Chapter 13
REV
The vibration of my phone against the nightstand dragged me awake before dawn fully broke across the compound.
For a second, I stayed still, my arm locked around Delaney’s waist while her warm body remained tucked against mine beneath the blankets.
Her hair spilled across my shoulder and pillow in tangled strawberry-blond waves.
She made a quiet sound in her sleep and pressed closer, almost making me ignore the call entirely.
But the name glowing on the screen killed that thought fast. It was Apex. Calling this early meant he must have found something.
I exhaled slowly through my nose before carefully reaching for the phone without waking her. My body protested the movement immediately because Delaney’s bare thigh was hooked over mine, warm skin sliding against me in a way that had my cock thickening.
Shit.
I answered quietly, trying to focus on the call rather than what I wanted to do to the woman lying in my arms. “Yeah.”
“Need you in Jax’s office,” Apex requested without preamble, his voice alert despite the early hour. “Now.”
That woke me up fully, and I glanced down at Delaney again while she slept peacefully against me. Last night’s conversation lingered heavily in my head, her confession that she was terrified of bringing innocent life into a dangerous world.
And the fucked-up thing was…I understood her fear about having kids after what she’d been through.
Didn’t mean I’d stopped imagining her round with my baby for even a second or convincing her to let go of her fear and trust that we would keep our kids safe. But the best way to do that was to remove the cause of her fear.
My gaze drifted over the smooth curve of her shoulder peeking out from beneath the blankets. Heat rolled through me hard enough that I had to physically stop myself from sliding my hand between her thighs and waking her up properly.
Later, asshole. Let the woman rest.
I’d taken her rough last night. Multiple times. She was bound to be a little sore.
Besides, right now, Magnus came first.
I leaned down and brushed my mouth softly across her temple before carefully untangling myself from her body. Delaney stirred faintly but didn’t wake as I slid out of bed and dragged on jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and my cut.
I paused long enough to look at her one more time before leaving the room.
The clubhouse was quieter this early. Most of the compound was still asleep except for the brothers rotating security shifts.
The smell of coffee drifted from the kitchen as I headed upstairs toward Jax’s office.
By the time I pushed through the door, Kane and Edge were already there.
Apex stood near the wall with a tablet in one hand, his expression focused.
“You look like shit,” Edge drawled casually as I stepped farther inside.
I dropped onto the empty chair beside him. “You should see the other guy.”
Edge snorted softly. “I assume by ‘other guy’ you mean your self-control.”
“Fuck off.”
Kane’s mouth twitched faintly before his attention shifted back to Apex. “Tell him.”
Apex nodded and turned the tablet toward me. “I traced an undeclared preservation property through shell payments, storage fees, and some grant-adjacent laundering Magnus buried under restoration expenses.”
That got my full attention. “What kind of property?”
“Old archive building outside city limits,” Apex answered.
“Technically registered to a preservation trust that only exists on paper. No public ties to Magnus directly, but the money flow is clean enough that it’s obviously his.
Utilities are active. Property taxes paid regularly.
And there’ve been deliveries made there under fake vendor names tied to the museum. ”
Jax tapped a few keys, and one of the monitors switched to satellite images of an isolated structure surrounded by trees and overgrown fencing.
“There’s more,” Apex continued. “Storage payments spiked recently. Same with supply purchases. Cleaning chemicals, preservation materials, and climate-control maintenance.”
“Private, controlled, and isolated,” I muttered, already feeling the pieces clicking together in my head. “Fits his psychology.”
My jaw tightened as I stared at the images on the screen. Magnus needed environments he could control completely. Places hidden from oversight where he could build and preserve his rituals without interruption. Somewhere quiet enough for obsession to grow unchecked.
“Looks like a fucking tomb,” Edge muttered.
“Basically is,” I replied flatly.
Jax zoomed further into the property. “No cameras on the outside that I can see from satellite pulls. But if Magnus uses this place actively, assume internal security.”
“Any signs he’s there now?” I asked.
“Nothing definitive,” Jax answered. “But utilities are currently drawing power.”
Silence settled heavily across the room for a second while we all stared at the property.
Then Kane straightened away from the desk. “You, Shifter, Century, and Axle hit it tonight.”
My pulse spiked. Finally, we were gonna see some action.
Edge leaned back in his chair. “Bastard really picked the wrong club to piss off.”
I stood, already mentally preparing for the operation ahead. Every instinct I had screamed that this was the right place. Magnus was careful, disciplined, and organized…but obsessive men always left pieces of themselves behind eventually.
And tonight, we were going hunting. Hopefully, we’d find the motherfucker in his lair. The tomb that would become his own.
