Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jackson
The would-be-assassin’s scream ricochets off the concrete walls. Blood slicks the floor, thickening the air with the stench of iron and sweat.
I press my forearm into the guy’s throat, pinning him to the chair. My knuckles are split open, raw, blood drying in the tight cracks.
“Who hired you?” I ask, my voice low, rough, and calm. The kind of calm that makes grown men start to pray.
He shakes his head, gasping. “If I tell you, I’m dead anyway—”
From his cot, Sin exhales with a soft laugh. “Try the ribs,” he says, his tone smooth, unaffected. “They crack faster when the body’s in shock. Makes a sound that gets through even the thick ones.”
I don’t respond, but I take Sin’s suggestion, because why not? I drive my fist into his ribcage once. Twice. The third blow cracks the rib loud enough to make the guy choke.
Sin claps slowly. “See? Beautiful.”
“Who sent you?” I growl, leaning in close. In my mind’s eye, I can see him grappling with Ava on the floor of my bedroom, and I see fucking red. “Was it Shadow and Ash?”
“No.” He spits a wad of blood onto the concrete floor.
Sin snorts. “Please. If he were one of my guys, you’d be dead already.”
I turn my head just enough to glare at him. “Shut the fuck up.”
Sin’s been holed up in the Panic Room for weeks now, lounging on that cot like some kind of dark prince in exile. And with each day, he gets more and more annoying.
The guy groans. I grab the knife from a tray I brought in and press the tip under his chin until a bead of blood slips down his throat. “Talk.”
He lets out a strangled sob. “I—I can’t.”
Sin’s annoying-as-fuck voice cuts through the room again. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
I turn toward him. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
He smiles. “Ask him who paid him not to talk.”
The guy freezes. And I feel it—that shift, that pulse of fear that tells me Sin just hit the vein.
I twist the knife just enough to bite. Blood beads along the edge, gliding down the man’s throat, and my mouth waters. “Who fucking paid you?”
He shakes his head, body trembling.
A part of me—one I try not to look at too closely—craves this violence. The sensation of metal sinking into flesh. The weight of another man’s fear in my hands. It’s sick, but it’s real. One of the few things that still makes me feel alive.
I slam the knife down through his palm. He screams, loud and broken. The sound ricochets through the Panic Room. I feel it vibrate in my chest.
“Stop wasting my fucking time.” My patience is hanging by a microscopic thread. He coughs, choking on his own blood. I grab his jaw and force his head up. “Who. The fuck. Paid. You?”
Silence.
I grab the guy’s shirt and rip it open, the fabric tearing easily. “You know what happens when guys like you don’t talk?” I whisper. “I carve them up, bit by bit.”
He jolts when the blade bites into his skin, a wet sound following as I drag it across his chest. Not deep enough to kill. Just deep enough to hurt. To motivate.
“Please—” His voice cracks.
“Tell me…”
“I can’t—”
“You can, and you will. Or I won’t have any more use for you,” I say. “And do you know what I do with things I have no use for?”
The knife twists in his hand again. His scream rips through the air, raw and animalistic. “Okay!” he pants. “Okay. I don’t know who hired me, exactly. But I know the order came from the inside, someone called Arbrum Notis.”
Everything stops. He fumbled the name, but I know it. A ghost from three years ago. “Aurum Noctis?”
The username from the Senator’s computer.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he says.
I stare down at him, my breathing labored. “You’ve talked to him?”
He shakes his head weakly, eyes rolling back. He’s losing consciousness. “Only through text…” He struggles to breathe, head lolling to the side. “You think you know who your enemies are. But not all of them are outside the walls…”
I sink the knife into his chest, right into his heart, watching with satisfaction as he twitches once, then twice. There was no point in asking him more questions. Whatever he said next would’ve been a last, desperate lie.
Sin whistles long and slow. “Well, well, well. Now, that’s interesting.”
I pull the knife free, blood dripping from the blade. The man slumps in the chair. The sight of him beaten and bloody should feel like victory. It doesn’t. It only feeds the thing inside me that never gets full. That part that wakes up hungry no matter what I do.
“It’s someone close, then,” Sin muses. “Someone who knows how to get to you...”
I drag a hand down my face, leaving a streak of wet blood in its wake. My pulse is still hammering, and I can’t tell if it’s adrenaline or my hunger for more violence.
