Chapter Twenty-Five
We tear through the warehouse perimeter in minutes, our fury blazing hotter than the fires of hell.
The fool posts just two guards at the front as our bikes roar onto the lot. He must have believed backup would magically appear. Someone forgot whose motherfucking city this really is. Finding them was inevitable.
Damon's mercenaries spring to life the moment we charge, but I leave the chaos to my brothers. My sights are set on the real prize hidden behind concrete. Gunfire cracks through the air as they scramble to hold us back. The rear guards bolt around the corner, plunging headlong into the carnage.
“Still just those two central heat signatures inside the space, Tomcat,” Vortex’s calm voice says in my ear.
A flanking guard swings his gun toward me, but Cyanide drops him with a single shot to the skull.
I hit the heavy metal door and find it locked.
Just another flimsy barrier between me and my little shadow.
Three savage blows from my hammer, and the handle explodes, letting me wrench the door open and storm inside.
My muscles lock tight the instant I spot two figures grappling on the warehouse floor.
Damon straddles Marigold, his bloodied fist cocked to strike again. He whips his head around as the door crashes open, and I let a savage grin break loose. My woman has already fought like hell. Blood drenches the right side of his face, and a jagged nail juts from his ruined eye.
Marigold seizes the moment his attention falters. Her hands dart across the gritty floor, desperate to snatch up anything she can wield as a weapon.
“Damon, Damon, Damon,” I tsk slowly, strolling into the room with the measured, lethal pace of an apex predator, keeping him distracted for her. “Did you honestly think you could just ride into my city, lay your filthy hands on something that belongs to me, and walk away with your fucking life?”
Marigold’s fingers clamp around a jagged hunk of broken concrete.
With a raw, animal scream, she hurls it at Damon’s head, pouring every shred of strength from her battered body into the blow.
The impact rattles his skull, buying her just enough time to wrench her hips and claw her way out from under him.
As she rises, her damage hits me like a sledgehammer, shattering the numbness in my chest. Her jacket is missing, her shirt hangs in tatters, and her bra barely clings together. Dark bruises bloom across her skin, and her jeans gape open, button and zipper undone.
A tidal wave of catastrophic rage floods my veins, burning hotter than acid.
This bastard nearly stole something sacred from her. He almost shattered her for a second time.
My lip curls into a savage snarl, the need for vengeance propelling me across the concrete, every step fueled by the marks he left on her skin.
She refuses to relent, trusting I’ll never let him overpower her again. The wild, desperate fire in her eyes says it all. She craves this kill. She needs to be the one to finish him, to reclaim her power. And what kind of man would I be if I denied my queen her victory?
She slams her boot into his ribs again as he flails, trying to shove her away. By the time he staggers to his feet, I am already behind him, my arm wrapped tight around his throat, squeezing off his breath in a merciless chokehold.
I look over at her, my breathing deep and steady. “You’ve done good, little shadow.”
“I’m not fucking finished with him,” she snarls right back at me, her chest heaving, blood dripping from her split lip.
“No?” I ask, genuinely needing to know exactly how far she wants to take this torture.
“Well, he’s still breathing, isn’t he? We can’t have that, lover.”
Goddamn, she is so fucking strong.
Right on cue, my brothers, Marigold’s family, begin to flood into the warehouse, their boots echoing off the corrugated steel walls as they form a tight, impenetrable wall of leather and iron around us.
That’s when Damon finally feels the weight of his situation.
He might be the most untouchable motherfucker in the Greek underworld before he faked his death, but he’s standing in our territory now.
Here, the Saint’s Outlaws are the monsters in the dark.
If you come for one of us, you come for all, and most don’t leave with breath in their lungs.
Damon lashes out, his fingers digging into my forearm in a last, frantic bid for survival. That’s what men do when death stares them down. No matter how empty they are inside, they still fight.
“I own you,” Damon roars at Marigold, thrashing and fighting fruitlessly against my iron-clad hold on him.
