24. Chapter 24 #2
I stroll past Felicia and stop right in front of the chair, looming over my former second-in-command, letting the silence stretch. Smiling as I watch his pupils dilate with the fear of being caught.
“Boss-man? I—I can explain,” he stammers, jerking against the ties. “She lured me down here. She’s crazy, Rylen, she’s—”
“You going to tell Maddox, are you?” I mock him, my voice dropping into a register that vibrates through my chest.
“Rylen, listen, she’s compromised!” Nathyn yells, his chest heaving as he thrashes. “I was gathering intel! I was trying to protect the club!”
I let out a slow, weary sigh, shaking my head. This fucking idiot must really think little of me if he believes I’d fall for that horseshit.
“You were blackmailing my staff, and extorting the main talent,” I announce, my voice terrifyingly calm.
“And worst of all? You made me leave the comfort of my office to come deal with your disloyal ass in this freezing cold fucking basement. Now, let’s talk about that burner phone, Nathyn. And the list.”
He looks like he’s seen a ghost. He tries to slip the stoic mask back in place but it’s cracking; realising I didn’t just find out about Felicia—I found out about everything .
“Felicia,” I say, my voice steady, not looking away from the top of Nathyn’s head. “Leave.”
“But—” she whines.
“I said, leave ,” I growl, reaching out to grab Nathyn by the hair, and yank his head back up. “This part isn’t for you.”
Felicia huffs, seeming like she’s going to fight me on it, until I cut her a look that leaves no room for argument. Her nostrils flare in defiance but she says nothing as she stalks towards the exit.
The door hasn’t even finished groaning shut before my fist finds the side of Nathyn’s jaw, colliding with a blow so sharp his neck momentarily loses all its strength.
I reach behind me, pulling a blade from the sheath at the small of my back. The steel catches the flicker of the single overhead bulb as I draw it free.
“You’re pathetic,” Nathyn snarls after a moment, trying to find his mask again. He spits a thick wad of blood onto the floor.
“You’re nothing more than Maddox’s little attack dog. What happens when he decides he doesn’t want to keep a monster by his side anymore?”
I smirk, bending down until I’m at eye level and let the last shreds of the professional mask fall away entirely, letting him see the side of me I keep buried.
“You’re absolutely right,” I murmur. “There is nothing in this world that matters more to me than Maddox. Which is why you’re going to tell me exactly who provided that burner phone and who gave you the names on that list.”
I begin slowly tracing the razor-sharp tip along the inside of his thigh, just above the knee .
“C’mon, Nathyn. Give me a name, and maybe I’ll let your family bury you when we’re through.” I flick my wrist, cutting through the fabric of his slacks.
“I don’t know any names!” he gasps, flinching as the cold steel touches his skin. “The phone was encrypted! I just got the drops in the alleyway! I never saw a face!”
I press the tip in, just enough to draw a bead of dark red.
“Wrong answer. Not to worry—we have all night, and I’m very good at keeping people awake.” I smile.
I spend the next ten minutes breaking him. It isn’t pretty.
I use the blade to peel back his bravado, and his skin, layer by layer, until the truth finally starts to bleed out.
“My uncle!” he finally shrieks, the sound jagged and raw as he fights to keep the shock from taking over.
“He sent me! Guard Miller! You remember him, don’t you? The one Maddox had fired? The one whose life you ruined !”
The name hits me like a punch to the chest.
Miller .
The sadistic guard from juvie who used to trade extra rations for bruises. Maddox didn’t just get him fired; he’d stripped the man of his pension and his pride.
“He wanted Maddox dead,” Nathyn wheezes, his eyes wide and wild.
“The Morrow break-in… the assault on Cass… that was supposed to be the cover. I was going to finish Maddox off while the club was in chaos and let Morrow take the heat. But you… you fucking ruined it. You saw the feeds looping and ran to the fourth floor before I could slip away. ”
So that’s it then. Nathyn wasn’t just a rogue employee; he was a plant. A slow-acting poison designed to kill the only man I’ve ever truly loved.
“You know, you were right about me Nathyn. There is no length I wouldn’t go to, and nobody I wouldn’t kill if it meant keeping Maddox safe.”
My whisper is a thin veil over the rage and adrenaline boiling in my veins.
Then, the restraint snaps. Before the thought even fully forms, my hand strikes, burying the blade deep into Nathyn’s thigh.
The concrete walls catch his tortured screams and hurl them back at us, but I’m too far gone to hear them.
My consciousness has slipped into the backseat and I’ve become a spectator to my own fury; the predator has claimed the reins, leaving me to watch from a distance as my body moves without me.
“He’s going to find out what you are,” Nathyn wheezes, his head lolling to the side as the shock starts to grey out his vision. His voice comes out as a wet rattle.
“Maddox thinks you’re his protector, but you’re just a butcher. Everyone sees the rot in you but him.”
His sentence ends on a scream as my blade stabs into his groin, severing the connective tissue between his pelvis and his mediocre cock.
The knife overcomes the initial grit of the muscle, sinking in as it begins to saw. Each stroke produces a sickeningly wet, repetitive slice that rings out against the cold concrete.
Blood streams down my forearm like water from a hose, hot and pulsing .
The metallic scent clings heavily in the air, cloying and thick in the back of my throat. It’s a suffocating smell, but to me, it’s the smell of a threat being dismantled.
