I wantmy journal. I want theshirt Rayden gave mewhen I graduated. I want to walk into my room and feel somethingfamiliar. Not this—this sterile, borrowed life where every step is supervised and every breath is counted and every fuckingmemoryis out of reach!”
No one dared speak.
“I want to touch my goddamn bed!” she went on, louder now, pacing in short, sharp strides like a tiger in a cage. “The one I used to cry into when Rayden got moved to another foster home, or when I had nightmares about our caseworker, or when Imissedmy mother and didn’t know if it was even okay to still miss her.”
