Chapter 20 #2
Killian hits me again. And again. Methodical now, not wild, each punch placed with the precision of someone who knows exactly how to hurt someone, exactly how to break them down piece by piece.
My ribs. My stomach. My face. Each impact a new explosion of pain that builds on the last until I can't tell where one injury ends and another begins.
I get a few hits in—enough to bloody his nose, enough to split his lip, enough to make him respect that I'm not going down easy. But there are still three of them and only one of me, and the math is simple and brutal and inevitable.
I don't remember deciding to stop defending and start attacking.
Don't remember the moment when survival shifted into offense, when I stopped trying to get out alive and started trying to make sure Killian didn't. Just remember my hands finding his throat, remember the satisfying crunch of cartilage under my thumbs, remember the way his eyes went wide with something that might have been fear before I drove my forehead into his face with every ounce of strength I had left.
His nose breaks. The sound is wet and final and deeply satisfying.
He goes down hard, and I follow him, fists still swinging, still hitting, operating on pure adrenaline and rage and the knowledge that if I stop moving I'm dead.
One of the lieutenants tries to pull me off and I catch him with an elbow to the temple that sends him stumbling back.
The other one is smarter, stays back, gun already drawn and pointed at me with shaking hands.
"Don't," I rasp, barely recognizing my own voice through the blood and the pain and the ringing in my ears. "You shoot me and this gets a lot worse for everyone."
He doesn't lower the gun. But he doesn't shoot either. Just stands there in frozen indecision while Killian groans on the floor beneath me, unconscious or close to it, blood pooling under his shattered nose.
"Asher." Talia's hands on my shoulders, pulling me back, her voice breaking. "Asher, please, we have to go, we have to—"
She's right. We have to go. Have to move before more guards come, before the situation deteriorates further, before my body gives out completely and I can't protect her anymore.
I push myself up—every muscle screaming in protest, ribs definitely cracked, jaw probably fractured—and grab Talia's wrist. "Move. Now."
"But he's—"
"Alive. He's alive. And we're leaving before that changes.
" I drag her toward the door, past the lieutenant who's still frozen with his gun, past the other two who are groaning and trying to get up.
My vision is swimming, tilting, the world refusing to stay level, but I keep moving because stopping means dying and I'm not dying here.
The hallway. The stairs. Each step an agony that radiates through my entire body.
Talia is supporting some of my weight now—when did that happen?
When did I start leaning on an eighteen-year-old girl to keep myself upright?
—and we're moving too slowly, making too much noise, leaving too much of a trail.
But we make it outside. Make it to the alley where my bike is waiting, sleek and black and representing escape, representing survival, representing not dying in a Viper compound on a Tuesday night.
I throw Talia over my shoulder—ignore her protest, ignore the way my ribs scream, ignore everything except the need to get her on that bike and get us both the fuck out of here—and somehow, through sheer stubbornness and adrenaline and probably some luck I don't deserve, we make it.
The bike roars to life. Talia's arms wrap around my waist—tight enough to hurt, tight enough to feel like she's trying to hold me together through sheer force of will.
I don't bother with subtlety, with stealth, with anything except speed.
Just open the throttle and let the engine scream us away from that place, away from Killian's broken face and his lieutenants' shocked expressions and the party that's probably still raging on oblivious.
Three miles. We make it three miles before Talia starts hitting my back.
Not gently. Not tentatively. Full-force punches that I feel even through the leather jacket, even through the haze of pain and adrenaline that's keeping me functional.
"Stop!" she's screaming, the word barely audible over the wind and the engine. "Stop the bike! Asher, stop!"
I slow down—not a full stop, because stopping feels dangerous, feels like giving up forward momentum—but enough that I can pull into an empty parking lot, can kill the engine, can turn to look at her.
She's already off the bike before I've fully stopped, stumbling backward on shaking legs, her face twisted with something that goes beyond fear or anger into territory I don't have a name for.
