Chapter 15
JAX
T he warehouse sat at the far edge of Crossbend. Corrugated steel panels sagged where the frame had bent under storms years back, windows long gone to brick and plywood. Weeds pushed up through the cracked asphalt, and vines had started to crawl up the southern wall.
I crouched in the weeds a hundred yards out from the fence line, laptop open, fans whirring. The hum of the code I’d written was steady and silent. Perfect.
Cameras inside—dead. Alarms—cut. Cell towers in a two-mile radius—jammed. For anyone holed up inside, the world just went dark.
The list in my head had been shrinking for days, names slashed off one by one until this was all that was left. Everyone tied to the loose ends of Lark’s case. Every motherfucker who thought they could keep a leash on her.
No one could leave this building alive. Not if I wanted Lark to truly be free.
I shut the lid, exhaled, and signaled Kane.
He moved like a shadow across the gravel, tall and steady, his eyes sharp even in the dark.
Edge flanked the other side of him, grinning like he already smelled fire, but his eyes had a hard glint.
Nitro was just a step behind, calm and coiled, while Fury lingered near the back, all watchful silence.
Two prospects—Kip and Johnny—held rear, nervous as dogs in a thunder storm, but quiet like they’d been trained. Their job was to learn, not lead.
Drift and Axle were back at the clubhouse, standing guard over what mattered most.
“Status,” Kane murmured.
“Dark inside,” I replied, tucking the laptop into my pack. “Cameras dead, intercom dead, alarms dead. Comms jammed to the tree line. If they shout for help, they’re only talking to crickets and snakes.”
Edge flicked his favorite knife through his fingers. “Time for fireworks.”
Nitro’s mouth curved. “Good. Been too fucking long since I got to light a fuse.”
“Stay focused,” Kane cut in. “We’re not here to play.”
Nitro smirked but said nothing more.
Prez turned to me again. “You get eyes?”
“Thermals went blind with everything else, but the heat map I cached before I flipped the switch says at least eight bodies on the floor and two up in the office catwalk. Plus a couple in the back rooms. They were lazy. Or cocky.” I felt my mouth twist. “I like cocky.”
Kane’s beard shifted with the ghost of a smile. “You always did.”
My pulse was steady, though a part of me thrummed hot under the surface.
We moved. Silent and stealthy, weapons tucked against our bodies as we slipped across the gravel lot.
It was an acre of open exposure, but we hugged the long-dead trucks hoisted up onto blocks, slid behind disintegrating crates, and crossed in the pockets of darkness cast by broken lights.
The humidity sat heavy and thick with the storm rolling in from the gulf.
Nitro padded to the man-door on the loading bay and crouched to set a matte brick against the latch, armed it with a twist, and looked up. Kane gave a nod. Nitro’s thumb pressed.
The lock went with a muffled thud under Nitro’s charge, and the door shrugged open a half inch.
Fury slipped through the breach first, rifle sweeping, then Kane. Edge and I split wide, with the prospects on our heels. Inside, the dark opened into rows of crates and machinery, the bones of an old, forgotten factory.
The silence seemed artificial, like every man in the vicinity was holding their breath.
Then everything blew.
Shouts ricocheted off walls, men scrambled, and weapons clattered. The first muzzle flash cracked the dark and lit up a man’s surprised face long enough for my crosshairs to find the center of it. One shot. My shot was quiet, a suppressed cough, and he fell forward into the shadows.
The room bloomed with noise. It didn’t get frantic, though. That was a lie people swallowed because it came from Hollywood. Instead, it got focused. The Kings didn’t fucking do panic. We did angles, breath, and the shortest line between a problem and its solution.
Edge moved like a knife and smiled like a lunatic.
Nitro didn’t so much as blink when rounds pinged metal near his shoulder; he adjusted and answered with a pop pop pop that shut two men up forever.
Fury flowed through the chaos, head down, a coil ready to strike, every shot a sentence that ended with a period.
I cut the room into zones in my head and slid across them between cover, sighting, breathing, and squeezing. One headshot. Another. No wasted motion, no noise. Just precision.
One man pivoted, gun raising, and I put two in his center mass. Another got bold and popped out from behind a crate, screaming something about “sons of—” that ended when I put him down mid-hyphen.
But even as my finger pulled and my gun kicked, my eyes scanned, hunting for one face. The man who tied it all together. The one still holding the knife over Lark’s throat.
He wasn’t there.
Two on the catwalk tried to flank. Edge lifted his gun, drew a line through the space between them, and both men dropped, their weapons clanging through the grating.
He whooped soft and a little deranged as Nitro clipped a charge on a crate and sent a shock wave through a far stack for the pure tactical pleasure of making a barricade slide into a fatal angle, basically slicing through the man standing behind it.
Kane’s voice was sharp as he called. “Left! Two!”
Fury answered with a pair of bangs and something heavy met concrete. “One.” Then, almost bored, he added, “Two.”
A third man—one of the mid-tier bastards—sprinted for the loading bay’s roll-up gap, misjudged the lip, and stumbled.
I caught him at the hinge, elbow to the temple.
Chokehold, quick and tight. His arms flailed while he gasped like a fish tossed onto the dock.
I pivoted him to the cinderblock wall and introduced his head to it twice, then his arms went slack.
My zip-tie bit plastic into his wrists before I gagged him with a strip of his own shirt and hauled him by the collar across concrete.
Kane’s eyes found mine across the chaos. One nod. No words.
