Chapter 27 - Drowning In Mirrors

Raven sat alone in the back booth of a forgotten diner on the edge of the East District, the kind of place where the booths were cracked, the coffee burnt, and no one asked questions. The rain tapped softly on the windows, a steady rhythm that masked the thudding in her chest.

A manila folder lay on the table before her, thick with the kind of truth that could ruin empires.

She flipped it open one last time, eyes scanning the neatly typed numbers, offshore accounts, forged receipts, and donation ledgers twisted into knots. Zane Morreau’s name never appeared. He was too careful for that, but the shell organizations he’d been funneling money through, especially the children's charity called Bright Horizons, told the story.

Money that should’ve gone to underfed kids and neglected classrooms had been quietly redirected into false construction invoices, shell investment firms, and personal security payments. She’d cross-referenced three different whistleblower files. It was airtight.

Zane wasn’t just dealing in flesh and weapons. He was laundering his guilt through children’s tears.

She slid the folder into a weatherproof envelope, sealed it tight, and stood. Her burner phone buzzed once.

Unknown Number: You’re playing a dangerous game, Red.

She froze. The diner’s lights buzzed above her. No one was looking. No one had seen her receive the envelope. She shoved the phone back into her coat pocket and walked out.

She dropped the envelope in the dead drop on 46th and Rosewood, a rusted newspaper box tagged with graffiti that read REVOLT IN INK. Her contact at the paper, an old investigative journalist named Elena she’d worked with before, would find it within the hour.

Under a false name. No traceable link. She was burning the candle from both ends now and it was only a matter of time before the flame reached her fingers.

By the time she returned to the penthouse, the rain had stopped. The sky hung low and heavy, thick with summer humidity. Raven let herself in quietly. The lights were dim, soft jazz echoing faintly from the speakers. She peeled off her coat, set her bag on the entryway table, and hesitated.

Jaxon wasn’t in the living room. Usually, he’d be at the bar or reading reports in the corner chair with a whiskey glass perched on his thigh. But tonight, the place felt… still. Watched.

She turned toward the hallway. His door was ajar. Light spilled into the corridor.

“Jaxon?” she called softly.

When Jaxon didn't answer she stepped the bedroom. He was seated on the edge of the bed, tie loosened, expression unreadable. Something about the quiet unnerved her.

“You’re home early,” she offered, trying to keep her voice neutral.

He didn’t look at her. Just gestured toward the glass, next to the decanter, on the side table. “Poured you one.”

She moved slowly, cautiously, took the drink, but didn’t sip. “You okay?”

He glanced up finally. His eyes were tired, darker than usual.

“Just a long day,” he said. “Everything feel… normal today?”

Her heart skipped. “Why wouldn’t it?”

He gave a faint shrug, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’ve been restless lately,” he said after a pause. “Distant.”

She lowered herself into the velvet chair across from him, fingers curling around the glass. “We both have.”

Another beat of silence.

She thought of the GPS tracker he didn’t know she’d found. Or thought she’d found. She’d tossed the first one, but there could be more.

Her phone buzzed again in her bag. She didn’t check it.

“I’m just trying to make sense of things,” she murmured. “There’s… a lot happening. Inside me. Around us.”

He nodded slowly.

But Raven didn’t know he’d already accessed the tracker data from her second purse. The one she hadn’t checked. He’d seen every location she visited that day including the diner, the drop and the route she’d walked to lose any tails.

He didn’t confront her. Not yet. Instead, he let the silence settle between them, heavy and purposeful. A trap in soft lighting.

That night, as she showered, Raven stared at her reflection in the steamed mirror. Her own face startled her. She looked older. Sharper. Yet still, she looked like a stranger with familiar eyes.

She touched the glass, watching the condensation collect under her fingertips. “Who are you now?” she whispered. Her fingers trembled. She didn’t know anymore.

She slipped into bed beside Jaxon later, his body warm but still as marble. He didn’t reach for her, didn’t kiss her goodnight. Just whispered, “Sweet dreams,” like a man waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, Raven sat at the kitchen island while Jaxon stirred cream into his coffee.

She knew she should tell him everything. About the charity, the laundering and Eena, but every time she opened her mouth, the words caught like thorns, so instead, she changed the subject. “Have you heard anything new about Talia?”

He stilled. “No.”

A lie. He had operatives searching every warehouse on the east side. So far, nothing. Zane had gone underground, but Jaxon wouldn’t show that weakness, not even to her, especially not now.

Raven reached for her bag. “I’ll be at the club today. Just checking in on a few dancers.”

He nodded. “Let me know if anything feels off.”

She hesitated. “I can take care of myself.”

A soft smirk touched his lips, but his eyes were cool. “I know.”

And that, more than anything, made her heart stutter, because she could feel it in him now. The quiet detachment. The way he was letting her speak, letting her move, but storing everything behind those sharp eyes. Like a man building a case with every word she said.

She left for the club without Jaxon.

Back at Club Eden, the music thumped like a pulse through the floor. Raven moved through it with ease, stopping to speak with the girls, checking on the bruised one she’d seen two nights before. The girl was gone. “Sick,” they said, but Raven knew better.

She felt the storm brewing in her chest.

Zane’s reach was growing bolder and crueler.

She couldn’t stop shaking when she slipped into the surveillance booth and checked the camera logs. Jaxon’s new off-the-books tech had quietly tagged Dante’s RFID badge moving in and out of a storage entrance on the north wing, one normally reserved for liquor shipments.

Raven chewed her lip. There were two trafficking routes now. One inside the club. One outside, off the books. She needed more time and more proof, but as she turned to leave, her reflection in the dark monitor screens stopped her. It was the flicker of her expression. Hard. Cold. Wary.

It wasn’t the girl who made vows on her brother’s bathroom floor. It wasn’t even the woman who had given her body to Jaxon Morreau in exchange for secrets. It was someone else. Someone she couldn’t name. And in that moment, she wasn’t sure who the real version of her was anymore.

Was it the one Jaxon wanted? The one Zane feared? Or the one Gabriel would no longer recognize?

Back at the penthouse, Jaxon watched her walk through the door on the surveillance monitor in his study. Calm. Collected.

He didn’t confront her. He just traced her tracker route again, another detour today, a quiet alley near the docks. Ten minutes spent loitering by an unregistered courier van. Another piece of the puzzle. He leaned back in the leather chair, eyes burning into the screen.

If she was building a story behind his back, he needed to know why, not to punish her, but because it would break something in him.

That night, Raven stood at the mirror again. Same steam. Same glass. Same face. But it was warping now. She pressed her palm to the surface, watching the heat blur her skin, her eyes, her mouth.

The woman in the mirror didn’t cry, didn’t flinch, but she also didn’t look human anymore. Just a ghost made of grief, secrets, and too many lies stacked on top of each other.

“Which one of us is real?” she asked the mirror softly, not expecting an actual answer.