Chapter 7
The door exploded inward.
Riot was already moving. The first man through caught a bullet in the shoulder and went down screaming, blocking the entrance for the half-second Riot needed to close the distance. Close quarters. His territory.
The second man tried to bring up his weapon. Riot grabbed his wrist, wrenched it sideways until bone snapped, and drove an elbow into his throat. The man dropped, gagging, and Riot took his gun before he hit the floor.
Two down. Six to go. Maybe more.
They poured through the doorway like roaches, and Riot met them with everything he had. This wasn't the ring—no refs, no rules, no bell to save anyone. This was survival, and he'd been training for it his whole life.
A fist came at his head. He slipped it, countered with a hook to the liver that folded the attacker in half.
Someone grabbed him from behind; he threw his head back, felt the satisfying crunch of a nose breaking, then spun and drove his knee into the man's groin.
When he doubled over, Riot's elbow found the back of his skull.
Three. Four.
The room was chaos—overturned furniture, muzzle flashes, the copper stink of blood mixing with gunpowder. Riot moved through it like he'd been born for this, every strike precise, every movement efficient. The restless energy that tortured him in quiet moments was finally, perfectly unleashed.
A bullet tore past his ear, close enough to burn. He dropped low, swept the shooter's legs, and put two rounds into his chest before the man finished falling.
Five.
"Find the woman!" someone shouted. "Check the back!"
Riot's blood went cold. Mandy.
He fought toward the hallway, putting down a sixth man with a brutal combination—jab to blind him, cross to stun him, uppercut that lifted him off his feet. But more were coming through the door, and he couldn't be everywhere at once.
Then he heard it. A scream from the back of the house—not Mandy's voice. A man's voice, high and shocked and pained.
Riot grinned and kept fighting.
Mandy had heard the gunfire start and known she couldn't stay hidden.
The false panel was supposed to protect her. She was supposed to wait until Riot came to get her, supposed to trust him to handle everything.
But trust didn't mean helpless. And when she heard boots in the hallway, heard a man's voice saying "Check the bedrooms," she'd made her choice.
The kitchen knife was where she'd left it three days ago, drying in the rack beside the sink. Eight inches of cheap steel, meant for chopping vegetables, not combat.
It would do.
She'd pressed herself against the wall beside the bedroom door, barely breathing, and waited. The footsteps got closer. The door swung open.
She didn't think. Didn't hesitate. Just drove the blade into the first thing she could reach—the soft tissue just above his hip, below his body armor.
The man screamed. His gun went off, wild, putting a hole in the ceiling. Mandy yanked the knife free and stabbed again, aiming for the same spot, and he crumpled against the doorframe with a sound like a wounded animal.
Not dead. But not coming for her either.
She stepped over him with the bloody knife clutched in shaking hands and moved toward the sounds of fighting. The hallway was dark, smoke drifting from the front room, and every instinct she had screamed to hide, to run, to let someone else handle this.
She was done listening to those instincts.
Riot saw her step into the hallway and nearly got his head taken off because he stopped paying attention to the fight.
She was covered in blood. Holding a kitchen knife like she knew how to use it. Her eyes were wild, terrified, and absolutely furious.
His woman. Fighting for her life with a goddamn kitchen knife.
Something primal roared through him—pride and fear and possessive fury all tangled together. He put down the man in front of him with a vicious knee to the face and fought toward her.
"Mandy! Get down!"
She dropped without hesitation, and Riot fired over her head, catching a man who'd been coming up behind her. The body hit the floor three feet from where she crouched.
"Stay behind me!"
"Working on it!" She scrambled toward him on hands and knees, knife still clutched in one fist, and Riot grabbed her arm and hauled her against his side. She was shaking—trembling so hard he could feel it through his whole body—but her jaw was set and her eyes were clear.
"How many?" she gasped.
"Lost count. More than eight."
"Great."
The front of the house was a war zone. Bodies on the floor, furniture destroyed, bullet holes stitching the walls.
Riot counted four men still standing, plus whoever had sent them.
Trevor's crew was professional, but they'd expected an easy target—a prospect and a house cleaner, nothing they couldn't handle.
They'd been wrong.
Glass shattered somewhere behind them. An engine roared. And then the cavalry arrived.
Powder came through the back door like a force of nature, shotgun blazing, laughing like a maniac. Turnpike was right behind him, methodical and precise, putting rounds exactly where they needed to go. The remaining crew members scattered—some trying to fight, some trying to run.
None of them made it far.
Riot pushed Mandy behind an overturned bookshelf. "Stay here."
"Where are you—"
But he was already moving. Because in the chaos of the backup arriving, he'd spotted something that made his vision go red.
Kyle Renner. Heading for the back door. Running.
The man who'd threatened Mandy. Who'd told her exactly what would happen if she talked. Who'd shown up at her apartment and described how she would disappear, just like Mrs. Hartley, just like everyone else who'd noticed too much.
