Chapter 44 #2
Ash’s gaze slides to me. “Alive is the only way we get what we need,” he says.
“We need to know who he’s talking to. What he promised.
What he already said about her. Whether he’s recorded anything.
Where he stored it. We take his head now without the intel, we’re still in a corner.
We take him breathing and aware and scared, we flip him inside out and hang him with his own spine. ”
Saint murmurs, almost reverently, “Poetry.”
I look at the three of them. My brothers. My blades.
All of them looking at me now.
Waiting.
Because this falls on me. This decision isn’t a group vote. Not this one. The others can plan logistics, call contacts, move money. They can argue tactics all night. But the moment we shift from defense to abduction, from guard to hunt, it’s my call, and we all know it.
This is the first time in a long time that the call involves family.
Not the old money kind. Not bloodlines. Not alliances drafted at cigar tables. Us.
Her.
Something in my chest tightens hard enough to hurt.
Damien tried to touch what’s ours. He walked hands-first at our gate.
He looked Ember Calloway in the eyes last night and pretended not to know her name.
He told the world Owen was dirty so no one would look too closely at how clean he kept his hands. And he sent men to my fucking door.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Ash’s mouth curves in a predatory smile. “Still in London. He didn’t run.”
“Idiot,” Vale says cheerfully.
“Arrogant,” Saint corrects softly.
Both are true.
Ash taps the screen. “He’s tucked into a Syndicate-adjacent safe space in Shoreditch.
Not one of the main houses. Somewhere low-profile.
Looks like an import office on paper. Third floor over a shuttered café.
He rotated there in the last four hours.
Means he moved as soon as we left him, and he thinks it’s quiet enough to regroup. ”
“How many bodies?” I ask.
“Six on rotation I can see,” Ash says. “Maybe eight total. He’s not carrying a full security detail yet. He thinks he doesn’t need one. He thinks his word still protects him.”
Vale laughs. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“What’s the building look like?” I ask.
“Brick,” Ash says. “Narrow stairwell entrance off the alley. One lift, probably fucking ancient. Windows overlooking Redchurch Street. Fire escape off the back. Easy to block off. Harder to breach without noise.”
Saint leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled. “Noise doesn’t scare me. Witnesses scare me. That neighborhood sees everything and says nothing until someone pays them to.”
Ash’s mouth tightens. “Which is why we don’t walk in through the front like Syndicate muscle. We ghost him.”
Vale tilts his head. “Define ghost.”
Ash looks right at him. “We make him leave.”
Now Vale’s smile turns sharp. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, that’s fun.”
Saint chuckles low, already following. “Start a fire.”
Ash nods. “Literal or metaphorical. Doesn’t matter.
We give them a threat that isn’t us. Something that forces his men to pull him out fast. Something that convinces them to move him from Point A to Point B on foot or in a car we can intercept.
We don’t breach his safe room. We hijack his transport. ”
“And take him between,” I finish.
Ash nods once. Saint’s eyes gleam. “Ambush on the road. No cameras. No witnesses. Mid-transfer, they’re sloppy.”
Vale leans back, satisfied. “It’s definitely poetic. Maybe even epic.”
I glance toward the sweeping staircase. If she wakes up and hears raised voices, she’ll come down. She’ll want in. She’ll argue that she deserves to be there when Damien goes down. She’ll ask to put hands on him first.
And… She’s not wrong.
But right now there’s still blood cooling on our gravel where four men tried to take her away from me while she slept. This part is ours.
And not because she’s fragile. Because we are not losing her. “We move today,” I say.
Saint hums, pleased. “Amen.”
Ash is already typing. “I’ll feed chatter to one of our street lines. Make it look like a rival crew’s about to light up that block. Something Syndicate-adjacent but not Syndicate-owned, so his boys believe it. That’ll spook his detail enough to relocate him.”
“Route?” I ask.
“Best one out is the alley to the side street, then cut past the old print house to avoid main cameras,” Ash says, eyes flicking as he maps.
“There’s a blind stretch between two buildings where the council never fixed the CCTV after a scaffolding job.
Dead minute and a half if they move fast. Two full minutes if they’re cautious. ”
Vale grins. “Two minutes is luxury.”
Saint cracks his neck. “Who’s on the pull?”
“I am,” I say.
