Chapter 17
ISAIAH
The Vipers came out of nowhere.
One second I'm doing a routine pickup from one of our protection clients on the east side, the next I'm ducking behind a dumpster while bullets chew through brick and metal like they're made of paper.
Three of them—professionals, not the usual street thugs we deal with—moving with coordinated precision that speaks to military training or something close to it.
The Vipers have been slithering across the city for weeks now, taking territory we don't have the manpower to defend, hitting our operations with intelligence that's too good to be coincidence.
Someone's feeding them information. Someone always is.
But tonight they got bold, tried to take me out while I was alone and exposed.
They almost succeeded.
I make it back to the safe house at just past midnight, adrenaline crash hitting me the second I kill the truck's engine.
My side is on fire—not a direct hit, thank God, just a graze that tore through my jacket and shirt and left a burning track across my ribs.
But it's bleeding steadily, soaking through the makeshift pressure bandage I made from my t-shirt, and I can feel the exhaustion pulling at me like gravity.
The front door opens before I reach it. Asher, already awake or maybe never asleep, takes one look at me and his expression hardens into that tactical assessment mode he shifts into when things are bad.
"How many?" he asks, stepping aside to let me in.
"Three. Vipers." I make it to the kitchen, brace myself against the counter. "Professional setup. They were waiting for me."
"Fuck." He's already moving, grabbing the first aid kit from under the sink, a bottle of vodka from the cabinet. "Sit."
I lower myself onto one of the kitchen chairs, hissing as the movement pulls at the wound.
Strip off my jacket and what's left of my shirt, both ruined, both going in the trash.
The graze is ugly—four inches long, deep enough to need attention but not deep enough to require a hospital. We've both dealt with worse.
Asher sets the vodka bottle on the table in front of me. "Drink."
I take a long pull straight from the bottle—whiskey, not vodka, because even in crisis I have standards—and let the burn anchor me while Asher opens the first aid kit with practiced efficiency.
"This is going to hurt," he warns, uncapping the vodka.
"Just do it."
He pours. The vodka hits the wound and I bite back a curse, my hand white-knuckling the edge of the table. The pain is bright and immediate, cutting through the adrenaline fog, sharpening everything to a crystalline clarity I don't particularly want.
"Tell me what happened," Asher says, voice level as he works. Cleaning the wound with methodical precision, checking for debris, for anything that might cause infection later.
"Routine pickup turned ambush. They knew exactly when I'd be there, exactly which route I'd take." I take another drink. "They're getting better intel than we're giving them credit for."
"Or someone's giving it to them." Asher's jaw tightens. "The leak's getting worse."
"Yeah." I watch him work, grateful for something to focus on that isn't the slow-motion disaster our lives have become. "I almost didn't make it out. One of them had me pinned behind a car, the other two flanking. If a patrol car hadn't come around the corner—" I stop. "I got lucky."
"Luck runs out." Asher reaches for the gauze, starts wrapping with the same efficiency he does everything. "We can't keep operating like this. Undermanned, under-resourced, with Xavier drunk in his room and Valentina—" He stops.
"Gone," I finish. "Say it. She's gone."
He doesn't respond, just finishes wrapping my ribs with tight, secure passes of the gauze. When he's done, he sits back, studying his work. "You should rest. That needs time to heal."
"Rest." The word tastes bitter. "Yeah. Because everything's so fucking restful right now.
" I take another drink, longer this time.
"Life is spectacular, Ash. Just spectacular.
The Vipers are closing in, taking territory we can't defend.
Our girl is across town staying God knows where, probably thinking we hate her.
And my cousin—my best friend—is upstairs drinking himself to death and smelling like piss because he'd rather destroy himself than admit he made a mistake. "
Asher's expression doesn't change, but I see the tightening around his eyes. "He's in pain—"
"We're all in pain!" The words come out louder than I intended, echoing off the kitchen walls. "We're all fucking suffering, Asher. But the rest of us are still showing up. Still doing the work. Still trying to hold this together while he wallows."