Night had fully settled by the time we rolled up near the property.
We killed the engines a quarter mile out and approached the rest of the way on foot through thick brush and low marsh grass, the dark outline of the building rising through the trees ahead like something dragged straight out of a nightmare.
The structure itself was old brick and stone, originally built sometime in the early 1900s, if I had to guess.
Most of the narrow and reinforced windows were blacked out from the inside.
A rusted iron fence surrounded the property, half swallowed by vines and neglect.
But the first thing I noticed was that the neglect was fake.
The grounds looked abandoned at a glance, but the pathways through the weeds had been maintained just enough.
Security lights sat tucked carefully beneath the eaves where they wouldn’t be visible from the road.
One corner of the building had newer mortar work too, subtle but obvious once you knew how to look for it.
Magnus hid behind decay because it made people look away.
Shifter crouched beside me near the fence line, pulling a small flashlight from his vest and covering the lens with his palm. “No cameras on this side.”
“Too smart for obvious security,” Axle muttered quietly behind us.
Century tested the chain-link gate once, then shook his head. “Locked.”
I stepped forward and pulled a set of cutters from my belt. “Not for long.”
Ten minutes later, we were inside.
The building smelled wrong the second we entered. The stale, dry scent of paper, dust, old wood, cleaning solvents, and carefully controlled humidity filled the air. My flashlight swept slowly across the interior while every instinct in my body tightened harder with each passing second.
Rows of shelving units filled the massive room.
I moved closer and saw that acid-free preservation boxes lined entire walls, each one labeled meticulously in Magnus’s handwriting.
Some shelves held old books and restoration materials.
Others had leather-bound journals stacked in chronological order.
Carefully cataloged binders sat arranged by date and subject matter like a museum’s inventory.
And everything was organized with horrifying precision.
“This isn’t a fucking kill room,” Axle muttered behind me, his voice low with disgust.
My flashlight drifted slowly over the shelves again. “It’s an archive.”
This was creepy as fuck. Unlike typical serial killers, Magnus wasn’t just collecting trophies. He thought he was preserving history.
Shifter opened one of the storage boxes carefully while Century moved deeper into the room with his weapon drawn. Inside the box sat dozens of handwritten notes, old photographs, restoration sketches, and ritual diagrams preserved in plastic sleeves.
“All cataloged just as carefully,” Shifter murmured.
I moved toward another shelf and pulled one of the journals free.
The pages were filled with neat handwriting detailing symbolic pairings, historical references, ceremonial staging, body positioning, herb usage, clothing selection, and ritual timelines.
There were side-by-side comparisons between historical memorial portraits and Magnus’s intended recreations.
My jaw locked tighter the further I read. The psychotic motherfucker wasn’t improvising any of this. He’d built an entire methodology around it.
“Son of a bitch,” Century muttered from somewhere deeper in the room. “Asshole isn’t fucking here.”
I stepped toward a large worktable near the center of the room, where dozens of papers sat spread beneath a green banker’s lamp.
It was clearly Magnus’s desk. And as I looked it over, that was when shit hit the fan.
The files spread across the surface weren’t random notes or historical research anymore. They were women.
Fuck. This was victim research.
Photographs paper-clipped beside typed behavioral notes. Schedules. Work routines. Symbolic matching criteria based on appearance, education, profession, and personality traits. Magnus had reduced human beings into historical components he could organize and classify.
My pulse slowed dangerously, my body and mind going cold as I got even more focused and fucking lethal.
I flipped through page after page while fury built inside me with every detail I absorbed. Then my hand stopped abruptly. Surveillance photographs. Looking at the dates, they were recent ones—going back to shortly after I stopped seeing signs of someone watching the compound.
They were all of one woman. A young blonde who resembled Delaney in a lot of ways, except for the round glasses often perched on her nose.
She was mid-twenties, maybe. According to his notes, she was a museum employee, and her badge was visible in several shots.
The photos tracked her movements—coffee shop, parking garage, university archive building, apartment entrance.
Every image had handwritten notes in the margins.
Observed behaviors and isolation tendencies.
Physical similarities. Symbolic suitability.
Then I spotted a photo that wasn’t from a modern camera. It was just as Delaney described. A funerary portrait of two women, ones who closely matched the appearance of Delaney and the woman in the photographs. It all turned my stomach.
Until I flipped that over to scan the final page, clipped neatly to the stack. It was a preparation schedule. Then my blood went ice cold.
“Fuck,” I growled.
The room went still behind me, and Axle appeared at my side. “What?”
My tone was low and deadly as I held up the sheaf of papers.
“He’s already picked his replacement.”