Broken Hands

110. The Depth of it

The rain drummed softly against the windshield as Damien turned into the driveway. The air hung thick and damp, carrying the unmistakable weight of a storm that had already passed. He stepped out of the car, the sound of his boots muffled by the slick pavement. With a practiced motion, he locked the car, his eyes scanning the dimly lit property out of habit. You never know what might be waiting.

The house greeted him with an eerie quiet. Not that he'd paid much attention to the noise—or lack of it—lately. For the past two days, he'd been consumed by the files on Charlie's device, the damning evidence it contained, and the criminals who had thought their sins would stay buried.

Damien moved through the entryway, his hands still cold from the rain. The weight of the day clung to him like a second skin. There'd been more arrests than he could count, more property seized, and more criminals dragged out of their comfortable new lives. Pedro Andres. Noyen. The names stuck in his mind, not because they were extraordinary, but because of their cruelty. Murderers. Traffickers, rapists. Men who had thought they could quietly retire, blending into society like their victims' lives weren't destroyed in their wake. But nothing stays buried forever.

Andres had opened a restaurant to reinvent himself, and Noyen had nestled into a luxury home, both thinking they'd outlast their crimes. But justice had found them.

He walked into his room, methodically unloading his gear. The weight of the gun, the cold edge of the knives—it was all part of his day-to-day reality, but today the tools felt heavier than usual. A faint bruise was forming on his hand, a souvenir from disarming one of Noyen's bodyguards. Damien ran his thumb over it absently.

Stripping off his uniform, he pulled on a clean white t-shirt, the soft fabric a sharp contrast to the tension in his body. He made his way to the kitchen, the scent of fresh coffee slowly filling the room as he leaned against the counter.

And yet, even the coffee couldn't quiet his mind.

Damien's thoughts returned to the images he couldn't unsee—the footage from Charlie's files. Little Grayson, so small, so vulnerable, trapped in a house of horrors. Charlie's heavy hand, the sharp cracks of torture, the suffocating sense of control.

For a man like Damien, who had seen the worst of humanity, this was still different.

Grayson's childhood had been stolen from him in ways that made Damien's stomach churn. And yet, somehow, the boy had survived. He'd framed his way out of the dark, scraping together the pieces of himself, trying to be normal in a world that had only ever shown him cruelty.

But Damien could see what Grayson couldn't. The unquenchable thirst for danger, it wasn't just rebellion—it was survival. It was wired into him, burned into his psyche by years of trauma. Grayson didn't see danger the way others did. He craved it, and embraced it because it was familiar. It was home.

And therapy, while helpful, wouldn't rewrite those instincts. It might soothe the edges of his pain, but it couldn't erase what Charlie and others like him had done. That wiring was permanent, part of who Grayson was now.

Damien sighed, gripping the edge of the counter as the rain outside softened to a gentle patter.

Grayson didn't need fixing. Damien knew better than that. But he could protect him, even when Grayson didn't think he needed protection. He could be the anchor Grayson didn't know he needed, and he could find him a solid ground.

Because Grayson had survived the worst Damien would do whatever it took to make sure he never faced it again.

Damien sipped his coffee, the warmth doing little to ease the growing unease in his chest. The past few days had been a whirlwind of revelations, most of them unsettling. Alexa's name—her alias "X"—kept surfacing in the files and tapes he'd recovered. It was clear she had been deeply entangled in Charlie's operations, acting as his puppet. Damien knew she'd been manipulated into it, but how had it all begun?