Chapter 182 Enemy of My Enemy

Chapter 182 Enemy of My Enemy
The first post hit my phone the same way it hit everyone else’s.

I was at the kitchen table in my father’s house, a half-finished glass of water in front of me, when the notification stacked across the screen. Anonymous. No profile image. A clean, clinical breakdown of donation trails, quiet transfers, and the kind of language that made “charity” look like a shell. I read it once. Then again. Then I set the phone down and stared at the dark window above the sink.

I felt no pity.

Not for Pastor Whitaker. Not for the board. Not for the carefully maintained families who had smiled through every purity event while the real machinery ran underneath. Whatever the anonymous poster wanted, we wanted the same thing in the only way that mattered. The enemy of my enemy was useful.

If someone else was willing to take a hammer to the Fund in public, I was not going to stand in the way. I would simply make sure I was standing close enough to the wreckage to take what I needed from it.

Abigail would be reeling.

That was the part that mattered.

I already knew, from the quiet channels I kept open, that the Whitaker estate had lit up after the post. Ambulance. Raised voices. The kind of sudden movement that only happened when a closed system took a hit it had not prepared for. By the time the second wave of messages started circulating, I knew where she would be.

Hospital.

I did not think it through as carefully as I should have.

I pulled on a dark sweater and jeans, pushed a hand through my hair, and was in the car before the full plan had even settled. Adrenaline made the edges of everything sharper. This was the biggest opening I had been handed since the night at 114 Morrow Lane.

The Fund was bleeding in public. The girl with the highest score was isolated, frightened, and sitting in a hospital hallway with her world coming apart. If I timed it right, I could walk straight into the empty space and become the one steady thing she reached for.

I was halfway across the parking lot, phone already in my hand, before the mistake landed.

Showing up like this— unannounced, slightly breathless, looking like I had run out of the house, was too much. Too eager. It would read as strange even to someone who did not already have reasons to be suspicious. I stopped between two cars, exhaled once, and forced the performance back under control.

I typed the text instead.

‘I saw the news about your family. I’m here if you need someone who understands. No pressure. Just… I’m thinking of you.’

Send.

Then I waited long enough for it to look like I had simply been nearby, not like I had driven straight here the moment the post went live.

When I finally walked into the hospital, I kept my hands in my pockets and my expression exactly where it needed to be: concerned, a little hesitant, ready to leave if I was not wanted.

She was in the hallway outside the surgical wing.

“Abby,” I said, stopping a respectful distance away. “I hope I’m not intruding. I heard about Eli and… I just wanted to check on you.”

Surprise flickered across her face. “How did you know I was here?”

I gave her the sheepish smile I had practiced in the car. “Church network moves fast. Someone mentioned the ambulance at the estate. I figured you’d be here. I sent the text on my way over. Service can be spotty in this area sometimes, especially at night. I wasn’t sure it went through.”

The explanation was soft enough to pass. I watched her accept it, even as a small crease of doubt tried to form and then faded. Good.

She told me Eli was in surgery. The wound. The bleeding. The not-knowing. I let my face do the correct things —soft concern, a small step closer that did not crowd her, the offer of coffee or company or simply someone who would listen.

I told her I knew what it was like when the world fell apart without explanation. I did not tell her that I had been the one holding the hammer in the dark for years. I did not tell her that the anonymous post had given me the cleanest opening I had ever been handed.

We sat.

She admitted she did not even understand why she was so worried about Eli. I gave her the kind of answer that would feel like understanding: the heart holding on tighter than the mind, connections that survived even when memory did not.

When I reached for her hand I did it slowly enough that she could have pulled away. She did not. Her fingers were cold. I brushed my thumb across her knuckles and felt the exact moment she leaned into the contact, just slightly, like someone who had been bracing for too long.

“You don’t have to carry this alone,” I said. “Whatever’s going on with your family, with Eli, with the blog post… I’m here. I understand more than you know. Family secrets can eat you alive if you let them.”

I watched the words land. I watched the faint, uncomfortable echo move behind her eyes—the masked night trying to surface and failing. She pulled her hand back. Guilt, caution, the Religious Police probably still living in the back of her mind.

I nodded as if I understood completely and gave her the safest possible version of myself: no pressure, no demands, just a man who saw her even when she could not yet see herself.

It was working.

Then Caleb stepped out of the doctor’s office.

The air changed.

I kept my face open and polite while his eyes moved between us. He looked at me as if he knew me. Or at least he knew enough to dislike the shape I made beside her. I gave him nothing. Beth came out behind him, worried, scanning the hallway.

I introduced myself cleanly, smiled at the right moments, asked the right light questions. Church potluck stories. Her father’s restaurant. The careful, boring details that made a man look harmless.

Underneath it I tracked every micro-expression on Abigail’s face. The way she kept drifting back to Eli even while her body remained angled slightly toward the safety I was offering. The way she pulled back whenever my knee or hand came too close.

The Halloween night was still in her somewhere, buried under the Red Pulse and the blackout and the accident. I needed it to stay buried a little longer.

When she went quiet, I asked gently whether she was thinking about him. She said he was family. I accepted the answer like it was simple.

The scream cut through the hallway like a blade.

Rebecca’s voice. Raw. Breaking.

We reached the office in a cluster—Beth first, then Abigail, Caleb and me behind. The wall-mounted television was already showing the footage. Pastor Matthew Whitaker in handcuffs. Flashbulbs. The same composed face he wore in pulpits and at dinner tables, now cracked along the edges as they walked him down the steps.

I felt the satisfaction land cold and precise in my chest.

No pity.