Chapter 45 The Kill Box #2
Something inside me has gone quiet. Hollow. I signed away my future to save Logan, and I don't regret it. The emptiness is still there. The knowledge that I was outmaneuvered by my own mother. That I never stood a chance.
“Don't look so tragic, Alexander.” Helena's voice is almost kind. “You'll rebuild. You inherited your initiative from me.”
New footsteps above us, hurried, approaching fast.
Helena checks her phone, her lips curving. “Right on time.”
The door at the top of the stairs opens, and my father descends into this madness.
Victor Hammond looks like a man caught in a storm. Suit wrinkled, silver hair disheveled, something wild in his eyes as they sweep the room. When he sees me on my knees, bleeding, his face goes white.
“Alexander—“ He starts toward me.
“Stop there.” Helena's voice is a whip crack. The mercenaries move, blocking his path. My father freezes.
His gaze shifts to Helena. Confusion flickers, then something darker. “What is this? You said he was hurt. You said—“
“He is hurt. Just not by accident.” Helena steps closer to him. “Surprise.”
“Helena.” Victor's voice drops low, dangerous. “What the fuck have you done?”
“What I should have done years ago.” She gestures to the mercenaries. “Your loyal security team. Except they're not so loyal anymore, are they? I cultivated them for years. It's amazing what people will do for the right price.”
My father's jaw clenches, the muscle jumping. His eyes cut to me, to Logan slumped against the beam, back to Helena. He's calculating, assessing, looking for an angle.
He won't find one. She's thought of everything.
“Sit down, Victor.” Helena nods to the mercenaries. “Don't make this harder than it needs to be.” She smiles, showing her teeth. “Or please do.”
They grab him before he can react. My father struggles, swinging at one of the men, but two armed goons against one isn't a fight he can win.
Still, he doesn't make it easy. In a surprising show of rage, he headbutts one man.
“Fucker!” the man shouts, bending over, covering his face.
The other guard doesn't waste time. Two quick punches to the stomach and Victor doubles over.
The guard forces him to the ground beside me, binds his wrists.
Victor Hammond. Titan of industry. King of his domain.
Tied up next to his worthless son.
“Helena.” His voice is controlled, but I can hear the strain underneath. “Whatever you think you're doing, we can talk about this. We can negotiate.”
“The time for negotiation was twenty years ago, when you spent our anniversary with your mistress.” Helena's composure cracks, a flash of something raw and wounded before the mask slides back into place.
“The time for negotiation was ten years ago, when you gave Julia that apartment next to your office and thought I wouldn't notice. The time for negotiation was three months ago, when you started drawing up divorce papers because your whore got pregnant.”
Victor's throat works as he swallows. “Helena—“
“You don't get to Helena me.” Her voice rises, and the fury pouring off her is terrifying.
“I gave you everything. My youth. My beauty. My ambition. I could have been someone on my own, but I chose you. I chose this family. How did you repay me? By humiliating me at every opportunity while I smiled and played the dutiful wife.”
“I never asked you to stay.”
The words drop into the room like a bomb. Helena goes very still.
“What did you say?”
“I never asked you to stay,” Victor repeats, and there's something almost gentle in his tone. Which makes it worse. “You chose to. You wanted the money. The status. The name. Don't pretend this was about love, Helena. We both know better.”
Her hand moves before I register it. The slap cracks across my father's face hard enough to snap his head to the side.
“Don't you dare.” Her voice is shaking now. “Don't you dare try to rewrite history. I loved you. I loved you, and you destroyed me.”
Victor turns his head back to face her. A red mark blooms across his cheek, but his expression doesn't change. If anything, he looks sad.
“Maybe you did,” he says quietly. “Once. But we both became something else along the way.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Helena stands there, chest heaving, mask completely gone. What's left underneath is ugly and raw and almost pitiable.
Almost.
I watch her rebuild the walls. Brick by brick, pulling herself together until she's in control again.
“Enough,” she says. “I didn't bring you here to litigate our marriage. I brought you here to sign.”
She produces another set of documents. Thicker. More signatures needed. Victor's majority shares in Hammond Industries.
“Sign these over to me, and you and your son can walk out of here.”
“And if I refuse?”
Helena's smile returns, thin and vicious.
“Then I'll have my men shoot Alexander in front of you.
Then I'll take these documents to my lawyers anyway and forge your signature.
It'll be messier, more complicated, but I'll still win.” She pauses.
“The only question is whether you'll be alive to see it.”
Part of me wonders if he'll refuse. If Victor Hammond will choose his empire over his son, the way he's chosen it over everything else his entire life.
My father looks at me. Neither of us speaks.
His throat bobs as he swallows. Steel grey eyes close, briefly, then open again. When he exhales, his shoulders drop, tension bleeding out of them.
“You signed your shares over,” he says.
“For him?” He tilts his head toward Logan.
“He's my family.” The words come out steady. “The family I chose.”
Victor's breath catches. Small, barely audible, but I see his nostrils flare. His gaze drops to my bound wrists, to the blood on my hands, to the way I'm hunched over my ruined ankle. Back up to my bruised face.
