Chapter 3
Grim
The screaming started before Grim even killed the engine.
La Luna Bar looked like a war zone. Broken glass glittered across the parking lot, neon lights flickered weakly against the dark, and the metallic tang of blood hung thick in the humid Alabama night. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, but the Saints were closer.
Grim swung off his bike, boots crunching over shattered bottles. The metallic scent of blood hit him hard.
And suddenly, he wasn’t at La Luna.
He was back in Kandahar.
The ground shook beneath him as mortar fire hit too close. Dust filled his lungs. Someone screamed for a medic. Someone else screamed for their mother. Grim’s boots crunched over rubble, over bodies, over the kind of destruction you don’t walk away from unchanged.
A young private grabbed his vest, eyes wild. “Sarge…Sarge, he’s not breathing…”
Grim dropped to his knees, hands steady even as the world exploded around him. “Stay with me,” he muttered. “You don’t fucking quit.”
A body jerked under his hands. Blood pooled too fast. Too dark.
He couldn’t save this one.
“Grim!” Havoc’s shout snapped the memory in half.
Grim blinked, the bar coming back into focus. But the smell of blood? That stayed.
Havoc was already crouched beside a man bleeding from a head wound, Ghost kneeling over another victim, hands steady and efficient.
“Any Reapers?” Grim asked, voice low.
Havoc jerked his chin toward the brick wall. “Took off.”
Grim’s jaw flexed. “Where’s Reyes?”
Havoc’s expression twisted, frustration, guilt, and fury all tangled together. “Didn’t even get that far. I walked in the door, and the place blew up. Reapers hit before I could find him.”
Grim’s stomach dropped. “So the meet never happened.”
“Not even close,” Havoc muttered. “If Reyes was here, he either ran… or they got to him first.”
A muscle jumped in Grim’s check. “Get them loaded.”
Ghost lifted the first victim with practiced ease. Havoc helped the second. Grim moved toward a woman slumped against the shattered front window. She was conscious but dazed, blood trickling down her temple.
“Easy,” Grim muttered, sliding an arm under her shoulders.
As he lifted her, a jagged shard of glass hidden beneath her shifted and sliced a clean line across his forearm.
He didn’t react. Didn’t even look at it.
He carried her to Havoc’s truck, set her gently inside, then turned back for the last victim—Brick.
Brick was slumped against the wall, blood soaking through his shirt, eyes glassy with shock. Grim’s stomach dropped. Brick was young, but he’d earned his place. He didn’t deserve this.
“Grim…” he rasped, barely audible.
“I’ve got you,” Grim muttered, hauling him up with one arm under his shoulders. “Stay with me. You hear me? You don’t fucking quit.”
Brick blinked hard, fighting to keep his eyes open. “Tell Stone… I didn’t run.”
“You didn’t,” Grim growled. “You stood your ground. Now stay awake.”
Brick’s fingers twitched weakly against Grim’s vest. “Hurts…”
“I know.” Grim tightened his grip, voice low and lethal. “You’re not dying tonight.”
Not on his watch. Not again.
He lifted Brick into the truck, bracing him carefully as Havoc slammed the door and peeled out of the lot.
Grim didn’t waste a second. He swung onto his bike, engine roaring to life as the rest of the Saints fell in behind him.
Gravel spit under their tires as they tore out of the parking lot, forming a tight escort around Havoc’s truck.
They tore down the back roads in tight formation, engines echoing through the dark as the miles blurred beneath them.
The ER entrance glowed ahead, harsh fluorescent light spilling onto wet pavement. Nurses rushed out with gurneys, shouting orders, moving with the controlled chaos Grim had seen too many times in too many places.
He carried Brick inside, boots thudding against the tile.
“GSW to the abdomen,” someone called. “BP dropping…”
“Over here!” a woman’s voice cut through the noise. “Put him here!”
Grim turned toward the sound. And saw her.
She stood at the center of the storm in navy scrubs, dark hair twisted into a messy bun, a pen tucked behind one ear. Her skin was warm brown, eyes sharp and steady as she assessed the room. She moved like she’d done this a thousand times, steady and sure.
“Vitals?” she snapped, already pulling on gloves.
“Fast and weak,” a nurse answered.
“Okay.” She leaned over Brick. “Hey, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Her voice was soft, but it cut through the panic like a scalpel.
Grim laid the prospect on the bed she’d indicated. Blood spread across the sheets in a dark bloom.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Brick,” Grim said.
She glanced up. “His real name.”
