Chapter 10
TEN
RIOT
I hit Ghost’s number and the fucker answers on the second ring. “Yeah.”
A beat of silence. “Down how?”
“Someone took shots at me. My bike’s wrecked.”
He’s quiet for a moment before he asks, “You hit?”
“Grazed. But I’m still breathing.”
“Fuck. You alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Send me your exact location.”
I pull up my location and send it. “Ten minutes,” I say.
“Five,” he answers, and then the line goes dead.
I don’t sit still. I walk the edge of the road once just to make sure nothing’s bleeding heavier than it feels, and I flex my fingers to confirm everything still responds.
The bike is twisted ten yards away, chrome scraped raw and one saddlebag torn clean off. Tank is going to lose his mind over it.
Headlights crest the rise faster than they should.
First the truck. Then the bikes. Ghost rides in first, hard and straight, with Blade on his left and two prospects behind them.
The truck pulls up behind my wrecked bike, and the driver door opens before it’s even fully stopped.
Mason steps out. Dagger comes around from the passenger side, already scanning the tree line like he expects round two.
Ghost kills his engine and swings off his bike in one smooth motion. His eyes move over me quickly, cataloging the blood, the way I’m standing, the way I’m favoring my shoulder.
“You look like hell,” he says.
“Feel worse,” I answer.
“Where?”
“Arm.”
He steps closer and pulls the fabric back without asking. “Yeah. You’re lucky.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Mason approaches slower, deliberate. “Walk me through it,” he says.
“Black SUV,” I tell him. “No plates. Stayed back until the straightaway. Then they closed distance and opened fire.”
“How many?” Dagger asks.
“At least one shooter. Maybe two. I heard multiple reports but only saw muzzle flash from the passenger side.”
“You return fire?” Mason asks.
“Twice. Might’ve clipped one.”
Dagger nods once. “Think it’s random?”
“No,” I say flatly. “This was deliberate.”
Ghost glances at the bike. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters. “Tank’s gonna cry.”
Blade huffs a quiet laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Load it,” Mason says.
The guys move fast. Two of them lift the back end of the bike while Dagger and Ghost steady the front.
It takes muscle and a few curses, but they get it upright enough to roll it toward the truck.
Metal grinds and something drags, but nobody complains.
They guide it up the ramp and into the bed, strapping it down tight like they’re handling a body.
Ghost turns back to me. “You riding or you sitting?”
“I’ll sit,” I admit, because I’m not stupid enough to try balancing a bike with one arm half-numb.
Mason studies me for a second longer. “You sure you’re steady?”
“I’m steady.”
He nods once. “Good. Then we move.”
Blade and the prospects mount up again. Ghost climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck. Dagger stays close to me as we walk toward it, not hovering, not crowding, just there in case my knees decide to argue.
“You think this is tied to her?” Dagger asks quietly, low enough that the others won’t catch it over the engines.
“Yeah,” I answer without hesitation.
Mason hears it anyway.
His jaw tightens slightly, but he doesn’t argue.
“Then this just stopped being simple,” he says.
I climb into the passenger side of the truck and shut the door. Ghost pulls out first, bikes flanking us like a moving wall.
My shoulder throbs in time with the rumble of the engine, and I stare out at the dark stretch of road disappearing behind us. Someone just tested us and we’re about to answer.
I’ve been in my office for over an hour trying to get a lead on who the fuck thought they could come after me.
Phone calls. Texts. Names pulled from old lists that should have stayed buried.
Right now I’m coming up with options I don’t like.
We handled our Russian problem when we took down Volkov.
So why the fuck are there more Russians circling?
Retaliation? A cousin. A brother. Some ghost from his organization looking to make a statement?
Or does this have something to do with Anya?
Do they want her back? The thought hits harder than the bullet did.
Fuck. I won’t let anything happen to her.
I push back from my desk before I punch a hole through it.
The walls feel too close, the air too thick with old leather and gun oil and frustration.
I need space. I step out of the office and head for the back door, and of course my brothers fall in behind me without a word.
Blade. Rev. Switch. A silent wall of ink and loyalty. No questions. Just presence.
