Javi pulled back just enough to look at her.
“Who?”
“Noah. He’s seven. He saved me. He stayed with me the whole time. He promised he wouldn’t leave.”
Javi turned.
Noah sat quietly in a plastic chair three feet away — small, scraped, bandaged, still wearing the dust of the collapse like war paint.
Javi stood slowly.
He walked over.
Looked down.
“You’re Noah?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You crawled in there… by yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Javi’s jaw worked. He swallowed once, twice.
Then the president of the Iron Vipers — the man who never broke, never bent — dropped to both knees on the hospital floor and pulled Noah into his arms.