"It's only been a few months—"
"It has been four months. Four fucking months of leaving us to run everything while he drinks and feels sorry for himself.
" I set the whiskey bottle down hard enough that it cracks against the table.
"I almost died tonight. Almost left a fucking crater in an alley because we don't have backup, don't have support, don't have a functional president leading this club. "
Asher stands, starts cleaning up the medical supplies. "What do you want to do?"
"I want him to get his shit together." I push myself up, ignoring the pull in my side. "I want him to stop being a coward and fix this."
"Zay—"
"No." I'm already moving toward the stairs, whiskey bottle in hand. "Something has to give. I have to be a man somewhere, and if that means dragging Xavier out of whatever hole he's dug himself into, then that's what I'm doing."
I take the stairs two at a time despite the screaming in my ribs, fury burning hotter than the pain. Xavier's door has rarely been opened since he kicked out Valentina, and the rest of us pick up the pieces of what he shattered.
I don't knock.
The door slams open and the smell hits me immediately—bourbon, stale sweat, the particular funk of someone who hasn't showered or changed clothes or done anything except drink and spiral.
Xavier's on the bed, passed out on top of the covers, empty bottles scattered across the nightstand and floor like a fucking monument to self-destruction.
I throw the whiskey bottle.
Not at him—I'm pissed, not trying to kill him—but close enough that it shatters against the wall above his head, showering him with glass and liquid and the sharp crash of sound that jolts him awake with a strangled gasp.
"What the fuck—" He jerks upright, disoriented, eyes wild until they focus on me in the doorway.
"Get up," I say, voice flat and cold.
"Zay, what—"
"Get. Up." I step into the room, glass crunching under my boots. "Something has to give, Xavier. Right fucking now. Something has to give."
He blinks, trying to process through the alcohol fog. "It's the middle of the night—"
"I don't give a shit what time it is." I cross to the bed, grab the front of his shirt—the same shirt he's been wearing for at least a week straight—and haul him up with more force than necessary.
"I just got back from a shootout with the Vipers.
They almost killed me. Would have killed me if I hadn't gotten lucky.
And you know what I kept thinking while bullets were tearing through brick inches from my head? "
He doesn't answer, just stares at me with bloodshot eyes.
"I kept thinking that if I died tonight, my last conversation with you would be me defending Valentina while you called her a liar and kicked her out.
" I shove him back against the headboard.
"I kept thinking that the last thing I'd remember about my best friend, my brother, is him being a fucking coward. "
"Don't—" He tries to push my hands away but he's weak from drinking, from not eating, from months of doing nothing but destroy himself.
"Don't what? Call you a coward?" I lean in close enough to smell the bourbon on his breath. "That's what you are, Xavier. You're scared of how much you love her, scared of how badly she hurt you, so you're hiding in a bottle instead of fixing it."
"She lied—"
"She was terrified!" I roar it, and somewhere in the back of my mind I register that my side is bleeding again, that Asher's careful bandaging is coming undone, but I don't care.
"She was scared of exactly what you did to her!
And instead of proving her wrong, instead of showing her that you could handle the truth, you proved her right.
You destroyed her in front of seventy people and then you came here to drink yourself to death while the rest of us try to keep everything from falling apart. "
"You don't understand—" He's fighting now, trying to get leverage, trying to push me off.
Good. I want him to fight.
We crash off the bed in a tangle of limbs and fury. He gets one punch in—catches me in the jaw hard enough to make stars explode across my vision—before I slam him back against the floor and pin him with my weight. My ribs scream in protest but I ignore it, using size and sobriety to keep him down.
"I'm not doing this with you," I snarl, forearm across his chest. "I'm not watching you destroy yourself. Not watching you destroy us. So you're going to fix it, Xavier. You're going to sober up, you're going to apologize, you're going to get our girl back. Or you're going to lose me."
