6 Asher
“I was trained to eliminate the threat. Nobody warned me what would happen when the threat is personal.”
I know as far as the assignment goes; I’m completely fucked.
I was never supposed to get attached. The truth is, I got attached the second I opened that front door and Scarlett Vale collapsed into my arms bruised, terrified, and half-naked.
After tonight? After holding her in my bed and hearing her say my name like I was something safe?
There’s no going back now. She’s not just the mission anymore.
She’s mine to protect, and I’ll put a bullet in any motherfucker who tries to touch her again.
I look down at Scarlett sleeping against my chest, her breathing uneven even in sleep.
She’s been restless all night, tossing and turning every few minutes.
Nightmares, I heard them yesterday too, soft cries, panicked breaths, her begging someone to stop.
It nearly fucking killed me not to go into her room every time I heard it.
Now there’s no way in hell I’m letting her sleep alone again.
I’m lying there watching her sleep like some obsessed fucking stalker when my phone suddenly beeps and vibrates violently against the nightstand.
PROPERTY brEACH DETECTED.
Every muscle in my body instantly locks. I slide out of bed without waking Scarlett and grab my jeans from the floor before crossing the hallway into my room. By the time I snatch my gun from beside the bed, Roman and Declan are already stepping into the hallway.
“East side fence,” I mutter, checking the security map on my phone.
We split instantly without another word.
Roman heads toward the front perimeter, Declan circles left and I cut through the back property line.
The cold night air burns in my lungs as I move through the darkness, scanning every shadow.
Then I see movement. A figure dressed completely in black sprinting from the tree line.
I move fast.
Within seconds I slam him against the side fence and jam the barrel of my gun against the back of his skull.
“Don’t fucking move.” The asshole freezes instantly.
I wrench his arms behind his back and secure zip ties around his wrists using the ones I grabbed from the kitchen drawer on my way out. I’m just about to rip the balaclava off his face when every single one of our phones starts blaring again. A second breach, this time inside the house.
“GO!” Declan shouts. I shove the restrained asshole toward him without hesitation.
“Take him to the basement.” Roman and I sprint toward the house at full speed.
“Motions sensors show movement upstairs,” Roman barks while checking his phone mid-run. “I’ll take the back hallway. You go to the front. Fuck” He curses under his breath.
“I’m calling Zariah. I didn’t finish uploading her full sensor access yet.”
Adrenaline floods my bloodstream as I tear through the front door.
No. No no no. I literally promised Scarlett hours ago that nobody would ever hurt her again. I take the stairs two at a time. At the top landing, Zariah is already there, gun raised and Scarlett’s bedroom door standing wide open. My stomach drops. Pinned to the center of the door is a photograph.
Scarlett. The night of the attack with two male figures with their hands all over her body while she struggled beneath them.
Their faces are hidden, but that won’t stop me.
I’ll use every resource I have and find.
Then I’m going to enjoy torturing them. Beneath the photo is a note stabbed into the wood with one of my own kitchen knives.
“You should have let us finish the job.” My blood turns ice cold as my eyes continue downward.
“The price has gone up and so has the challenge.”
Then the final line.
“$1,000,000 for her life.” That’s when I realize something far worse than a break-in just happened, someone put a fucking bounty on Scarlett and someone managed to breach our security and they could have taken her, could have killed her.
If we didn’t have Zariah here, we could have left Scarlett and Harper at risk.
“You’re on guard duty until we come back up,” I tell Zariah coldly. “Don’t move from this spot.”
She nods and I turn and head toward the basement, we caught one of them and now I’m about to do what I do best. Make him talk.
The second the basement door swings shut behind me, the rest of the world disappears, down here, I become who they trained me to be.
The basement wasn’t some horror-movie torture chamber like people imagined when they thought about men like us.
It was worse because it looked professional.
Controlled. Designed by people who understood violence so well they no longer needed to glorify it.
Cold concrete floors stretched across the underground space beneath harsh industrial lighting.
One side of the room held our operations center—surveillance monitors, encrypted laptops, weapons laid out with military precision, security feeds from every inch of the property glowing across massive screens.
Everything down here was connected right to our phones.
The other side?
That side was built for extraction. Steel restraints bolted into concrete. Floor drains. Medical cabinets. Soundproof walls. Everything is clean. Organized. Efficient. No wasted movement. No wasted tools. Just purpose.