The back lot is dim, security lights throwing long shadows over cracked asphalt and oil stains that have been there longer than some of our prospects. I pull a cigarette from the pack in my cut and light it, the flame steady even though my hand isn’t.
My shoulder is burning under the bandage, a deep, pissed off throb that reminds me every time I move that I got lucky. The graze is clean, but it’s angry. My bike is wrecked, twisted metal and shattered glass hauled off to the side like a body.
But I’m still standing.
That matters.
Because the part of me that wants to sit down and let the pain catch up is the same part that would start replaying it. The crack of gunfire splitting the night. The sting ripping through my arm. The way the road rushed up when I lost control for half a second.
I am not giving my head that kind of room tonight.
The guys spread out around me in a loose perimeter, backs to brick, eyes scanning the dark beyond the fence line. No one relaxes. Not really. Perdition is still roaring on the other side of the building, bass bleeding through metal and concrete, the pulse of it steady and defiant.
Mason makes the call not to shut it down, deciding that it is business as usual in the front while we deal with what almost happened in the back. If whoever did this is watching, they do not get the satisfaction of seeing us flinch or scramble.
I take a long drag and let the smoke fill my lungs, welcoming the familiar bite as it settles in my chest. Blade shifts closer to me, his gaze cutting toward the street like he expects something to come barreling around the corner at any second.
“You think it’s tied to her.”
It is not a question. It is a statement.
“Everything’s tied to her right now,” I mutter, because that is the truth whether I like it or not.
Rev exhales slowly, his breath curling into the night air. “Volkov had reach.”
“He had reach,” I agree evenly. “Had.”
That is the problem.
We ended him clean, and we made sure it was public enough that the message should have stuck. Anyone paying attention should have understood exactly what happens when you come for us. So either someone did not get it, or someone simply does not care.
My jaw tightens as headlights sweep past the mouth of the alley before disappearing into the dark. My mind runs through the possibilities again, methodical and relentless. Old deals. Old enemies. The Russians we pushed out last year. The infiltration. The drug push in Jackson.
This feels different.
It feels targeted. It feels precise. They followed me when I left Perdition and waited until I was alone before making their move.
There is nothing random about that.
And if this is about Anya, then it changes everything.
My chest tightens at the thought. She is not a bargaining chip. She is not leverage. She is not getting dragged back into that world because some asshole wants to test our boundaries or see how far he can push.
I flick ash onto the pavement and grind my teeth.
“They want to make a statement,” Switch says quietly, his voice steady but edged with something darker.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“They picked the wrong motherfucker.”
A low, humorless chuckle moves through the group, the sound carrying more promise than amusement.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and every muscle in my body locks tight. For a split second, I think it might be her. I pull it out quickly, my pulse kicking hard.
It is not her.
It is information instead. A partial plate. A vehicle description. A possible direction of travel.
I glance toward the front of the building without meaning to.
She doesn’t belong anywhere near this. And yet, the image of her in that warehouse, chained to concrete and still looking at me like she refused to break, slides into my head.
If this is because of her, then they just made the biggest mistake of their lives.
Because I didn’t hesitate then and I won’t hesitate now.
Blade is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching the entrance like he is waiting for the same SUV to come back and try again.
Ghost has been pacing a slow line near my bike, but he is not really pacing.
He is measuring distance. Tank is muttering under his breath about my bike like that’s the real tragedy here, and I would normally tell him to shut up, but there is something grounding about the fact that he cares enough to be pissed.
Headlights swing into the lot. A black SUV pulls up and then another behind it.
I don’t have to ask who that is, because there is a particular way those vehicles move, controlled and confident like the road belongs to them.
The first SUV isn’t even fully stopped when the passenger door flies open.
Anya jumps out before the vehicle settles, heels hitting pavement hard enough that one of Viktor’s men swears under his breath and reaches toward her on instinct, but she shrugs him off without breaking stride.
She crosses the lot straight toward me like nothing else exists, and for a split second the whole place shifts around her, because even my guys react to her movement.
Mason steps half a pace forward and then stops himself, because he is not blocking her.
Ghost stops pacing. Blade straightens. Tank goes quiet.