Em exhales, long and steady, then shakes his head as though shaking off the ghosts clinging to us. “Alright,” he mutters, pushing himself upright. “That’s enough drowning for one night. You want to help her? Start by not breaking yourself down before she even gets here.” His eyes soften, but only a little. “Blow off some steam. Cook us something. You know it always works. And when Kimber wakes up hungry, she’ll need something decent in her stomach.Plus…” His mouth quirks, the closest thing to a smile he’s had all night. “Sounds like Ronan and Berk are heading back. We’re gonna need a full table, not scraps.”
For a second, I just stare at him, almost ready to argue, almost ready to tell him food doesn’t fix what’s broken. But he’s right. He’s always fucking right.
“Fine,” I mutter, dragging myself up, but there’s a flicker of warmth in my chest that wasn’t there a minute ago. I head into the kitchen and open the fridge, scanning shelves until something comes together in my mind. Something simple, but good. Hearty. Filling.
Chicken thighs, paprika, garlic—smoke and comfort blooming in the air. It’s nothing fancy, not like the feasts Mom used to whip up, but it’s real food. Comfort food. By the time I slide the whole pan into the oven, the kitchen smells alive—warm, safe, like the home we’ve been starved of for years.
I wipe my hands on a towel, glance at Em leaning in the doorway, arms crossed but eyes softer than before. He nods once, approving, and I feel some of the weight in my chest ease. Not gone, never gone. But lighter. Manageable.
“Better?” he asks.
I shrug, but the corner of my mouth twitches. “Yeah. Better.”
And for the first time in too damn long, I almost believe it.
The oven hums low, filling the air with the scent of roasted chicken and broth-soaked rice, the kind of smell that makes a place feel like home again. Em and I sit in silence, the weight of everything pressing in from all sides, but for once it doesn’t suffocate. More like a pause. A breath before the next storm.
The front door opens, hinges groaning. Every muscle in me locks tight. Em straightens where he sits, and I push to my feet, wiping my palms against my thighs even though they’re not damp.
Then he’s there. Ronan. My twin. Our anchor and our chaos. His face is flushed from the cold, hair mussed like he’s been running fingers through it, and in his arms—no, behind him, clinging like she’s not sure she belongs—is Berk.
For a heartbeat, I think my mind is playing tricks. She’s smaller than I remember, sharper, shadows clinging to her edges like scars you can’t see but can feel. Yet, it’s her. Every piece of her I’ve been missing.
My chest squeezes, a sound catching in my throat, but I choke it back. Em’s eyes are shining in the low light, but he stays still too, as if moving too quickly might scare her away. We both feel the urge to close the distance, to pull her close and prove she’s real—but we don’t. Not now. We know better. After what we did, and what we failed to stop, the pace has to be hers. She tucks herself tighter behind Ronan, like a shield. The sight guts me more than if she’d screamed. Berk, my Berk, hiding from me.
Ronan doesn’t let her stay there, though. He glances back at her, murmurs something low I can’t hear, and then gently tugs her forward, wrapping her in his arms under his chin like she belongs there. He kisses the side of her head, easy and natural, like it’s the most familiar thing in the world.
Our faces are mirrors, but Ronan’s is open in a way mine hasn’t been in years—free, full of relief, even joy. He’s happy. He’sworried, yeah, but happy. And I can’t remember the last time I saw that on him.
I want to step forward. I want to say something. But my voice doesn’t work, and my body doesn’t move. I just stand there, taking her in, praying she’ll look up. Praying she’ll see I’m not the same monster who once stood over her.
Ronan nudges her like he’s proud of some ridiculous prank she just pulled, laughing as if he can’t believe her audacity. “You were supposed to take us to your place to grab your things,” he says, voice thick with amusement. “Imagine my surprise when you bring me straight here.” He tightens his arm around her waist, a possessive press that makes my skin prickle, and he leans his mouth close enough to her ear that I can see his jaw work. He growls, low and intimate, not bothering to hide the way he’s rubbing himself against the curve of her ass. The sound is equal parts warning and worship.
For a breathless second, she doesn’t move. Then she looks up, and the world tilts. Her eyes cut across the room and land on us—me and Em—and the way she stares down at us is lethal. She doesn’t look like the girl from the photos or the memory I’ve been clutching like a talisman. The good-girl sheen is gone. In its place is something cold and deliberate. A viper smile that slices through whatever soft corner I had left for her. She slays me with one look, then smirks, like she knows exactly what she’s just done to our hearts.