We dragged him out the door, gunfire still raging behind us, and shoved him into the back of the unmarked van waiting two blocks down.
The driver—ours—didn’t look up when we slid the back open.
We shoved the prisoner in, bent his knees, kicked them to make space, and I slapped the door shut with the kind of satisfaction that meant the next phase had begun.
“Wrap it,” Kane growled into his mic. “Sweep and burn.” He looked at me. “You’re done here. Go.”
I didn’t argue.
The rooms beneath The Pit were not an accident. Concrete and steel. No windows. No air except the heavy hum of the vent. A drain that didn’t clog. Doors that laughed at pry bars. And a cache of tools and weapons that always made Edge grin. Especially when he added something new to the collection.
The prisoner was quickly zip-tied to a chair, head lolling, blood matting his hair where my elbow had cracked his skull. His chest heaved too fast, and his eyes fought the light until they glistened, animal-sharp and fucking stupid.
I laid out the tools. Not for show. For purpose. No theatrics. Men who called it art were lying to themselves so they could feel special. This wasn’t art. This was maintenance.
“Here’s how this works.” My voice was even as I snapped on gloves.
“You tell me the name. The one that keeps the rest of you fed and paid. The one who wasn’t at the party tonight.
You speak quickly, and you might have a future.
” I shrugged. “Or maybe just an open casket.” As I selected a plier with a slim, serrated mouth, I continued, “You don’t, and I take things in a way you’ll regret for however long you get to live.
” Another shrug. “I’d consider cremation after that. ”
He tried to talk around the gag so I pulled it down. He licked split lips and coughed.
“You think—” he started.
I snipped the tip of his ring finger off before he got past the verb in his sentences.
He shrieked, high and strangled. The sound hit the concrete and bounced around the room.
“Verb choices matter.” I put the plier down and picked up a mallet. “So do knees.”
He struggled against the zip-ties as if they might give way. Idiot. The chair scraped an inch to the left before I set my boot on one foot and made him still again with my weight.
“This isn’t about vengeance, you know,” I told him, truthfully. “This is removing an obstacle in my fucking way.”
Silence.
Continuing on, I didn’t shout. Didn’t posture.
Didn’t waste a word. My voice stayed low, steady, as I pressed the point of a blade just deep enough to slice nerves and bleed truth.
His finger snapped under pressure, and his kneecap shattered with a crack that echoed off the walls.
Each sound filed away inside me, clean and cold.
He broke. They always did.
The name spilled out of him on a sob. The last one. The guy who’d been pulling strings in the dark.
I stared into his eyes for a beat, then I put a bullet between them.
Blood pooled under the chair. I washed my hands in the sink until the water ran clear. When I took the gloves off, my fingers were steady.
I wasn’t satisfied. Not angry. Just finished with this part.
One left. That’s all.
I holstered my pistol and headed for the stairs.
Edge was waiting when I came up, and his eyes caught mine.
“Got it.”
“On your six,” he returned, already moving.
We rode out at midnight, engines low, two predators on the hunt. The location was a rundown house on the edge of town, roof sagging and porch half-rotted. A light flickered in the front window.
We killed the engines two blocks back, rolled the rest in silence. Boots hitting the dirt, our weapons in hand.
The door creaked under my push.
He barely had time to reach for his gun.
Edge slammed him back against the wall, pinning him like prey, and I raised my weapon.
One shot. Quiet. Brutal. Over.
The body slid down the plaster, leaving a smear of red.
Cold satisfaction hit like ice water in my chest. Now she’s free .
Edge clapped my shoulder once, then we walked out, leaving the house to rot behind us.
It was deep into the night when I rolled back through the compound gates. The air was thick with the silence that followed storms—still, heavy, and almost sacred.
Kane stood outside his office, leaning against the doorframe. His eyes scanned me once, reading every drop of blood, soot, and exhaustion.
He handed me a plain black garment bag.
“She’s yours. Make it official when you’re ready.”
My throat tightened as the words landed in places I didn’t show people. I just nodded, took it, and walked away.
My room was dark and cool. I set the bag on the bed, unzipped it, and folded the plastic back like I was undressing something sacred. The vest lay inside, black leather, freshly stitched. It was smaller than mine, cut for her frame. The words on the patch were simple and not up for debate.
PROPERTY OF JAX.
The sight hit like a punch. Heat in my chest, sharp enough to hurt. Everyone would know she was mine. More than that—she’d know.
I set it in the closet, careful and reverent, staring for a long time. The weight of it anchored me.
Then I stripped and stepped under water hot enough to bite.
Blood and soot went down the drain in the shower as the steam filled my head and made the edges of the world soften.
I scrubbed until the skin on my knuckles protested.
Cuts I hadn’t noted earlier stung when soap found them. None of them mattered.
When I padded back into the room, towel slung low and hair damp, Lark was there. Curled on her side, sheets tangled around her legs. Breathing soft, steady. Peaceful.
I slid in behind her, the mattress tilting under my weight, my body still humming with the last vestiges of adrenaline from the night as I pulled her back against my chest. My arms locked around her.
She made a sleeping sound and inched back, seeking my heat, then she sighed softly. Contentedly.
For the first time since I saw her picture, my body unclenched.
I breathed her in—vanilla and warmth, the only scent that mattered—and let my eyes close.
It’s done. She’s safe. She’s mine .
Sleep took me with her heartbeat in my ear.