SNEAK PEEK LEGION’S FURY
Chapter 1
Legion knew something was wrong before he killed the engine.
The Merritt Veterans Physical Therapy Clinic sat dark at six PM on a Tuesday—no lights in the treatment rooms, no cars in the staff lot, the kind of silence that meant either empty or ambush. Twenty-four years of Special Forces had taught him the difference. This wasn't empty.
He swung off his bike and moved toward the entrance, cataloging details with the automatic precision of a man who'd run operations on four continents.
Fresh tire tracks in the gravel, too wide for Hannah's sedan.
Broken glass glinting near the side door.
And two men in a black SUV parked at the edge of the lot, watching the building with the patient boredom of predators waiting for prey to bolt.
They hadn't noticed him yet. That was about to change.
Legion pushed through the front door and found destruction.
The waiting room looked like a bomb had hit it—chairs overturned, magazines scattered across the floor, the reception desk's computer smashed to pieces. Medical equipment lay in ruins throughout the treatment area. Six years of work reduced to wreckage in what couldn't have been more than an hour.
And in the middle of it all, sitting on an overturned exam table with a bag of frozen peas pressed to her face, was Hannah Merritt.
"You're early." Her voice came out steady, but he caught the tremor underneath. "Appointment's not for another thirty minutes."
Legion crossed the debris field in four strides.
His hand found her chin before she could pull away, tilting her face toward the fading light from the window.
The black eye was fresh—maybe two hours old, swelling already purpling the delicate skin beneath her brow.
Someone had hit her hard enough to leave knuckles imprinted in the bruise.
Something cold and lethal unfurled in his chest.
"Who."
It wasn't a question. It was a demand, delivered in the quiet voice that had made colonels flinch and enemies beg.
Hannah's jaw tightened under his grip. "Couple of guys with a business proposition I wasn't interested in. They got persuasive."
"Names."
"Didn't exactly exchange cards." She pulled away from his touch, green eyes blazing with the same stubborn fire that had made her the best PT he'd ever worked with.
The woman had spent six years bullying Green Berets and Rangers through rehabilitation, refusing to accept anything less than full recovery. She didn't scare easy.
But she was scared now. He could see it in the way her hands shook when she lowered the frozen peas, in the quick glance she shot toward the parking lot.
"They're still out there," Legion said. Statement, not question.
"Told me to think about their offer. Said they'd be back for my answer." Hannah laughed, the sound brittle and wrong. "I think destroying my clinic was supposed to help me think faster."
Legion moved to the window, positioning himself at an angle that let him see the SUV without being visible from outside.
Two men, both with the military contractor look—private security muscle, probably former Army who'd washed out or got pushed out.
The driver was smoking. The passenger was checking his phone.
Neither of them was watching the door.
"Stay here."
"What are you—"
But he was already gone, slipping through the side exit Hannah probably didn't know he'd noticed on his first visit three months ago.
The evening air hit him like a wet blanket—Carolina humidity that clung to everything—and he used the building's shadow to approach the SUV from the driver's blind spot.
The smoker died first.
Legion came through the driver's window before the man could reach for the gun at his hip, one hand clamping over his mouth while the other found the pressure point at his throat.
Four seconds of applied force and the cigarette dropped from slack fingers, the body slumping against the steering wheel.
The passenger looked up from his phone just in time to see Legion coming around the hood.
He was faster than his partner—got a hand on his weapon, started to raise it—but Legion had been dropping men like this since Panama. He caught the gun arm, twisted until the joint separated with a wet pop, and drove his elbow into the man's throat with enough force to crush his windpipe.
The whole thing took maybe fifteen seconds.
Legion stood in the parking lot, breathing slow and controlled, and assessed the situation. Two bodies. One SUV that needed to disappear. And a woman inside who'd just had her world torn apart by people who clearly didn't know what they were dealing with.
He pulled his phone and made two calls. The first was short: coordinates, cleanup, thirty minutes. The second was shorter: "Compound. Now. Bringing company."
When he walked back into the clinic, Hannah was standing at the window.
