Chapter 42
Bastiaan
The floodlight hums overhead, its beam spilling hard and white across the dock, carving the night into brutal contrast—blinding brightness and deep shadow.
The Reapers are already waiting for us, gathered in a knot of leather and patched cuts.
Still hands. Eyes that track every inch of me as I close the distance.
Each step I take is deliberate.
Boot scrape. Pause. Boot scrape.
Not slow enough to look scared.
Not fast enough to look desperate.
One of them steps forward before I’m close enough to hear him clearly.
Doesn’t matter—I know his type. Big, broad-shouldered, built like he could pull a fucking engine block with one arm.
His mouth carries a half-smile, the kind worn by men who have already imagined how they’ll hurt you and are just waiting to see if you deserve it.
His gaze locks on mine like he’s measuring me against whatever fantasy he’s already worked out. I’m sure this prick is the President.
When I’m close enough, he says it. “Van der Meer. Flower man in the flesh. Didn’t think you’d walk in here alone.”
“I’m here for Amber. Who are you?”
His grin sharpens. “Hawk. Prez of the London chapter. I get it, the bitch is a pretty thing. Got some fight in her. I like fight.”
My jaw ticks, a reflex I can’t stop. He notices. Likes it.
Behind me, the low growl of engines cuts through the air—two quick revs, then silence. Headlights sweep over the dock and vanish. Boots hit the concrete—heavy, deliberate. Jack moves up beside me, his men spilling out behind him like a black tide, spreading to the edges of the light.
“You start without me?” Jack’s voice is calm, even bored. But the edge under it is steel.
“Just started,” I say.
“And Amber?”
I don’t answer. She’s somewhere behind these bastards, locked up, and every second we spend here is another she spends in that room.
Hawk glances at Jack, clocks the way his men stand—loose but ready. “Two for one, Chains,” he drawls. “Must be important to both of you.”
“She ain’t important,” Jack says, stepping slightly ahead of me. His voice is flat. “She’s everything. And you’re going to hand her over.”
Hawk’s grin says he’s been waiting for that. “Maybe. You’ve got one hour to give me what I want. You drag your feet… she stays with me. And she won’t be walking anywhere by the time I’m done with her.”
Inside, I go cold. On the outside, I give him nothing. But he’s smart enough to know his words hit home.
The wiry Brit on Hawk’s left pulls a phone from his pocket. “You want proof she’s breathin’?” He taps the screen and hands it over.
The video’s grainy, but I’d know her in a blackout. Amber. On the floor, her back to the wall, knees drawn in. Wrists bound. Eyes locked on the camera steady. But I see the truth in the small things: the tightness at her mouth, the stiffness in her shoulders, the controlled, deliberate breathing.
“Say hello, princess,” a voice purrs from somewhere off-screen.
The gag’s in, she can’t fucking speak. She doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. She stares into the lens like she’s trying to burn through it and reach me.
“That’s enough,” I snap. My voice is sharper than I intended.
The wiry prick smirks, but Hawk takes the phone from him, slips it into his cut. “She’s alive. She’s fine—for now.”
Jack’s voice cuts in, even, low. “Here’s the deal. You get your guys back, I get my daughter whole. If she’s not, I’ll start takin’ pieces off you until we’re fuckin’ even.”
Hawk tilts his head like he’s weighing it. “We’ll see. I want confirmation. Clock’s ticking.”
“You’ll have it,” Jack says.
Hawk’s hand shifts. It’s small, almost lazy, but I track it. He dips under his cut, and then steel catches the floodlight—a gun, black and cold. He levels it at my chest.
“See,” Hawk says, conversational, “I don’t like deals I can’t enforce.” His thumb drags the slide back with a metallic hiss, chambering a round. “One wrong move, I drop you before your girl’s daddy here can fuckin’ blink.”
I lock my stance. My gaze doesn’t leave his. If he’s looking for a flinch, he won’t find it here.
Jack doesn’t even shift his weight. His voice comes low and lethal. “If you shoot him, Hawk, you’ll be chokin’ on your own blood before you hit the fuckin’ water.”
For one long second, the only sound is the tide slapping the pilings and the hum of the floodlight. Then Hawk lowers the gun, slow and deliberate, sliding it back under his cut. The threat stays.
He grins. “Better hurry. Pretty bitch like that… I might get bored waitin’.”
The hour grinds past like rusted chain. Jack takes calls—short, clipped, no wasted words. His men shift positions, scanning the shadows beyond the dock’s light. I stay where I am, watching Hawk, picturing her.
Not the grainy version on the phone. The real Amber.
Sitting on a cabin floor in her bare feet, brushing her thumb over my cheek.
