Chapter 1 – Corvus
CORVUS
G rey stirred atop the thin cot, his face pinching as he woke.
His skin puckered where the surgical tape held the clean bandage against the garish wound where his right eye used to be.
Rook jerked his chin up, discarding the blade he’d been using to carve twelve more kill lines into the flesh of his right forearm. We left our silent vigil by the front window of Sanctum now allowing cold dawn light to filter through the tinted glass.
“He’s waking up,” Rook rumbled, lurching in Grey’s direction, his leg fucked from not one but two bullet-wounds, one that would’ve shattered his knee-cap if it had hit just a few inches higher.
Grey coughed and Rook bent to slide a hand beneath his shoulders, helping him sit up.
I moved for the glass of water set on the floor beside the cot and passed it over, concealing a wince at the sharp pain in my abdomen.
“Drink,” I ordered, not caring that the noise was waking the other injured Saints laid up on cots throughout the entire floor of the bar.
The smell of lead and injury was so strong it managed to overpower the usual reek of stale liquor permeating these walls.
Grey choked down some of the water, his one eye focusing slowly on us as he pushed through the haze of drugs our vet had to use to keep his ass down.
I pressed a hand to the bandage on my lower stomach, feeling the ridge of wiry stitches through the gauze as I rose back to my full height.
I couldn’t remember the vet digging out the bullet, but I could feel the phantom memory of his sharp tools where they’d scraped and nudged and pulled between major organs.
Sewing back together bits of my insides and my outsides.
“Where is she?” Grey croaked and my jaw tightened, teeth clicking from the pressure.
Rook’s fingers curled over Grey’s shoulder, squeezing, but our youngest brother’s eye remained trained squarely on me. As if he somehow knew her leaving was my fault regardless of the fact he was unconscious, near fucking death, when I’d said what I said to her.
“She took off. Isn’t answering any of our calls,” I said in a low voice, struggling to keep it steady. “I sent Drake to look for her hours ago. He texted just before dawn to say he couldn’t find her.”
Grey nodded solemnly, his eye narrowing as he considered that.
“She blamed herself for this,” he said, lifting a hand to gently brush the bandage with a grimace.
“She had help,” Rook hissed, his dark gaze sliding to me before returning to Grey.
Anger flared Grey’s nostrils and tightened the lines around his mouth as he shook his head slow. “She’ll come back. She won’t leave us,” he said with conviction. “She can’t.”
Rook nodded his agreement. “Yeah, man. She’ll be back when she’s ready.”
Grey’s shoulders sagged and for the first time he allowed himself to see the quiet chaos surrounding us all. “How many did we lose?”
“Eight,” Rook replied.
“ Fuck .”
“Injured?”
“What you see here. Vet says everyone’ll make it, but Vance won’t walk again.”
I turned to the window, staring out into the early morning as though I could will Ava Jade to appear through the thin fog still clinging to the street.
She would be back.
She had to come back.
My throat burned, and I swallowed hard to snuff the aching, licking my dry lips and tasting blood. No way of telling if it belonged to myself or someone else.
Since we got back, none of us left this space save for Diesel and a small group of uninjured Saints and Kings. They went to see to the clean-up, make sure no one escaped alive.
“Hey,” Becca said weakly, her voice thin and groggy as she padded barefoot through the cots of sleeping gangsters from the back room where we’d put her. She winced when she saw Grey but quickly covered it up with a small smile. “You’re awake,” she said. “Does that mean…”
“He’s going to be fine,” Rook confirmed gruffly, the words carrying with them a finality, as though Grey’s survival was entirely up to him and he’d already made the call. Daring the reaper to try to come and claim a soul that was ours.
Grey’s lips turned up at one corner. He cocked his head at Becca as she tucked a long strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Does it look that bad?” he asked.
She started, shaking her head vehemently. “What? No. No, it’s, um… ”
“It looks badass,” Rook filled in, giving Becca a glare that could’ve damn near reduced her to ash.
“Yeah,” Becca agreed, swallowing. “I just—it just looks like it hurts, that’s all.”
“It does,” Grey confirmed, clearing his throat. “Feels like I got kicked in the head by a horse.”
My guts twisted.
“And then a zombie with dull fingernails dug out my eye.”
Rook’s upper lips twitched. “Thanks for that visual, man,” Rook deadpanned, going dead-eyed to cover up how bothered he was by his brother’s pain. He patted Grey on the thigh. “I’ll go get you some more morphine, you big baby.”
