Chapter 18
ONYX
The thing about shadows is, they don’t always come at night. Sometimes they find you in the daylight. On a quiet street. In the last place you thought you'd be found.
Jareth Marks learned that the hard fucking way.
The bastard ran the second he knew we were coming. Vanished from the art world like smoke. Shredded every document, wiped his computers, pulled his accounts, and even abandoned the studio he was so obsessed with.
But the Hounds have fucking teeth.
Wizard had been working nonstop. He scrubbed every digital trail Marks had ever touched, dismantling his networks one by one. He filed all the symbols Elena had drawn for us in a digital vault that was stored in our SKIFF room. The IPs tied to Marks’s hidden servers were ghosted.
We cleaned house, digitally and financially, while Ace ripped the money pipeline apart from the other end. Every offshore account was burned, all the fake non profits collapsed, and any silent partners and money launderers were buried under layers of misdirection and corporate dead ends.
The Hounds had been circled on too many maps.
If anyone connected Elena to our operation, the blowback could cost us.
So we erased the ties, one by one, until not even the dirtiest fed or wiliest criminal could pin anything on us.
No signatures. No accounts. No prints. And no survivors from the side that made Elena a target.
It took a couple days, but Wizard finally turned up an address.
I’d been on ready alert since we rescued Elena, so when he handed over the location, I went right into action. It was early, so Elena was still sleeping. I gently kissed her until she was mostly awake, mussed and so tempting. But I was done with this shit hanging over our heads.
“Got to go, baby. Shouldn’t be too long.”
“Is everything okay?” Her tone was curious, but I could see her holding back any more questions. We’d talked about what I could and could not share with her. She’d proved, yet again, how fucking perfect she was for me by accepting the limitations without hesitation.
“Club business, baby.”
“Okay,” she murmured sleepily before tipping her face up for another kiss. “Be safe.”
“Always.”
When I got to the armory, Kevlar was sharpening a combat knife, the movement slow and measured, like he was picturing exactly where he was going to slide it. Tomcat checked his ammo. And Ink was twisting a silencer onto the barrel of his Glock, his expression as deadpan as ever.
King had also assigned another enforcer to this op.
Shadow was a cleaner. The kind that wipes away all traces of…
well, everything. If someone wanted something from one of his scenes, they’d better get it before he even laid eyes on it.
Once he went to work, everything disappeared before he melted away like a shadow.
He looked up when I entered the room, but he didn’t say a fucking word. He rarely did.
Once we were ready, we rode without patches, cuts, or anything that could trace back to the Hounds. Kevlar had eyes on the target the second we hit the grid, and Wizard stayed in our ears through the comms, tracking everything from traffic patterns to local heat.
Marks had holed up in a house north of the state line. Too new to be suspicious, and just generic enough not to stand out. Two stories, backed up to dense woods, with tinted windows, and one rental car out front. A hatchback.
What people didn’t see—unless you knew where to look—were the three guards.
We cleared them without speaking or tripping an alarm. Silent and deadly.
Kevlar took the one on the porch. Grabbed the fucker from behind, dragged him down the steps, and cut his throat before he could make a sound. Ink went through the garage, leaving a body with a hole between the eyes inside. Shadow took the side door, and I went around back.
I smirked when I saw the last guard watering the lawn, acting like a normal guy. Someone hadn’t trained this motherfucker well, because he’d let the empty woods behind the house give him a false sense of security.
His lack of awareness was his downfall—literally. Before he knew what was happening, he fell to the ground, his eyes lifeless and hands still clutching the hose.
I stepped over him, shut off the water, then picked the lock and entered the house. Shadow was already walking the first floor, his eyes sweeping the scene as he calculated what would be needed to leave everything sterile.
“First floor clear,” Ink murmured in my ear.
Then Kevlar’s voice came through the comm. “Upstairs. Second bedroom on the left. Standing by across the hall.”
I knew Kevalr wouldn’t make a move, he was there to back me up in case shit went sideways.
Marks was mine.
At the top of the stairs, I clocked my surroundings and Kevlar’s position, then ghosted over to the only bedroom with light under the door.