He blinks slowly. His jaw unclenches. Something shifts in his posture, shoulders dropping another fraction.
He turns back to Helena. “Untie me. I'll sign.”
“Victor—“ I start.
“She's right about one thing.” His voice is quiet.
“I've made mistakes. Spent my whole life building an empire and ignoring everything else. Everyone else.” He looks at me again.
“I thought you were soft, Alexander. Thought your sentimentality was weakness. You just gave up everything to save your friend.” He pauses.
“I don't think I would have done the same.”
“Don't sign,” I plead. “Don't give her what she wants.”
“It's only money.” He almost smiles. “It's always been just money. I've been too foolish to realize it.”
Helena watches this exchange with growing impatience. She nods to one of the mercenaries, who cuts Victor's zip ties. “Touching. Now sign.”
Victor takes the pen and signs without his usual flourish.
Helena gathers the documents, satisfaction radiating off her like heat.
She's won. She's actually won.
I watch my father, expecting rage, calculation, some scheme already forming behind his eyes. Instead, he looks deflated. Hunched. Older than I've ever seen him.
Shouting from above. Distant at first, then closer. A crash hard enough to shake the ceiling. Then another.
Helena's head snaps toward the stairs. “What—“
Gunfire. Muffled by distance but unmistakable. More shouting. Fighting.
The mercenaries exchange uneasy glances. One of them speaks into a radio, gets static in return.
“What is that?” Helena demands.
My heart is pounding. I don't know what's happening. Could be Victor's people, the loyal ones, finally realizing something's wrong. Could be police. Could be a rival using this chaos to make a move.
Could be help. Could be something worse.
I catch Logan's eye. He's trying to sit more upright, grimacing with the effort. Body battered, but his eyes track the chaos.
“Go check,” Helena orders two of the mercenaries. “Move!”
The door slams behind them. Two left. Better odds, but still not good.
The sounds above intensify. More gunfire. Another crash.
Helena clutches her bag, hands shaking. She backs toward the far wall. Her composure cracking.
“What did you do?” she hisses at Victor.
“Nothing.” He sounds as surprised as she is. “I came alone. You made sure of that.”
The remaining mercenaries are distracted, attention split between us and the chaos above. Their radios crackle with panicked voices. Screaming. Orders barked and cut short.
They haven't tied me again. Underestimating me. I catch Logan's eye.
Now or never.
Pain is just information. That's what the physical therapist said when I was recovering from being shot last year. Pain tells you something's wrong, but it doesn't have to stop you.
My ankle tells me something is very, very wrong.
I don't stop.
I launch myself at the nearest mercenary, driving my shoulder into his knees. We go down hard, his rifle clattering away. My fist connects with his throat, once, twice, and he's gasping, hands scrabbling at his neck.
Logan scrambles up, hands still bound behind him, and throws himself at the other mercenary. They go down in a tangle of limbs, and Logan drives his knee into the man's face. Once. Twice. Blood sprays.
It's messy. Brutal. Desperate. My ankle buckles and I nearly go down, but adrenaline keeps me upright. I wrench the rifle free just as the mercenary recovers, bring the butt down hard on his temple. He crumples.
“Alexander!” My father's voice. I turn to see a third mercenary at the top of the stairs, weapon raised.
I'm not fast enough. I know I'm not fast enough.
Gunfire. The mercenary drops, rolling down the stairs.
Men pour through. Leather. Denim. Hard faces.
Bikers.
My vision swims. I can't focus. One of them moves faster than the others, huge, familiar.
Tank.
“You look like shit, Rhodes.” His voice cuts through the ringing in my ears.
“Feel worse,” I manage, sagging against a crate.
Tank moves to Logan, a knife appearing in his hand, slicing through the zip ties. “Get him up,” he orders someone behind him.
More bikers. Maddox, of all people, moving through the chaos with a blade gleaming in his hand.
“Where's Helena?” I ask, scanning the room.
She's gone. Slipped away in the chaos. The bag with the documents gone with her.
“She ran,” Tank says grimly. “Back exit. I've got brothers on it.”
“Emma.” A sudden jolt. “Where's Emma?”
Tank's jaw tightens. “I'll take you to her.”
Before I can respond, Tank is at my side, hauling my arm over his shoulder. “We're getting you out of here. Now.”
“Logan—“
“We got him. Move.”
I don't have a choice. My ankle won't support me, and Tank is already half-carrying me toward the stairs.
Behind us, Logan curses as someone helps him up.
Voice thick with pain, but alive. Victor stands on his own, walking on my other side.
He doesn't touch me, but he positions his body between me and what's left of the fighting.
Every step is agony. The warehouse above is chaos. Bodies on the ground, mercenaries subdued or fled. Iron Wolves everywhere. Leather cuts and hard faces.
We stop to let me and Logan catch our breath.
“Come on. Emma's waiting for you in the car.” Tank nudges me forward.
I grab him by the shoulder. “What the fuck do you mean she's outside? You brought her here?”
He shakes me off easily. “I didn't bring her. She allowed me to accompany her.”