Chapter 43
Vienna
Now
The first one died with my hand over his mouth.
He hadn’t heard me coming. Hadn’t sensed the shift in the dark behind him, or the quiet displacement of air as I stepped out from the trees and into the edge of the compound where the shadows were thickest. He was too busy staring out across the perimeter with a cigarette hanging from his lips and his cut half open, one hand tucked lazily into his pocket like he genuinely believed standing watch meant he was safe.
He didn’t even get a chance to turn.
My hand clamped over his mouth and my knife slid cleanly into the side of his throat in one swift movement, the blade cutting deep enough to silence him almost instantly.
His whole body jerked violently against mine, boots scraping uselessly against the ground as I dragged him backwards into the dark and held on until the fight left him completely.
Then I let him drop without any warning or big speech. Just quick, ruthless death.
I wiped the blade against his jeans, crouched low for a second to make sure the body was hidden enough not to be immediately spotted, and then moved on.
The compound was crawling, just not in the organised way Nico probably thought it was.
Too many men had been posted in all the obvious places.
The gates. The garages. The path around the back.
Windows. Doorways. Patrol routes that made sense to anyone who had only ever defended a place from the outside. But I wasn’t outside.
I knew this place. I knew where the blind spots were, knew where the shadows pooled deepest between the outbuildings and the tree line.
Knew which corners men liked to piss around when they thought no one important was watching and which spots got neglected because everyone assumed someone else had already checked them.
And I knew, more importantly than anything, that men like this always got lazy in the quiet.
They got comfortable.
And comfortable men died easiest.
The second one was behind the old storage shed near the side fence, leaning against the wall with his phone in his hand and his head tipped back as he laughed at something on the screen. I didn’t recognise him until I was close enough to smell the cheap aftershave on him.
Then it hit me like a brick.
He’d been there that night.
One of the ones standing near the bar while Gabriella tore my life apart in front of both clubs.
I remembered his face because he’d smiled. Not a huge grin. Nothing dramatic. Just that little smug twitch at the corner of his mouth that said he’d known exactly what was happening and had enjoyed every fucking second of it.
He saw me too late.
His eyes widened, mouth opening around a sharp intake of breath that never became sound because my knife was already in his gut, angled upward and twisted hard enough to fold him over around it.
I caught him before he hit the ground, lowered him slowly, then pulled the blade free and drove it once into his neck just to make sure.
His blood was hot over my hand.
I left him there in the dirt and kept moving.
By the third body, I had stopped counting.
Because it didn’t matter. They could all die for all I cared.
I moved from one patch of darkness to the next like I’d been built for this, my body taking over in the way it always did when the line between control and violence blurred enough to become instinct.
A gun would have been easier, but easier wasn’t what I needed. Easier got attention. Easier got lights switched on and alarms raised and every bastard on this compound suddenly deciding to become useful all at once.
No.
A knife let me choose the pace.
A knife let me keep this personal.
The fourth one was younger than the others, barely more than a prospect by the look of him, and he died because he rounded a corner at the wrong time and looked directly at me with surprise instead of caution.
I had him against the wall before his brain had fully caught up, blade under his jaw, eyes wide and terrified as I drove it up and into the soft part beneath his chin.
He made a wet, choking sound that would have haunted me once.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he was just another obstacle between me and Gabriella.
I lowered him carefully to the ground, stepped over his legs, and kept going.
The dogs barked once somewhere off to the far side of the compound, and I froze instantly, flattening myself into the shadow of the garage wall as a pair of Riders moved across the yard toward the sound.
One of them was muttering under his breath, already irritated, while the other carried a torch he clearly had no idea how to use without shining it directly into his own fucking eyes.
Idiots.
I waited until they passed.
Then I followed.
The one at the back never saw me. My hand caught his shoulder and spun him just enough for the blade to slice straight across his throat before he had a chance to do anything other than make a confused noise into the night.
The one with the torch turned too slowly, his face going slack with shock as his mate collapsed at his feet, and I was already on him by the time he reached for the gun at his hip.
My knife went into his side first.
Then his neck.
And then his eye.
He dropped twitching beside the other one, the torch rolling from his hand and casting a weak, spinning beam across the gravel before going still.
I crouched, picked it up, and switched it off.
Then I dragged both bodies behind the bins and carried on.
By the time I reached the back of the main house, my hands were slick with blood, and my pulse had settled into something unnervingly calm.
Like some dark part of me had been waiting years for a night exactly like this and had finally been given permission to breathe.
The back steps leading into the kitchen were empty, but I didn’t trust that for a second. I crouched low by the wall and listened first, knife still in hand, my breathing slow and even as I focused on the sounds inside.
Nothing obvious. There were no voices close by, or the heavy sounds of boots near the door.
I glanced once over my shoulder at the compound behind me.
There were so many bodies there, rotting in the dark.
It wouldn’t take long before someone discovered them and raised the alarm. I had to move quickly.
My grip tightened on the knife as I walked to the door, reached for the handle, and slipped inside.