“Relax,” she says, voice smooth and dangerous. “No one else knows about this place.” She glances around the living room with the casual familiarity of someone who’s walked these halls athousand times, which makes my chest tighten with an odd mixture of relief and betrayal.
Em blinks, then asks, puzzled, “Where?” as if searching the house again will make sense of this—will make the invisible visible. We’d combed this place when we arrived; how could she have been here and we not know?
Her smile widens, teasing, and she hesitates only a beat before turning toward the hall where the bedrooms are. She moves slowly, every step confident, and I follow because of course I follow her—always. She pauses at my door, reaches for the built-in entertainment wall, and clicks a tiny, almost apologetic button along the seam. The panel glides open soundlessly, revealing a narrow, perfectly hidden cavity that runs behind the wall.
My stomach drops so hard I taste metal. “Fuck,” Em breathes before he can stop himself. He sounds equal parts astonished and deceived. “Forgot to tell me about this room, I guess.” He glares over at me, annoyed.
She slips into that narrow space like it’s a second skin, like the shadows themselves have been her shelter for longer than I can measure. It’s not just an entrance—it’s a revelation. Up close, her scent hits me, not perfume or anything polished, but raw and real. Smoke clings to her like she’s worn the night as a cloak, threaded through with something sweeter, wilder—like her very skin remembers the forest and fire. She glances back at us over her shoulder, casual, almost taunting, and says, “Been here for months.” The words slam into me with the force of both confession and challenge, as if she’s daring us to make sense of how we missed herhiding in plain sight. Inoursafe house. Not that we would’ve noticed—we haven’t used it, and we haven’t been back here in years, not since we bought the damn place.
We crowd closer, the three of us, craning our necks like thieves trying to steal scraps of her life. At first glance, the place is bare bones. A narrow bed shoved against the wall, the bedspread crooked, wrinkled, like it doesn’t matter if it’s straight or not. It punches me in the chest because it’s so her—she never cared about tidiness, about making her bed in the mornings. For a fleeting moment, the thought tugs a smile across my lips, something achingly familiar in the middle of all this strangeness.
Then my gaze shifts, drawn to where the room truly comes alive. Across the space, the glow of multiple monitors bathes everything in cold blue light. Screens flicker and shift with endless streams of information: shipments, phone calls, surveillance feeds, names of employees and key players scrolling in neat, merciless columns. The scale of it stuns me. This isn’t just hiding; it’s strategy. This is war. My heart kicks in my chest as the pieces click together—this is how she’s been ahead of us at every turn, how she knew where to strike, when to move, who to gut.
The words leave me in a whisper, reverent without meaning to be. “You’ve got everything monitored.” My eyes scan the screens, catching glimpses of damning details as they flash past, each one a nail in the coffin of our fathers’ empire. No wonder she was so precise. No wonder every blow she landed cut exactly where it needed to.
A rush of pride fills me, sharp and unexpected, warming my chest like fire catching dry kindling. I didn’t train her for this. None of us did. Despite that, she’s here, flourishing, sharper and stronger than any of us imagined. “You’ve done amazing, Berk,” I tell her, my voice thick with something I don’t want to name.
For the first time tonight, the steel in her seems to soften. Her shoulders dip, her chin tucks, and for just a moment, the fierce warrior folds away, replaced by the shy, sly girl we once knew. The contrast wrecks me. One heartbeat she’s the viper who dismantled men like they were nothing, and the next, she’s the minx, the soft secret we lost and found again in the same breath. God help me, both versions of her undo me.
All my loose screws rattle. The relief that she’s alive, the rage that she hid from us, the ache of how much we failed her—and how much she was protecting us long before we even knew to be grateful. Ronan steps close to her again, wrapping her up in his arms, as if staking a claim, and for the first time since this nightmare started, I feel something like a plan take shape behind the chaos. Find her, hold her, earn whatever forgiveness she might dole out. But first, I swallow hard and force my voice to steady. “You could’ve told us,” I say, quieter than I mean to. “We would’ve—”
She cuts me off with that same dangerous smile and slides fully out of the hidden space as if she owns both sides of that wall. “I didn’t want to,” she says simply, eyes bright and unrepentant. “Not until I knew I could trust the right people.”