Chapter 16 #2
Because they knew too much. Way too much. And waiting longer would only give them time to call for backup or reveal more intel I didn't want them to have.
Swift. Efficient. Brutal in the way that fucking school had trained me to be.
The closest suit went down first, never saw it coming despite his training. Knee to the groin to double him over in automatic response, then elbow to the temple while he was already dropping. He hit the floor hard and didn't get back up.
The second one pulled his gun—finally, too slow—but I was already inside his reach, moving on pure muscle memory and instinct.
Twisted the weapon away, joint lock, redirected his momentum using his own weight, slammed him face-first into the concrete wall hard enough that something cracked audibly—bone or wall, didn't matter which.
The third one actually got a shot off, the sound deafening and echoing in the enclosed space.
Missed. Too rushed. Too panicked by how fast his partners had dropped.
I took him out with three shots from the second man’s gun, brains exploding out the back of his skull.
Three armed men down in under ten seconds.
The fat men had just stood there frozen in the doorway, gawking, too shocked to move or help or even think about running.
I'd grabbed my jacket from where they'd made me leave it by the door and run.
Out of the building. Down stairs two and three at a time, barely touching the railings. Through streets I was still learning, navigation half instinct and half desperate improvisation. Checking behind me constantly for pursuit, for cars, for anything that looked wrong or out of place.
On the run again.
I walked through Paris now, hours later and miles away, keeping to well-lit streets with witnesses and security cameras, watching reflections in shop windows for followers, tracking cars that appeared more than once in my peripheral vision, noting faces that lingered too long.
No tail that I could spot with certainty.
But that didn't mean they weren't there.
Just meant they were better at surveillance than I was at spotting it.
St. Paul's had found me.
After years of thinking they were dead, of being careful, of never putting down roots anywhere long enough to be tracked—they'd found me, anyway.
The question now was how.
I could blame myself for fighting last night. For being visible and memorable. For doing exactly what Connor had warned against—drawing attention in a city where we were trying to build something permanent, something that mattered.
But seriously, what were the actual chances that the organization hunting the nine of us just happened to know the fat men who ran underground fight clubs in Paris?
What were the odds that they'd connected those dots that fast—one night of fighting to identifying me to setting up a meeting?
Minuscule.
Statistically impossible, almost.
Unless it wasn't coincidence at all.
Unless—
No.
Connor was right.
He'd said something fundamental had changed. That St. Paul's wasn't the same organization we'd escaped from eighteen years ago.
And he was absolutely right.
St. Paul's hadn't grown into this on their own.
They didn't have the resources or infrastructure for that kind of expansion.
Didn't have the sophistication or international reach.
The old St. Paul's—the one we'd burned to the ground after killing Thorne—had been brutal but ultimately contained.
A sick experiment funded by a small group of sadists who wanted perfect soldiers they could use for their underworld deeds.
This was fundamentally different.
This was bigger.
Much, much bigger.
The surveillance photos from multiple countries. The international reach and coordination. The professional operatives instead of just sadistic trainers. The resources to track nine highly trained men across continents for nearly two decades ...
That took serious money. Real organization. Global infrastructure and intelligence networks.
St. Paul's wasn't operating independently anymore.
They were part of something else now. Something with corporate backing or government connections or both. Something that made our old nightmare look small by comparison.
And that meant all of us—all nine of us scattered strategically across the world, thinking we were safe—were in immediate danger.
I needed to tell Connor.
Tonight.
Right fucking now, if possible.
Because the "meeting" wasn't the end of anything. It was the opening move.
I could feel it in my bones, in that old combat instinct that had kept me alive through situations that mathematically should have killed me.
They weren't going to just let this go. Weren't going to mark me down as "found but lost again" and move on to easier targets.
Fuck.
Three impossible problems.
Deal with the St. Paul's threat before they killed all of us.
Help Ella find answers about her sister without getting her killed in the process.
Keep her at arm's length emotionally so she didn't get caught in the inevitable crossfire when everything went to hell.
I wasn't sure I could manage all three simultaneously.
Wasn't sure I could manage any of them successfully, honestly.
The world felt like it was closing in from multiple directions at once—walls moving inward, ceiling dropping lower, floor disappearing beneath my feet.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it was a woman with sad eyes and dangerous honesty who looked at me like I was something worth wanting instead of something worth running from as fast as possible.
A woman I couldn't stop thinking about even when I should be focused purely on survival and threat assessment.
A woman who deserved so much better than what I could offer her.
Better than violence and danger and a man who'd probably get her killed just by being near her.
A massive reckoning was coming.
From more than one angle.
St. Paul's hunting us. Ella's sister's secrets that had gotten her killed. My own complete inability to stay away from something I knew I should leave alone.
And I wasn't ready for any of it.
Not even close.