Chapter Eighty-Five: The Girl Who Survived
696 Words
-----Morgan's POV-----
She wasn’t used to feeling like this.
Unsteady.
Not when walking into a cell. Not when surrounded by ghosts.
And yet, the moment Axton stepped forward and Luca’s smirk vanished, something inside Morgan ached.
Not fear.
Not weakness.
Grief.
Because no matter how twisted and vile the man shackled to that wall had become, he’d once been a boy who saved her life.
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Morgan was eight when her mother died.
An overdose. Cheap pills, cheaper whiskey. She’d found her face-down in the bathtub with the water running and the radio playing soft jazz.
They hadn’t had heat for weeks.
She waited two hours before calling anyone.
Didn’t cry.
Didn’t scream.
She just stared at her mother’s body and counted every tile on the bathroom wall until the paramedics came.
From there it was social workers.
And files.
And the word unmanageable scribbled in red ink across more than one folder.
She didn’t hit. She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw tantrums.
She shut down.
And that scared people more than if she’d broken windows.
When The Haven took her, they told her it was a special school for kids like her.
She believed them.
For exactly six hours.
Until they made her hold a gun.
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She met Axton first.
He didn’t talk.
Didn’t blink.
He just watched her.
Evaluating.
She thought he hated her.
He didn’t. He just didn’t know what to do with a girl.
Luca, though? Luca smiled.
He helped her through drills. Brought her extra food. Snuck her painkillers when her ribs were bruised too badly to move.
He was charming.
Protective.
For a while.
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They were twelve when she shared a bunk with Silas during a storm because her room was flooded.
Thirteen when Price taught her how to disassemble a sniper rifle in sixty seconds.
Fourteen when she beat Rourke in hand-to-hand and made him call her Ma’am for a week.
And fifteen when Axton kissed her behind the mess hall.
It wasn’t love.
It wasn’t even need.
It was escape.
And Luca saw it.
She never forgot his face.
The first real crack in their group wasn’t a mission failure or a betrayal.
It was her.
Luca stopped talking to her. Stopped smiling.
Started pulling away.
Started breaking things.
She thought it was jealousy. Ego.
But it wasn’t.
It was possession.
Luca never wanted her.
He wanted her to be his. Like a trophy.
Like something to hold over Axton.
When they ran? When they finally escaped that hell?
Luca didn’t come.
And she told herself she didn’t care.
But she did.
Because she remembered the boy who shielded her with his body when the lights went out during the blackout training.
The boy who gave her his dessert every night for a month.
The boy who didn’t laugh when she cried silently under the bed the night they killed their first target.
That boy was gone.
Replaced by a monster.
And seeing him now—dirty, bleeding, still trying to manipulate them—was like looking at a ruined photograph.
She wanted to cry.
But she wouldn’t.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Rourke stood a few feet back, arms crossed, jaw clenched.
He looked…
God, he looked good.
Tactical gear. Sweat on his brow. That little twitch in his jaw when he was holding back anger.
He caught her staring and raised an eyebrow.
She looked away fast.
Fuck.
What was wrong with her?
This wasn’t the time.
She was armor. She was precision.
But something about the way Rourke carried himself when the girls clung to him in that escape tunnel—gentle, patient, like they weren’t a burden but a gift—it hit her somewhere she thought was long dead.
She shook it off.
“You ready?” Axton asked, voice low.
She nodded.
But her hand brushed her hip. Right over her heart.
Because whatever happened in that cell?
It wasn’t just about Luca.
It was about who they all became the moment they left The Haven.
And how far some of them had come.
While one of them never left it at all.
- Writer
