13
HAWK
The roadback to Bellamy Ranch feels longer tonight.
Maybe it’s because the highway’s empty.Or maybe it’s because I left a piece of myself tied to a chair in Reyes’s basement, bargaining with a man who should’ve been behind bars years ago.
The air outside the cracked window smells like hot dust.I roll it down farther, needing the sting of wind to remind me I’m still free.At least for now.
The steering wheel creaks under my grip as I think about what I agreed to.
A favor.
One favor.
No one gets hurt.Reyes promised.
Then again, what does that mean?Physically hurt?Emotionally?
Reyes’s voice still echoes in my head, smooth as poison.
Because no matter how I turn it over in my mind, I can’t see that man asking for anything clean.
Maybe he never calls it in.Maybe this was just a power play—his way of reminding me that even the Bellamys can bleed.
I didn’t need Reyes to tell me that.
I’ve done plenty of bleeding for the Bellamys.
The thought sits in my gut like a rock.
Mile markers tick by.My reflection stares back from the windshield, my jaw tight.The blue of my eyes is apparent even in the reflection.
My father’s eyes.
The thought makes my stomach twist.
Austin Bellamy.
A man who killed another man and called it justice.
I told myself for years I wasn’t him.That I saw the line and didn’t cross it.
But the truth?
That line’s been fading for a long damned time.
It started that night in the old barn when Falcon and I buried who we thought was Diego Vega.And then again when I let my older brother take the heat for something he didn’t do without speaking up.
Yeah.
Line.
Crossed.
I shake my head hard.I can’t go there now.Not tonight.
Not when Belinda’s missing.
