Wolff
The bell rings.
My fist cracks across the bastard’s jaw again, blood spraying hot across my chest and face. He’s down on one knee, fists half-lowered, too slow to block the next hit.
The bell rings again.
Someone shouts my name.
I hit him once more.
His head snaps sideways. Blood spatters across the mat. My knuckles split wider with the impact, but I barely feel it. I drive my fist into his face again, then again, until other Sovereigns are hauling me backward and the medical staff is flooding the ring around him.
I jerk out of their grip, sending one of them stumbling and hop down from the platform, chest heaving.
The bastard I was sparring isn’t moving. His blood slides down my ribs and drips from my jaw onto the concrete floor as I grab a towel and stalk toward the locker room.
Dropping onto the bench in front of my locker, I drag the towel over my face, smearing blood across the back of my hand.
The door swings open behind me.
“Jesus Christ.” Graves’s voice bounces off the cinderblock walls. “Remind me never to flirt with you when you’re on your period.” He sits on the bench beside me, smelling of cigarettes.
“He still breathing?”
“Unfortunately. But if it makes you feel better, he’s gonna be pissing through a tube for a while.”
I toss the blood-soaked towel onto the floor. “What do you want?”
“So hostile. I come bearing gifts, and this is how you treat me?”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“You never are.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and slaps a thin folder down on my lap. “Good thing I’m not here for your sparkling personality.”
I frown and flip it open. Every page is in Russian.
“What is this?”
“No idea. You know I can’t read that shit. Couldn’t be bothered to get it translated either. Felt like a you problem.”
I stare at the first page, irritation already building. “Then why bring it to me?”
“Look at the date, dumbass.”
My eyes drop to the top corner of the folder.
Everything in me stills.
It’s the week AJ was taken.
“Where the fuck did you get this?”
“Was balls-deep in Devin on her daddy’s desk last night and found it shoved in the bottom drawer. Perks of fucking a Commander’s daughter. Sometimes, you get your dick sucked. Sometimes, you get classified documents.”
“You stole this from Commander Harrington’s desk?”
“I prefer ‘borrowed with extreme prejudice.’ Relax, K9. Either it helps your weird-ass obsession, or it doesn’t.
I’m tired of waiting for you to lose your goddamn mind and blow up half the Section while I’m trying to get promoted.
You’re stressing me the fuck out.” He gestures to himself as he walks to the door.
“Look at me. I’m practically developing empathy.
It’s disgusting.” He smirks over his shoulder as the door closes.
“I’m gonna go peel somebody’s face off. Gets me back to feeling like myself. ”
I look back at the file.
It isn’t a mission report.
It’s a communication log.
Not official Sovereign formatting either. Just timestamps, names, coded references, and pages of messages between transport teams moving through Russia.
I don’t hear footsteps.
I hear the metallic click first.
Then cold steel presses to the base of my skull.
“Don’t fucking move,” Gage snarls. He’s breathing fast and uneven, hands shaking.
“Easy, kid.”
“Shut the fuck up. How could you do that to her?” He presses the muzzle harder into my head.
“You gonna shoot me, or you just want to talk?”
“I should shoot you.”
“Then do it.”
The barrel digs in. “I should have done it a long time ago.”
I move fast.
Grabbing his wrist, I twist hard and duck under the line of the gun in one motion.
The weapon goes off with a deafening crack into the ceiling as I slam Gage into the lockers and wrench the pistol out of his hand.
He grunts, trying to throw me off, but I’ve already got his arm pinned behind his back and the barrel of his own gun shoved under his jaw.
He spits blood on my boots. “Go to hell.”
“You’re starting to make a bad fucking habit out of pissing me off.” I press the barrel harder against his skin. “So unless you’ve got a death wish, you’re gonna explain why you just tried to shoot me in the head.”
He clenches his jaw so hard it looks like it might crack. “You know fucking why.”
I stare down at the side of his face, watching the hate roll off him in waves. His breathing is still too fast. He’s got no control.
“You raped her,” he seethes. “How could you do that to her?”
My eyes briefly drift to the Russian file still on the bench. AJ must have told him about the stage…about the night I found her. My thumb slides against the trigger guard.
I exhale slowly. “I did what I had to do.”
“You admit it?”
“If I hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t have made it out alive.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
I frown. “Russia.”
“What does Russia have to do with anything?”
“The stage.”
His expression changes. “What stage?”
“Kid…what the fuck are you talking about?”
“You broke into her fucking house.” His voice cracks. “You dragged her into the kitchen and raped her while she screamed for you to stop. You sick fuck.”
Everything inside me goes cold. Her house?
“She loved you.” His breathing turns ragged. “She fucking loved you, and you raped her wearing that goddamn wolf mask and—”
I slam him into the lockers with enough strength to dent the metal. “Wh—”
“She’s in fucking pieces because of you!” he shouts, struggling against my hold. “I found her bleeding on the kitchen floor. She was barely conscious, and she still wouldn’t say your name because she was too fucking ashamed—”
My grip slips. “I don’t… I didn’t—”
“What, you gonna pretend you don’t remember now? Pretend you didn’t beat the shit out of her dog too?”
The room tilts. I shove off him but keep the pistol trained on his chest.
He wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “The neighbor’s house caught you on camera. You were wearing that same fucked-up wolf mask from the Hunt.”
Yanking his phone out of his pocket with shaking fingers, he shoves it at me.
Security footage fills the screen—grainy, black and white, time-stamped. A figure in dark clothes moves across AJ’s front yard and up onto the porch. Wearing a wolf mask. My wolf mask…that Graves shoved in my locker before I left Chicago…
Every drop of blood leaves my body, my knees weakening.
My thumb freezes against the screen. Her face in the hallway crashes into me. The pure look of terror…like I was her worst fucking nightmare.
She was raped…and she thinks it was me.
Something inside my chest tears clean in half. Then something colder takes its place. I look back at the footage, at someone wearing my face. The phone shatters in my fist. Glass cuts into my palm, but I don’t feel it. The only thing I feel is pure, blinding rage.
Whoever the fuck did this…
I’m going to skin them alive.