Chapter 15
Fifteen
Noir
I’m behind the wheel, knuckles white on the leather, engine growling like it’s just as pissed off as I am. Dagger’s beside me, phone to his ear, voice sharp and low as he calls in the cavalry.
“Bring everything. We’re getting her back, alive. I don’t give a fuck what it takes. No, not later—now. Lock and load.”
His other hand rests on his thigh, twitching like he’s itching to stab something already.
His blade’s strapped to his leg, steel glinting under the dash light.
My Glock’s in the side panel, fully loaded, safety off.
There’s a sawed-off tucked under my seat.
The trunk’s packed—extra mags, flashbangs, vests.
We’re not going in soft. We’re going in to end this.
I take the corner hard, tires screaming. Dagger doesn’t flinch. Neither of us speak for a beat, just the heavy sound of breathing and the metal-on-metal of weapons getting checked. I glance at him once. His eyes are wildfire. Controlled chaos. And I know mine are worse.
Because they fucking took her.
Our girl.
And now we’re coming.
I should’ve seen it sooner. Should’ve kept my head straight. But all I saw was red—revenge, guilt, blood. I wanted to make Dagger hurt for what I thought he did to Brynn.
Didn’t realize it’d be Blair who ended up paying the price, and now, if we don’t move fast enough, Dante will fucking kill her.
Not just for the product, or the money.
But to make a fucking point—that you can’t rip him off. That you don’t fuck with him and expect the people you care about to keep breathing.
Dagger turns to me, jaw locked. “You sure about this place?”
“Yeah. I got one of his runners to talk,” I grit. “Said if Dante took someone big—someone he wanted to show off—he’d take them there.”
To his fucking compound.
“Alright, then that’s where we go. Link and Stone will meet us there.”
The drive is long. Silent. The kind of silence that buzzes in your teeth and makes your pulse throb louder than the engine. We don’t speak. Just steel ourselves. Load mags. Check steel.
Every mile we cross tightens the noose.
We finally hit the edge of Dante’s compound, tucked in the California hills, remote and winding, where no one hears gunshots and the trees don’t talk. The kind of place you bury secrets deep and count on the dirt to keep them.
Gravel crackles under the tires, but no lights go on. No sirens or shouts. Just the sound of engines dying and weapons getting pulled. My pulse thrums like bass under my skin.
We don’t speak—not at first. Just move. Me, Dagger, Link, and Stone. Four ghosts in the dark, loaded to end a fucking war.
The first two guards drop fast—silent and clean. Dagger slits one from behind, hand over his mouth, blade quick across the throat. I drive mine into the other’s neck, twist, and drag him behind the shed.
No shots. No sound. Just death.
We reach the side door—old wood, warped at the edges. Dagger tests the handle, locked. He glances at me once. I nod.
Then he kicks it in.
The crack echoes, but no one comes. We move fast—every footstep measured, eyes scanning the dark.
The hallway inside is narrow, lined with faded wallpaper peeling at the corners, the air thick with the stench of sweat, bleach, and old blood.
Fluorescent lights flicker overhead like they’re about to die, casting everything in sick, stuttering pulses of white.
Stone and Link break off without a word, sweeping the main floor in opposite directions, clearing rooms as they go. I hear a muffled grunt—one of Dante’s guys hitting the ground hard—but we don’t stop.
Dagger checks the next corner, blade already drawn. I cover the rear, Glock steady in my grip.
We push deeper into the house.
Every step is war. Every breath is a countdown.
“Listen, I think it’s pretty fucking clear, that I don’t like you,” I say, my voice low, cold, honest. “But if something fucking happens to me—if I fall—you get her out.”
Dagger doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t posture or bark something back. He just looks at me—hard, steady—and breathes out slow through his nose. Like he’s leveling himself. Then he nods once, the kind of nod that feels like a fucking pact.
“You have my word,” he says, voice low and rough. “As long as you’ll do the same.”
I nod back.
That’s it. No handshake. No chest-beating theatrics. Just blood-worn truth passed between two men who should’ve killed each other a long time ago but didn’t. For her.
Dagger’s hand tightens around the grip of his blade. His eyes cut sideways toward me.
“And for the record,” he mutters, voice dry and sharp. “I still can’t fucking stand you.”
My lip curls. “Good. Hate keeps the aim steady.”
We move.
The hallway twists left, dim and stinking like mildew and rot. Footsteps echo off the concrete, low and sharp. Dagger’s ahead of me, moving like a shadow with a blade already in hand, his shoulders tight with fury. He halts—abrupt, controlled, and flicks his chin toward the end of the corridor.
