Chapter 45 #2
“Forty seconds,” Ash snaps. “You’re about to have half the street looking your way. Get him in the car. Now.”
“On it,” I say. “Vale—”
“Already ahead of you,” Vale sings.
He shifts his grip in a way that should not be possible at that angle — one hand sliding from Damien’s throat to clamp across his jaw, the other hooking behind Damien’s knee. He wrenches, pivots, and in one vicious, practiced motion he flips Damien over his own shoulder and dumps him forward.
Damien hits Saint’s car hood with a hard, breathless grunt.
Saint winces. “Mateo,” he scolds. “Paint.”
Vale laughs. “Tell Caelum to buy you a new bonnet.”
Saint sighs. “He already owes me for the last one.”
“Move you bloody fools,” Ash snarls in my ear.
We move.
I grab Damien by the back of the neck and shove him, hard, toward the passenger door. Vale yanks it open. Damien tries to twist free, finds Vale’s hand already on his belt, finds Saint already sweeping his legs. He hits the seat face-first with a strangled sound.
“Try to run,” Vale croons, leaning in over him. “Please.”
Damien spits something that’s meant to be a threat and comes out a wheeze. Saint swings around to the driver’s side, but the second his hand hits the door there’s motion at the alley mouth — more bodies, faster now, voices raised and angry.
“Company,” Saint mutters, urging us forward.
This is the ugly part. You can plan for timing. You can plan for angles. You can’t plan for the way adrenaline makes men who should run decide to be heroes.
Three more Syndicate boys round the corner, fast and clumsy. Two knives, and one gun. The gun comes up first, hands shaking. Amateur, which means the odds are in our favor. Saint moves to block, and I already know what he’s about to do.
“Down,” I snap.
He doesn’t go down. He steps forward, reaching for the barrel instead of ducking it — hand snapping up to twist, mouth already opening to say something like repent—Bang.
The world snaps white for a second, and my heart stops. Saint staggers, just slightly. The bullet doesn’t hit his chest — thank God — but the guy with the gun didn’t know how to hold his own recoil, and when Saint wrenched his wrist, the round grazed high and wild and Saint caught the backspin.
He doesn’t cry out. He just grunts and pivots, slamming his shoulder into the shooter and driving him into the wall with a sick crack. The other two rush in on instinct, trying to swarm Saint.
Vale explodes out of the passenger side like a demon set loose. He meets the first one halfway, headbutts him so hard I hear the crack from here, then grabs the second by the collar and bounces his skull off the car roof.
It works—for a moment.
But the idiot with the knife still swipes. Vale jerks back half a heartbeat too slow — too high, too eager — and the handle of the blade, slams into the side of his head with a hollow, ugly thud. He goes stumbling back a step, eyes wide for a split breath. Not down. Just rattled.
His smile disappears for the first time. Something cold spikes through my chest.
“Mateo?” I bark.
“I’m fine,” he snarls, then sways a little, blinks hard, and bares his teeth. “Motherf—”
Saint takes the choice away from him.
He’s already got the shooter by the collar in one hand. With the other, he snaps his wrist out at the last Syndicate idiot’s knee. The angle is brutal, fast. The man screams and goes down. Saint drops them all.
Then he steps back toward us, face pale under that tanned skin, jaw tight.
My eyes widen, and I see it now. When the shot went wild and he twisted, he must’ve slammed his wrist into the edge of the brick doorframe.
Hard. The joint is already swelling. Wrong angle.
The kind of wrong angle you don’t walk off.
“Saint,” I say, moving.
He lifts that arm and I see his hand shake.
“Broken,” he says coolly, like he’s discussing the weather. “Non-dominant hand. Inconvenient, but I’ll survive. Get moving. We’re leaving now.”
Ash snaps in my ear, and I can hear keys hitting keyboard fast. “You’ve got eyes,” he warns. “Traffic cam at the end of the lane just turned. Syndicate’s calling in cousins. Fire brigade is thirty seconds out, with Met probably two behind them. You linger, you get witnesses. Move.”
“Go,” I snarl.
Saint slides into the driver’s seat one-handed, face tight but steady. Vale blinks once hard like he’s forcing his vision to clear, then shoves Damien’s head down and climbs in after him, planting a knee in Damien’s back and yanking his arms behind him with vicious precision.
Damien hisses in pain. “This is—”
Vale leans down and murmurs something in his ear I can’t hear. Whatever it is, Damien goes very, very still.
I get in back and slam the door.
Saint resituates and then guns it.
The tires squeal against wet stone, and we shoot out of the alley just as the first curl of actual visible smoke licks around the corner and a fire engine siren starts wailing three streets over.
Ash in my ear: “Left. Now. Don’t take Shoreditch High Street. They’ve already got eyes there. Go east, cut through the estate, and I’ll blind the council cams on the inner road for the next three minutes.”
“Copy,” Saint says through clenched teeth.
