Chapter 18 Katana
KATANA
The clubhouse is in complete fucking chaos.
Quinn’s voice rips through the halls like a whip crack. “Front and center! Now!”
It’s not a request. It’s a command that shreds the air, and the effect is immediate.
Boots pound against the scarred wood floor, chairs scrape back from battered pub tables in front of the long bar in the back, drinks abandoned, food half-eaten.
Conversations die mid-sentence. One by one, every patched member, prospect, and hang-around floods into the common room, pulled by the gravity of her fury.
Nobody dares drag their feet. Nobody even breathes wrong.
Quinn stands in the middle of the room, her cut now thrown over her workout gear, her eyes like ice.
She doesn’t need to raise her voice again, she’s already got every one of them by the throat with just her presence.
LC’s beside her, arms crossed, jaw ticking like she’s ready to break someone’s nose if Quinn gives the word.
I don’t fall in with the others. My ribs ache too much to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and more than that, I’m invested and need to see this from the front. So I push in beside LC, the table’s edge braced against my thigh, Quinn’s presence radiating off her like heat from steel.
“Where’s Riot?” Quinn’s voice is low but lethal, the kind of tone that promises blood. Her gaze cuts across the line of faces, Meadow’s jaw tight, Silk’s fists flexing, Siren whispering something under her breath. “Who’s seen her?”
Silence. Not one of them answers.
Quinn slams her bat on a nearby table, the impact sharp enough to rattle the legs, the echo bouncing off brick and making Inferna flinch so hard she nearly stumbles.
The hit doesn’t fracture the table, but it damn near fractures the room.
“She walked out of here with one of ours. Devyn is missing. And if anyone in this room is helping her, or so much as hesitated to stop her, you’ll answer to me. ”
Shock ripples across the room. Nyx swears under her breath. Orchid grips the back of her chair until the wood groans. Mama Ru presses her hand to her mouth, her eyes welling.
“That poor girl,” she whispers, her voice breaking. The sound barely carries, but everyone hears it.
The silence stretches, thick and brittle.
Lolita whispers something quick in Spanish under her breath, the words tumbling too fast to catch.
Scarlet Rose mutters a curse, sharp enough to sting.
The weight of it presses down harder with every second of silence.
The whole room feels like it’s one word away from snapping.
Vex bounces on her heels, her boot tapping a restless rhythm against the floorboards, eyes narrowed like she’s already picturing Riot’s blood.
Mystique keeps shaking her head, whispering “no” over and over, like maybe if she says it enough times it won’t be true.
Rogue cracks her knuckles, muttering something about skinning Riot alive.
LC steps forward, her voice cold and clipped, slicing through it all. “Nobody leaves until we get Devyn back. Riot made her choice. Now we make ours.”
The prospects hover at the end of the line, pale and wide-eyed. One looks like she might puke, her hand pressed flat to her stomach. Another’s eyes dart from Quinn to LC to the rest of us like she’s trying to figure out how the fuck she landed in the middle of this storm.
My stomach coils tight. Dante was right. Riot’s betrayal is no longer a rumor, no longer a possible set-up. It’s flesh and blood, Devyn’s life on the line.
And just when the silence starts to stretch too thin, when I can hear the thud of my own pulse like a drum in my skull, Quinn’s phone buzzes. The sound is obscene in the silence.
Every head jerks toward it. Quinn doesn’t answer at first. Just stares down at the screen, her expression carved in ice. The buzz dies, leaving the room raw. Then it starts again, rattling against the table.
Quinn swipes the screen, and angles it toward me and LC. Her face doesn’t change, but my stomach drops like stone.
Devyn. Bound to a chair. Wrists chewed raw from rope. Duct tape cutting into her mouth. Her eyes are wide and wet but she’s alive.
Beneath it, the message:
TRADE HER FOR MY FREEDOM.
LC’s fist slams against the table, rattling plates. My breath catches like I swallowed glass. Rage floods every vein, hot enough to choke me.
“That bitch.” My voice is low, raw. “She thinks she can bargain?”
Quinn finally turns the phone outward. The common room detonates in shouts, curses, chairs toppling.
Mama Ru gasps, covering her mouth, while Scarlet Rose mutters a vow of vengeance so sharp it cuts the noise.
I don’t hear all of it. My focus narrows to that picture, Devyn’s terror etched into me like a brand.
Quinn doesn’t look away from the phone. “Riot doesn’t walk out alive.”
LC’s already pacing, fists clenching and unclenching. “We end her. Tonight.”
