3. Knox
Knox
I drive.
The engine is so quiet it almost feels detached from the road, insulated from the outside world the way everything the Brotherhood owns is insulated.
The car is custom, reinforced, armored in places no one would notice unless they tried to put a bullet through it.
The leather is soft. The dashboard is seamless.
The windows are tinted thick enough to blur faces from the outside while keeping our view crystal clear.
Havoc sits in the passenger seat with one hand resting loosely on his thigh, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against his jeans. He’s calmer now than he was in the warehouse, which means he’s focused. That’s how he works. He bleeds off energy before a job, then goes still.
Most people would call him unstable. They’d be wrong.
He’s a live grenade, yes. But a controlled one. I’ve seen him hold position under fire without flinching. I’ve seen him move through chaos with terrifying precision. When it matters, he doesn’t lose himself.
He thinks I believe I’m better than him. I can see it in the way he watches me sometimes. The way he waits for correction. But the truth is simpler than that.
I don’t think I’m above him. I think I’m responsible for him. There’s a difference.
Vale sits behind us, silent, gaze angled toward the window. He always goes quiet before we move in. His silence isn’t emptiness; it’s concentration. He’s already mapping the building in his head, already calculating how things might go wrong.
Streetlights streak across the windshield as we leave the main roads. The industrial district is darker, quieter, the buildings spaced wider apart. The harbor is somewhere to our right, the air faintly salted even through the closed windows.
Havoc glances at me. “You’re in your head again,” he says.
“I’m driving.”
“You’re thinking.”
“I’m always thinking.”
He smirks faintly and looks back at the road.
He thinks I suppress something he embraces. Violence. He enjoys it openly. He doesn’t pretend otherwise. When it’s time to hurt someone, he steps into it like it’s the most honest thing in the world.
I understand that feeling better than I admit.
I don’t flinch from violence. I never have. I learned early how to compartmentalize it, how to apply it when necessary and shut it off when it isn’t. In the military, it was structured. Directed. Justified by flags and orders and chain of command.
The Brotherhood is different. Here, violence is quieter, more deliberate, not patriotic. But I feel it all the same. The clarity. The narrowing of purpose. The moment when everything reduces to objective and outcome.
I just don’t smile about it.
The building comes into view at the end of the block. Two stories of concrete and dim light bleeding through the edges of boarded windows. I slow the car without speaking.
Two vehicles are parked outside.
Havoc notices immediately. “We’re not alone.”
“No,” I say.
Two vehicles means more than one body inside. It means witnesses, associates, guards. It means variables.
I pull to a stop a short distance away and kill the engine. Silence settles in the car, heavy but not tense. I open the center console and take out the masks. I hand one to Havoc first.
He takes it, studies it for half a second, then looks at me.
“Follow the rules,” I say evenly.
He tilts his head. “I always do.”
“That’s not accurate.”
A corner of his mouth lifts.
I look back toward the building. “Two cars means more than one person inside. Anyone who is not a victim is a liability. If they move against us, they die.”
Havoc nods once. “And him?” he asks.
“The target stays alive.”
There’s the smallest pause.
“For how long?” he asks.
“Long enough to talk.”
We need names. Routes. Suppliers. Whoever thought they could operate through our territory without permission. The Brotherhood does not forgive encroachment.
Vale leans forward slightly from the back seat. “Extraction point?”
“Secondary site,” I say. “We move him once secured.”
Havoc pulls the mask over his face, and the shift is immediate. The humor disappears. What’s left is focus.
He looks at me again. “You trust me?” he asks quietly.
I hold his gaze. “There’s no one else I’d want in that doorway.”
He doesn’t answer that, but he doesn’t need to.
I slip my own mask on and reach for the door handle. “Stay on objective,” I add. “No improvising.”
He exhales once through his nose. “You worry too much.”
“I plan,” I correct.
I open the door, and cold air rushes in, carrying the scent of oil and harbor water. Knox and Havoc leave after me.
The building sits half a block ahead, squat and unimpressive. Faded brick. Boarded windows on the upper level. A side entrance with a metal door that’s seen better years.
The sedan is parked crooked near the curb.
The truck is closer to the building, backed in for a fast exit.
That bothers me.
I crouch slightly and study the ground. Fresh tire tracks. Mud that hasn’t dried yet. At least three different patterns. More than two vehicles have been here tonight.
Havoc notices the same thing. He doesn’t say it, but I can see it in the way his shoulders shift.