I kicked it in and found Marks scrambling for the drawer beside his bed.
I didn’t give him the chance to reach it.
Just put a bullet through his hand and watched him scream.
I saw recognition in his eyes the second I stepped over the threshold.
He knew exactly who I was. What this was. And why I was here.
“You fucking branded her,” I seethed, stepping closer. “Used her. Almost got her killed. You don’t walk away from that.”
“I didn’t know she was y-yours,” he stuttered, his voice pleading. As if he would get even an ounce of mercy from me.
“Doesn’t fucking matter who she belongs to, motherfucker. She didn’t give you permission, didn’t even fucking know that you had marked her like she was nothing more than your property.”
Marks was shaking, blood soaking through the white designer shirt he probably thought made him look harmless. I pressed the barrel of my Glock against his forehead, my hand steady. “You shouldn’t have fucking touched her.”
He opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him speak again. There was nothing he could say that would stop what was coming.
One shot. Between the eyes.
Shadow walked in a few seconds later and started unpacking his gear. Acid. Gloves. Floor cleaners. Devices that would fry anything electronic in the house. He didn’t blink as he wrapped the body and began prepping for disposal.
Ink handed me a fresh clip as I wiped my weapon down. “He scream like a bitch?”
I nodded once. “Fucker pissed himself before I even chambered the round.”
Kevlar chuckled as he helped Shadow move the body to the floor. “Cowards always dress nice. Real killers don’t need fancy collars.”
Shadow was quiet as he finished prepping the room like we’d never been there.
We pitched in to make the process go faster.
I needed to get the fuck back to my girl.
With all this bullshit behind us, I wasn’t gonna wait any longer to tell her the truth.
That I loved her, needed her more than my next breath.
Then I was gonna put my patch on her, a ring on her finger, and fuck my kid into her if I hadn’t already.
By the time we rolled out, there was no trace of us. No blood, no prints, and no tech. Just an empty house about to get torched by its own wiring.
It was done.
But I didn’t breathe easy until we crossed the state line and pulled back into the compound, our bikes humming low.
The clubhouse loomed ahead, familiar and solid. Home.
I peeled off and killed the engine just outside the garage. Ink and the others parked alongside me, and we walked across the gravel together in silence.
Ink was the first to break it. “So, are you finally gonna stop pacing the roof at night?”
I shot him a look. Yeah, I hadn't been able to sleep much lately. I’d wear out my girl until she passed out before wandering up to the open roof area that spanned between the club bedrooms and King’s house, which had been built off the back.
I’d been trying to burn off the excess energy from my fear for Elena and utter rage at Marks.
Kevlar grinned. “Motherfucker was up there last night at two in the morning. Looked like Batman without the cape.”
“Fuck off,” I muttered, but the weight in my chest had already started to ease.
Elena was safe. And the bastard who touched her was gone.
As I stepped inside, King’s voice rumbled from his office. “Onyx.”
I turned and walked in.
He sat behind the desk, a glass of whiskey, half-finished in front of him, and a file open that I didn’t bother looking at. He glanced up at me, eyes unreadable.
“It’s done,” I said simply.
He nodded once, leaning back in his chair. “Any trouble?”
“Nothing we didn’t expect.”
He didn’t press. Just pushed a folded vest across the desk toward me.
It was black leather. Same cut as mine, but smaller. Elena was stitched over where the vest would rest on her heart. And on the back, surrounding the Hounds of Hellfire logo were the words, PROPERTY OF ONYX.
King lifted his chin. “Go claim your woman.”
I stared at it for a second longer, something deep and raw twisting in my chest. “She’s already mine.”
“Yeah,” he drawled, one corner of his mouth inching up. “But now she’ll be wearing proof when you drag her to bed.”
I huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh and folded the vest under my arm.
King’s eyes met mine one last time. “Don’t fuck it up, Reeve.”
I turned and walked out, my mind already on her.
“In the kitchen,” someone said the second I entered the common room.
I headed straight there, needing desperately to see Elena.
I had something to tell her.
And something to give her.