**Chapter 46 — Jason POV**
The back exit of Madeleine's building smelled like damp concrete and old pipes. Scarlett was ahead of me, checking the alleyway was clear, her dark hair pulled back, her jaw set like stone. Julia was beside me, her hands still shaking slightly from the adrenaline, doing a decent job of pretending they weren't. Under her arm, wrapped in a dark cloth, was the golf club. She held it like it was both evidence and a burden, which it was.
Between us, barely conscious, was Marc.
I had one arm hooked under his shoulders. He was heavier than he looked — the dead weight of a man who wasn't quite dead, which under the circumstances was the best possible outcome. His head lolled forward, a slow line of blood running from his temple down his jaw. The golf club had caught him clean. Madeleine hadn't hesitated, which told me everything I needed to know about how bad things had gotten before I arrived.
"Clear," Scarlett said from the alleyway.
We moved.
My car was parked two streets over — far enough that no one would connect it to the building, close enough that I wasn't carrying a half-conscious man through half of San Francisco. I'd made that calculation before I even arrived. Old habit. My father raised me around men who thought about exits before they thought about entrances. I'd spent years trying to be nothing like those men.
Tonight, I was grateful for the education.
We got Marc into the back seat. Julia climbed in beside him — not because she wanted to be near him, I could see that clearly, but because someone needed to monitor his breathing and she was the most composed of the three of us right now. That surprised me. The golf club lay across her lap, still wrapped, her hands resting on top of it like she didn't quite know what to do with it but wasn't ready to let it go either.
Scarlett was in the passenger seat before the door was fully open, staring straight ahead, hands flat on her thighs.
I started the engine.
"Nikolai's place is twenty minutes from here," I said. "He'll be ready."
Silence.
I glanced at Scarlett. Her profile was sharp in the passing streetlights — that jaw, those eyes. The same eyes I'd recognized the first day she walked into my life pretending to be someone else. She was doing it again now, in a different way. Pretending to be calm. Pretending the blood on her sleeve wasn't affecting her.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Don't ask me that right now."
Fair enough.
I drove.
In the back seat, Julia pressed two fingers to Marc's wrist, checking his pulse the way someone does when they've looked it up and are hoping they're doing it right. Her other hand kept the wrapped golf club pinned against her thigh. "Still strong," she said quietly. "He's breathing fine."
"Good," I said.
"Good," she repeated, with considerably less warmth.
Marc made a low sound. Not words, just a groan — the body registering pain before the mind catches up. Julia pulled her hand back like she'd touched something hot, then steadied herself and put it back.
"He's waking up," she said.
"He won't be coherent for a while," I told her. "Head trauma. He'll be confused, disoriented. Don't engage with him, don't answer any questions he asks. Just keep him still."
Julia looked at me in the rearview mirror. Something shifted in her expression — not quite trust, but a reassessment. "You sound like you've done this before."
"I haven't," I said. "But I grew up around people who had."
She held my gaze for a second, deciding something about me. Then she nodded and looked back at Marc.
"What do we do with this?" she asked after a moment, lifting the wrapped golf club slightly.
"Nikolai will know," I said. "He's handled worse evidence than a golf club. Don't unwrap it, don't touch the actual surface. You did the right thing taking it."
"Scarlett would have left it," Julia said, not unkindly. Just as a fact.
From the passenger seat, Scarlett said flatly, "I was a little distracted by the man bleeding on the floor, Julia."
"I know," Julia said. Same flat tone. "That's why I grabbed it."
A beat of silence. Then something passed between them that I couldn't fully read — not forgiveness exactly, not yet, but something functional. Two people who had been through something together and were still, despite everything, on the same side.
Scarlett still hadn't moved otherwise. Still staring forward.
"He's going to be fine, babe," I said. Quietly enough that it was just for her.
She turned her head slightly. "You don't know that yet."