We move separately but within sight of each other. Vale slips toward the right side of the lot, staying in shadow near a stack of shipping pallets. I angle left, keeping low near a rusted dumpster.
Havoc should wait.
He doesn’t.
The warehouse doors are cracked open just enough for light to leak through. Voices drift out. Male. Laughing. Relaxed.
I count silhouettes through the narrow gap.
One.
Five.
Eight.
Ten—
Twelve.
Crap. That’s more than anticipated. Two cars usually mean three or four men. Twelve increases the risk of chaos. I breathe, trying to think what to do next.
The Brotherhood has cleaners. They come after. They erase. They sanitize the narrative. That was how I started—not as a shooter, but as the man who made it look like nothing happened at all. Gloves. Bleach. Reports. Disposal.
You learn quickly how much damage one room can hold.
I adjust my grip on my weapon and glance toward Havoc to signal we reassess.
He’s already moving. Damn it.
He doesn’t charge. He walks straight toward the light.
“Havoc,” I hiss under my breath, too quiet for him to hear.
He pushes the warehouse door wider and steps inside like he was invited. “Well,” he says casually, voice carrying through the space. “This looks cozy.”
Every head inside turns. All armed.
The surprise on their faces lasts half a second. Then guns rise. Vale and I step out of our cover simultaneously, weapons up, angles covered.
For a brief, taut moment, no one fires.
The room is larger than it looked from outside. Crates stacked along the walls. A folding table in the center. The target stands near it, hand halfway to his waistband.
He looks confused.
He should.
“Easy,” Havoc says, hands slightly lifted but nowhere near surrender. “Nobody has to die stupid.”
One of the men, younger and twitchier than the rest, shifts his weight. “Who the hell are you?” he demands.
“You know who we are,” Havoc replies lightly.
I see it happen before it fully does.
The twitchy one panics. He lunges at Havoc instead of firing, maybe thinking he can close the distance fast enough to make it messy.
He makes it two steps before Havoc drops him.
It’s not graceful. It’s brutal.
Havoc pivots, grabs the man’s arm mid-lunge, twists hard enough to tear something loose, and drives him face-first into the concrete. The crack echoes.
The room detonates.
Gunfire erupts.
Vale moves first, controlled and surgical, two shots in quick succession that drop a man near the back wall. I shift right, firing once at the man closest to the door before he can line up a shot.
Havoc doesn’t shoot. He moves through them. Close. Fast. Controlled violence in tight quarters. He slams one man into a stack of crates hard enough to splinter wood, then disarms another with a brutal elbow and uses the man’s own weapon against him.
It’s chaos. It’s exactly what I tried to avoid.
And it works.
Within seconds, three of the twelve are down.
One crawls toward the side door.
Vale intercepts him.
The target is still standing. Frozen. Eyes wide.
Alive.
Good.
Havoc straightens slowly, breathing hard, blood spattered across the front of his shirt that isn’t his. He turns toward the target with a slow, deliberate smile.
I step forward, gun steady, voice calm despite the ringing in my ears. “Drop it,” I tell the target.
He does.
I glance at Havoc. His breathing is heavy, but his eyes are clear. Focused. He met violence head-on like he always does. He just prefers to announce himself first.
I should be furious. Instead, I feel the familiar narrowing settle in my chest.
The job is still salvageable. Barely.
“Secure him,” I say.
Havoc’s grin widens. “Yes, sir.”
The target’s hands are up. Shaking. For half a second, I think he understands how this ends for him. Then something shifts in his eyes. Calculation.
He drops.
Not surrender. Movement.
He dives sideways, not toward the door we came in through, but toward a narrow hallway I hadn’t clocked behind the crates.
“Move!” I bark.
Havoc is already after him.
I pivot to follow, but the man Vale dropped near the back wall isn’t as down as he looked. He surges up off the floor with a strangled yell and slams into me from the side.
We hit hard, and my shoulder clips the table on the way down. My weapon skids across concrete. He’s on me fast, fingers digging for my throat, the stink of sweat and gunpowder in my face.
I drive my elbow up under his jaw. Bone connects with teeth. He reels but doesn’t go limp. Persistent. I roll, reverse our positions, and pin his arm at a bad angle.
“Havoc!” I shout, not because he can’t handle himself, but because timing matters.
No answer.
The man under me scrabbles for something at his waistband, and I see the knife too late. He slashes. The blade grazes my ribs, hot and shallow.