Chapter 15 Ashes #2
He nodded once, jaw tight. Whatever jokes he usually had, they'd died in this room. "Get them out," I told Kai. "I'll be back." Then I left him there, surrounded by broken people, and went to kill the man who'd done the breaking.
I've killed a lot of men. In Afghanistan, it was duty. Orders and objectives and the cold calculus of war. In the MC, it was protection—defending my brothers, my territory, the only family I had left. I'd made peace with the blood on my hands years ago.
But climbing those stairs, leaving Kai behind with the victims, I realized I'd never wanted to kill anyone as much as I wanted to kill Viper. The images wouldn't leave me. The cages. The hollow eyes. The boy who wouldn't look up.
That could have been Kai. The thought came unbidden, sickening. Different circumstances, different luck. That could have been him.
"Reaper." Hawk's voice in my ear. "Status?"
"Moving to the third floor. Irish is with me. Four hostiles down. At least six more ahead."
"Viper?"
"Intel says he's in the main office. Top floor."
"End this." Two words. All the permission I needed.
I moved through the warehouse like a ghost. The training never left you—the way to clear a corner, the rhythm of breath and motion, the cold focus that turned fear into fuel.
Three Devil's Dust came around a corridor junction.
My gun barked three times. They dropped.
Irish followed in tight formation, covering my six with the quiet competence of a man who'd done this before.
No jokes now. Just the grim efficiency of soldiers at work.
"Contact ahead." Irish's whisper cut through my thoughts. I refocused. Doorway at the end of the hall, light spilling out, shadows moving inside. Multiple targets.
"Flash and clear," I ordered. "I want Viper alive if possible. The rest are expendable."
Irish pulled the pin. Threw. I counted—one, two—then moved.
The flashbang detonated in a burst of light and sound. I was through the door before the echoes faded, gun up, targets acquired. Two men by the window, disoriented, reaching for weapons. I dropped them both. A third came from behind a desk, knife in hand—Irish put him down with a clean headshot.
And there, cowering in the corner behind an overturned chair, was Viper.
He was smaller than I expected. Lean, wiry, with a face like a rat and eyes that darted constantly, looking for escape. The man who'd built an empire on human suffering, reduced to a trembling animal when the hunters finally caught up.
"Reaper." He tried to smile, tried to find that oily charm I'd heard about. "Let's talk about this. Whatever Phoenix wants—money, territory—we can make a deal."
"A deal." I moved closer, gun trained on his forehead. "Like the deals you made with those people in the cages downstairs?" His smile flickered. "That's business. Supply and demand. I'm just—"
"You're just a man who sells children." I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off the ground. He weighed nothing. All that evil in such a small package. "You sent your men to hurt someone I love. You threatened my family. My home."
"Chen—" He gasped, clawing at my hand. "Chen will destroy you. She's got resources you can't imagine—"
"Chen's next."
I thought about making it slow. Thought about the boy in the cage who wouldn't look up. Thought about every victim we'd found, every life Viper had bought and sold like cattle. He deserved slow.
But Kai was waiting. And I'd already spent too long in the dark.
I snapped his neck. The sound was small. Anticlimactic. He dropped, and it was over.
"Compound secure," I said into the comm. "Viper's dead."
Hawk's response was immediate. "Copy that. Chen?"
"Not here."
"Then we're not done. Regroup at the cages. We've got civilians to evacuate." I stepped over Viper's body without looking back.
Time to find Kai.
KAI
Tyler and I had fallen into a rhythm—him breaking locks, me helping the victims stand, checking for injuries, offering water from my canteen.
The work was slow, heartbreaking. Some of them couldn't walk.
Some couldn't stop crying. One woman just kept repeating a name—"Maria, Maria, Maria"—like a prayer.
The girl who'd reached through the bars was named Ana. Seventeen, from Guatemala. She'd been in that cage for three weeks. "Almost there," I told her, helping her sit against the wall with the others. "We're going to get everyone out, and then—"
"Well, well, well."
The voice made my blood freeze. Slash stood in the doorway, gun in hand, face twisted with hatred. His nose was crooked—permanently broken from Axel's fists—and his eyes had the wild, cornered look of a man with nothing left to lose.
"Thought you could take everything from me?" He stepped into the room, weapon tracking between me and Tyler. "My crew, my reputation, my fucking face?"
Tyler moved to put himself between Slash and the victims. "It's over, Slash. Viper's dead. Your boys are dead. Walk away."
"Walk away?" Slash laughed—a high, unhinged sound. "To what? Chen's going to have me killed the second I'm not useful. Viper was my only protection, and you—" His gun swung to me. "You started all of this. That night in the parking lot. If you'd just let Reaper bleed out like you should have—"
"Then someone else would have stopped you." I kept my voice steady, even as my heart raced. "Men like you always get stopped eventually."
"Men like me?" He moved closer, gun aimed at my chest. "Pretty boy nurse who thinks he can play gangster? You have no idea what men like me are capable of."
"I know exactly what you're capable of." I thought of the cages. The hollow eyes. Ana's bird-bone fingers. "I've seen it."
"Then you know I've got nothing to lose." He raised the gun.
Tyler moved first—lunging for Slash's weapon arm, deflecting the shot. The bullet went wide, sparking off a cage. The victims screamed, scrambling for cover.
The tactical pen was in my hand before I consciously reached for it.
Tyler had Slash's gun arm locked, but Slash was strong—stronger than he looked—and he was breaking free.
I drove the pen into his shoulder. He screamed, grip loosening.
Tyler wrenched the gun away, kicked his legs out. Slash hit the ground hard.