Grim stared back. “Brick.”
Her mouth tightened, but she didn’t argue. She pressed gauze to the wound, hands steady.
Brick groaned, fingers twitching.
“You’re alright,” she murmured, voice dropping. “Easy… easy.” Then, under her breath, barely audible, “ándale…” The word was soft, instinctive, something she didn’t seem aware she’d said.
Grim didn’t understand the word. But he understood the tone. Soft. Steady. Warm. It didn’t belong in a room full of blood and fear. It didn’t belong anywhere near him.
“Sir?” another nurse said, shoving a clipboard toward him. “We need your information. Name, contact, relation to the patient.”
Grim barely glanced at it. “He’s with us.”
“We still need your name.”
He almost said Grim. Almost. But the hospital didn’t care about road names.
“Maddox Hale,” he muttered. The nurse scribbled it down and moved away.
The woman in scrubs, Sophia if he’d heard right, reached for more gauze. She pressed it firmly to Brick’s wound as the trauma team rushed in.
“We’re taking him to surgery,” someone called.
“Vitals trending down, pressure dressing in place, two large-bore IVs, responsive to pain,” she said, stepping back immediately, letting the trauma team take over. The team wheeled Brick toward the OR doors, voices overlapping as they moved.
She stripped off her gloves, tossed them into the biohazard bin, and sanitized her hands in one smooth, practiced motion. Fresh gloves snapped into place as she turned—right into Grim.
Her fingers brushed his wrist. Just a touch. Barely anything.
But Grim’s breath stuttered. His entire body went still.
Her gaze flicked up, eyes locking on his. “You’re bleeding,” she said quietly.
He blinked. “What?”
She nodded toward his forearm. Blood smeared his skin where the glass had sliced him earlier. He hadn’t even felt it.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re not.” Her tone didn’t change, still calm and still steady. “You need stitches.”
“I said I’m fine.”
She didn’t flinch at the edge in his voice. “And I said you’re bleeding.”
She reached for his arm again, slower this time, giving him room to pull away. He didn’t.
Her fingers wrapped gently around his wrist, warm and sure. The contact sent a strange jolt through him, like someone had plugged him into a live wire and told him to hold still.
His breath caught.
He stared at her mouth.
Why the hell was he staring at her mouth?
He didn’t have room for this. Not for softness. Not for wanting anything that wasn’t survival. Whatever pulled him toward her wasn’t desire. It was instinct. That’s what he told himself.
She turned slightly, reaching for a saline wipe with her free hand. The movement brought her closer, the faint scent of soap and something sweet, vanilla maybe, curling around him.
“Just let me clean it,” she murmured.
He didn’t move. Couldn’t.
She dabbed at the blood, careful and precise. The sting barely registered. All he could feel was the warmth of her fingers on his skin.
She glanced toward the clipboard at the foot of the bed, eyes flicking over the top line.
Patient delivered by: Maddox Hale.
Her gaze returned to his face.
“Maddox,” she said softly.
The name hit him like a punch.
He hadn’t heard it spoken like that in years. Not by someone who wasn’t angry. Not by someone who wasn’t leaving. His jaw clenched. “Don’t call me that.”
Her eyes flicked to the patch on his cut.
GRIM — Sergeant-at-Arms.
“Should I call you Grim instead?” she asked. The way she said it, curious not mocking, made something twist in his chest.
“No,” he said, too fast.
Her lips curved, just barely. “Then Maddox it is.”
He stared at her. No one called him that. Not anymore.
The name sounded different in her mouth. Softer. Like it belonged to someone who hadn’t been carved up by life and stitched back together with violence.
She finished cleaning his arm and pressed a piece of gauze over the cut, her fingers lingering a second longer than necessary.
“Hold that,” she said.
He did. Because she told him to. Because her voice made it hard to do anything else.
She turned toward the next stretcher being rushed in, a middle-aged man clutching his chest, pale and sweating. “I’ve got him,” she called, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves as she moved to his side.
Her tone shifted instantly, calm and steady and commanding. “Sir, look at me. Tell me where it hurts.”
Grim took her in as she moved from one crisis to the next without hesitation. Efficient. Focused. Fierce. And every so often, she murmured a soft word under her breath—ándale, eso, good—little fragments of comfort that steadied her as much as her patients.
Grim watched her, confused by the way her presence softened the edges of the room.
Confused by the way his chest felt too tight.
Havoc appeared at his shoulder. “You good, brother?”
Grim didn’t answer. Because he wasn’t. Not even close.