Chapter 14 #2
"You don't remember?" I press the flat of the blade against his cheek, not cutting, just letting him feel the cold metal. "Let me help you. She begged. I know she begged. Because that's what Vanna does—she fights, and when she can't fight anymore, she begs. She pleads. She cries."
I trace the blade down his face, watching a thin red line appear in its wake.
"And you didn't stop." My voice drops to a whisper. "You heard my wife begging you, crying, and you didn't stop."
"I'm sorry—"
"No." I shake my head slowly. "No, you're not sorry. You're scared. There's a difference."
I make the first real cut.
It's across his chest, through his shirt, deep enough to hit muscle.
The blood wells up immediately, soaking through the fabric, and Virgil screams.
The sound bounces off the walls of the cabin, echoing in the small space, filling my ears like music.
"This is for my wife," I say.
He's gasping, crying now, tears streaming down his face. "Please—please stop—I'll do anything—"
"There's nothing you can do." I make another cut, parallel to the first. "There's nothing you can say. The time for talking was before you put your hands on her. Before you violated her. Before you threatened my child."
"I didn't—"
"This is for my baby." The name comes out rough, raw. “It’s not even born yet, and you put your hands on his mother. You held her down and you hurt her and you made her afraid that you'd kill it."
Another cut. Deeper this time.
Virgil's screams are getting hoarse, his voice giving out.
He's sagging against the wall, held up only by my grip on his collar.
"This is for my sister's necklace." I carve a line down his arm, watching the blood flow. "My mother's necklace. The only thing Leah had left of her—the only thing that survived the fire—and you kept it in a bag like loose change. Like garbage. Like it meant nothing."
"I didn't know—"
"You didn't care." Another cut. "That's worse."
I work methodically, each slice accompanied by words. By names. By reasons.
"This is for every girl you've ever touched." Cut. "Every woman you've trafficked." Cut. "Every life you've destroyed." Cut.
"This is for Vanna's mother." Cut. "She died in a trap house just like this one, did you know that? OD'd on the shit you sold her. On the poison you pump into this town."
Cut.
"This is for Rick." Cut. "He's rotting in prison because of you. Because you used him, the way you use everyone."
Cut.
"This is for every family you've torn apart." Cut. "Every kid who lost a parent." Cut. "Every parent who buried a child." Cut.
Virgil has stopped screaming.
He's just hanging there now, whimpering, his body a canvas of red lines.
Blood pools on the floor beneath him, spreading outward, soaking into the already-stained wood.
His eyes are glazed, shock setting in, but he's still conscious. Still aware.
Good, I need him aware for this last part.
I drop the knife.
It clatters against the floorboards, and the sound seems very loud in the sudden silence.
The cabin smells like copper and fear and something else, something primal.
The smell of death, coming to collect its due.
Virgil's eyes find mine.
Hope flickers there—hope that maybe the worst is over, maybe I'm done, maybe he'll somehow survive this.
He won't.
I grab him by the throat with my bare hands and lift him off the ground.
He's lighter than he should be, blood loss draining him, shock shutting down his body.
His feet kick weakly, finding no purchase.
"And this," I say, leaning in close so he can see my eyes, so he can see exactly who's ending him, "is for thinking you could take what's mine."
I don't use the knife. I don't use the gun.
I use my hands.
The same hands that cradled Vanna when I carried her out of that trap house five years ago.
The same hands that held her hair back while she detoxed, while she screamed and cried and begged me to let her go, to let her use, to let her die.
The same hands that shook when I dropped her off at rehab in the Poconos, terrified I'd never see her again.
Terrified she'd give up.
Terrified I'd lose her the way I lost my parents.
These hands know how to build things. How to fix things. How to hold onto things that matter.
They also know how to destroy.
I squeeze.
I feel the cartilage of his throat collapse under my fingers.
Feel his windpipe give way. Feel the life draining out of him one precious heartbeat at a time.
He tries to struggle, but there's nothing left in him.
Just twitches. Just reflexes. Just a body fighting a fight it's already lost.
His eyes bulge.
His face goes purple, then gray.
His mouth opens in a silent scream, but no sound comes out—there's no air left in his lungs, no strength left in his body.
Ruger and Coin don't look away.
They stand there, bearing witness, because that's what brothers do.
We see each other.
The good parts and the bad parts.
