85 The guilty ones

**Date = 1 August**
**Place = San Francisco (UCSF Medical Center)**

**POV - Aria**

The sound comes before the sight of him.

Footsteps.

Hard. Measured. Angry enough to make the linoleum vibrate.

Marco’s pacing rhythm shifts — slower, heavier, then stops — and every instinct in me goes cold.

Jackson bursts in, and the entire atmosphere changes like someone just cracked a storm cloud over our heads.

Hair a mess, shirt torn and crusted with blood, his knuckles raw, his jaw clenched so tight it looks like it can splinter. His eyes — hell — his eyes aren’t even human right now.

There’s something in his hand — a handbag. Or, what’s left of one. It’s scuffed, the strap torn, fabric stained with something dark. There’s a resin keychain dangling off it — a little clear heart-shaped trinket with tiny peach blossoms sealed inside.

He doesn’t walk. He charges. Straight toward me.

The room tenses. River jerks upright in her seat, a Styrofoam cup tips over, spilling cold coffee onto the floor. Nobody cares.

“Jackson?” Enrique’s voice cuts through the tension, calm but wary — the kind you use on wild animals and ticking bombs. “Hey. Stop. What —”

Jackson doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down. Until he’s right in front of me. The bag slams into my chest hard enough to sting, so close to my face I can smell the dirt still clinging to it.

“What’s this?” he spits.

I stare at it, confused. “It’s my bag,” I say, because — well, it is.

He shakes it, the keychain swinging between us like an accusation. “This!” He jerks the charm toward me. “What the fuck is this?” I’m not sure if it’s a trick question or if he really doesn’t know.

“I — it’s —” I stammer, my mouth moves faster than my brain. “A keychain. For … keys …”

“Where did you get it?” He’s clearly trying very hard to keep his anger intact.

“A nurse … she sold them to raise funds for a little girl’s artificial leg.” I manage. “I bought one for Leyla, and she gave me this one for free. Said I should carry it with me … it’s a good luck charm.”

“It’s a tracker!” The word explodes, rattling the air, rattling me. “A fucking tracker, Aria!”

For a moment, I swear every conversation, every shuffle, every machine beep stops.

My brain stutters, the syllables barely making sense. “A … tracker?” I repeat, because that can’t be right. “No — it’s not —”

For a moment, I can’t even breathe. The word ricochets through my skull, hitting every thought that’s already cracked and fragile from the collision, the screaming, the sirens.

“Jackson, calm the fuck down,” Enrique cuts in fast, moving forward, his hand already out as if to diffuse the bomb that is his brother.

“Don’t!” Jackson whips his focus to him, and for a second, I see the old fury in his eyes — that bottomless pit of rage and grief that no therapy can ever fill.

“This happened —” his finger jabs toward me like an accusation, “Because of her.”

I flinch. The words land like a physical hit. My body goes cold before my brain even processes them.

Enrique steps in front of me so fast it’s a blur. “Enough,” he warns, voice low, deadly. “Don’t you dare.”

Jackson’s laugh is broken glass. His face is cold. I’m sure he’s thinking up ways to punish me.

“Stop it,” Enrique snaps. “She didn’t know!”

But Jackson doesn’t stop — I’ve learned he never stops until the storm subsides. His cold eyes glare at his brother. “If she doesn’t make it … I swear to God hell will break loose …”

“You think I’d let anyone hurt her?” Enrique spits out, stepping forward, his hand half-raised like he’s daring his brother to test him. His voice vibrates with fury and something else — something I’ve not heard before. Not on him.

Jackson’s jaw works once, twice. Then he gives a short, cold laugh — no humor, just exhaustion and bitterness.

“Oh, that’s sweet,” he mutters, voice low and cutting. “You get to play hero for your girl.”

He tilts his head, eyes dark and flat. “Meanwhile, two of ours are hooked to machines down the hall.”

The words are quiet but cruel, each one a bullet. Enrique flinches like he’s been hit.

Jackson’s expression doesn’t move, but something in his eyes does — a flicker, sharp and ugly. He exhales slowly through his nose, the kind of sound that means he’s barely keeping himself from detonating. “So yeah,” he adds, mouth twisting, “you protect yours. You’re doing a hell of a job.”

The silence that follows feels like it’s swallowing the room. Even the hum of the hospital lights sounds too loud.

Enrique’s voice drops, low and dangerous. “You don’t get to throw that at her.”

Jackson’s gaze flicks away, jaw clenching until the muscle jumps. “Don’t have to,” he says. “You caught it just fine.”

Enrique growls, and then — he moves.

Faster than I’ve ever seen him move.

He grabs Jackson by the shirt, shoving him back against the wall hard enough to cause an echo down the hall. The sound vibrates, sharp and useless.

The air feels electric, the kind that trolls before lightning hits. River’s eyes are huge, Haley pulls her close, and Mel whispers something sharp under her breath that sounds suspiciously like a prayer mixed with profanity.

