Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
BLADE
Pain drags me back to consciousness like it’s got teeth.
Not slow. Not gentle. It slams into me all at once, like my body remembers every second of last night and decides I don’t get a grace period.
My ribs scream the second I breathe too deep.
My gut burns, tight and angry, and my leg feels like it’s been beaten with a crowbar and left to rot.
I groan and immediately regret it.
The room smells wrong. Not oil. Not metal. Not home. It’s clean. Too clean. Bleach and antiseptic and something faintly floral that doesn’t belong anywhere near me.
I force my eyes open. Ceiling first. Not mine. Bare walls. A lamp on low. A chair pulled close to the bed like someone’s been sitting there a while. I try to sit up, but pain explodes through my ribs and abdomen, white-hot and unforgiving, and I choke on a breath.
“Don’t,” a voice snaps.
I turn my head and find that Bella’s standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed tight like she’s holding herself together by sheer will. Her eyes are red and puffy. She’s been crying, hard and recently.
Switch is posted by the door, arms folded, jaw locked. Hawk’s near the window, shoulders tense, eyes sharp like he’s waiting for something to come through it.
And then I notice who’s not in my direct line of sight.
The door is cracked open. Rev is there, half in the hall, half in the room, one shoulder braced against the frame like he’s been pacing for hours and finally stopped moving because I opened my eyes. His face is hard, furious, eyes rimmed red in a way I’ve never seen before.
Behind him, just inside the doorway, Brooke stands frozen.
Her hands are clenched in the fabric of her hoodie. Her face is pale, eyes glassy, like she’s been holding herself together by pure willpower and one wrong word will shatter her.
None of them look relieved. That’s when it hits me. Bri. “Where the fuck is she?” My voice comes out wrecked, raw like I’ve been screaming for hours. I don’t soften it. I don’t try to. “Where’s Bri?”
Brooke sucks in a sharp breath. Bella flinches. I try to push myself up again, pain be damned, panic slamming into my chest so hard my vision spots. Switch moves fast, pressing me back down with firm hands. “Blade,” he says evenly. “You’re not moving.”
“Get your fucking hands off me,” I snarl. “Where is she?”
Rev’s voice cuts in, low and dangerous. “Blade. Easy.”
“Don’t tell me easy,” I snap. “Tell me where the fuck she is.”
Bella steps forward, her composure cracking as fresh tears spill. “Blade, please. You can’t—”
“I don’t care,” I cut in. “If she’s hurt—if she’s—”
“She wasn’t there,” Bella says.
The words land wrong. Flat. Empty.
“What?” I growl.
“When we got to you,” she says quietly. “She wasn’t there.”
Cold spreads through my chest.
Brooke shakes her head slowly, like she’s been refusing to let that sentence be real this whole time.
“You don’t get to say that like it’s nothing,” I snap. “You don’t get to tell me she just vanished.”
Hawk exhales slowly. “We didn’t even know you were missing at first.”
That makes my head snap toward him.
“What?”
“We all got to Ashton,” Hawk continues. “Everyone was accounted for. Or so we thought.” His jaw tightens. “It wasn’t until Riot noticed you never showed.”
Switch nods. “Riot checked your location. That’s when we saw you’d never made it out of town.”
Rev’s hands curl into fists at his sides.
My stomach drops.
“So you went back,” I say.
“Immediately,” Hawk replies. “We found the crash site. The bike. Blood everywhere.” His voice lowers. “And you.”
Bella swallows hard. “You looked dead, Blade. Fucking dead.”
Brooke lets out a sound that’s half sob, half broken breath and turns away, pressing her forehead to the wall like she can’t watch this anymore.
I close my eyes for a second, the memory flashing in broken pieces. The gun. Bri screaming. The way her hands were slick with blood.
“Where was she?” I ask again, quieter now. Worse somehow.
“She wasn’t there,” Bella repeats. “No sign of her. No trail. Just… gone.”
The room feels too small. Too tight.
“She could be hurt,” I rasp.
“We don’t know,” Hawk says. “We don’t know anything.”
The door opens wider.
Mason steps in.
The room changes instantly.
He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t rush. He just exists in the space, president presence settling over everyone like weight. Dagger follows him, eyes already sharp, already dissecting everything.
Mason’s gaze goes straight to me. “You’re awake.”
“Why the hell am I still in this bed?” I snap.
Bella steps closer, her hands shaking as she presses them to the mattress. “Because you took a bullet to the gut.”
I glance down.
My shirt’s gone. Bandages wrap tight around my abdomen, thick and carefully layered. My ribs are bound too, tight enough that breathing feels like work.