The parts we're proud of and the parts that will haunt us in the dark hours of the night.
I want them to see this.
I want them to know exactly what I am, what I'm capable of, when someone threatens my family.
I want the memory of this moment to spread through the club, through the town, through every dark corner where men like Virgil do business.
I want them all to know: this is what happens when you touch a Saint's woman.
This is what happens when you come for our families.
This is the price.
It takes longer than I expect.
It takes less time than Virgil deserves.
When it's finally over, when the last twitch fades and his body goes completely slack, I let him drop.
What's left of him crumples to the floor, and I stand there, breathing hard, covered in blood that isn't mine.
The quiet stretches out.
My hands are shaking.
I stare at them, at the blood coating my fingers, and I feel something crack open inside me.
The coldness that carried me through the last hour is melting, and what's underneath is raw and bleeding and barely held together.
Then Ruger's hand lands on my shoulder.
"It's done, brother." His voice is steady, an anchor in the storm. "He's gone."
I stare at the body.
At the thing that used to be Virgil.
He looks smaller in death, diminished, like the monster under the bed revealed to be nothing but shadows and dust.
"I was supposed to protect her." The words come out broken. Fractured. Like glass grinding against glass. "That's my job. That's all I had to do, Ruger. Protect my wife. Protect my baby. And I failed."
"No." Ruger steps in front of me, forcing me to meet his eyes. His face is hard, certain. "You didn't fail."
"She was right here." My voice cracks, and I feel tears burning behind my eyes—tears I haven't let myself shed since this nightmare started.
"While I was riding to that fucking motel, she was here.
He had her for hours. Hours. And I didn't know.
I couldn't feel it. What kind of husband doesn't know when his wife is—"
I can't finish the sentence. Can't say the word.
"She's alive." Ruger grabs my shoulders, shaking me slightly. "Vanna is alive. The baby is alive. You got here in time. You saved them."
"You didn't see what he did—"
"She'll heal." His grip tightens. "She's the strongest woman I've ever met, and that includes Tildie. You know that. You've watched her claw her way back from hell more than once. She'll do it again. And she won't be doing it alone."
I want to believe him.
I want to believe that this can be fixed. That the woman I love can recover from this.
That we can go back to building the life we were planning—the baby, the future, the happily ever after Vanna talked about surviving for.
But I can't stop seeing her on that mattress.
Can't stop seeing the bruises, the blood, the torn clothes.
Can't stop imagining what happened in this room while I was miles away, useless, chasing shadows.
"Hey." Ruger shakes me again, harder. "Look at me, Garrett. Look at me."
I force myself to focus on his face.
On the brother who's stood beside me through everything.
"This part is over," he says. "Virgil is dead. He can't hurt her anymore. He can't hurt anyone anymore. Now you go to your wife, and you hold her, and you tell her it's over. You be there for her. That's how you protect her now."
"I don't know if I can fix this."
"You don't have to fix it alone." Coin's voice, quiet and steady, from somewhere behind me. "She's got you. She's got the club. She's got Leah, Tildie, all of us. We take care of our own, brother. That's what we do."
I take a breath.
It shudders through my chest, painful and raw.
Then another.
Then another.
My hands are still shaking, but the tremors are starting to fade.
The tears I refused to shed are drying in my eyes.
I reach into my jacket and pull out the jewelry box.
It's still clean, somehow.
Untouched by all the blood on my hands.
"This needs to go back to Leah," I say. "But I want Vanna to be the one to give it to her. When she's ready. When she's strong enough."
Ruger nods. "That's right. That's how it should be."
I tuck the box away again, close to my heart.
"The body," I say. "The cleanup—"
"Already handled." Ruger pulls out his phone. "Boys are outside. This place will be nothing but ashes by morning. No body. No evidence. Virgil just disappears. Like he never existed."
"His men?"
"Dead or running. Maddox and the prospects handled it before he left with Vanna. It's done, Garrett. All of it."
I look around the cabin one last time.
At the mattress. The syringes. The blood.
At the body of the man who thought he could take my wife from me.
"Burn it," I say. "Burn it all."
"Already planned." Coin moves past me, already pulling out a lighter. "Go. We've got this. Go be with your woman."
I follow Ruger out through the hole in the wall, stepping over debris and broken glass.
Outside, the night air hits my face like a blessing—cool and clean, smelling of pine and earth instead of blood and death.