Logan steps forward. “Boys — hey —”

“Stay out of it!” they both bark at the same time, and it’s terrifying how identical their voices sound. Two men carved from the same bone.

The bag falls to the floor with a dull thud, the keychain glinting under the harsh hospital lights like some cruel joke.

Jackson’s breathing raggedly now, his chest heaving. “Do it,” he mutters, quieter this time, but the words still hit like shrapnel. “Just do it.”

Enrique’s face softens, just barely. “It’s not your fault,” he says, letting go of his brother. “You could not stop it.”

Is that what this rage is all about? Because he feels guilty for not performing a miracle?

Jackson’s eyes flick to me — full of fury and fear and something deeper that looks almost like grief. His voice cracks when he finally mutters, “I should have saved …”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” Marco says, stepping forward. He’s pretty brave, I give him that. “You were stuck with River!”

Jackson’s head tilts slightly — that tiny, terrifying motion that says more than getting dogged. His jaw flexes, eyes narrowing in a way that feels colder than the sterile floor underfoot. “And whose fault is that?”

Marco’s expression shifts as he realizes what he just said.

River stiffens, her small fingers tightening around the blanket. When she speaks, her voice is so small it almost gets lost in that hum of those lights.

“I didn’t look,” she whispers. “I just … ran.”

Marco freezes, guilt written in every line of his face. His eyes glisten with shame, utterly mortified at his own words. He clearly didn’t mean it like that.

But River stares at him, teary-eyed, her small fists tightening. “Sky told me so many times to look before I cross a road. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

Marco swipes at his eyes, guilt spilling over. A man wallowing in penitence, watching her as if she’s fragile glass.

Jackson closes his eyes for a second, like the sound of her guilt physically hurts him. His shoulders tense, that steel shell locking into place, but when he looks down at her, it’s not anger. It’s something worse — heartbreak buried under exhaustion.

“Hey,” he says, voice low, gravel, rough. “You did nothing wrong.”

Her lip trembles. She shakes her head, tears slipping down her cheeks. “But if you hadn’t had to grab me, you could’ve —”

“Enough,” he cuts in, firmer this time. Not loud, but final. Like a door slamming shut. “There are others to blame.”

Jackson’s glare cuts to me first — sharp, searing, the kind that makes the air feel thinner. There’s no shouting this time, just the weight of accusation burning in his eyes — I’m the reason we were found, the reason everything went to hell. Knowingly or not, I’m the one he blames.

Then his gaze shifts to Marco, and the silence gets heavier. It’s not rage now — it’s something colder, quieter. A verdict. The kind of look that pins a man to his own conscience. Marco flinches under it because he knows exactly what that look means — he failed.

In Jackson’s eyes, it’s all connected — one fatal chain of mistakes, looping around them like barbed wire.

Marco straightens instinctively, jaw tight, his Adam’s apple bobbing like he’s swallowing a piece of cork. He doesn’t need words to understand. Hell, even I understand — he was supposed to be watching the kid — and because he didn’t, River ran — and because she ran, Jackson was holding her when the car hit — and because she was in his arms … Sky is hurt.

A muscle twitches in Marco’s jaw. He looks down, throat working, eyes shadowed with regret. “I should’ve —”

Jackson doesn’t let him finish. “Yeah,” he says quietly, voice calm but deadly sharp. “You should’ve.”

That’s all. No shouting. No more fury. Just that one quiet line that somehow sounds like a sentence.

The tension coils tight in everyone’s chests.

Then, unexpectedly, Jackson exhales — long, shaky, tired. He runs a blood-smeared hand through his hair and crouches down beside River. His tone softens. “You okay, kid?”

River nods quickly, eyes glossy.

He tucks the blanket a little tighter around her. “Then we’re good. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispers, but her voice wobbles.

He gives a faint nod, barely there, and straightens again. His eyes flick briefly back to me, then Marco — a final, wordless warning that’s almost more terrifying than his rage.

Logan picks up the discarded handbag from the floor and removes the little heart. He holds it up. The soft pink petals are frozen mid-bloom inside the resin, like a charm meant to ward off the dark. But instead, it led the darkness straight to us.

“Should we destroy this?” he asks.

Enrique leans forward, eyes glinting with that dangerous kind of calm. “Wait,” he says slowly, “don’t destroy it just yet. Let’s use it. And lead the bastards into a trap.”

All the boys in the room light up at once, that unspoken spark flickering between them — a shared, silent understanding, that means a plan’s already forming, something reckless and probably illegal.

We, girls, exchange wary looks, lost, sensing the shift but not the meaning.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Mel rolls her eyes toward me, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Here we go again.”

And I can practically feel the tension thickening — that quiet, electric warning that another battle’s about to start.

With one last peek at the keychain, Logan shoves it into his pocket before falling into a chair next to Haley.

For a long second, no one speaks. The only sound is the distant hiss of oxygen through a vent and the faint squeak of shoes somewhere down the corridor — getting louder — and then the sharp click of heels and the murmur of authority break the silence.