“Careful,” Sin says. “You keep losing control like that, and there won’t be much left for your girl to save.”
I let out a dark laugh. “She’s the one who needs saving.”
For once, Sin doesn’t look amused. “Yeah, I’m not so sure about that…”
With a grunt, I drop the knife onto the tray, and it falls with a loud metallic clang. The guy in the chair is still breathing, but barely. I’d be surprised if he made it past the hour.
I wipe the blood off my knuckles and head for the door, needing space before I do something I can’t take back.
Sin’s laugh follows me. “You’re slipping, McKnight. All this over a girl?”
I don’t answer him, but the words crawl under my skin anyway.
Because he’s right.
This isn’t about control or vengeance or the damn Burning Crown anymore.
It’s about Ava.
I never stopped loving her.
Not when she left, not when I told myself she was safer without me, not when I tried to fuck the feeling out of my system. It’s been there the whole damn time, festering under my ribs, waiting for the moment she’d walk back into my life and remind me what it felt like to bleed.
And now that she’s here, I don’t know how to stop. I don’t think I ever did.
I shut the vault door, locking Sin in with the mess. As I head up the basement stairs, I tell myself I’m calm. But I’m not. The need for violence still pulses in my veins, and I hate how good it feels.
I pull my phone out and text Andre.
Station someone at my bedroom door. No one in or out unless it’s me.
Copy that.
Ava’s face flashes in my mind. She’s probably sleeping, oblivious to the fact that someone inside Rush House is trying to hurt her. Inside. Fuck. The word gnaws at me as I type the next message to Lucas, Christian, and Ash.
Meet me in H323. Now. It’s urgent.
Roman’s grandfather’s office. He was a professor at ExU, and his old office across campus is still the most secure spot the Sacred Sons have.
When I step into the elevator, my reflection stares back at me in the glass.
There’s blood on my shirt, my jaw is locked, eyes too dark. I look too much like my father.
With a disgusted sound, I force the thought away and exit the elevator, unlocking and stepping into the office.
It smells like weed and musty books, and it’s quiet except for the clock ticking on the far wall.
I lean against the desk, staring at the faint red stains on my hands, wondering when I stopped feeling disgusted by it.
Lucas is the first to walk in, his gaze sweeping over me critically. “Are you bleeding? What the hell happened to you?”
Christian follows, hair damp like he was just dragged out of the ocean. He throws a deadly glare at his brother, then turns his attention to me. “What’s going on?”
Then Ash. When he walks in, his expression is cautious. “Damn. You look like shit, Jackson.”
Each one of them radiates tension, confusion, because they know, if I’m calling them here to this office, it can’t be good. There are no cameras here. No listening devices. This is where we come when we need to talk freely.
I look at each of them, dead-on.“What do you guys think about me marrying Ava?”
They glance at each other, confused.
“Does it matter?” Christian says. “It’s over and done with now.”
“Do you think it was a mistake? Me bringing her here?”
Did they have anything to do with the attack on Ava? I mean, damn, Lucas tried to kill Eve a few weeks ago because of her connection to Sin, and the threat she posed to the Burning Crown. That’s just how we operate in the Burning Crown. We tend to murder and maim first and ask questions never.
What if one of the other Sacred Sons decided Ava was a threat? What if they decided to eliminate what they saw as a liability?
My question lingers in the air, and I study each one of their faces. Thankfully, they all look confused as fuck, and a little annoyed.
“What the fuck is this about?” Lucas asks, suspicious.
“Yeah, what the fuck is up with the twenty questions?” Ash adds.
“I questioned the guy who attacked Ava yesterday,” I say.
Christian’s eyes narrow. “And? Did you get anything out of him?”
I meet his gaze. “It wasn’t Shadow and Ash.”
Silence.
Lucas crosses his arms over his chest. “Who else could it be?”
I take a slow breath and glance down at the floor, that guy’s last words running through my head: You think you know who your enemies are, but not all of them are outside these walls.
I look up. “He didn’t have a name, but he said it was one of us. Someone inside the Burning Crown.”
“Fuuuck,” the guys hiss in unison.
“I’ll find who came after my wife,” I continue. “And when I do, I’ll make them feel every second of the fear they put her through—up close, slow, and personal…”