Motorcycles are lined up in the gravel, engines idling.
Prospects are dragging bodies toward a pile.
Someone's already got gas cans, preparing to erase this place from the earth.
I stop at my bike and turn back, watching as flames begin to lick at the cabin's windows.
By morning, there'll be nothing left.
Just ash and memory.
And the memory will fade too, eventually.
That's what time does.
But I'll remember.
I'll carry this night with me forever.
I climb onto my Harley and follow Ruger into the darkness.
Toward Ruby Memorial.
Toward Vanna.
The ride takes forever and no time at all.
I'm barely aware of the road beneath me, the wind in my face, the familiar rumble of the engine.
My hands are still crusted with blood—Virgil's blood—and I can feel it cracking and flaking as I grip the handlebars.
I should wash. Should clean up. Should make myself presentable before I walk into that hospital.
But I can't wait.
Every second away from her is agony.
When I finally push through the doors of the ER, Leah is waiting.
She's still in her scrubs, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she looks exhausted.
Terrified. Relieved.
All at once, emotions flickering across her face faster than I can track them.
"She's in trauma room four," Leah says before I can speak. "She's stable. The baby's stable. But Garrett..." Her voice wavers, and I see tears in her eyes. "What he did to her—"
"I know." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "I handled it."
Her eyes drop to my hands, to the blood that's dried in the creases of my knuckles, under my fingernails.
"Good," she whispers. And there's something fierce in her voice, something that reminds me she's my sister. My blood. "Good."
I don't wait for more.
I push past her, past the nurses who try to stop me, past the security guard who takes one look at my face and steps aside.
They can see what I am right now.
What I've done, and none of them want to get in my way.
Trauma room four.
I shove open the door.
And there she is.
Vanna.
My wife.
She's on the bed, surrounded by machines and monitors, IVs running into both arms.
Her face is a mess of bruises—purple and black and sickly yellow around the edges.
Her lip is split.
Her eyes are swollen nearly shut.
But she's awake.
And she's looking at me.
"Garrett." Her voice is barely a whisper, cracked and hoarse, but it's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.
I cross the room in three strides and gather her into my arms as gently as I can.
I'm mindful of the monitors, the IV lines, the injuries I can see and the ones I can't.
I'm mindful of the baby growing inside her.
But I need to hold her.
I need to feel her heartbeat against my chest.
Need to breathe in the scent of her hair, even masked by hospital antiseptic and dried blood.
Need to know, in my bones, that she's real.
That she's alive, that I didn't lose her.
"It's over," I say into her hair. "He's gone. I've got you, Van. I've got you."
She breaks down in my arms.
The sobs tear through her, shaking her whole body, and I hold her tighter.
I let her fall apart against me, let her tears soak through my ruined shirt, let her grip my arms hard enough to bruise.
"You came," she whispers between sobs. "I knew you'd come. I told him—I told him you'd come—"
"Always." I press my lips to her forehead, to her temple, to her swollen eyelids. "I will always come for you, Savannah. There's nothing in this world that could stop me. Nothing."
She cries harder, and I feel tears of my own sliding down my cheeks.
The tears I couldn't shed in that cabin, couldn't let myself feel while the work still needed doing.
I cry for her, for what was done to her, for what she survived.
I cry for the baby.
I cry for myself.
For the man I was before tonight, and the man I've become.
But mostly, I cry because she's alive.
Because against all odds, against every evil thing in this broken world, my wife survived.
And that's all that matters.
"I love you," I whisper against her hair. "I love you so much, Van. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I couldn't stop him before—"
"You saved me." She pulls back just enough to look at me, her swollen eyes meeting mine. "You saved us. You always save us, Bloodhound."
I don't feel like a savior.
I feel like a failure.
Like a man who should have done more, should have been smarter, should have seen the trap before it snapped shut.
But she's looking at me like I'm her whole world.
Like I'm the only thing that matters.
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe that has to be enough.
"I've got you," I say again, pulling her back against my chest. "It's over now. He's gone, and he's never coming back, and I've got you. I've got both of you."
I hold her until her sobs quiet.
Until her breathing steadies.
Until she falls asleep in my arms, exhausted and broken but alive.
And I stay there, holding my wife, watching the monitors track her heartbeat and our baby's heartbeat, two rhythms intertwined.
Virgil is dead.
The nightmare is over.