"It doesn't matter." His voice breaks, all the fight draining out of him in an instant. "None of it matters because I already lost her. I already—" He makes a sound that's halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I'm already losing the love of my life. What's one more person?"
The words hit me harder than his punch did.
I shove him down harder, making his head thunk against the floor.
"It's your fault," I say, and I mean for it to be harsh but it comes out almost gentle.
"You did this, Xavier. You're the one who kicked her out.
You're the one who said those things. You're the one who's been hiding up here instead of fixing it. "
"I can't—" Tears are streaming down his face now, cutting tracks through weeks of grime. "I can't fix it. I destroyed her. You didn't see her face, Zay. You didn't see what I did to her."
"You're right. I didn't see her face." I ease my weight off him slightly.
"But I saw her after. Saw her sitting outside that clubhouse looking like someone had scooped out her insides.
Saw her at the safe house packing her stuff with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Saw her ride away like she had nothing left to live for. "
He flinches like I've struck him.
"And you know what else I saw?" I continue, quieter now. "I saw someone who still loves you. Even after everything you said. Even after you ripped her apart in front of everyone. She still loves you so much it's destroying her."
"How do you know—"
"Because she asked me to take care of you.
" My voice cracks. "When she was leaving, when she was at her lowest, she told me to go back and take care of you.
To be the friend you needed. That's not someone who stopped loving you, Xavier.
That's someone who loves you so much she wants you taken care of even when you've broken her. "
He turns his face away, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
I sit back, finally letting him go. My side is definitely bleeding again—I can feel the wetness soaking through the bandage—but it doesn't matter. This matters. Getting through to him matters.
"I love her too," I say finally. "So does Asher. We're all in this together, remember? That's what we agreed to. That's what she wanted—all of us. And you threw it away because you were hurt and scared and too proud to see past your own pain."
"She lied to me for weeks—"
"She was terrified." I say it again because apparently he needs to hear it multiple times.
"She killed your brother in self-defense and then she was terrified to tell you because she knew—she fucking knew—that you'd react exactly the way you did.
And she was right, Xavier. She was completely, devastatingly right. "
He's quiet for a long moment, just breathing, just existing in the wreckage we've made of his bedroom. Finally: "What do I do?"
"You sober up." I push myself to my feet, wincing at the pull in my ribs. "You shower. You eat something. You get yourself functional. And then you grovel."
"She won't—"
"You don't know what she will or won't do until you try.
" I head for the door, leaving him on the floor surrounded by broken glass and empty bottles.
"But I'll tell you what I know. I know that if you don't at least try to fix this, if you let her go without fighting for her, you'll regret it for the rest of your life.
And I know that I won't be around to watch that. So fix it, Xavier. Or lose me too."
I make it to the hallway before I have to brace against the wall, the adrenaline finally crashing completely. My side is on fire, my jaw is swelling from where he hit me, and every breath feels like it costs something.
Asher's at the bottom of the stairs, first aid kit in hand. "You're bleeding again."
"Yeah." I make my way down carefully. "Worth it though."
"Is he—"
"He's a mess. But he heard me. Whether he actually does anything about it..." I shrug, then immediately regret it as pain shoots through my ribs. "That's on him."
Asher guides me back to the kitchen, sits me down, starts unwrapping the blood-soaked bandage. "You need to take better care of yourself."
"Says the man who lives on coffee and cigarettes."
"That's different."
"How?"
He doesn't answer, just works in silence, cleaning the wound again, applying fresh gauze and bandage with those precise, careful movements that somehow manage to be both clinical and caring.
"Do you think he'll do it?" Asher asks finally. "Fix things with her?"
"I don't know." I watch him work. "But I know that if he doesn't, we're all going to lose her. And I can't—" I stop. "I can't lose her, Ash. I can't lose any of you. We're supposed to be in this together."
"We are." He secures the bandage with tape, sits back. "Even when it's complicated. Even when it hurts. We're still together."
"Then we need to make Xavier see that." I stand slowly, testing my weight. "Before it's too late. Before we lose her for good."