Chapter Thirty-One Khai
Chapter Thirty-One
Khai
The bike roars beneath me as I tear through the city, the engine snarling like it shares my rage. Streetlights smear into streaks of colour. Red lights mean nothing. Speed limits dissolve into irrelevance. Lanes become suggestions I cut through without mercy.
I don’t slow.
I don’t breathe.
Everything else falls away, the world narrowing to asphalt and velocity and the violent, singular need driving me forward. The need to reach the warehouse before it is too late.
I should’ve known.
The moment Jaxon’s tracker went dark, the game had already shifted, the trap snapping shut with surgical precision.
I cut the bike hard into the warehouse yard, gravel exploding beneath the tyres as I skid to a stop and dismount in one fluid motion. The building looms ahead, cavernous and still. Too still. One of the massive doors hangs partially open, a silent invitation laced with threat.
I step inside.
The smell hits first.
Blood, metallic and stale. Oil. Cold steel.
It settles into my lungs, familiar and wrong all at once.
I move quickly now, gun already in my hand, senses stretched tight as wire. Shadows cling to the walls. Every sound feels amplified, every breath borrowed.
Then I see him.
Jaxon is slumped in a metal chair at the centre of the space, wrists bound, ankles shackled, his body bearing the brutal evidence of my father’s handiwork. His face is swollen, split open in places, dried blood painting him in dark strokes. Tape seals his mouth, cruel, unnecessary.
But his eyes lift the moment he hears me.
Sharp. Aware.
Alive.
Relief punches through me, fierce and fleeting, because if Jaxon is here, broken but breathing, then this was never the endgame.
It was only the misdirection.
And whatever my father truly wanted…
He’s already moved on to it.
I cross the space in seconds, tearing the tape from his mouth like it offends me by existing.
“Khai,” Jaxon rasps, the sound torn from a bruised throat. Urgent. Pained. Fear threaded through every breath. “This was a distraction.”
The words land heavier than any fist ever could.
My hands still as I cut through his restraints, my pulse roaring in my ears. “What do you mean?” I ask, though something dark has already begun to take shape in my gut.
He swallows hard, eyes locking onto mine. “He’s gone after her,” Jaxon says, breath laboured but relentless. “Your father. He lured her out.”
A beat.
“Hospital,” he adds. “ICU.”
The world fractures.
Because in that instant, I know, with bone-deep certainty, that while I was tearing through the city to save my brother…my best friend.
My father was closing his hands around the one thing I can’t afford to lose.
Something inside me splinters.
Not breaks, shatters.
The world lurches violently off its axis, and whatever restraint I had left disintegrates. I don’t remember deciding to move. I only remember the thunderous crack as my fist slams into a metal shelf, the shock vibrating up my arm. Then another blow. And another.
Glass explodes.
Steel screams.
A chair goes airborne, smashing uselessly against the wall.
I tear through the warehouse like a force unleashed, destroying anything foolish enough to exist within reach. Crates collapse. Shelving buckles. The space becomes a ruin in seconds, an echo of the devastation ripping through my chest.
Walls. Metal. Bone-deep fury.
Rage owns me.
Rage and something far worse.
Terror.
When I finally stop, my chest heaves violently, breath tearing in and out of my lungs. Blood slicks my knuckles, skin split open where I didn’t stop myself. Jaxon watches me from where he stands, silent and steady, knowing better than to interrupt what just clawed its way to the surface.
“She’s not collateral,” I growl, the words scraped raw from my throat. “She’s not a message.”
“I know,” Jaxon says quietly.
He hesitates, choosing his next words carefully. “But she is important to you.”
The truth lands like a blade.
“He took her because she matters,” Jaxon continues, voice low and grim. “Because she’s the one thing that can reach you.”
A lesson.
That’s what my father wants to teach me.
And as the last of my rage settles into something cold and lethal, one truth burns brighter than the rest,
If my father thinks he can use her to break me…
He has no idea what kind of monster he’s just unleashed.
I force myself back into motion.
Stillness will kill me faster than bullets ever could.
I move to Jaxon, steadying him as I clean the blood from his face, my hands firm but careful.
He’s hurt, worse than he’s letting on, but he stays upright, jaw clenched, refusing to break.
When he’s steady enough, we move together, slipping through the concealed floor panel and down into the underground armoury.
Steel. Ammo. Violence waiting patiently in the dark.
A spare bike rests nearby, sleek and ready, fate dressed in chrome.
I look Jaxon over one last time, cataloguing injuries, measuring risk. “Are you going to be okay?” I ask. “Can you ride?”
He gives me a crooked smile, pain flashing briefly in his eyes. “This?” he scoffs weakly. “This is nothing. I’m with you.”
He winces as he pulls the helmet on, breath hitching as he swings a leg over the bike while the industrial lift carries us back toward the surface. He hides it well, but I see it.
“This isn’t your fight,” I say quietly. “You don’t have to come.”
Jaxon turns his head, eyes sharp despite the bruises. “Get on your bike, Khai,” he says, voice steady, unyielding. “Let’s go get the bastard.”
A pause.
“I’m with you, brother.”
Minutes later, we’re unleashed back onto the streets.
Two machines tearing through the city like it’s trying to outrun us, or maybe we’re outrunning what waits if we stop.
Traffic becomes a living obstacle course.
I reach for gears that aren’t there. We split lanes with inches to spare, mount kerbs without slowing, cut across intersections as horns scream and brakes lock behind us.
Streetlights streak past in violent flashes. The city blurs into heat and motion and fury.
We ride like men with nothing left to lose.
I push harder, faster, every reckless manoeuvre fuelled by the image of her trapped somewhere I can’t reach yet. Every second matters. Every heartbeat counts.
“You still with me?” I snap into the helmet intercom, my voice tight with tension I can barely contain.
There’s a breath, then Jaxon’s voice crackles back, rough but unbroken. “Yeah. Don’t you dare worry about me.”
I don’t reply.
I just twist the throttle and let the city burn behind us as we race toward the one place I’m not prepared to arrive too late.
We hit the hospital like a war zone.
Bikes are abandoned where they stop, engines still ticking as we shove through doors and sprint down sterile corridors. Shoes skid against polished floors. People shout. Alarms blur into background noise.
ICU.
We split without a word, instinct and urgency tearing us apart in opposite directions.
I rip open doors one after another.
Empty.
Empty.
Wrong.
Then,
Bed nine.
I burst through the doorway.
And the world freezes.
My father stands in the centre of the room with Emmy pressed tight against him, her back locked to his chest, her feet barely brushing the floor as he lifts her just enough to steal her balance.
His arm is cinched around her throat in a perfect, merciless hold.
Her hands claw desperately at his forearm, fingers trembling as she struggles to breathe.
Her eyes meet mine.
Wide. Terrified.
Alive.
The gun is pressed to her temple.
My hand moves on instinct, reaching for my weapon,
Click.
The sound comes from behind me.
One of my father’s men steps into view, gun levelled straight at my heart, finger already resting on the trigger.
“I wouldn’t do that,” my father says calmly.
He drags the barrel slowly along Emmy’s temple, down her cheek, tracing her skin with intimate cruelty. She shudders violently in his grip, breath hitching as he strokes her face like she’s nothing more than a possession he’s decided to admire before breaking.
“So good of you to join us, son,” he murmurs.
And standing there, helpless, with Emmy trapped between us like a living shield, I know with bone-deep certainty:
If I make the wrong move…
She dies.
And my father won’t just pull the trigger.
He’ll smile while he does it.