Quinn doesn’t reply right away. Her eyes stay locked on the phone, reading the message over and over like maybe it’ll change. Finally, she exhales slowly, her voice flat. “We need to know where the hell she is.”
“She’s in some shithole warehouse.” I jab a finger at the screen, my hand shaking. “Look at it. Concrete walls. Exposed bulb.”
LC snaps, “That’s half the damn city.”
The walls feel like they’re closing in. Devyn’s terrified face is burned onto the back of my eyelids. And behind it, Dante’s voice: Trust me… Riot’s a leak.
I want to scream. I want to claw Riot’s eyes out. Dante was right. And I didn’t want to hear it. I let this happen.
Quinn steadies me with a look. “Kat, you’ve seen more basements and backrooms than any of us. What stands out?”
I drag the phone closer, scanning the picture again.
The wall behind Devyn isn’t just concrete, it’s painted halfway up in a sick industrial green.
A rust-stained conduit pipe droops across the ceiling where the bulb dangles, its light pooling weak across the floor.
In the corner, a water pan tipped sideways, dried blood flaking in its rim.
LC’s sharp inhale cuts me off. Diesel shifts at her feet, growling, picking up her tension. She kneels, smoothing his head once, then points at the photo. Her voice shakes with fury.
“Not a warehouse,” she mutters. “That’s the damn kennel.”
My chest locks tight.
LC’s eyes flash to Quinn. “Remember the dog fighting ring we took down last year? Where I rescued Diesel?” She stabs her finger at the chain-link in the background. “That’s it. Same paint. Same cages.”
Memory hits hard, the stink of blood and wet fur, the sound of snarls echoing in those cages, the rage in LC’s face as she carried Diesel out broken and shaking.
“Makes sense. Riot would know it.” I say, my voice clipped, my fists clenched at my sides.
Quinn’s jaw sets. “Then that’s where we go.”
No hesitation. No vote. Just fact.
“Ten minutes,” Quinn snaps. “Gather what you need.”
The order cracks through the air like a gunshot. Everyone scatters at once, boots hammering the floor, doors slamming open, voices low and clipped.
I push through the ache in my ribs and make it upstairs.
My room feels smaller than it should, the air heavy with Dante’s scent still lingering.
I strip fast, ignoring the pull at my stitches, ignoring the way my breath hitches sharp in my chest. Jeans, black tee, boots laced tight.
My cut settles over my shoulders like a second skin.
I shove extra mags into my pockets, slide a knife into my boot, and don’t let myself think. There’s no time for it.
By the time I get back to the common room the place is a storm.
Guns snap shut as rounds chamber, knives scrape against leather as they slide home in sheaths.
Meadow’s at the bar, strapping a pistol to her thigh.
Silk knots her hair up and tapes her wrists like she’s stepping into the ring.
Scarlet Rose lines blades across the table, choosing with surgical precision before she tucks two into her belt.
Vex shoulders a shotgun, the pump racking loud enough to cut through the chaos.
The brick walls echo with every sound of metal on metal, boots on wood, the murmur of vows muttered under breath. Mama Ru hovers near the bar, her hands tight around a rag she keeps wringing. A single tear streaks her cheek. “God protect my girls,” she prays to herself, “bring them all home safe.”
Quinn stands in the middle of it all, her cut squared across her shoulders, her bat leaning against her boot. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t need to. She’s gravity, pulling every one of us into place. LC steps up beside her, the knives on hips glinting, her jaw clenched tight.
One by one, we file out of the Clubhouse toward our bikes. Engines roar to life in unison, the ground trembling under the weight of our fury.
Quinn takes point. LC moves in beside her. I fall in at her flank, my ribs screaming, but my hands steady. The rest of the Harlots fall into formation, headlights blazing as we peel out together.
We leave the clubhouse behind, the night swallowing us whole.
The ride to the kennel is brutal. The city blurs around us in streaks of light, the air cold and sharp off the Atlantic.
My ribs protest every turn, every jolt, but I ride harder, the roar of my engine drowning out the screaming in my chest. Each passing block feels like one less chance to get to Devyn alive.
By the time the sagging shape of the kennel rises into view, my palms ache from gripping the bars.
The place sits half-sunk into a lot choked with weeds and a half-collapsed chain-link fence, the old sign for Champion Kennels still clinging by one rusted bracket.
Most of the roof has caved in. Corrugated siding flakes with rust, the edges curling like peeling skin.
The stink hits even from the street, piss, mildew, the scent of blood that can never be washed out.