But he wasn't done. A knife appeared in his other hand—pulled from somewhere I hadn't seen—and he slashed upward. Tyler jerked back, the blade catching his forearm, blood spraying.
"Tyler!"
"I'm fine—get him!"
Slash was scrambling to his feet, knife weaving. Blood poured from his shoulder, but his eyes were fixed on me with absolute hatred.
"You first," he snarled. "Then your brother. Then everyone you've ever—"
I hit him. Not with the pen. With my fist—a straight right that connected with his broken nose. He howled, stumbled back. I followed, years of Tyler's training taking over. Elbow to the solar plexus. Knee to the groin. He doubled over, and I grabbed his head, drove it into my rising knee.
He went down. Stayed down. But his hand was still moving, still reaching for the knife—
Tyler's foot came down on his wrist. I heard bones crack. "Stay down," Tyler said, breathing hard. "It's over."
Slash looked up at me. Blood poured from his nose, his shoulder, his wrist now shattered once more. But his eyes still burned with hatred.
"It's never over," he spat. "Chen will—"
"Chen will what?" I crouched down, meeting his eyes. "Protect you? You just said she'd have you killed. You're nothing to her. You're nothing to anyone."
"Fuck you."
"No." I picked up his fallen knife. Felt the weight of it in my hand. "You broke into my home. Threatened my life. Helped run an operation that put children in cages." I pressed the blade against his throat. "Give me one reason I shouldn't end you right now."
He didn't have one. I could see it in his eyes—the dawning realization that all his cruelty, all his violence, had led him here. To a concrete floor. To the mercy of a man he'd underestimated.
"Kai." Tyler's voice was quiet. "You don't have to do this."
"I know." I held Slash's gaze. "But I'm going to."
The blade moved.
The aftermath was silence.
Tyler helped me to my feet, didn't say anything about the blood on my hands. We stood there for a moment, breathing hard, surrounded by the victims we'd saved and the body of the man who'd helped cage them.
"You okay?" Tyler finally asked.
"No." I looked at my hands—trembling, red. "But I will be."
"First kill is hard."
"Was it hard for you?"
He was quiet for a moment. "No. That's what made it hard." I understood. The absence of guilt was its own kind of wound.
We finished opening the cages in silence. All twenty-three victims were free by the time Axel burst through the door—eyes wild, gun raised, ready to kill anyone who'd touched me.
"Kai—" He saw Slash's body. Saw the blood on my hands. Understood. "Are you hurt?"
"Not my blood." He crossed to me in three strides, pulled me into his arms. I let him hold me, let his strength shore up the places I was crumbling.
"Viper?" I asked against his chest.
"Dead."
"Good." We stood there, wrapped in each other, while around us Phoenix members streamed in to help evacuate the survivors. Maria arrived, took one look at the scene, and transformed into a general—directing traffic, organizing transport, making sure everyone got out.
Twenty-three people. Fifteen women, five girls, three boys. The youngest was twelve. We'd saved them. It should have felt like victory. But as I watched them being led to safety—hollow-eyed, traumatized, carrying wounds that would never fully heal—all I felt was rage.
Chen had allowed this. Protected it. Profited from it. And she was still out there.
Dawn crept over the compound as the last of the survivors were evacuated.
I sat on a loading dock, watching the sky turn pink and gold, trying to feel something other than empty.
Tyler had found a first aid kit somewhere, was stitching up his own arm with the casual efficiency of someone who'd done it before.
Axel found us there. He looked like hell—covered in soot and blood, exhaustion carved into every line—but he was alive.
We all were. "Chen's files," he said, holding up a hard drive.
"Everything. Financial records, communications with Viper, names of everyone she's been protecting.
" He handed it to Tyler. "Your evidence just got a lot stronger. "
Tyler took it, something like hope flickering in his eyes. "This could bring down half the Bureau's organized crime division."
"That's the idea."
"What now?" I asked. Before anyone could answer, a phone rang.
We all froze. It was coming from Slash's body—a burner phone that we'd missed. Tyler crossed to it, checked the screen. "Unknown number." He answered, put it on speaker.
Silence. Then a voice I recognized—calm, pleasant, professionally warm.
Michelle Chen.
"I assume Viper is dead," she said. "And Slash, given that he's not answering. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. Men like them are replaceable."
"This is over, Chen." Tyler's voice was hard. "We have your files. Your records. Everything."
"Do you?" She sounded amused. "Then I suppose you also know about the secondary location. The one Viper kept off the books." A pause. "Thirty-seven more. That's how many I have. Women and children. Tucked away where your Phoenix friends will never find them."
My stomach dropped. "You're bluffing," Tyler said.
"Am I? You spent eight months inside Viper's operation.
Did you really think you saw everything?
" Her voice hardened, the pleasant mask slipping.
"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to destroy that hard drive.
Every copy, every backup. And then you're going to disappear—all of you—and pretend none of this ever happened. "
"And if we don't?"
"Then thirty-seven people die. Slowly. Painfully. And I'll make sure the last thing they know is that you could have saved them." Another pause. "You have twenty-four hours to decide. I'll be in touch."
The line went dead. We stared at each other—Tyler, Axel, and me. The sunrise painted the compound in shades of blood and gold. "She's lying," Axel finally said. "She has to be."
"Maybe." Tyler's jaw was tight. "But can we risk being wrong?"
I looked at the hard drive in his hand. The evidence that could destroy Chen. The evidence that might cost thirty-seven innocent lives. Twenty-four hours.
The war wasn't over. It was just beginning.