"We have to go back," she says, and her voice is breaking, shattering around the edges. "We have to go back right now. We have to make sure he's—we have to—"
"Talia—"
"We have to make sure he's alive!" She's crying now, tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking with the force of her grief and panic and terror. "Killian. We have to make sure he's alive. We have to go back. We have to—"
The realization hits me like a physical blow, worse than any of Killian's punches, worse than the knowledge that I probably have internal bleeding and definitely have broken bones.
Talia loves him.
Talia is in love with Killian.
"Oh, God," I breathe, the pieces clicking together with horrible clarity. The way she stayed with the Vipers. The way she refused to leave. The way she looked when I was beating him unconscious. "Talia—"
"I love him," she sobs, and the confession tears out of her like something being ripped from her chest. "I love him and I need him and you—you hurt him and we have to go back and make sure he's okay and I can't—I can't lose him, Asher, I can't lose Killian and Axel, you can't take them away from me, you can't—"
Axel. Another name. Another piece of the puzzle I didn't know I was missing.
I get off the bike slowly, carefully, my body threatening to give out now that the adrenaline is starting to fade. Cross to where she's standing in the middle of the empty parking lot looking small and broken and terrified.
"Hey," I say quietly, reaching for her. "Hey, it's okay—"
"It's not okay!" She jerks away from me, backing up until she hits a concrete barrier and has nowhere else to go. "Nothing about this is okay! You came and you took me and you hurt him and I need to go back, I need to make sure he's breathing, I need—"
"Talia." I catch her shoulders, gentle but firm, making her look at me instead of spiraling further into panic. "Breathe. Just breathe for a second."
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can." I pull her into my chest, wrapping my arms around her even though the movement makes my ribs scream, even though I can feel blood still leaking from various cuts and abrasions. "You can breathe. You can calm down. And then you can tell me what the fuck is going on."
She collapses against me, her whole body shaking with sobs that sound like they're being torn from somewhere deep and fundamental.
I hold her—this girl who's been grieving alone for years, my baby sister who lost her twin brother while I lost mine, both of us shattered by Henry's death because I couldn't face the fact that he died on my watch, that I failed to protect him.
I've kept distance between us, buried myself in club business instead of acknowledging our shared grief—because admitting how much losing Henry destroyed me means admitting I failed both of them.
"He's alive," I tell her when the sobbing quiets to something more manageable. "Killian. I didn't kill him. His nose is broken and he's probably concussed but he's breathing. He's alive."
"You don't know that—"
"I do." I tilt her chin up, make her look at me. "I've killed people, Talia. I know what it looks like when someone's dying. Killian was breathing when we left. Conscious enough to groan. He's going to be fine."
"But what if—"
"No what ifs." I'm firm now, because she needs firm, needs something solid to push against. "He's alive.
And you're going to tell me right now what's really going on.
Who's Axel? Why are you in love with the leader of the organization you're supposed to be destroying?
What the fuck have you gotten yourself into? "
She's quiet for a long moment, just breathing against my chest, her tears soaking into my jacket. Then, quietly: "Killian and Axel. They're—they're together. Both of them. And I—" She stops. "I fell in love with both of them."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy with implications I'm still processing.
"You fell in love," I repeat slowly. "With Killian. And Axel. The Viper leadership."
"I know how it sounds—"
"It sounds insane." But even as I say it, I'm thinking about Xavier and Valentina and Zay, about the way relationships can get complicated when more than two people are involved, about the fact that I have no room to judge.
"It sounds like you went in planning revenge and came out with something else entirely. "
"I wasn't planning it," she says defensively.
"I didn't—it just happened. I was there and they were—they're not what I expected.
They're not monsters. They're just—they're people.
Complicated people with their own trauma and their own reasons for doing what they do.
And I—" She pulls back to look at me. "I love them.
Both of them. The way you love Xavier and Zay and Valentina.
I love them and I need them and you can't ask me to choose between them and my family. "
"I'm not asking you to choose." I brush hair out of her face, trying to process this, trying to figure out how to handle a situation that's gotten infinitely more complicated than a simple extraction.
"But Talia, they're Vipers. They've been attacking the Raiders.
Killing our people. Taking our territory. "