Marigold pays him no mind, humming a careless tune as she weaves between my brothers, rifling through their arsenal. She’s hunting for something specific, but none of them have it.
“Little shadow,” I call out to her.
“Yes, lover,” she replies, instantly turning and coming over to me.
“If you check my pocket, I think you’ll find something you’ve been missing.”
She tilts her head, a wicked spark lighting up her eyes.
“I always miss that thing, Tomcat.” She shoots Damon a look of pure disgust. “As tempting as it is to prove him wrong by letting you fuck me right here, I’d rather not give him the satisfaction of seeing me naked.
Besides, your brothers are all watching. ”
Damn, I love this woman.
Laughter pours from my chest as I shake my head at her. “Not that, baby.”
Marigold’s face falls in genuine disappointment, making me laugh again as her hand slips into my pocket to discover what’s really waiting for her.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m not opposed to watching a live-action flick,” Malice chimes in from the group, wiggling his brows.
Marigold giggles, her laughter curling into my chest and settling warm against my heart.
Fucking beautiful.
“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all,” Damon continues to rant, his voice raw.
“Sure you will, bud,” I tell him, completely unbothered.
Then, I let out a sharp grunt as a blade suddenly slides deep into my side.
Well, hell. I should have frisked him myself. I figured if he hadn’t pulled a weapon on Marigold, he must be empty-handed. I should have known he was the kind of bastard who wanted to drag out her suffering with nothing but his own two hands.
What none of us expect, though, is what the sight of me being hurt by Damon does to Marigold.
I thought I’d seen her go feral before, but nothing compares to this. Her eyes blaze with a hatred so raw it chills me, her lips curling back as she unleashes a battle cry that ricochets through the warehouse.
The knife she snatched from my pocket flashes in the warehouse gloom before she drives it into Damon’s gut. I lose count of the stab wounds after fifty, long after his life slips away, but I keep holding him steady for my fierce little warrior to finish her work.
At last, she plunges the blade into his chest, right where she said she did before. Her whole body trembles as she peels her blood-soaked fingers from the handle and steps away. Blood stains her skin and shredded clothes, but it’s the wave of relief in her eyes that holds me.
Marigold finally pulls her gaze away from Damon’s ruined chest and looks up at me. Her teeth glide nervously along her bottom lip as worry creases her face. “What if he’s not dead?” she asks, voicing her deepest, most lingering fear out loud.
Dropping his lifeless body to the concrete, I step over it to close the distance to her. I lift my hand toward her face slowly, wanting her to see my exact intention. She instantly leans into my touch when I curl my fingers around her cheek.
“What have I told you, baby? You and me, right?”
She nods.
“Then I got you.”
I turn around to face Pope. “Mind if I borrow Precious?”
Pope narrows his eyes at me, pursing his lips at the request. But then he takes another long look at Marigold, drops his eyes to Damon’s body, and a grim understanding fills him.
Flicking open the leather safety latch of his custom holster, he pulls his signature axe out and passes it directly to me.
“Thanks.”
He shrugs, his voice steady. “She’s one of us.”
Without a single second of hesitation, I bring the heavy axe down right in the middle of Damon’s neck. The blade is incredibly sharp, and it only takes a few more hard, precise swings before Damon’s head completely separates from his body.
I wrap my fingers tightly in his dark hair and lift the severed head up, turning back to face Marigold.
“Holy crap, that’s hot,” she mutters.
Then she looks deep into my eyes, letting me see every single shred of the absolute truth in hers. “I fucking love you.”
“Fucking love you too, baby.” I casually toss Damon's severed head over to Malice and hold the bloody axe back out to Pope before turning my full attention straight back to her. “I'm damn proud of you.”
She scrunches her nose in that maddeningly cute, impossibly perfect way only she can. “For what?”
“For slaying your monsters. Out here tonight, you didn’t need anyone to rescue you, baby. You were your own damn hero.”
