My breath catches, not from fear, but from the weight of a moment I’ve been imagining for months. He doesn’t look away. Neither do I. The noise of the crowd fades behind the thunder in my chest. I hold his stare, unflinching, daring him to see me. Not just the girl hidden in the shadows—but the reckoning that’s coming.
Chapter Two
Ronan
Electricity vibrates beneath my skin, a low, thrumming current that rides the edge of my nerves and crackles in my chest. It builds slowly, coiling like smoke in my lungs, until the tension makes it hard to breathe. The fine hair on my arms rises, reacting to something unseen but all too familiar, like the warning before a lightning strike. I flex my hands, trying to ground myself, but my fists clench without meaning to. Something’s off. It’s in the air tonight—thick with memory, charged with ghosts I thought I’d buried.
The demons that usually lurk beneath the surface are clawing their way up more aggressively than usual. Restless. Loud. Unforgiving. And I know exactly why.
Our father’s been breathing down our necks more than ever, barking about the empire he thinks we owe our lives to. The family business. The Calder legacy. His voice, a constant poison in my ear, demanding blood, obedience, and control. But that business—his business—is a rotted corpse we’ve been dragging behind us for years, and pretending it’s still alive. We all know the truth. There’s nothing noble left in it. No loyalty. No family. Just shadows and scars and debts paid in broken bodies.
Life didn’t always feel this heavy. Back before the fire, before we lost her, there were moments I thought we could turn it all around. Reclaim something pure. I used to believe there was a way to untangle ourselves from the rot, from the chain of sins handed down by our fathers like inheritance. But now, I’m not so sure.
Lately, everything’s felt sharper. Memories hit harder, uninvited and violent in their return. It’s like my past is stalking me, breathing down my neck the same way he does. Something in the air tonight has stirred the ashes. I can feel it in my bones. A reckoning’s coming. One we can’t outrun.
There’s one person who owns the center of my thoughts—day in, day out, no matter how many hits I take, how many people I put on the ground, how much time passes.
Berkley Monroe.
She’s always the reason I end up in the ring, beating my fists against flesh and canvas until the memories blur and my knuckles scream louder than my head. They hit me like a freight train with no brakes—her laughter cutting through the noise, the faint scent of her shampoo clinging to my skin, the way she said my name like it anchored her to me. Like I mattered. But the memories aren’t the worst part.
It’s what came after.
The silence. The sudden, brutal absence. One second she was there—ours, mine—and the next she was gone. Just… gone. A fire. A funeral with no casket. Ashes where answers should have been. And a hollow carved straight through my chest that never healed, never filled, just stayed open—burning, waiting, reminding me every damn day of what was taken and never returned.
They said she died with her dad, but they couldn’t find her body in the ash. No one could explain that anomaly. Vapor. Ash. Like the flames swallowed her whole and wiped her off the face of the earth.
I never bought it. Not for a second.
And maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about the message. A jumbled, half-scrambled text that made zero sense. I’ve stared at that message so many times that the screen on my phone is practically worn thin from my thumb scrolling to it.
What if it wasn’t an accident?
What if it was a cry for help?
The thought has festered in the back of my mind ever since the glitchy message hit my phone. It’s dug in deep like a parasite, gnawing at my insides every time I close my eyes and think about her—about that night. Iknowit wasn’t random. No matter how scrambled it is, something deep in my gut screams that it matters. A clue. A warning. A plea.
And that’s what’s driving me insane more than anything—the not knowing. The helplessness. The rage. Especially because Rowen won’t hear a damn word of it, brushing it off like I’m grasping at ghosts. And Emerson? Heisn’t pushing for answers either. He’s just floating through this nightmare, too numb or too afraid to dig deeper.
I’m left standing next to the window, fists clenched, heart pounding, and no one on my side. Just the silence. The static. And that fucking message that won’t stop replaying in my head.
My boots scrape against the carpet as I roll my shoulders, trying to shake off the tension. Doesn’t work. That static charge under my skin only grows stronger, building pressure behind my ribs like a storm waiting to break. My body remembers her. My soulachesfor her. And tonight, I swear, the air is different. Heavier. Familiar.
A growl rips free before I realize it, deep and guttural, vibrating through my chest like thunder rolling through stone. It cuts through the silence, and Rowen’s head snaps in my direction. His brows draw tight, a flicker of confusion slipping past the stoic mask he wears so well. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t need to. I’ve known him my entire life—I don’t need the words. As my twin, he’s clocking every movement, analyzing every shift in my stance, every flicker of emotion I’m failing to keep off my face.
I don’t meet his eyes. Or judgement. Ican’t.Not right now. Because if I do, I’ll lose focus. He’ll see it all. The rage. The grief. The hope I’ve kept buried so deep it threatens to explode. My fists aren’t clenched for show—they’re braced for the weight I carry. The ghosts. For her.
It’s the burn searing through my chest, hotter than the overhead lights in the arena. The way my heart pounds like it’s trying to outrun the truth. It’s the jumbled message I can’t erase from my mind, the one that shouldn’t have meant anything—but does. A fractured text—half garbled nonsense, half desperate scream. No one else believes it matters. But Ifelther in it.
Berkley is alive. I don’t know how. I don’t know where. But my soul, what’s left of it, is screaming the truth my brothers won’t see.
She’s out there.
Not that I can speak the truth—not out loud. We made that decision a long time ago without ever really saying it. A silent pact sealed in grief and guilt. Berkley’s name hasn’t passed between us in years, not in any real way. It’s like we thought if we kept our mouths shut, maybe the pain would loosen its grip. But it never did.
Dad had shown us Reign’s letter—the one we weren’t supposed to see. The one that blamed Berkley for everything. He said Reign caught her the night of the sleepover, tangled up with her boyfriend, that they had an all-out screaming match at the house. A fight so volatile, Dad had to physically step between them to stop it from spiraling out of control. It didn’t make any sense, even then.
We were supposed to be there that night, but Dad surprised us with a last-minute trip to the cabin. Said it was time we had a break from the chaos, a chance to breathe. We didn’tthink much of it—just packed and went. When we came back… she was gone.