Her face had gone pale, lips pressed together in a thin line. She'd watched the whole thing—watched him move through those men like they were training dummies, watched him kill without hesitation or remorse. The frozen peas lay forgotten on the floor.
"You—" She stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "You're not just a patient."
"No."
"Those men. They're—"
"Dead." Legion closed the distance between them, stopping just inside her space. Close enough to touch. Close enough to see her pulse hammering in her throat. "And whoever sent them is going to find out that coming after you was the worst mistake they ever made."
Hannah's chin came up—that stubborn defiance he'd watched her aim at broken operators who wanted to quit their rehab. "I didn't ask for your help."
"You didn't have to."
"I can handle my own problems—"
"Your clinic's destroyed. You've got a black eye. And two more of them would've been inside the minute they decided you'd thought long enough." Legion let the words land, watched her flinch at each truth. "This stopped being something you handle alone the second they touched you."
"And what, you're just going to fix it? Ride in on your motorcycle and make it all go away?"
"Something like that." He glanced around the destroyed clinic, at six years of her life reduced to wreckage. "But first, you're going to tell me exactly what they wanted. What 'business proposition' gets delivered with fists."
Hannah was quiet for a long moment. He could see her calculating—weighing her options, measuring him against whatever threat had just blown her world apart. Smart woman. She'd figure out soon enough that her options had narrowed to one.
"Patient files," she finally said. "They wanted access to my patient records. Specifically, veterans with chronic pain conditions."
Something clicked in Legion's mind. The overdose deaths Ghost had mentioned last week—three veterans in two months, all with similar injury profiles. The rumors of a new pill pipeline running through Fayetteville's veteran community.
"How many times have they come before tonight?"
"This was the third visit." Hannah's voice went flat. "First time was polite. Second time they made threats. Tonight they stopped asking."
"And you didn't think to call anyone? Report it?"
Her laugh was bitter. "Report it to who? The cops they probably own? The VA that takes six months to return a phone call?" She shook her head. "I've spent my whole life watching the system fail people, Mr. Kane. I stopped expecting it to help a long time ago."
Legion studied her—the bruise darkening across her cheekbone, the defiance burning in her eyes, the way she held herself like she was ready to fight even though she had to know she was outmatched.
Six years building something that actually helped veterans, and someone had just burned it to the ground because she wouldn't hand over the people she'd dedicated herself to healing.
The cold thing in his chest shifted, becoming something sharper. More personal.
"My name's not Kane." He reached into his cut and pulled out a card—plain black, just a phone number and a patch logo. "Not anymore. And this isn't something the system can fix."
Hannah took the card, stared at it. "Black Ops Brotherhood." She looked up at him, something new in her expression. Realization, maybe. Or the beginning of fear. "You're that motorcycle club. The one with the Special Forces veterans."
"I'm the president of that motorcycle club." Legion held her gaze, let her see exactly what kind of man she was dealing with. "And whatever's happening here—whatever these people want with your patients—it just became club business."
"I don't want to be anyone's business."
"Too late." He nodded toward the parking lot, where the SUV sat with two bodies cooling inside. "You became my business the second I walked in and saw your face. Now we can do this the hard way, where you argue and I ignore you and we waste time while whoever's behind this sends more people. Or—"
"Or?"
Legion stepped closer. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his eyes. Close enough that he could smell antiseptic and fear and something softer underneath—something that made him want to put his hands on her for reasons that had nothing to do with checking her injuries.
"Or you trust me. Just long enough to figure out who did this and make sure they never come near you again."
Hannah stared at him for a long, charged moment. He watched her weigh his words against everything she knew—the violence she'd witnessed, the bodies in the parking lot, the destroyed clinic around them.
"I don't trust anyone."
"Good." Legion's mouth curved slightly—not quite a smile, but close. "Neither do I. That's why we're going to get along."
The sound of motorcycles rumbled in the distance—brothers coming for the cleanup, right on schedule. Hannah's eyes darted toward the window, then back to him.
"We need to talk," Legion said. "About what you know, who's targeting you, and how we're going to make them regret it."
The look in his eyes made it clear: refusing wasn't an option.