“I pulled it out,” Bella continues softly. “The bullet. I cleaned the wound as best I could and stitched you up.” Her voice wavers. “You’ve got broken ribs. I wrapped them. Your leg’s a mess, but not broken.”
I nod once. “Thank you.”
Then I look at her again. “But where the fuck is your sister?”
Bella breaks.
She drops into the chair beside the bed, hands coming up to her face as she starts crying in earnest. “I don’t know,” she sobs. “I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
Brooke turns back at that, tears streaming openly now.
Rev swears, vicious and low.
The words slice clean through me.
“He took her,” I growl.
Dagger’s jaw tightens. Mason doesn’t argue.
“How long have I been out?” I ask.
Bella wipes her face, sniffing. “We left Brooke’s around seven-thirty.”
My heart pounds harder. “And now?”
“It’s nine,” Hawk says. “Nine a.m.”
Fuck, almost half a day. She could be anywhere. Hurt. Scared. Alone. “They planned this,” I say.
“Yeah,” Hawk says.
“And they knew exactly who they wanted,” Dagger adds.
“She fought,” I say quietly. “She’s stronger than she thinks.”
Bella nods. “I know.”
“I’m not resting,” I say flatly. “I’m not staying still. And I’m not letting this go.”
“Blade,” Mason says calmly.
“I don’t care what you said,” I cut in. “I don’t care how long it takes or who I have to bleed to get there.”
I brace myself, pain screaming as I sit up fully.
“I want every name,” I snarl. “Every face. Every place they’ve ever touched.”
Mason meets my gaze. “Then tell us what happened.”
I laugh, harsh and broken. “You think I wouldn’t already be up tearing this place apart if I could?”
Rev steps forward. “All we found was wreckage.”
Bella lifts her head, eyes red and pleading. “Please. Just tell us what you remember.”
I close my eyes remembering the headlights. “They rammed us,” I say finally. “SUV. Dark. No plates. Rode my ass for a mile before they clipped the back tire.”
Hawk curses under his breath.
“It wasn’t random,” I continue. “Not even a little. They waited until we were isolated, no traffic, no witnesses. They wanted us down.”
Switch nods slowly. “That tracks.”
“They didn’t kill us on impact,” I say. “That was intentional too. They wanted us alive.”
Bella’s fingers curl into the fabric of her jeans.
“I could barely move. Ribs were already fucked. Leg too. Bri was hurt, but she was conscious. I got her helmet off, checked her over. She was bleeding, but she was with me.” My voice cracks just slightly at that. “She fought,” I say. “Harder than anyone gives her credit for.”
Bella lets out a broken sound.
“He came out of the SUV with a gun,” I continue. “Calm as hell. Not some kid. Not some dumbass trying to prove himself.” I open my eyes and look straight at Mason. “I recognized him.”
He stiffens. “From where?”
“The warehouse we’ve been watching,” I say. “He was there when we were tailing those assholes. Not one of the college kids.”
Switch’s jaw tightens. “So higher-up.”
“Yeah,” I confirm. “Not the boss. But close enough to know everything.”
Bella wipes at her face. “Did he say anything?”
“He knew we have been watching them,” I answer. “Knew how long. Knew where. He said they clocked us days ago. Said Perdition wasn’t just a message, it was leverage. Pressure. They wanted Mason to react.”
Hawk’s mouth tightens into a hard line. “Son of a bitch.”
“He wanted Bri,” I say quietly. The room goes dead silent.
“Not as collateral,” I add. “Not as bait. He’d been watching her. Said she wasn’t supposed to be on the bike that night, which means she was already on his radar.”
Bella’s face drains of color.
“He talked like he already owned her,” I growl.
“Like taking an Iron Reapers woman was the whole fucking point. They wanted to prove they could take what’s ours for themselves.
This isn’t just retaliation on the club for whatever their upset about, these people want to destroy us and make sure the Iron Reapers can never be in charge. ”
Switch mutters something vicious under his breath.
“He shot at me,” I continue. “I moved to block Bri. She grabbed the gun when it went loose. She was shaking, but she didn’t freeze.” My throat tightens. “He lunged at her,” I say. “And she fired.”
Bella sobs quietly.
“She was just trying to make sure he didn’t shoot me, they fought over the gun and then it went off.
” I press my hand flat against my bandaged gut, memory slamming back in full color.
“I took the round,” I say. “I went down hard after that. The last thing I remember is her screaming and him coming up behind her.” I shake my head slowly.
“I didn’t see him take her. I didn’t see where they went. I blacked out.”
Silence stretches, thick and brutal. I look at all of them, fire burning through the pain, through the exhaustion, through the fear that’s been clawing at my spine since I woke up.
Silence stretches, thick and brutal.
No one moves. No one speaks. It’s the kind of quiet that only exists right before something explodes.