Page 40 of Crusher's Illusion

I stay behind. Trying not to break. But I do.

Not loud. Not messy. Just one tear. One crack.

Crossfire.

That’s what this is. I’m in the crossfire of a war I never meant to join. A man I never meant to love. And a truth that’s tearing everything apart.

And I don’t know if I can survive the next hit.

Steel looks at me with pain in his eyes, like he knows how my heart has just been ripped out of my chest. “You’re staying.” He looks at me one last time. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“You won’t.”

NINETEEN

BREAKING POINT

NEVAEH

I can’t sleep. Not because of the argument with Crusher. Not because Rock all but spat in my face. Not even because I watched Killian bleed out and still smell the copper on my fingers.

It’s the silence that kills me. The silence from Erik’s side of the house. From Steel. From everyone. The silence means they don’t trust me.

I sit on the edge of the couch, hoodie wrapped around me like armor, trying to crack the encrypted files Crusher has had this whole time. The cursor blinks in the decrypted window like it's daring me to keep going. My backup drive hums against the table, and the recovered files scroll by in flashes. Blurry surveillance images, clipped phone calls, grainy video timestamps. Data logs from files tied to a string of safehouse addresses.

One folder marked"ShadowBox."

And then I see it.

A freeze-frame of a girl. The image is timestamped two days before the rescue Jordan died for. A video blinks at me, daring me to press play. When I do, my whole world tilts on its axis.

“We’ve got you. Stay still,” I hear a calm voice from a young teenage boy in the background. It can’t be, can it? Is this Jordan, the boy Crusher couldn’t save? “Just breathe. They won’t touch you again.”

The video continues to play, panning in the back of a pickup. Bright blue eyes wide with fright, mouth duct-taped, bruises coloring her arms. My breath stops in my chest. I know that face.

Lena. My baby sister.

The sister everyone thought was on a drug bender when she disappeared five years ago. She was in the back of that truck. She was the girl Jordan died saving. Jordan was the stranger who helped my baby sister.

And suddenly everything makes a cruel kind of sense.

My hands shake so hard that the laptop nearly slips off my lap. I slam it shut. My stomach churns, bile crawling up my throat. I try to breathe, but the panic is pressing in, claws sharp and fast. This was never just a story. Never just a source. This was blood. This was my family. And I didn’t even know. This is what they’re trying to bury.

By dawn, I’ve made up my mind. I have to leave. Not because I want to, but because they need me gone. My presence is like a slow poison in their veins. Every time they look at me, they see risk. Death. Exposure.

I push off the couch I’ve been sitting on all night. My feet move before my brain catches up. I need air. I need answers. I needout.

Down the hall, the Clubhouse stretches long and suffocating. I barely register the flickering overhead lights or the murmurs behind closed doors. My chest is too tight. My hands are too cold. I just want to disappear. Before I rip something open I can’t put back together.

I make it to the side door before two shadows block my path. Zane and Zack Wilde. The twin prospects.

“Where are you headed?” one of the twin prospects, Zane, I think, asks casually.

“Air,” I lie. “Just around the side.”

Zack, his brother, leans against the doorframe. “Steel said you’re not to leave the property.”

“I’m not a prisoner.”