He jerks the wheel one-handed. The car fishtails for a second on slick asphalt, then grabs. We shoot down a narrow side street lined in bins, delivery lorries, and a fox that darts in front of us and vanishes under a fence.
I turn in my seat and look at Vale.
He’s breathing hard through his nose. There’s already a purpling knot blooming high on the left side of his head, just at the temple, under the dark sweep of his hair. His pupils aren’t blown — good — but they’re not even either. Not good.
“How many fingers?” I ask, holding three up.
“Fuck you,” he says clearly.
Good enough for now.
“Stay awake,” I tell them, looking from Saint to Vale. “If you pass out on me, I’m leaving you both on the side of the A13.”
“Mmm,” he purrs, dazed but defiant. “Romance.”
Saint huffs in annoyance. Damien makes a muffled noise under him, face mashed into the seat.
I grab a fistful of Damien’s hair and force his head up. He hisses, tries to twist, finds he can’t.
He’s breathing hard. Sweat at his hairline. Fury in his eyes. Fear under it.
Good.
“Hi,” I say pleasantly. “Welcome to your new schedule.”
He bares his teeth. “You’ve just torched any deal you had left in this city, Voss. You think Syndicate is going to let you walk after this? You think anyone in Whitehall is going to cover you when they see—”
I drive my knuckles into his kidney. Soft. Controlled. Hard enough to cut him off.
He chokes.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I murmur, leaning close enough that my breath hits his ear.
“You are going to answer questions. You are going to do it clearly. You are going to do it without lying. And you are going to do it quietly. If you do not? I will hand you to Mateo and let him play. If you try to posture? I will hand you to Nikolai and let him preach. If you try to make yourself useful? I might keep you alive long enough to make you useful. Do you understand me?”
His jaw clenches. I tighten my fist in his hair just a fraction, angling his head back until his eyes meet mine. He has to see it. I make sure he sees it.
This isn’t business anymore, no. This has become fucking personal.
“You’re not touching her,” I say softly.
His eyes flicker, and I can tell that’s the first crack.
Good.
Saint takes a hard left that presses us all into the doors. He’s breathing harder now, sweat on his brow, that broken wrist clutched tight against his stomach. He shouldn’t be driving like this one-handed. He is.
“Ash,” he grits out. “Status.”
“Clear for the next ninety seconds,” Ash says.
I can hear keys, hear his breathing, hear the focus in it.
“I’ve got you eating garbage route through estate cameras.
Council thinks you’re a maintenance van.
After that, you’ve got a bus lane camera you can’t spoof because it’s manual.
So you’ll want to not be there in ninety seconds. ”
“Lovely,” Saint mutters.
He guns it.
We shoot out of the estate, blow through a narrow stretch that smells like fried oil and cheap aftershave, and cut onto a quieter road lined in old brick and bare trees. The manor’s on the other side of the river. Ten minutes, maybe less at Saint’s speed.
Vale shifts his weight and groans, low. His hand goes to his head instinctively. He pulls it back and checks for blood. There’s a smear. Not much. He grins, lopsided. “Still pretty,” he mutters.
I roll my eyes. “You’re concussed.”
“Mildly,” he says.
“Stay awake,” I order.
“Buy me dinner and I’ll consider it.”
Saint exhales a laugh through his teeth. “You two sound married.”
“Don’t propose in my car,” Saint adds. “My wrist’s already ruined. I can’t sign anything.”
“Speaking of wrists,” Vale says lightly, leaning around the seat to get a look at Saint’s arm. “How bad?”
“Functional,” Saint says.
“Broken,” I correct.
Saint huffs. “Semantics.”
I glance back down at Damien.
He’s quiet now. Seething. But quiet.
I ease my grip in his hair, just slightly. Enough to let him breathe easier. Not enough to give him any fantasy of control.
I can feel my pulse finally starting to slow. Not by much. Just enough to let thought cut through the red.
We did it. It wasn’t clean. Definitely wasn’t elegant in the slightest, or perfect.
But we did it.
He’s in the car—alive to boot.
Saint’s hurt. Vale’s rattled. We may have been seen. We may have faces on someone’s shaky phone. Ash will have to scrub that in the next hour before it spreads. But he’s in the car. And that changes everything.
Ash breathes into the line. “Alright. Listen to me very carefully. You are no longer on city surveillance. I dropped you off the map. You’re ghosts for the next twenty minutes. After that, I can’t promise anything else won’t come your way. Get him home.”
“Copy,” I say.
Saint takes the last turn toward the manor road, bracing himself and his wrist. The world goes quiet in a way you can feel in your teeth. Vale exhales, low and satisfied. “Caelum,” he says, almost sing-song.
“Mateo,” I answer.
“We,” he says, grinning slow and wicked despite the glassiness in his eyes and the blood still drying at his temple, “have a guest for dinner.”
I look down at Damien, and he glares up defiantly at me.
I smile, and the shiver that runs through Damien makes my blood sing in anticipation. “No,” I murmur. “Dinner is for family. He’s for after.”