“Police are here,” Marco states softly.

The calm before the next storm.

And Jackson, already looking like he’s holding himself together with sheer willpower, finally mutters under his breath, “Perfect. Just what I fucking needed.”

Three men. I know them by now.

Captain David, with his broad frame and lined face that’s seen every brand of hell this city can offer, steps through the door — Detective Collin, tall and sharp-eyed — and Detective Matthew, quieter, with a notebook already in hand. The young ones stay on the threshold with Marco, looking in from the hallway.

The energy shifts again — not calmer, just … more controlled. Contained, like the storm’s been boxed up but not defused.

“Hey, Captain. Long time no see.” Enrique’s tone drips with that smooth, half-sarcastic charm he keeps holstered for bad days. His handshake is confident — too confident for a hospital room that still smells faintly of blood and burnt rubber.

Captain David takes it, his face weathered and unimpressed. “That Christmas dinner invitation is getting more and more realistic,” he says, mouth curling like he’s throwing a funny pun.

I blink. I don’t get it — but judging by Enrique’s shit-eating grin, it’s one of those inside jokes where you should have been there for it to be funny.

“If you catch the fucker that did this,” Jackson mutters darkly, “I’ll baste you a turkey myself.”

The detective beside Marco huffs a laugh. Jackson doesn’t. His smirk is pure venom — and it’s the kind of smirk that makes people instinctively take a step back.

“Hell,” he adds, voice cold enough to make the fluorescent lights feel harsher, “if you let me kill him, I’ll throw in some green eggs and ham.”

Jackson’s eyes are lit up like burning blue gasoline, his jaw clenched, his fists twitching as if he’s holding himself together with sheer spite.

David clears his throat, turning stiffly toward Enrique. “He’s kidding, right?”

Enrique just lifts a shoulder — casual, dangerous, like a man who’s learned not to promise what he can’t guarantee.

Jackson’s gaze locks onto the captain, ice and fire all at once. “Oh, come on … those people asked for it,” he says, voice low, steady, and terrifyingly sure. “And I promise you, they’re going to get it.” He peers towards the two detectives in the doorway.

Something cold crawls down my spine. The way he says it — like he’s already carved out a grave somewhere in his head — makes my throat tighten.

“Will you really kill them?” David asks, half joking, half genuinely unnerved.

Jackson’s mouth twists, eyes still on the two men. “I’m no angel, Captain. I promise you that.”

He’s not kidding.

Not even a little.

And then, before anyone can defuse it, a small voice cuts through the tension.

“That’s not true.” Every head turns. River.

She slips off Haley’s lap like a little comet of chaos, her hair bouncing, her tiny pink boots slapping the floor. She’s still wearing the pink tutu outfit Leyla chose for the wedding.

Jackson barely has time to react before she climbs him like a tree — arms around his neck, legs wrapped tight around his waist.

He catches her automatically, confused, one hand hovering midair like he’s afraid she might break if he breathes too hard.

“The devil WAS an angel once,” she says, her voice small but unflinching, eyes bright and watery. She leans back just enough to look him dead in the face. “Sky said so.”

Something in Jackson’s expression flickers — the crack of a storm cloud before lightning hits. His throat bobs.

“The most bea-U-tiful angel,” River continues seriously, “that just got a little lost along the way.”

She tightens her arms around him, and the silence in the room feels heavy, holy, like everyone’s afraid to ruin it. Jackson’s breathing slows, rough and uneven, his eyes burning in a way that has nothing to do with anger now.

“That’s why I believe in you the most.”

The vein on his temple pulses — his jaw flexes once, twice. He doesn’t say a word — can’t.

He’s too busy trying not to come apart.

Then, without warning, River plants a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. “MWHA!”

Jackson freezes. Like, completely ice over. The man who just threatened to commit murder looks like he’s been short-circuited by a nine-year-old.

Logan’s mouth twitches. “Well, shit,” he mutters, trying not to grin.

River nods, solemn again, as if delivering divine orders. “She said she’ll fix you one kiss at a time.”

Something in my chest twists. Mel makes a strangled sound — halfway between a sob and a laugh. Even Enrique’s smirk has softened into something quietly broken.

“So I’m helping,” River adds, patting Jackson’s cheek like she’s sealing a pact.

Jackson just stares at her — this tiny, brave creature who doesn’t even know she’s healing a man who hasn’t stopped bleeding since the day he was born. His voice fails him. His breath fails him. But his hand, steady now, moves to cradle her back.

“Hell, girl,” Mel sniffles, wiping her face with the sleeve of her sweater, “you’re making the boys cry.”

“Correction,” Enrique murmurs, clearing his throat as he wipes the corner of his eye with a finger. “We’re just malfunctioning.”

The room ripples with quiet laughter, shaky and wet and human — the kind that sounds like oxygen after too long underwater.

And for the first time since the crash, the storm feels a little lighter.

Because somehow, impossibly, River’s managed to pull the devil back toward the light.