CHAPTER ELEVEN
The highway unspooled beneath the tires like a black ribbon soaked in the first pale light of morning.
Elena kept both hands on the wheel, ten and two, the way her father had taught her when she was sixteen and still believed the world was a place that rewarded careful driving.
Jax sat in the passenger seat, head tipped back against the headrest, eyes half-closed. His left hand rested on her knee…warm, steady, the only anchor she had left.
Neither of them had spoken since they left the dirt track. The silence felt sacred, fragile, like the thin skin forming over a fresh burn.
The smell of smoke still clung to their clothes…the smell of acrid and Chemical.
It crawled into Elena’s nostrils every time she breathed, a reminder that the ledger…the physical proof of years o
