Chapter Seven
Edge had six minutes to turn a beach rental into a defensible position.
He moved through the safehouse with brutal efficiency, flipping the kitchen table onto its side, shoving the heavy couch against the front windows, checking sight lines from every angle.
The place wasn't built for this. Thin walls, big windows, two exits that would both be covered the second Vitale's men arrived.
But it was what he had.
"Here." He pressed a pistol into Angela's hands. She stared at it like he'd handed her a snake. "Safety's off. Point and squeeze. Don't think about it."
"I've never—"
"You stabbed a man with pruning shears." Edge caught her chin, forced her eyes to his. "You can do this. Stay behind the counter, don't move unless I tell you, and if anyone who isn't me comes through that kitchen door, you put them down."
Her hands were shaking. But she nodded.
That was enough.
Edge positioned her in the corner of the kitchen, behind the overturned table with a clear line to the back door. Not perfect—nothing about this was perfect—but it gave her cover and a chance. That was more than most people got.
His phone buzzed. Ghost.
ETA 8 minutes. Hold the line.
Eight minutes. Tony's crew would be here in four.
Edge texted back: Hurry.
Then he killed the lights and waited.
They came loud. Two vans screeching to a stop outside, doors slamming, voices shouting orders like they'd never heard of stealth.
Edge counted silhouettes through the gaps in the blinds.
Eight men, maybe nine. Tony's scratched face visible in the streetlight glow as he directed his crew toward both entrances.
The front door exploded inward.
Edge dropped the first two before they cleared the threshold. Clean shots, center mass, bodies crumpling onto the welcome mat with the wicker seashell design. The third got smart, ducking low and rolling behind the couch Edge had positioned.
Wrong move.
Edge put two rounds through the cushions and heard the man scream.
Gunfire erupted from everywhere. Muzzle flashes lit up the dark living room like strobe lights. Bullets punched through the thin walls, through the beach-print paintings, through everything that wasn't solid wood or overturned furniture.
Edge moved.
He'd learned combat in places worse than this, against enemies smarter than these. Vitale's men were drivers and muscle, not soldiers. They shot wild, panicked, more interested in making noise than hitting targets.
Edge didn't miss.
A man came through the side window in a shower of glass. Edge met him with the butt of his pistol, felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage as the man's nose collapsed. He went down screaming, and Edge stepped over him toward the kitchen.
Angela.
Two men had breached the back door. One was down—she'd actually done it, put a bullet through his shoulder that left him writhing on the linoleum. The other had her pinned against the counter, one hand on her throat, gun pressed to her temple.
"Drop it!" The man's voice cracked with fear and adrenaline. "Drop it or I blow her brains out!"
Edge stopped. Lowered his weapon.
"That's right. Put it on the floor. Kick it away."
He did.
Angela's eyes met his. Terrified. Furious. Alive.
"Tony wants to talk to you," the man said, dragging Angela toward the back door. "Both of you. Says it's time to stop playing games and—"
The side of his head disappeared.
Angela screamed as blood sprayed across her face, across the white cabinets, across everything. The man dropped, and behind him stood Ghost with his gun still raised.
"Cavalry's here," Ghost said.
The battle turned.
Brothers poured through both entrances—Ace with his methodical violence, Block like a wrecking ball in human form, Pike providing cover fire from the street. Vitale's men broke. The ones still standing tried to run, tried to surrender, tried anything that might keep them breathing.
Edge didn't care about them.
He moved through the chaos with a single target in mind.
Tony.
The driver was retreating toward the vans, his wounded arm still wrapped in bloody bandages from the pruning shears Angela had buried in it. He saw Edge coming and raised his gun with his good hand, fired wild, missed by a foot.
Edge didn't slow down.
He hit Tony at full speed, driving him into the side of the van with enough force to dent the panel. Tony's gun went flying. His head cracked against the metal. But he wasn't done—the big man threw an elbow that connected with Edge's ribs, bought himself enough space to get his feet under him.
"You have no idea what you're doing," Tony snarled, blood streaming from his scalp. "Vitale has resources you can't imagine. This isn't over just because you killed some drivers—"
"This isn't about Vitale."
Edge caught Tony's wild swing, twisted, and drove his knee into the man's damaged arm. Tony screamed. Went down to his knees.
