Claimed by the reaper

Chapter 14

Sabrina arranged the visit without asking first, which was, Wren would later admit, probably the only way it would have actually happened. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon drive to the small, well kept house on the edge of town where Danny Reyes's daughter lived with her mother, ostensibly to drop off a care package from the diner's regular charity drive, though Wren suspected the real purpose ran considerably deeper.

"You don't have to come in," Sabrina said, parking outside the modest house. "I just thought, given everything Reaper told you about Danny, it might help, seeing that this isn't just an abstract piece of the investigation. It's a real family, still living with what happened."

Wren went in anyway and found herself sitting in a comfortable, sunlit living room across from a woman named Carla Reyes, whose careful, weathered composure reminded her uncomfortably of her own mother's photograph. It was the same particular steadiness of someone who'd learned to carry grief without letting it define every remaining moment of her life.

"Sabrina mentioned you're helping look into what really happened," Carla said, once introductions had been made, watching Wren with careful, searching attention. "To the fire, I mean. Whether it was really the clubs, or something else."

"We're trying," Wren said carefully, unwilling to promise more certainty than the investigation currently held. "Nothing's confirmed yet. But there's reason to believe it might not have been either club at all."

Something moved across Carla's expression, old grief tangled with cautious, fragile hope.

"My daughter still asks about it sometimes. Why her father died. I've told her it was dangerous men fighting over territory, because that's what everyone always believed. I don't know how to explain something more complicated than that, if it turns out to be true."

"I understand," Wren said softly, old grief of her own surfacing unexpectedly. "My own mother died when I was young. I spent years being told simplified versions of what happened, because the adults around me thought I couldn't handle anything more complicated. I understand now, looking back, that the simplified version cost me something important, the chance to actually understand and properly grieve what I'd lost."

Carla studied her with new, careful attention.

"You lost your mother young too?"

"When I was seven," Wren said quietly. "Cancer, not violence. But grief doesn't really care about the specific cause, I've found. It just settles in regardless, and you spend years learning how to carry it properly."

They talked for nearly an hour, Carla's careful reserve slowly giving way to genuine, grateful connection, and Wren left the small house with a photograph Carla had insisted on giving her. Danny was smiling, his arm around a considerably younger version of his daughter, an ordinary, precious moment neither of them could have known would become so significant.

She showed the photograph to Gideon that evening, both of them settled together in the quiet privacy of her room, the weight of the afternoon's visit still sitting heavily in her chest.

"She gave you this?" he asked, studying the image with visible emotion.

"She wants us to find the truth," Wren said quietly. "Not just for the club's sake. For her daughter, so she eventually understands what actually happened to her father."

She paused, old grief resurfacing unexpectedly.

"I told her about my mother. I don't think I've talked about that with anyone in years, honestly. Not properly."

"Tell me," Gideon said gently, echoing the same quiet invitation he'd offered weeks earlier about the nightmare, giving her the space to share only what she was ready to.

Wren was quiet for a long moment, old memory surfacing carefully, cautiously.

"She was sick for almost two years before she died. I remember mostly fragments, the hospital smell, my father's face getting more tired every time I saw him, the specific quality of silence in our house after she was finally gone."

She traced the edge of the photograph absently.

"My father remarried eventually. Someone practical, someone who didn't talk about grief because she thought it would upset me further. I learned to stop bringing my mother up, mostly. It felt easier than watching everyone flinch whenever I did."

"That sounds lonely," Gideon said softly.

"It was," Wren admitted, surprised by how easily the honesty came now, after months of careful, patient trust building. "I think that's actually part of why Marcus was able to control me so completely, looking back. I'd already learned, very young, that my own grief made other people uncomfortable. It wasn't such a large step, learning that my own fear and pain made him uncomfortable too, and needed to be hidden the same careful way."

Something in Gideon's expression turned fierce and protective, though his voice stayed gentle.

"You don't have to hide any of that here. Not with me, not with this club. Your grief, your fear, all of it is allowed to exist here without anyone flinching away from it."

"I'm starting to understand that," Wren said softly, leaning into him. "It's still strange, some days. Learning that vulnerability doesn't automatically cost me something, the way it always did before."

"I understand that particular lesson too," Gideon admitted quietly. "Reaper doesn't get to be vulnerable. That's rather the entire point of him, honestly, a version of myself specifically built to never show anyone a single unguarded moment."

He reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together with quiet deliberation.

"You're the only person who's ever gotten past that, Wren. Properly, I mean. Not just the name, though that mattered too. All of it."

She studied him carefully in the soft evening light, something warm and certain settling deeper into her chest with every unguarded admission he offered her.

"I'm grateful for that," she said quietly. "More than I think I can properly express."

"Then don't try to express it," Gideon said, something warm and inviting in his voice, closing the careful distance between them. "Just stay. Exactly like this, for as long as you want to."

She did, settling fully against him as the evening deepened into full dark outside, both of them quiet and unguarded in a way that felt, after months of careful, patient trust building, entirely and comfortably earned. Two people slowly, deliberately choosing to be fully known by each other, one honest, vulnerable conversation at a time.