Riot caught him in the kitchen.
Kyle spun, bringing up his weapon, but Riot was faster. He knocked the gun aside and drove his fist into Kyle's face—once, twice, feeling cartilage crunch and bone give way. Kyle staggered, tried to throw a punch, and Riot slipped it easily.
"You shouldn't have touched her."
Another punch. Kyle's head snapped back, blood spraying from his ruined nose.
"You shouldn't have threatened her."
Hook to the body. Ribs cracked. Kyle doubled over, gasping, and Riot grabbed him by the hair and forced his head up.
"You shouldn't have come to her home and told her she was going to disappear."
The next punch dropped Kyle to his knees. And the next put him on his back, sprawled across the kitchen floor, barely conscious.
Riot stood over him, breathing hard, fists painted with blood that wasn't his. The familiar darkness was rising—that place where the violence took over and he couldn't stop, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but hit until there was nothing left to hit.
But underneath the darkness, something else burned brighter. Mandy. Her face when Kyle had threatened her. The fear she'd carried for three weeks. The way she'd grabbed a kitchen knife and fought anyway.
This wasn't mindless violence. This was justice.
"Please." Kyle's voice was a wet gurgle. "I was just following orders. Trevor made me—"
"Trevor's next."
Riot's fist came down. And kept coming down. And when it was over, Kyle Renner would never threaten anyone again.
Silence, eventually. The roar of blood in his ears fading to something manageable. The red haze clearing from his vision.
Riot looked down at his hands—split open, covered in Kyle's blood, shaking with adrenaline—and waited for the sick feeling that always came after. The horror at what he'd done. The fear that he was becoming the kind of man he'd grown up hating.
It didn't come.
Kyle Renner had terrorized a woman for noticing a crime. Had made others disappear. Had walked into her life and promised her death like it was nothing.
And now he was gone. Because Riot had stopped him.
The violence had purpose. Finally, after a lifetime of fighting just to fight, the violence meant something.
"Riot." Turnpike's voice, calm and steady. "You good?"
Riot stepped back from the body and turned to find his brothers surveying the damage. Powder was checking pulses, confirming kills. Turnpike stood in the doorway, eyes moving from Riot to Kyle's corpse and back again.
"I'm good." And he meant it. "Where's Mandy?"
"Here."
She stepped out from behind the bookshelf, still holding the bloody knife, still shaking. Her eyes went to Kyle's body, and Riot waited for the horror. The revulsion. The moment when she realized what kind of man she'd let into her life.
Instead, she walked straight to him. Dropped the knife. And wrapped her arms around his chest like he was the only solid thing in a world that had gone insane.
"Is he dead?" she whispered against his blood-soaked shirt.
"Yeah."
"Good."
Riot's arms came up around her, holding her close, and he felt something in his chest crack open and bleed. Not pain. Something else. Something terrifying and wonderful and completely new.
"We need to move." Turnpike's voice cut through the moment. "Powder's going to torch the place. Evidence cleanup."
Riot nodded but didn't let go of Mandy. "Compound?"
"Compound. Patriot wants a full debrief." Turnpike's mouth curved slightly. "And he's going to want to hear about the house cleaner who stabbed one of Trevor's guys with a kitchen knife."
Mandy let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "I didn't kill him."
"You didn't run either." Turnpike nodded at her, something like respect in his eyes. "That counts for something."
Riot pulled back just enough to see her face. Blood on her cheek, tears cutting tracks through the grime, eyes still too bright with shock and fury and something that might have been triumph.
"You did good," he said roughly. "You fought."
"I wasn't going to let them take me." Her voice broke on the words. "I wasn't going to be another name no one remembers."
"You never would have been." Riot pressed his forehead to hers, ignoring the blood between them, the bodies on the floor, the brothers waiting to move. Just for a second. Just long enough to make sure she understood. "I would have remembered. I would have burned the whole city down."
Powder appeared in the doorway, a jerry can in each hand and a grin on his face. "Hate to interrupt the moment, lovebirds, but this place is about to become a fire hazard. You want to be inside when it goes?"
Riot stepped back, took Mandy's hand, and led her toward the back door. Behind them, the first flames began to lick at the walls.
Outside, the night air was cold and clean. Bikes waited at the end of the alley, engines idling. Riot helped Mandy onto the back of his machine, felt her arms wrap around his waist, her body pressing against his back.
His hands still ached. His knuckles were torn to hell. And somewhere in his chest, the silence was deeper than it had ever been.
Kyle Renner was dead. Trevor Boone had lost his intimidation specialist. And Mandy Fitzgerald was alive because Riot had done what he was born to do.
The safehouse blazed behind them as they rode away. Riot didn't look back.
The war wasn't over. But tonight, they'd won a battle.
And for the first time in his life, the violence had been worth something.