Chapter 27
Grim
The clubhouse was silent.
Smoke curled lazily through the air, clinging to the walls like a ghost that refused to leave. The floor was still warm in places, the heat of the explosion lingering like a warning. Bullet holes pocked the walls. Blood stained the floor where Switchblade had fallen.
Someone had tried to scrub it, but the stain remained, dark and stubborn and refusing to fade. Switchblade’s absence pressed against the room like a physical weight.
Grim stood in the center of the wreckage, chest heaving, fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white. His cut was torn. His face was streaked with soot. His eyes were wild.
He looked like a man who’d been hollowed out and filled with rage.
Even Havoc, who feared nothing, shifted his stance. Rook’s jaw ticked, eyes flicking between Grim and the bloodstain on the floor.
Stone approached slowly, hands raised like he was approaching a wounded animal. Rook and Havoc stood behind him, both tense, both watching Grim like he might shatter or explode.
“Grim.”
“Don’t.” Grim’s voice was raw and shredded. “Don’t tell me to calm down.”
His breath came in short, sharp bursts, like his lungs couldn’t decide whether to work or collapse.
Stone didn’t flinch. “I’m telling you to breathe.”
Grim let out a sound closer to a snarl than anything human, raw and furious and shaking. “She’s gone. They took her. They took my…” His voice cracked, and he turned away, slamming his fist into the wall so hard the plaster split.
Rook took an instinctive step forward, ready to catch him if he went down. Havoc’s hands curled into fists at his sides, fury and helplessness warring in his eyes.
Havoc stepped forward. “We’ll get her back.”
Grim spun on him, eyes blazing. “You don’t understand. I felt her fear before. I felt it. And I wasn’t here.”
Rook’s jaw tightened. “You were saving lives. That matters.”
Grim shook his head violently. “I should’ve been here. I should’ve—”
He stopped, chest heaving, breath shaking.
Stone stepped closer. “You’re no good to her like this. You want to get her back? Then you need to get your head straight.”
Grim’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t lose her.”
Stone’s expression softened. “You won’t.”
No one slept.
The Saints worked through the night, boarding up windows and cleaning blood from the floors and checking the perimeter. Every patched member moved with purpose, anger simmering beneath the surface.
Havoc barked orders, voice sharp. Rook coordinated rotations, jaw clenched.
Vandal and Ghost hauled debris, their movements jerky with barely contained fury.
Fish moved silently through the shadows, checking blind spots, tracking footprints, analyzing angles of entry like a ghost retracing the attack.
Every man carried Switchblade’s death like a weight on his shoulders. His cut lay folded on the bar, untouched. No one had the heart to move it. No one dared.
Grim didn’t sit once. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, as if trying to hold himself together by force. Every few minutes, his gaze drifted to the hallway where Switchblade had fallen — and he’d flinch, like the memory physically struck him.
He paced like a caged animal, eyes burning, jaw clenched so tight it looked painful. Every sound made him flinch. Every shadow made him turn. Every minute without Sophia felt like a knife twisting deeper.
Ledger sat at the bar, laptop open, fingers flying. He hadn’t stopped since the attack. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands shaking from too much caffeine and not enough sleep.
“Come on… come on…” he muttered.
Grim stalked over. “Tell me you found something.”
Ledger swallowed. “I’m trying. The Reapers wiped their usual channels. No chatter. No pings. Nothing.”
The room seemed to shrink around Grim, the walls pressing in, the air too thick to breathe.
Grim slammed his hands on the bar. “Try harder.”
Ledger didn’t even flinch. “I am.”
Soft footsteps approached, controlled and deliberate. Fish stepped into the dim light, eyes sharp from whatever he’d found outside.
Grim turned toward him, eyes wild. “Tell me.”
Fish stepped closer, voice low and steady. “Tracks outside the back fence. Three sets. Heavy. They carried her.”
Grim’s vision tunneled. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was going to pass out or tear the entire building apart with his bare hands. Grim’s breath hitched. His hands curled into fists.