A guard stands posted outside a thick steel door. Broad, armed, and cocky in that dead-eyed way that says he thinks the vest on his chest makes him invincible.
Dagger moves without a word.
Silent, low, efficient.
One hand braces on the wall as he slips behind the guy then quick as a snap, his blade hooks under the bastard’s chin and drags across clean.
No scream.
Just a fucking wet gurgle and a heavy slump.
Dagger catches his body before it hits the ground and lays him down without so much as a grunt, then wipes the blade on the guy’s vest.
I watch him with a curl of grim respect. He doesn’t enjoy it. Just does what needs to be done.
“Locked,” he mutters, jiggling the handle. Gunshots still echo upstairs—Link and Stone sweeping the upstairs level, handling Dante’s men one by one.
I’m already raising my Glock, safety off.
He steps aside.
One shot to the latch—clean through the bolt, and the door buckles, frame cracking.
Without a second thought, we push inside and descend together .
The basement air hits like a fist. Chemical, metallic, and damp.
Each breath tastes like rust and rot, settling in the back of my throat like poison.
The stairs groan under our boots, the echo swallowed by the concrete walls as we descend, slow and loaded for war.
Overhead, a pipe drips steadily, like a countdown ticking out time we don’t have.
One bulb sways above the stairwell, casting fractured shadows that twitch and slither like they’re alive.
The corridor stretches out ahead of us—tight, oppressive, and lined with doors. Some closed, others cracked, but every one of them a possibility I don’t want to fucking consider. This place wasn’t built for escape. It was built for holding shit in. For secrets. For suffering.
Dagger gestures for me to go left and peels right. We split.
I move quiet, weapon raised, breath sharp and shallow. First door—storage. Just crates and a cracked-open box of zip ties and surgical gloves. Second door—plants. Rows of flowering pot plants under hanging heat lamps, the smell thick, sweet and wrong. I clear it fast. No Blair.
No fucking Blair.
My pulse spikes. Jaw clenched as I move to the last one.
End of the hall. Sealed tight with a padlock bolted into the warped wood. One flickering light overhead barely cuts through the dark.
My breath catches. Every instinct howls.
She’s in there.
I know it. I fucking know it.
I step back. Raise my boot.
First kick—solid hit, but the lock doesn’t budge. Wood splinters. My shoulder jerks from the force.
"Fuck," I hiss through my teeth.
Second kick. A deeper crack. My leg throbs, but I don't stop. Can’t. I see flashes behind my eyes—my mother’s body slumped in a hallway the day she died. Not again. Not her.
Not Blair.
I step back. Grit my teeth. Slam into it a third time.
The door shudders. Creaks. Gives a little.
I picture Blair’s face. The way she smirks when she’s being a brat. The way she kisses like she’s drowning and wants to take you down with her. The way she made me want something more than revenge.
I fucking roar and drive my boot in one last time.
The door caves inward, splintering at the hinges, slamming against the wall with a bang.
And the world?—
The world fucking stops.
There she is.
Blair.
Chained to a rusted pipe, slumped over, body limp.
One wrist red and raw from struggling, the other bent at a sick angle like she tried to fight through the cuffs.
Her lips are tinged blue. Blood’s dried under her nose, crusted down to her chin.
She’s in nothing but a bra and panties—both torn.
The lace cut across her ribs like she was dragged or thrown.
Bruises bloom down her thighs, across her stomach, fingerprints inked in purple and yellow where someone grabbed her too hard.
One knee’s scraped bloody. A gash across her shoulder’s still oozing. She fought.
Fuck , she fought hard. I can see it in the way her knuckles are bruised, and still, she lost.
Bruises darken both her cheeks—fingertip-shaped. Like they held her down, forced her mouth open, shoved the shit down her throat while she kicked and screamed.
There’s foam at the corner of her mouth.
They fucking drugged her.
There’s a torn bag beside her, half-crushed under her hip. Pills scattered everywhere—holographic pink, glinting under the flickering bulb like they’ve got something to fucking celebrate.
Cyanide. Enough to kill a room. They didn’t just want her gone—they wanted to make her a fucking statement. A stage. A show.
This wasn’t a threat.
It was a message—louder than bullets, carved in her blood, screaming at me through the way she isn’t screaming at all.
Fuck.
My lungs won’t work. My limbs won’t move.
Because all I see is my mom—sprawled on our kitchen floor, eyes wide and glassy, needle dangling from her vein like it belonged there.
All I see is Brynn—breathing but gone, soul already evacuated.
But this?
This is Blair.