Marigold’s gaze drops to Damon’s lifeless, headless form sprawled across the concrete. “He’s really gone.”
I slide my hand up to her throat, fingertips pressing softly to her skin, feeling the steady thrum of her pulse beneath my touch. “Yeah, baby. He’s completely gone.”
“Now what?” she whispers, her whole body collapsing into me as the weight of adrenaline and exhaustion finally drags her down.
“Now you can stop fighting. You can stop running. Now, baby, you can finally fucking live.”
“Okay. Can we go home now?”
“After we get you looked at by the medic.”
Patch walks over to us right on cue, aggressively shaking his head in annoyance. “After you’re both looked at.” He cuts a hard glare directly at me. “Did you just completely forget you have a fucking hole in your side from where the bastard stabbed you?”
“Now that you mention it,” I mutter, my face twisting in a sudden wince as Marigold gasps and yanks up the hem of my black shirt.
“Let’s go. Right now,” she demands, narrowing her eyes at me in a way that leaves absolutely zero room for argument.
“You and Marigold will ride in the back of the cage,” Pope orders, stepping in to take command of the scene.
“My bike—” I start to protest.
“Zodiac will follow right behind the cage riding your bike,” Pope cuts me off, referring to another newer prospect in our ranks. “That cool with you?”
I glance over at the man he’s talking about.
He’s a hell of a lot younger than most of us, but the rigid way he holds his frame tells me he’s already seen a massive amount of shit in those short years, and absolutely none of it was any good.
He’s here for the exact same reasons we all originally gravitated toward the Saint’s Outlaws.
The brotherhood. The absolute loyalty. The deep, grounding knowledge that you’ll always have someone standing at your back.
“Fine,” I tell the prospect, my voice low and warning. “You fuck it up, I do the exact same thing to you.”
Zodiac lowers his head in quiet, respectful acknowledgment. “Treat it like my own, brother.”
Pope glances around the dark warehouse space where Marigold spent the last day, a heavy scowl settling over his face. “Burn this entire place to the fucking ground. Make sure none of this shit comes back on the club.”
Manic and Butcher snatch up the gasoline cans we stash in the cage, dousing every inch of the warehouse with ruthless efficiency.
Blitz, Ducky, and Basilisk drag in the last bodies from outside, stacking them in a grim heap beside Damon.
When every enemy is accounted for, Butcher empties the last of his fuel over the mound, making sure nothing is left untouched.
I draw Marigold close, arms locked around her waist, my chin pressed to her hair as we watch Pope light a match and send it spinning onto the drenched pile. Flames roar to life with a savage whoosh, and the warehouse fills with the choking, unforgettable stench of burning flesh.
“Can we go?” Marigold asks quietly, her head leaning back against my chest.
Then I remember her parents and almost want to kick my own ass for forgetting for a split second.
“Yeah, baby. Let’s get checked out by Patch so we can finally get the hell home.”
She turns slowly in my arms and lifts her blood-coated hands to gently rest against my face. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“I always will. No matter what the stakes are. No matter where you are. You go, I follow, little shadow. Even if that means we’re walking straight through hell together.”
“Really?” she breathes, and I swear to fuck, literal hearts fill her eyes.
“Fucking bet.”
I never wanted this.
That's the truth I would have told anyone who asked, right up until the moment it stopped being true. I wanted freedom. Needed it the way some men need air or motion or open road.
What I didn't understand, what I couldn't have known until Marigold walked into my life and refused to walk back out of it, was that I had the definition wrong.
Freedom isn't the absence of ties.
It's finding the one person who doesn't cage you. The one who blows the doors off every wall you built and stands in the wreckage grinning, ferocious and bright and entirely too much, and somehow makes the ruin feel like home.
I found what I was looking for.
I found it in the most unhinged woman I've ever known.
She is my stillness. My chaos. My liberation and my peace.
Marigold is the destination I never knew I was chasing all along.