Chapter 25
Grim
The Saints tore into the lot at full throttle, engines screaming, headlights cutting through smoke that hadn’t been there when they left. The air tasted wrong — burnt, metallic, thick enough to choke on.
Stone’s bike skidded to a stop, gravel spraying. “Shut it down,” he barked, already ripping off his helmet.
Grim’s heart hammered against his ribs. The clubhouse door hung off its hinges. Windows were blown out. Smoke curled from the shattered frame in dark, rolling waves. Bullet holes pocked the siding like a swarm had torn through it.
Havoc’s voice cracked. “Ledger said breach… but this—”
Rook didn’t wait. He sprinted toward the entrance. “Switchblade! Brick! Ledger!”
Fish swept the perimeter, eyes sharp, jaw locked. “Multiple entry points hit. They knew exactly where to strike.”
But Grim was already moving.
He ran for the door, boots pounding over broken glass, smoke clawing at his lungs. Every breath burned. Every step felt too slow.
“Sophia!” he roared, voice tearing out of him. “Sophia!”
The ruined hallway swallowed the sound.
He rounded the corner just as Brick and Ledger stumbled out of the safe room, coughing, covered in soot and dust. Brick’s arm bled freely. Ledger’s glasses were cracked, his tablet clutched to his chest like he’d crawled through fire to keep it safe.
Brick’s voice shook. “They took her.”
The world stopped.
Grim’s heart slammed once, hard, then seemed to forget how to beat.
Ledger swallowed, voice shaking. “Reapers. They hit us fast. Switchblade tried to protect her. He—he didn’t make it.”
Grim staggered, breath ripping out of him like a wound. His knees nearly buckled.
Behind them, Vandal stumbled out, soot-covered, shaking, eyes wild. “They blew the gate before I could radio it in…there were too many of them.”
The words barely registered through the roaring in Grim’s ears.
Stone stepped into the hall. Havoc and Rook flanked him, both breathing hard, both taking in the destruction with growing fury.
“Grim—” Stone started.
But Ledger suddenly froze.
His tablet, cracked and smeared with soot, buzzed in his hand.
He looked down.
His face drained of color.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “I’ve got footage. Internal cams auto-backed to the tablet before the system fried.”
Grim’s head snapped toward him. “Show me.”
Ledger hesitated for a fraction of a second, then tapped the screen.
The hallway fell silent except for the distant crackle of fire, a low and hungry sound that seemed to breathe with the ruined building.
Ledger tapped the screen again, and the footage expanded.
Smoke billowed through the clubhouse corridors, thick and swirling, turning the emergency lights into a pulsing red haze.
The camera angle was terrible — half-blocked by drifting smoke, the lens rattling from tremors the angle didn’t fully catch.
Grim could hear the fire alarm, but only as a distorted, static-laced shriek buried under the chaos.
Prospects sprinted past the camera, coughing, dragging injured women toward the safe room. The lens shook violently as something exploded off-screen, the tremor from the ceiling collapse hitting the camera even though the debris itself wasn’t visible.
Then Switchblade burst into frame.
The camera hadn’t caught the moment he reached Sophia — the angle only picked up when he pulled her into view, one arm braced protectively across her body.
His face was streaked with soot, jaw clenched, eyes sharp despite the chaos.
He kept glancing over his shoulder, scanning every shadow, every doorway, every flicker of movement.
Sophia stumbled, coughing hard, and Switchblade hauled her upright with a gentleness that didn’t match the violence around them. He shoved her behind him again, shielding her with his own body as he moved.
The smoke parted just enough to reveal movement at the far end of the hall.
Three Reapers rounded the corner.
They came fast, boots pounding and weapons raised, faces twisted with the kind of rage that didn’t need words. The camera caught the moment Switchblade saw them. His stance shifted. Shoulders squared. Feet planted. He pushed Sophia back with one hand, never taking his eyes off the threat.
The camera didn’t catch the full fight — only fragments through the smoke.
One of the Reapers lifted his gun.
The emergency light flickered, illuminating the tattoo crawling up the back of his hand — a spiderweb, black and jagged.
Ledger’s voice cracked. “Spider.”
The gunshot tore through the speakers, sharp and violent. Switchblade jerked as the bullet hit, his body dropping hard enough to shake the frame. The camera angle made it look instantaneous, but Grim knew footage never told the whole story.
Sophia screamed — a raw, broken sound that cut straight through Grim’s chest.
Spider didn’t hesitate.
He stepped over Switchblade’s falling body like it was nothing.
His hand shot out, fisting in Sophia’s hair, yanking her backward so hard her feet left the ground.