Laughing once—head tilted back—because I told her one of Abel’s godawful knock-knock jokes that wasn’t even a joke.
I think about her breathing in a small, locked room, listening for footsteps, forcing herself to stay calm.
Jack’s phone buzzes. He checks, answers, speaks ten words and hangs up. His eyes cut to Hawk. “London’s ready.”
Hawk’s eyebrows tick up. “Is that right?”
Jack lifts his chin toward Hawk’s man with the phone. “Put your people on. Live.”
The wiry fucker snorts like it’s a game but taps again, then flips the screen outward.
A video call blinks into focus: a dim clubhouse room, wood panelling, a torn banner.
Two men on a couch—banged up, pissed off, breathing.
Behind them, a clock on the wall says 23:18.
A hand we don’t see holds the camera steady.
“Talk,” Hawk says.
One of the couch guys leans forward, split lip, eyes mean. “We’re back,” he says. “In London. Breathin’.”
“Whole?” Hawk asks.
The second guy rolls his shoulder like it hurts, but works. “Whole enough.”
“Show me the room,” Hawk says.
The view turns, shaky, across a bar top, a chalkboard with this week’s pool bracket, a back door with a bent hinge they still haven’t fixed. Hawk watches all of it like he’s checking a ledger.
“Good,” he says finally, and the word drops into the dock light like a coin in a glass.
He lowers the phone with a satisfied blink. “They’re home. Which means,” he adds, looking at me like I’m a curiosity he’s decided not to buy, “it’s your turn.”
Jack doesn’t look away from Hawk when he speaks. “Bring her.”
Hawk flicks two fingers. One of his men disappears into the warehouse. The door shuts on a dull hydraulic wheeze.
Time lengthens. Not a minute. Not a second. Just the stretch between one breath and the next, and then the one after that, and how empty they feel when you can’t hear her taking them too.
I make myself map the ground because if I don’t, I’ll move.
The forklift ruts in the concrete. The coiled hose to my right.
The three-pace gap from the shadow beside the stack of pallets to the edge of the light—someone could be in there if they were idiot enough to be in there.
The glint off a bottle near the piling tells me the tide’s high enough to eat a body quick if it falls wrong.
The line I’ll take if something goes bad: two steps forward, angle left—
The door opens.
She steps out.
Amber.
Bound wrists. Gag. Hair pulled back roughly somewhere along the way. Chin up. Eyes locked on me like nothing else exists or ever did.
Every muscle in me tightens and then let’s go in the same instant, like a rope yanked and released.
“Untie her,” I say. I don’t raise my voice; I don’t want to cause any more shit than what we’re dealing with.
A Reaper hesitates because he’s stupid or new. Hawk tilts his head. The plastic bites once, twice, and falls. The gag comes free. Strings of saliva and cloth taste be damned; she doesn’t wipe her mouth. She doesn’t look anywhere but at me.
Her lips are dry. Her face is pale. Her eyes—Christ—her eyes are steady and alive and so angry with fear that I want to put my hands through the night.
“Bas,” she rasps.
I’m already moving. Two steps, and she hits my chest like a breath I’ve been holding since birth.
She sags when I close my arms, not because she’s weak—but because the job she gave her body is done now, and it finally lets her share it.
Her fingers hook into the back of my jacket—skin to cloth to skin. Proof.
“I’ve got you,” I breathe into her hair. “You’re safe, liefje. I’ve got you.”
Her next breath shudders. I feel it. I file the sound away with the other things I’ll never let happen again.
“Trades not finished,” Hawk says, voice bored on purpose.
I don’t look at him. I angle my body so she’s behind my chest and arm, and my hip is between her and his men. Jack’s already stepped that half pace forward, which means death if anyone misreads it.
“You’ve got your proof,” Jack says. “You got your boys in London. We walk out with my daughter. Clean and quiet.”
Hawk looks at his nails like he’s weighing dirt. Then he takes one step, close enough I could count the stitches in his patch if I cared. The dock tightens around that movement like a noose.
“Almost clean,” he says, and his hand slides again. The gun is back, easy and fast and aimed. Not at me this time.
At her.
The world narrows to a black circle. The part of me that plans isn’t thinking; it’s doing. I pull her tighter behind me, shoulder turned, stance locked, hand open at my side where it needs to be to move through him if he breathes wrong.
Jack’s voice doesn’t lift. “Hawk.”
Hawk’s grin flashes. “Relax. Man’s entitled to insurance. One wrong blink and I redecorate your boy’s jacket.”
“He ain’t my boy,” Jack says. “Lower the gun.”
“Or what?” Hawk asks, affectionately. “You’ll scold me?”
Jack’s eyes don’t change. “Or I’ll put you on your back lookin’ at the sky through a hole in your fuckin’ face.”