Chapter Twenty-one #2
Avery’s face was a stone beside him. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Jackson could see the old rage pull at her, the thing that made her move without thinking when someone she loved was attacked. He stayed his hand because this wasn’t the place for execution.
Behind them, rain hissed on burning timbers. The clearing smelled of smoke and iron and something harder to name. Judgment, maybe. Or the hollow relief of a fight finally ended. Warren’s words floated in the wet air, grotesque and deliberate.
“Coward,” Jackson said finally, quiet but cutting. “You hide behind doctrine while you kill kids and call it necessary. You call that righteous?”
Warren spat again, then went silent, eyes darting as if listening for sympathy that wouldn’t come. Jackson kept his gun ready anyway. He didn’t trust the man to lie still just because the world around them had shifted.
Movement flashed at the edge of the road, shadows breaking through the drifting smoke. Jackson swung his gun toward it, muscles coiling tight. Through the haze, three figures emerged.
Mick and two Brotherhood men holding him by the arms.
“What the hell,” Jackson muttered. The rain caught on the barrels of their weapons, on Mick’s torn shirt, on the bruises already blooming across his jaw. The bastard didn’t look armed, didn’t look like he’d been in control for a while.
Before Jackson could call out, Warren spotted them.
“Tate! Benny!” he roared, his voice cracking. “Shoot them. Shoot every damn one of ’em. The girls, too.”
Avery flinched beside Jackson, and the whole team moved as one. Jackson, Noah, Isla, and Avery all lifted their guns, sights locked on the new arrivals.
“Don’t,” Jackson barked, his tone a whip in the air.
But one of the Brotherhood men, the taller one, jerked, reaching for the pistol at his hip. His grip on Mick slipped as his hand went for the weapon.
Noah fired before Jackson could react.
The gunshot cracked through the clearing, deafening in the rain. The man went down instantly, hitting the mud hard and unmoving.
The second Brotherhood member froze. His weapon clattered to the ground.
Jackson’s heart was pounding, every nerve still strung tight. The smell of burnt powder lingered heavy in the air, mixing with the stench of smoke and wet earth.
Noah moved in fast, limping but steady, kicking the Brotherhood man’s gun farther out of reach. “Face down,” he ordered. The man obeyed, hitting the mud without protest. Noah holstered his weapon long enough to cuff him with the zip ties Isla tossed over.
Jackson swept his gaze across the scene. Warren was still pinned, howling curses. The dead man lay motionless near the road. The one Noah restrained was shaking, his face buried in the dirt.
And Mick—
He was standing perfectly still, eyes wide, breathing hard. He looked like he didn’t quite believe he was still alive.
Isla moved toward him, gun steady, keeping her distance. “Hands where I can see them,” she ordered. Mick slowly raised his arms. Isla’s movements were precise, professional, one hand keeping her gun steady while the other patted him down for weapons.
Nothing.
“He’s clean,” Isla called out.
“Of course, I’m clean,” Mick muttered, sounding as if he were in a trance, maybe in shock. “They kidnapped me. They dragged me out of that hospital and brought me here.”
The man’s eyes were darting around, and there was fear, confusion, maybe guilt. But no defiance.
Avery stayed behind cover, her weapon still raised, gaze locked on Warren. The bastard was still snarling in the mud, but the fight was gone from him now, smothered under pain and failure.
Mick’s expression changed the moment Warren’s words sank in.
Jackson saw it happen. The flash of confusion, then disbelief, then something darker, sharper. Rage.
“You…” Mick’s voice cracked, raw and hoarse. “You killed my mother?”
Warren lifted his head, blood smeared across his face, and gave that same hollow, mocking laugh. “I told you. The bitch deserved to die,” he said, voice rasping through clenched teeth. “She brought it on herself.”
“Mick,” Noah barked, stepping forward, his hand raised. “Don’t—”
But Mick wasn’t listening. He staggered a few steps closer, the anguish written all over his face. His chest heaved, breath coming in ragged bursts.
“You killed her?” he said again, quieter this time, almost a whisper. “You murdered your own—” He choked off the word, unable to finish it.
Warren sneered up at him, his tone turning cruel. “You never did understand what this was about, boy. Your father knew. He built something bigger than you’ll ever—”
“Stop,” Jackson ordered, but Warren didn’t.
“—and you? You’re just like your mother. A traitor. You don’t appreciate what he was, what we were. You think you’re better than us?”
Mick’s hand was shaking as he stared down at him. His eyes flicked to the ground, and Jackson followed the movement too late.
The gun the surviving Brotherhood soldier had dropped was half-buried in the mud, only a few feet away.
“Mick—” Avery started, but by the time the warning left her mouth, Mick had already moved.
He snatched up the weapon, his hands slick with rain and blood.
“Mick, don’t do it,” Noah shouted, voice breaking through the storm.
Warren laughed again, ugly and defiant even as he lay pinned beneath the concrete. “Go on, then! You’ve got your father’s blood. Let’s see if you’ve got his guts!”
The gunshot cracked through the clearing before anyone could move.
Jackson flinched at the sound, the echo bouncing off the ruined bunker and dying in the rain.
Warren’s head slumped sideways. The sneer was gone, replaced by nothing at all.
For a long, breathless moment, no one spoke.
Mick stood over him, the gun hanging limp at his side, smoke curling faintly from the barrel. His chest heaved once, twice. Then he looked up—eyes empty, face pale—and dropped the weapon into the mud.
Jackson felt his stomach start to churn. It was over for Warren, sure. But what Mick had just done, what it would do to him, was only beginning.
Cal and Garrett came out of the smoke, silhouettes forming in the dull orange glow of what was left of the Brotherhood’s compound. They were splattered with mud and soot, eyes red from the smoke, but on their feet and moving.
Garrett was the first to speak, his voice rough. “We checked the grounds,” he said. “There’s no one left. Anyone who was in that building was blown to bits.”
Cal gave a grim nod beside him. “It’s a graveyard out there. Nothing but fragments.”
Jackson let out a slow breath and looked around the clearing. The rain was washing away the last of the smoke, but not the stench of it, the bitter, metallic smell of fire and blood. The debris still smoldered in places, jagged pieces of concrete jutting up like tombstones.
He’d seen enough death in his time to recognize the kind that stayed with you. This wasn’t war. It was the aftermath of one man’s arrogance, of a bastard who’d decided he was judge, jury, and executioner.
Warren lay still in the mud, and Darian sat nearby, bleeding and silent. Mick stood over both of them, staring at his hands as if he didn’t know what they were anymore.
Jackson’s gaze drifted past the carnage to the one thing that made any of this matter.
Avery.
She stood a few yards away, the rain plastering her hair to her face, eyes locked on Warren’s body. There was shock in her expression, raw and hollow, but beneath it, something else too. Relief. Exhaustion. The slow realization that it was finally, undeniably over.
Jackson walked to her, his boots sinking into the mud. She turned as he reached her, and before she could speak, he pulled her into his arms.
She didn’t resist. She just folded against him, her hands gripping the front of his vest, her face pressed to his shoulder.
He held her tight, one hand at the back of her head, the other around her waist, grounding them both against the ruin surrounding them.
“It’s over,” he murmured, his voice low enough for only her to hear.
She nodded against him, a shaky breath leaving her chest.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Jackson believed it.
It was over.
And she was finally safe.