"I know Nikolai. He's the best private physician in this city. If Marc wasn't already gone when we put him in the car — and he wasn't — then he's going to be fine."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "And after he's fine?"
"One problem at a time."
"Jason."
"Scarlett."
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Not quite. "You're annoyingly calm right now."
"One of us has to be."
She turned back to the window. But I saw her shoulders drop by about half an inch, which for Scarlett was the equivalent of collapsing into someone's arms.
Julia watched the exchange from the backseat without commenting. When I glanced at her in the mirror again, she was looking out the window, one hand still on Marc's wrist, the other resting on the golf club like she was guarding both a patient and a secret simultaneously.
---
Nikolai's building was a converted Victorian in a quiet part of the city — the kind of neighborhood where residents minded their own business as a matter of personal policy. He met us at the side entrance, already in a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a medical bag over one shoulder. He was tall, early forties, with the kind of face that had been handsome once and had aged into something more interesting. His accent was light — Russian, filed down by years abroad.
He took one look at Marc and said nothing dramatic. Just: "Bring him in."
We moved Marc onto the examination table in what Nikolai called his private room — which was, in practice, a fully equipped medical space that had no business existing in a residential building. Clean. Precise. The kind of setup that answered questions you hadn't asked yet about what kind of man Nikolai was.
Julia set the wrapped golf club carefully on the side counter without being asked. Nikolai glanced at it, then at her, then back at Marc. He still said nothing.
He worked quickly. Gloved hands moving with the ease of someone who had done this in worse conditions — better lighting, no questions, no panic. He checked Marc's pupils, cleaned the wound, ran his hands along his skull with focused precision.
The three of us stood against the far wall, giving him room. Scarlett's arms were crossed. Julia's were at her sides, stiff. I kept my hands loose, watching Nikolai's face for information.
After several minutes, he straightened.
"He'll survive," Nikolai said simply. "Significant laceration, mild concussion. No fracture. No internal bleeding that I can detect, and I'd know." He peeled off his gloves. "He needs rest, monitoring through the night, and to stay away from whoever did this to him."
"That won't be a problem," Scarlett said.
Nikolai looked at her for a moment. Then at Julia. Then back at me, with an expression that said he had noted everything in this room and filed it somewhere I would never have access to.
"The item on the counter," he said to Julia. "Leave it with me."
Julia hesitated for exactly one second. "You'll dispose of it properly?"
"I'll make sure it doesn't exist," he said. "That's the same thing."
She stepped back from the counter.
Nikolai moved to the small sink in the corner and began washing his hands with the methodical calm of a man who had long ago made peace with the strange shape his career had taken. "He'll need someone to stay with him tonight," he said. "I'll manage that. You three should go. Separately, if possible. Don't arrive at the same address within the next hour."
"Thank you, Nikolai," I said.
He didn't look up from the sink. "Don't thank me yet. Thank me when this doesn't become something larger." He finally turned, drying his hands. "And Jason — next time you call me at this hour, at least tell me in advance what I'm walking into."
"Next time I'll try to schedule the emergency more conveniently."
He almost smiled. Almost.
We left through the same side entrance we'd come in. The night air was cool, sharp after the close warmth of the medical room. The three of us stood on the pavement for a moment without speaking.
Julia exhaled slowly, tipping her head back to look at the sky. "He's going to survive," she said, as if testing the words for weight. "Which means eventually he wakes up. And remembers."
"Yes," I said.
"And then what?"
I looked at Scarlett. She was already looking at me. That dark, unreadable gaze that had drawn me in from the first day and hadn't let go since.
"Then we deal with it," she said. "Like we deal with everything else."
Julia lowered her head. Looked between us. Something in her face settled — not peace, exactly, but resolution. The look of someone who had decided, quietly and finally, that they were in this until the end.
"Okay," she said simply.
We walked back to the car together.
The golf club was gone.
Marc was alive.
Author Note :
Scarlett Is Finally Back Hope you like this chapter ❤️