I stand up, the severed appendage gripped in my crimson-stained fingers. I waggle it in front of his face triumphantly.
“What do you think? New toothbrush?”
Nathyn doesn’t respond, only the whites of his eyes are visible as the blood loss takes hold.
My fingers dig into the side of his jaw, wrenching his mouth open, and I shove his mangled cock inside.
I release my hold and step back, watching him gag uncontrollably. Vomit pools down his chest, mixing with the dark, heavy river of blood at his feet.
His head slumps down—the blood loss has taken its toll.
The room is silent, save for the wet drip-drip-drip on the concrete.
“ What the fuck did you do ?”
The voice hits me like a bucket of ice water. I turn sharply, knife raised, my vision still tunnelled on the kill. I almost lunge before I take in Maddox’s bewilderment.
Fuck, how long has he been watching? Nathyn’s muffled screams were so loud that I didn’t notice him arrive.
I try to shield his field of vision with my body, but it’s too late. Maddox’s hand grips me tightly by the shirt and pulls me to him.
“What did you fucking do, Rylen?” His voice is filled with a mixture of fear and pain. His confused gaze can’t decide if it wants to focus on me, or what’s left of Nathyn’s corpse .
“I did what I had to do,” I admit, indifferently. My voice— is that my voice? —sounding devoid of humanity.
His fingers curl even tighter in my shirt, his breathing ragged. The way his sapphire eyes are searching for answers feels like a bullet to the heart.
I never wanted him to see this. I didn’t want him to have to know the sadistic ways I remove threats from his world. How by the end of it, they aren’t even themselves—they all wear the face of my step-father as I watch the light fade from their eyes.
I don’t want to be this way, but if it’s between them and Maddox, well… it’s not even a choice. Maddox is all that matters. He’s all that’s ever mattered.
He never knew, but even as kids I would wait until he fell asleep, slip out of his grasp and go to the bunk of anyone who dared to mess with him. I’d make sure they knew better than to cast a sideways glance at what was mine.
“Your eyes…” he whispers, a distraught expression splayed out before me.
I know that he’s there, that he’s in pain and needs comforting, and yet I can’t summon the will to soothe him this time. It’s as if I’m stuck behind a wall of glass inside my own body, just out of reach of the controls.
“It’s like you’re not even there. Ry, please— baby , I need you to look at me— really look at me.”
He’s cooing now, caressing my face. The calloused skin of his palms drags through the light stubble scattered across my jaw, smearing Nathyn’s blood across my skin
“Come back to me,” he murmurs, his touch against my cheek is so tender that it’s physically painful .
Maddox’s eyes shimmer, a thin veil of tears threatening to break over his beautiful features. The raw fear and agony in his expression act like a sledgehammer against my defences, cracking the walls I’ve built.
I force my eyes away from him, dragging my gaze toward the carnage I’ve carved into Nathyn. My brows furrow, my mind struggling to process the grisly scene as it finally snaps into focus.
I can feel the heat of the blood—thick and tacky against my skin—and the metallic tang of it coats the back of my throat.
Get it off. Get it off. Get it off.
I’m frantic, my hands slapping at my shirt in a desperate attempt to scrub the mess away, but I’m only painting myself in more of it.
My skin feels like it’s peeling back under a wave of fire, and my chest tightens, my lungs seizing as I fight to suck in enough air.
I killed him. Nathyn’s dead, at the club, because of me.
The weight of what I’ve done hits me like a tonne of bricks. What the fuck am I going to do? There’s over fifty guests upstairs right at this very moment.
“Rylen! Hey, hey—it’s okay!” Maddox’s voice cuts through the static, trying to anchor me.
My face crumples, and I collapse into Maddox’s embrace, seeking the only solid thing left in my world.
“He’s Miller’s nephew,” I whisper against his shoulder.
I feel the sudden tension in Maddox’s frame as he pulls back, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second as the weight of that name lands .
Then, his entire demeanour shifts. The softness doesn’t vanish—it just hardens into a protective suit of armour. The powerhouse of the empire takes the lead, his gaze sharpening with a sudden, lethal clarity.
“We’ll figure everything out later,” he says, his voice dropping into a steady, grounding resonance that demands my focus.
“Nathyn was a threat. That threat is gone. There are no bears.”
He catches my face in his hands, thumbing away a tear before pressing a powerful, lingering kiss to my trembling lips, as if trying to breathe his own iron will into my lungs.
I nod, attempting to pull myself together. I clear my throat then ask the question that’s dawned on me.
“Why are you down here? How did you know where I was?”
“Felicia,” Maddox explains, “she got scared when she heard all the screaming. Probably worried you’d do something stupid, like kill a man,” he chuckles breathlessly.
“Well, good thing I didn’t overreact and do something that idiotic, eh?” I reply, my mouth twitching into a thin, grim smirk.
The heavy door creaks open and Felicia steps into the room, her eyes darting from us to the floor. She sees the crimson ruin of Nathyn’s body and let’s out a sharp, visceral scream that rings in my ears.
Maddox and I both wince at the sound, the high-pitched vibration of her shock scraping against my raw nerves. She doesn’t say a word .
Her face is a mask of pure horror as she turns on her heel and bolts towards the exit.