I feel three different reactions hit the air. Ash goes still. Saint exhales through his nose, calm, accepting. He saw that coming. Vale’s smile goes slow and hungry. “Of course you are.”
“You’re not going alone,” Ash says at once.
“No,” I say.
“Wraith?” Saint asks.
“Wraith’s not leaving her,” I answer, giving Vale a pointed look.
Vale licks his teeth. “So I’m your partner. Romantic.”
Ash’s eyes flash. “And me.”
“You’ll be running ghost and eyes,” I tell him. “I need you on the feed.”
He bristles. “Caelum.”
“I need you on the feed,” I repeat. “I need you in my ear. I need you to watch for secondary movement. I need you to loop street cams in a one-block radius without flickering so nobody reviewing can see a stitch. I need you to spoof a council van signal in case someone’s looking at plate logs.
Vale can rip a man out of a car without slowing his heartbeat.
Saint can lock down the lane and kneecap anyone who thinks they’re getting brave.
You are more useful on oversight than with your hands on Damien’s throat.
I need you where you are strongest. You hearing me? ”
His jaw ticks, and I know he hates it. But he also knows I’m right. Ash nods, once. Sharp. “Fine.”
Saint smiles, slow and bright and a little savage. “And me?”
“You’re our door,” I say. “We block, we box, we disappear him. You hold the line and make sure no one chases. You’re good at telling men to stay down.”
Saint inclines his head, almost theatrical. “My specialty.”
Vale claps his hands once, delighted and obviously already ready to cause mischief. “Field trip.”
I look each of them in the eye.
“Ash,” I say. “You spawn the fire. Give Syndicate thirty minutes’ warning they’re about to take heat.
Make sure it sounds believable, not apocalyptic.
You spook Damien’s crew, not send them into full scramble.
Saint, you get us wheels that don’t trace back here.
Something disposable, something fast, something that can take a hit if it has to.
Mateo, you suit up and get comfortable with the idea that if Damien so much as breathes in the wrong direction, I’m breaking his fingers before you can. ”
Vale’s grin widens. “Wouldn’t dream of stealing your fun, carino.”
“And Rook…” Ash says quietly.
I meet his gaze, knowing exactly what he is asking. “I’m going to put Damien in the ground,” I say. “But first I’m going to hear him scream.”
Saint exhales a soft, “God forgive you,” that sounds nothing like a prayer.
Vale laughs under his breath. “Oh, He won’t.”
Ash’s expression shifts. Not shock. Not fear. Something like relief. Like this is the first time he’s fully breathing since last night. “Good,” he murmurs.
Because it’s done now, the decision is made. No more waiting to see what that fucker Damien does next.
We’re dictating, because we have to. And we all know why.
It’s not empire this time. It’s not territory. It’s not shipment lanes, or influence, or respect.
It’s family.
I didn’t use that word before her.
Not for us. We were crew. Riders. Kings, if you wanted to be poetic and stupid in equal measure. Bound by money and reputation and shared scars.
Now?
Now Saint jokes like we’re altar and congregation. Vale fights like he’s starving and we’re the last thing in this world that tastes of anything. Now Ash looks at her like a man looks at air. Wraith sleeps with a gun in one hand and her in the other and calls that peace.
Now I’m standing in my own house, looking at bodies cooling on my gravel, knowing somebody tried to take what’s mine out from under my roof while she was sleeping in one of my shirts, and I feel—not rage.
Rage is too clean. I feel… Violation.
Something black and steady moves through me, slow like oil spill, coating everything.
I turn back to the window.
Outside, the mist is lifting. You can see the gate clearer now. Iron. Blood on gravel, already going dark. Our land, our stone, our rules.
“They’re not ripping this apart,” I say quietly.
Saint goes still.
Vale’s grin fades, goes sharp.
Ash stops tapping.
“They are not,” I say, and I can hear my own voice now, calm and lethal, the one that makes people listen whether they mean to or not, “breaking what we built. They are not touching what’s ours.
They are not laying hands on our queen. They are not taking what finally feels like more than survival out of our fucking hands because some washed-out handler decided he’s God in a suit. ”
No one speaks.
They don’t have to.
It’s already decided.
“We move in three hours,” I say. “Get me everything. Then we take Damien.”
And this time, we don’t give him the chance to send anyone to our door ever again.