Becca wrapped her arms around herself, tiptoeing toward where I stood back at the front window.
She looked out into the morning, at the streets slowly waking for another gorgeous day in Thorn Valley.
None of them aware that only miles away, just out of earshot, a battle left at least forty men dead by the shores of Spirit Lake.
“She still hasn’t come back,” Becca said.
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
She shivered, her fingers tightening on her shoulders.
It was hot as fucking balls in here, so I knew it wasn’t from the cold.
“Have you tried calling?” she asked.
I lifted a brow at her, and she deflated. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course you have.”
“I take it you’ve tried too?”
She nodded and my stomach twisted.
Ava Jade would ignore us if she was upset, me especially, but Becca? If she wasn’t answering calls or texts from her best friend either, that meant she was more hurt than I realized.
That or she’d lost her damn phone.
Or something far far worse.
I wished I’d had Grey install the tracking app on her new phone, but I was trying to let go of my need to control her. Giving her, her freedom. Look what fucking good it did me.
My fists clenched and not for the first time this morning, the urge to hit something until my knuckles cracked and bled raced up my arms like lightning, heat pulsing through my core. I shut my eyes against the sensations, a ragged breath slinking past my lips.
A hand gingerly touched my shoulder, and I flinched, gripping the window ledge to keep from throwing my girl’s best friend across the damn room.
“She’s fine,” Becca said, though her tone lacked conviction. “She’s always fine, no matter what happens. I’m pretty convinced that girl can’t die.”
….die?
Why the fuck did she have to say that?
I scrubbed a palm over the sharp stubble on my jaw, pulling away from Becca’s touch.
The back door of Sanctum opened, and I had my gun out and aimed, Becca swept behind me, in the span of a single second.
“What took you so long?” I heard Rook say quietly, and my pulse steadied as Diesel strode into the main bar with a few men on his heels.
I tucked my gun back into the waistband of my jeans, avoiding the injury still singing agony through my core.
Our father took in the injured around him, the storm of his face not calming until he found Grey.
“I’m good,” Grey confirmed and Diesel’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he cleared the space between them, sinking to one knee to check the wound and Grey’s state himself.
He nodded once he was satisfied, and some of the ice in his eyes melted away, leaving a glint on the surface before he blinked, sniffing hard and the tears were gone.
“You scared me, Son.”
Grey smirked. “About time. I’ve been trying for years.”
Diesel shook his head, rising back to his feet. “Smart-ass.”
He lifted something from his back pocket and turned, throwing the slim phone in my direction. I caught it, my lips parting in surprise and dread.
“Found it on the roof at the Docks,” Diesel explained as I pressed the side button, lighting up the screen to a barrage of missed call and text notifications. The battery almost dead. “Someone was trying to call it off the hook. Thought Grey could check it, make sure it’s not one of theirs, or?—”
“It’s not,” I interrupted him. “It’s Ava Jade’s.”
I walked it to Grey, and he took it eagerly.
“It’s locked. Can you get into it?”
Rook returned with a single tiny pill, but Grey didn’t take it, staring at the lock screen like he could figure out her passcode just by staring at it.
“Do you need a laptop?”
He shook his head, thumb hesitating over the screen before he tapped five times and then sighed in relief.
“How did you know her passcode?”
“Saw her enter the first two numbers once. Wasn’t hard to figure out the rest.”
I resisted trying to pry the phone out of his hands as he scrolled through all our missed calls and texts.
“What do you mean?” Becca asked, confused.
“The numbers were two and seven. C. R. It wasn’t hard to figure out the rest. It’s a thumbprint entry, but her backup passcode spelled Crows .”
His words were a sucker punch to the gut.
I didn’t know how, but I was going to make this up to her. I’d fucking beg for forgiveness on my knees. I’d grovel at her feet for as long as it took.
She shouldn’t have fired that shot, but I shouldn’t have put the blame for Grey, for everything, on her shoulders.
And then there was the other possibility.
That I was wrong.
If Ava Jade hadn’t taken the shot, it was possible Lenny Ace could’ve come back even stronger, with a better plan, and killed us all.
We lost good men, but we were still here.
Diesel was still here.
Maybe it was the right call. The call I was too hesitant to make.
“ Damn ,” Grey cursed, his thumbs lifting from the screen as he paused his scrolling, staring down at something with his lips in a hard line.
“What is it?” Rook asked, but I was already pulling the phone from Grey’s stiff grip.
It wasn’t a text he was looking at but an email.
From: Ava Jade Mason
Subject: RE: Miss me?