Declan stands near the center of the room with the intruder forced onto his knees while Roman leans against one of the metal tables cleaning blood from his knuckles like this is just another fucking Wednesday.
The guy’s eyes immediately lock onto me the second I step fully into the light and panic floods his face.
Good. People always make the same mistake when they look at me.
They assumed Roman was the dangerous one because he smiled while threatening people.
They assumed Declan was the worst because he stayed cold all the time.
But me? I was the one they sent when they needed monsters handled.
“String him up.”
I nod toward the heavy hook bolted into the ceiling. Within seconds, Roman and Declan haul him upward roughly until his feet barely touch the ground. I move slowly toward him, removing my watch first before setting it carefully onto the metal table beside me.
Calm.
Controlled.
That’s what always terrified people most.
Not yelling.
Not rage.
The calm.
“You tried to break into my house,” I say quietly.
The man immediately starts shaking his head.
“Please,” the man starts babbling immediately. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. Some guy offered me ten grand to access the property. He said it was just a security test.”
Did I believe him? Not for a fucking second.
“Roman,” I say quietly. “Knife.” Roman hands it over without hesitation. I step closer until the man is forced to look directly at me.
“You picked the wrong fucking house.” The blade presses lightly against his side just enough to make him flinch violently.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” I say calmly. “Who hired you?”
“I told you everything!” Wrong answer, I clear my head and go to the place I need to and become the name that is feared all over the world, The Phantom. That’s what they used to call me, because once I decided someone was a threat…I stopped looking human.
I stab the knife into the man’s side, being sure not to hit his lung.
I want the asshole to suffer. I take a few more stabs this time to his shoulder, next to his thigh.
Then I pick up the sledgehammer and swing it into his knee cap.
He screams in pain and tries to pull on the ties holding him onto the hook.
“Fuck you asshole. That bitch is gonna die.”
This time I drop the sledgehammer and just start using my fists. I hit him in the face over and over until his eyes are bloody and swollen.
“Call her a bitch again,” I growl, grabbing the man by the throat hard enough to cut off his air, “and I’ll forget we needed information from you in the first place.”
The asshole actually laughs. Blood stains his teeth as he spits at my boots.
“Go ahead,” he rasps. “I’m dead anyway.” Something cold settles inside my chest and Roman sees it immediately.
“Asher,” he warns carefully but it is too late.
“Roman, hold his head still.” He does as I tell him, even though he gives me a questioning look.
I then go over to the toolbox and grab a mouth opener.
I attach it and pry open his jaw. I begin to slice smaller chunks of his flesh in a specific pattern and feed them to him.
I put as much as I can in his mouth and then secure a ball gag over his mouth.
He now has no fucking choice but to fucking swallow and choke on his own flesh.
Declan mutters “Jesus Christ” under his breath before disappearing into the basement bathroom, clearly done watching. I barely hear him, because all I can see is Scarlett’s terrified face.
The bruises.
The nightmares.
That fucking photo pinned to her bedroom door.
By the time I finally step back, the man hanging from the ceiling is barely conscious and shaking uncontrollably. Roman watches me carefully.
“What do you want done with him?” I wipe blood from my knuckles slowly before looking up.
“Take photos.”
Declan reappears from the bathroom looking pale.
“Asher…”
“Do it.” My voice leaves no room for argument.
“I want a message sent out across every dark web channel, underground board, and bounty network you can find.”
Roman’s expression hardens instantly. I step closer to the barely conscious man and grab his jaw.
“Anyone who comes after Scarlett Vale…” I say quietly, “gets worse than this.”
Silence fills the basement.
“I want the bounty traced,” I continue while turning toward the stairs. “Every transaction. Every alias. Every account. Put our best people on it.”
Roman nods once.
“I’ll call Grant.”
I stop halfway up the stairs without looking back.
“And don’t cut him down until he stops breathing.”
I walk upstairs while muffled sobs and choking sounds echo through the basement behind me.
I relieve Zariah from her post outside Scarlett’s room before quietly stepping inside.
She’s still asleep and completely unaware of everything that happened only a few hours ago.
For a moment, I just stand there watching her breathe, struggling internally with whether or not I should tell her about the break in and the bounty.