Chapter 4
? Arden ?
Viktor Shaw’s estate was exactly as we remembered it: perfectly vile.
The lawns were trimmed within an inch of their lives, the hedges sculpted into obedient lines, gravel paths raked smooth.
The light of the chandeliers glowed from tall windows, music drifting through the open doors of the main house where Buyers laughed and drank.
The three of us slipped in from the back without breaking stride.
The steps leading into the basement creaked in the same places they always had, and I felt my chest tighten when we crossed the threshold, nightmares pressing in on me from all sides.
Viktor had taken the large open space beneath the house and converted it into tiny rooms housing tinier cages, metal bars bolted into the stone floor, children curled inside them.
It was heart stopping to see, to imagine that I had been one of them in the beginning, helpless and afraid.
I dropped to my knees beside one cage, my breath stuttering as I whispered to the children, telling them we were there, that they were leaving.
Rafe moved among them carefully, having yanked the keys from their hook by the basement door and unlocking cages, his expression dark but controlled.
Kane lifted the smallest kid without comment, his arms cradling them and his fury packed tightly into his body.
There were at least eight times the amount of kids in those cages since we’d last been at the estate.
The next rooms were worse. Overcrowded bunks, thin mattresses pressed shoulder to shoulder, kids who smelled of bleach and sweat and soil from the gardens they’d been forced to tend, hands roughened by labor that kept the estate pristine for the people drinking upstairs.
They moved when we told them to, trained to obey.
They were all so tired when they looked up at us, and I imagined that Creed looked just as exhausted.
Maybe that was why they took our hands so willingly; we recognized each other in the infinite chasm that was our loss of innocence.
Creed worked fast but not carelessly, guiding them out through the same service corridors we’d once been marched through ourselves, the party above us growing louder, oblivious, Buyers celebrating while their investments disappeared beneath their feet.
We directed the kids to the courtyard and the gardens, telling them to crouch into the shadows and remain quiet.
By the time we reached the last room, my chest ached with the way that place had shaped us and continued to shape others long after we’d escaped it.
The basement was clear, but there were still the main rooms upstairs.
I double-checked that my gun was tucked in my back waistband, exchanging a determined look with Rafe and Kane before a firm hand took hold of my elbow.
I’ll…Rafe signed, looking down at the ground as if ashamed. I’m going to stay with the kids outside. I’ll cover them in case someone notices.
I stepped closer to him, ducking my head and catching his gaze. I nudged my knuckle under his chin, forcing his eyes to lock with mine, his grip on my elbow faltering. Are you sure?
His eyes flicked over my face before he nodded. I don’t…trust myself. Please. He sucked in a breath. Be safe.
I won’t let anything happen to her, Kane promised. You have my word, brother.
Rafe trembled slightly when Kane squeezed his shoulder.
I wrapped my arms around his waist at the same time, letting myself tuck against his chest in a tight hug.
Rafe’s grip on my elbow shifted when I did, his arms folding around me and clutching me, his fingers curling into the leather of my jacket.
Kane released a long exhale, the three of us quiet as we stood in Viktor’s courtyard.
For a second, I felt like a kid again, my rusted switchblade in my grip.
That day, I fought until I couldn’t fight anymore, and even then, somehow, I kept going.
We all did. Despite Viktor. Despite Halden.
Despite the world. Only a bullet seemed to be able to stop any of us, but, well, fuck that, because Thorne was there, loving always.
I pressed onto my toes and kissed Rafe’s cheek, cupping his face softly with a small smile before I stepped back.
His dark eyes glimmered in the moonlight when he watched Kane and I walk backwards toward the front doors.
I hated leaving him there, but I loved him for knowing his limit, for putting aside his pain and choosing to protect, because that was my Rafe.
Protector. Savior. I felt nothing but immense pride at the way he jogged to those gardens and hunkered down with those kids.
This wasn’t a job for our sharp shooter anyway.
No one in that house deserved a quick death except the innocent children tied down to the beds upstairs.
“I’ll go to the rooms,” I said. Kane and I stopped outside the double front doors, our arms brushing.
He cracked his neck to the side. “I guess that means I’m distracting.”
“Kane,” I said, uneasy. “If you fucking die, I’ll pray every night for Thorne to whack you in hell for being an idiot.”
A dark chuckle left him before it died on his tongue, his lips never quite making it to a smile. “You’ve nothing to worry about. Didn’t you know? I’m the unkillable man.” He reached for the door handle but I caught his hand.
“I mean it,” I whispered hoarsely. “Please. If you can’t win, then run. Promise me you won’t sacrifice yourself to the evil on the other side of those doors.”
His jaw ticked before he firmly pulled his hand out of mine. “I’m sorry, Arden. I don’t make promises I can’t keep anymore.”
“Then stay the fuck alive to protect me,” I asserted. “You promised Rafe.”
“Yeah.” He blinked a few times and then nodded. “Okay.”
I tugged free my gun and flicked the safety off. “When you smell the smoke, that means the kids are out. That means you get the hell out.”
“Step to the side, sweetheart.” He pushed my shoulder, forcing me into the shadows before he took hold of the door handles, a wild, blood-thirsty expression overtaking his features. “I owe sixty-seven ghosts a debt.”
Kane wrenched the doors open hard, the sudden wash of music and laughter spilling out into the night, chandeliers glittering overhead and bodies turning in surprise as the threshold was breached.
The first man closest to the entrance barely had time to register what he was seeing before Kane was on him, a massive hand fisting into the lapel of his tailored jacket and hauling him forward with cold-blooded force.
Kane’s other fist came up in a short, efficient arc and connected with the man’s face, bone cracking wetly beneath his knuckles.
The Buyer went slack, collapsing in a heap.
Chaos followed immediately.
Screams tore through the room, glasses shattering, and people stumbled backward, chairs scraping, bodies colliding in panic as Kane stepped fully inside, leaving the doors yawning open behind him like an invitation to hell.
He moved through them with terrifying precision, every strike placed to incapacitate and dominate.
There was a reason he was Rafe Creed’s number two, why he was sent to the London fight scene by the Ravens.
Kids had been terrified of him growing up, rightfully so.
Even I stood in shock, having to shake myself out of my trance, completely captivated my brother in arms. He’d been the most brutal fighter I’d ever seen before prison.
If anything, those eight years had made him a thousand times worse.
A second man rushed Kane, drunk and indignant, and Kane caught him by the throat, lifted him clear off the floor, and slammed him back-first into a column before dropping him like discarded trash.
Buyers scattered, shouting for security, for Viktor, for someone to make sense of what was happening, but Kane didn’t give them time to regroup.
He seized a champagne bottle from a nearby table and brought it down across a man’s skull, glass exploding, liquid raining down, then drove his knee into another’s gut so hard the man folded in on himself with a strangled cry.
Kane was so beautifully violent, and I knew his little brother was cheering somewhere, screaming his head off in joy.
Kane moved toward the heart of the estate, drawing eyes and bodies and fear with him exactly as planned.
I slipped inside unseen, heart pounding.
I turned toward the staircase and ran up it.
Less than eight minutes and forty-three seconds.
That’s what my bomb had been set to at Halden’s compound.
That’s all it took to kill Thorne. I would never underestimate time again.
I shouldered open one door after another, breathless when I mercifully found most rooms empty.
Whatever party this was, it wasn’t about sampling the product.
I stumbled toward the end of the hall, seeing my old door, my mind whirring with discomfort as I wrenched it open.
It was…exactly the same. The ropes on the bed.
The cracks in the floor, and the writing carved into the headboard.
To the great escape.