Chapter 17 Inferno #2
"Am I?" That smile widened. "Funny thing about the FBI. I've spent twenty years building relationships there. You'd be surprised how many agents answer to me."
As if on cue, new gunfire erupted outside—different pattern, different weapons. FBI tactical teams had arrived. But instead of converging on Chen's mercenaries, they seemed to be fighting... each other?
"Your brother's backup," Chen said, reading my expression. "Unfortunately for him, two of those 'trusted agents' have been on my payroll for years. Right now, they're keeping Sarah and her team very, very busy."
My heart sank.
"Here's what's going to happen." Chen moved closer, and I could smell her perfume—something expensive, floral, obscenely out of place in this nightmare. "You're going to come with me. Quietly. And in exchange, I'll let these last few sheep go."
"And if I refuse?"
She nodded to her man. The gun pressed harder against the elderly woman's temple. She whimpered, barely conscious but aware of the danger pressing against her head.
"Then I start reducing the surplus population."
The boy behind me was trembling, clutching my jacket. The woman's eyes were wide and lost with terror. Three mercenaries, automatic weapons, no cover, no backup—
"Okay." The word scraped out of my throat. "Okay. Let them go."
"Child, no—" The woman started.
"Shut up." Chen's mask slipped, just for a second—that reptilian coldness underneath. "Mr. Nakamura has made his choice. Wise man." She gestured to her team. "Secure him. Let the others—"
The window behind her exploded.
Declan's rifle cracked once more. Two mercenaries dropped, one with half his head missing. The third spun, raising his weapon toward the window—
I moved.
The tactical pen was in my hand before I consciously reached for it. I drove it into the third mercenary's throat, just below the balaclava. He gurgled, and dropped with a hollow thud. I grabbed his weapon, spun—
Chen had the elderly woman in front of her like a shield, a compact pistol pressed to her head. "Impressive." She wasn't smiling anymore. "Your brother taught you well."
"Let her go."
"Or what? You'll shoot through a hostage?" She was backing toward a side door, dragging the woman with her. "I don't think so. Not the heroic nurse who saves lives."
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know everything about you." Her eyes glittered with something ugly.
"I know you watched your grandmother die.
I know you cried yourself to sleep in six different foster homes.
I know you fell in love with a broken biker who makes you feel needed.
" She was at the door now, almost through.
"You're predictable, Kai. That's why you'll always lose. "
"Maybe."
The voice came from behind her. Tyler emerged from the shadows of the side room, gun leveled at Chen's head. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, but his hand was steady.
"But he's not alone."
Chen's smile flickered. "Tyler. I was wondering when you'd—"
"Let her go. Now."
"You won't shoot. I'm your only link to the Bureau's corruption. Kill me, and it all gets buried."
"I have your files. I have witnesses. I have thirty-seven victims who can testify." Tyler's voice was ice. "I don't need you alive, Chen. I just prefer it."
The standoff turned the air into ice. Chen's eyes darted between us—calculating, always calculating.
Then Axel's voice, from behind Tyler: "He won't shoot you. But I will." He stepped into view, covered in blood and ash, gun raised. Behind him, Irish and Blade, weapons trained. Chen was surrounded.
"It's over," Axel said. "Let the woman go."
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then Chen laughed—a brittle, ugly sound.
"You think this ends anything?" She released the woman, who crumpled to the floor.
I rushed to her, checked her pulse—alive, terrified, but alive.
"I'm one person. One cog in a machine that's been running for decades.
Kill me, arrest me—it doesn't matter. Someone else will take my place. They always do."
"Maybe." Tyler moved forward, pulled out handcuffs. "But you'll be rotting in prison while they try."
He wrenched her arms behind her back. She didn't resist—just stood there with that cold smile, watching me as the cuffs clicked shut.
"Your grandmother's heart was so fragile at the end," she said softly. "These things happen to old women." Her eyes met mine, flat and cold. "Especially when someone decides they should."
Tyler yanked her toward the door. "Move."
She went, still smiling, leaving poison in her wake.
The aftermath was controlled chaos. FBI tactical teams—the ones still loyal—secured the farmhouse, separated Chen's compromised agents from the rest. Medics swarmed the victims, providing the kind of professional care I'd been improvising with bandages and prayers.
Thirty-seven people. All alive. All rescued.
I sat on the farmhouse steps, watching ambulances load the last of the victims, too exhausted to move. The boy I'd saved—his name was Daniel, I'd learned—had refused to let go of my hand until the paramedics gently pried him away. He'd looked back at me as they lifted him into the ambulance.
"Thank you," he'd whispered. Two words. Worth everything.
Axel found me there as dawn broke over the farm.
"Hey." He dropped onto the step beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "You okay?"
"No." I watched the sky lighten, pink and gold bleeding through the grey. "But I will be."
"Chen's in custody. Federal marshals are taking her to a secure facility—one Tyler's partner controls. No chance of escape or... accidents."
"Good."
"The victims are being transported to three different hospitals. Maria's coordinating with social services, trying to find family members." He paused. "Some of them don't have anyone to go back to."
"Then we help them find something new." I turned to face him. "That's what family does, right?"
His smile was tired but real. "Right."
We sat in silence as the sun rose higher, painting the ruined farm in shades of gold. Somewhere inside, FBI agents cataloged evidence. Somewhere on a highway, Chen was being driven toward a cell she'd never leave.
It was over. Finally, truly over.
"Kai." Tyler's voice made me look up. He was standing a few feet away, arm bandaged, exhaustion carved into every line of his face. But he was smiling. "Sarah wants to meet you. Properly. Says anyone who can survive Chen's personal attention deserves a commendation."
"Maybe later." I didn't have the energy for introductions. "Tyler... what Chen said about the FBI... About someone taking her place..."
"She's not wrong." His smile faded. "This doesn't end corruption. It ends her. But it's a start."
"Is that enough?"
"It has to be." He looked out at the sunrise, something wistful in his expression. "We saved sixty people in two days, Kai. Sixty lives that would have been sold, destroyed, enslaved. That matters. Even if we can't save everyone—what we did here matters."
I thought about Ana, the girl from the warehouse. About Daniel, the boy who'd whispered thank you. About thirty-seven people who would see their families again because we refused to give up. "Yeah," I said. "It does."
Tyler nodded, clapped my shoulder, and walked back toward the farmhouse. Axel pulled me closer, pressed a kiss to my temple.
"Let's go home," he murmured.
Home. The clubhouse. The family we'd built from blood and choice.
"Yeah." I let him help me to my feet. "Let's go home."
We walked toward the trucks together, leaving the farm—and everything it represented—behind us.
But as we drove away, I couldn't shake the echo of Chen's final words.
These things happen to old women. Especially when someone decides they should.
She hadn't confessed. Hadn't even claimed responsibility. She'd just shown me the shape of the knife and let me imagine how deep it had gone.
Some poisons don't need proof to work. They just need doubt.
And doubt, I was learning, could last forever.