The camera caught the initial yank, her body twisting in pain — but the smoke swallowed them almost immediately.
Anything after that, including the bag they used to cover her head, happened out of frame.
Her scream echoed through the hallway, through the speakers, through Grim’s bones.
The feed cut out as Spider dragged her into the smoke, the rest of the abduction happening beyond the camera’s reach.
Grim’s vision tunneled.
The world narrowed to a single point of rage, grief, and helplessness.
His breath came in sharp, violent bursts.
Stone muttered, “Son of a bitch…”
Havoc punched the wall so hard plaster exploded. Rook swore under his breath, voice breaking. Fish closed his eyes, jaw clenched.
Ledger swallowed. “He killed Switchblade. He took Sophia. It’s all here.”
Grim’s hands shook so violently he nearly dropped the tablet.
He stared at Spider’s tattoo, that black and jagged web burned into his vision like a brand.
His voice came out low, lethal, inhuman.
“I’m going to kill him.”
Stone didn’t argue. Didn’t calm him. Didn’t tell him to breathe.
He just nodded once.
“We all are.”
Grim slammed his fist into the wall, cracking the plaster. “Where is he?!” Grim’s breathing turned ragged, animalistic. His hands shook. His vision blurred at the edges.
Ledger spoke again, voice tight. “They split up when they left. I can see bikes heading in three different directions. They planned this. They covered their tracks.”
Grim’s jaw clenched. “So we don’t know where they took her.”
Ledger shook his head, guilt twisting his features. “Not yet.”
“Then find out,” Grim growled.
“I will,” Ledger said. “I swear it.”
But one thing cut through the haze:
The sheet being pulled over Switchblade’s body.
His boots stuck out from underneath, scuffed and worn and laces uneven. Grim had teased him about those damn laces a hundred times.
His throat tightened. His chest cracked open.
Switchblade had been a soldier. A prospect. A brother.
And he’d died protecting Sophia.
Grim stepped forward, dropping to one knee beside the body. He rested a hand on the sheet — just for a moment — jaw clenched so tight it hurt.
Havoc looked away. Rook bowed his head. Fish closed his eyes.
Stone’s voice softened, just barely. “He died a Saint.”
Grim’s voice broke. “He shouldn’t have died at all.”
Stone didn’t argue. He didn’t offer comfort. He didn’t lie.
He just stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, the way brothers do when the world falls apart.
Grim rose slowly, every muscle trembling with barely contained rage.
He looked at the destruction. At the blood on the floor. At the smoke curling through the air. At the empty space where Sophia should have been.
His voice was a whisper, cracked and raw. “Hold on for me, Sophia.”
The rage carried them through the next hours, boarding up windows, clearing debris, checking the perimeter, tending to the wounded.
Orders were barked. Tools clattered. Boots thudded across scorched floors.
The clubhouse breathed like a wounded animal, every groan of the damaged beams a reminder of what they’d lost.
But eventually, even fury burns itself out.
One by one, the brothers drifted away, some to clean up, some to collapse from exhaustion, some to sit in silence with their grief. The noise faded. The adrenaline ebbed. The night settled heavy and hollow around them.
Grim couldn’t sit. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop seeing it, Switchblade falling and Sophia screaming and Spider’s hand in her hair.
He needed air. He needed space. He needed something that didn’t hurt to look at.
So when the clubhouse finally went quiet, when the last door shut and the last voice faded, Grim slipped out the back and walked to the garage.
Switchblade’s tools were still on the workbench.
His jacket still hung on the hook.
His half-finished project, a rebuilt carburetor, sat exactly where he’d left it.
Grim stood there, staring at it, feeling something inside him crack.
Switchblade had been quiet. Steady. Reliable. The kind of man Grim respected without needing to say a word. The kind of man who didn’t flinch under pressure. The kind of man who paid attention.
And now he was gone.
Because Grim hadn’t been fast enough. Because the Reapers had been one step ahead. Because the world took good men and left the rest behind.
Grim reached out and picked up the carburetor. It was heavier than it looked. Solid. Real. Something Switchblade had touched hours before he died.
Grim’s hands shook.
He set it down carefully, like it might break.
Then he braced both palms on the workbench and bowed his head.
His breath hitched.
Once.
Then again.
He didn’t cry. But his shoulders shook, and his jaw clenched so hard it hurt, and the grief tore through him like shrapnel.
He stayed like that for a long time.
When he finally straightened, his eyes were dry, but something in him had shifted.
He looked at Switchblade’s jacket.
“I’ll handle it,” he said quietly. “I’ll make it right.”
His voice didn’t shake.
His hands didn’t either.
He walked out of the garage with a new kind of stillness, the kind that came right before violence.