"This is about the woman you put your hands on."
Tony's eyes went wide with understanding. With fear. With the sudden realization that he wasn't dealing with club business or territorial disputes.
This was personal.
"She's just a florist," Tony gasped. "She's nothing—"
Edge's fist caved in his throat.
Tony clutched at his neck, trying to breathe through a windpipe that no longer worked. His face went purple. His eyes bulged. He collapsed onto the pavement, legs twitching, fingers scrabbling uselessly at his crushed airway.
Edge watched him die.
It took longer than the movies showed. Forty-five seconds of choking and thrashing and the desperate animal struggle of a body that refused to accept its end. By the time Tony went still, Edge's brothers had finished mopping up the rest.
Six dead. Two wounded and running. One who'd surrendered and was currently zip-tied to a porch railing.
Edge stood over Tony's body and felt nothing but satisfaction.
"Brother."
He turned. Ghost was approaching with Angela in tow. She was pale, shaking, covered in blood that wasn't hers. But she was walking. She was upright.
She was alive.
"She handled herself," Ghost said. There was respect in his voice. "Dropped the first one who came through the kitchen door. Didn't freeze when the second grabbed her."
Edge moved without thinking. Crossed the distance between them and pulled Angela against his chest, one hand fisting in her hair, the other pressing flat against her back. Holding her like he could absorb her into himself, like he could make her safe through sheer force of will.
"You're okay," he said into her hair. "You're okay."
"I killed someone." Her voice was small. Muffled against his jacket. "He came through the door and I just—I squeezed, like you said, and he—"
"You defended yourself. That's all you did."
"There's so much blood—"
"Not yours." Edge pulled back enough to look at her face. Wiped a smear of red from her cheek with his thumb. "None of this is yours. You understand? You did what you had to do. You survived."
Angela's eyes found his. Searched for something. Judgment, maybe. Disgust. Whatever she expected to see in a man who'd just crushed another man's throat with his bare hands.
She didn't find it.
What she found was something rawer. Fiercer. The kind of possessive intensity that should have terrified her but didn't.
"The safehouse is burned," Ace said, approaching with his gun already holstered. The Sergeant at Arms looked like he'd just finished a moderately difficult workout, not a firefight. "We need to move before Vitale sends another crew."
"Compound," Edge said. He didn't let go of Angela. "She comes with us."
"Figured." Ace's gaze flicked to the woman in Edge's arms, then back to him. A brief nod. Acknowledgment. Acceptance. "Pike's clearing a route. Two minutes."
Edge looked down at Angela. "Can you ride?"
"I—" She glanced at the carnage around them. The bodies. The blood. The brother still zip-tying the survivor to the railing. "Yes. I can ride."
"Good."
He led her toward his bike, stepping over Tony's corpse without a second glance. The man who'd put his hands on Angela. The man who'd threatened her, terrorized her, tried to destroy her.
Gone.
But this wasn't over. Tony was muscle. Vitale was still out there, and now he knew his operation had hit a wall. Men like him didn't retreat. They escalated.
"Edge."
Ghost tossed him a burner phone recovered from one of the bodies. "Might want to check that. Got a lot of calls from the same number."
Edge scrolled through the call log. One contact, repeated over and over. A local number with a 609 area code. He held up the phone so Angela could see it.
"Recognize it?"
Her face went pale. "That's the number they texted me from. The 'last chance' message."
"Then we know who to trace." Edge pocketed the phone and swung onto his bike. "Come on. Time to get you somewhere safe."
Angela climbed on behind him, her arms wrapping around his waist like they belonged there. She was still trembling. Still processing. Still covered in a dead man's blood.
But she was alive.
She was his.
And the men who'd tried to take her from him were going to learn exactly what that meant.
The convoy rolled out thirty seconds later—Edge and Angela on point, Ghost and Ace flanking, Pike running interference ahead. Behind them, the safehouse burned with evidence nobody needed found. The shore town streets were quiet, locals smart enough to stay inside when they heard gunfire.
Edge pushed his bike north toward Atlantic City, toward the compound, toward the brotherhood that would protect Angela while he hunted down everyone responsible for tonight.
Tony was dead.
But Vitale was still breathing.
That would change soon enough.