Stone walked in, rubbing a hand over his face. “Any luck?”
Ledger hesitated. Then his brows pulled tight, the kind of frown that meant something wasn’t adding up.
“Hold on.” His fingers flew, pulling up a corrupted data stream.
Grim leaned in so fast the stool beside him toppled. “What.”
Ledger didn’t look away from the screen. “I picked up a stray packet off a Reaper relay node. No sender tag. No signature. Just… noise.” His jaw flexed. “Except it isn’t noise.”
He isolated a sliver of code, jagged and messy and human. A single embedded coordinate flickered through the static.
“I don’t know who dropped this in their system,” he muttered, “but they knew I’d see it.”
Fish frowned. “You think it’s a trap.”
“I think it’s deliberate.” Ledger clicked again. “And whoever wrote this… they’re good. Better than anyone the Reapers have. Almost like they wanted me to follow it.”
He pulled up the satellite feed tied to the coordinates. Cold. Empty.
Then he overlaid thermal. The screen bloomed with heat signatures—multiple, human-sized.
Ledger’s voice dropped. “It lit up last night.”
Fish leaned closer. “That’s a lot of bodies for a dead yard.”
Stone exhaled. “It’s gotta be their compound.”
Grim’s voice was a low, lethal growl. “Sophia’s there.”
Ledger nodded once. “Whoever sent that fragment… they pointed us here.”
Stone straightened. “Church. Now.”
The patched members filed in, faces grim, cuts still stained with soot and blood. The room felt heavier than it ever had, like the walls themselves understood what was at stake.
Stone stood at the head of the table. “We have a location.”
Ledger projected the satellite image onto the wall. “Old industrial yard. Abandoned warehouses. Reapers have used it before for weapons drops and off-book meetings.”
Grim’s jaw flexed. “And now they’re using it to hold Sophia.”
Stone nodded. “We hit it hard. We hit it fast. We hit it smart.”
Havoc cracked his knuckles. “What’s the layout?”
Ledger pulled up a blueprint. “Six main structures. One central building with reinforced walls, likely where they’re keeping her.”
Rook leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Back up. That packet you pulled, the one that led you to this. You trust the source?”
Ledger didn’t flinch. “I don’t know the source.”
Rook’s voice sharpened. “Then how the hell do we know we’re not walking into a trap?”
Ledger tapped the screen, zooming in on the corrupted code fragment. “Because whoever sent this knew exactly what they were doing. The embedded coordinates match the thermal signatures. The timestamps align with Reaper movement patterns. And the code? It’s too clean to be theirs.”
Fish frowned. “So someone’s helping us.”
Ledger nodded once. “I don’t know why. I don’t know who. But the data is real. And it points here.”
Grim’s voice was ice. “Good enough.”
Stone shot him a warning look. “You’re not going in alone.”
Grim didn’t respond.
Stone continued. “We split into two teams. Havoc and Rook take the perimeter. Grim, you’re with me. We breach the main building.”
Grim’s eyes burned. “I’m going in first.”
Stone didn’t argue. “Fine. But you follow the plan.”
Grim didn’t promise anything.
Stone looked around the table, voice steady, commanding. “This isn’t just a rescue. This is a message. They came into our home. They took one of ours. They killed one of ours. We end this.”
A low rumble of agreement moved through the room, not loud and not shouted but deep and certain. A promise. The men nodded, faces hard.
Grim stood slowly, his voice low, feral, shaking with emotion he could barely contain.
“I’m coming for you,” he whispered, not to the room but to her. “Hold on for me, Sophia.”
His voice cracked, raw enough to silence the entire room. Havoc bowed his head. Rook’s jaw clenched. Even Stone’s eyes darkened with something like grief. Stone placed a hand on Grim’s shoulder — not as his president, but as his brother.
And the Saints rose as one.
War wasn’t coming. It was already here, and the Saints were ready to burn the world down to get her back.