Chapter Six
Vice went from dead asleep to fully alert in the space of a heartbeat, his body responding to danger before his brain caught up. Diana was warm against his side, her breathing still even, her hand curled against his chest where it had fallen when she drifted off.
He hated to move her.
The second sensor pinged. East perimeter.
Vice slid out from under Diana's arm, catching her before she could fall, lowering her gently to the couch cushions. She stirred, murmuring something, and he pressed a hand over her mouth before she could speak.
Her eyes flew open. Panic.
"Company," he breathed against her ear. "Stay low. Stay quiet. Do exactly what I tell you."
Diana's panic shifted into something harder. She nodded against his palm.
Good girl.
Vice grabbed his piece from the end table and moved to the window, keeping low, peering through a gap in the blinds. Shadows moved in the darkness—too many of them, too coordinated. Professional assault formation.
Six men. Maybe more.
His phone buzzed silently. Maverick: Spotted the convoy heading your way. ETA 3 min. Hold tight.
Three minutes. An eternity when you were outnumbered six to one.
Vice texted back: Six tangos. East and south approach. Diana inside.
Copy. Wraith riding with me. DON'T DIE.
Vice allowed himself a grim smile and pocketed the phone.
"Diana." He crossed back to her, pulling her up from the couch. "Bathroom. Now. Get in the tub and stay down. Don't come out no matter what you hear."
"Vice—"
"No matter what." He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I need to know you're safe so I can focus on killing these bastards. Can you do that for me?"
Something flickered in her expression—fear, determination, trust. "Yes."
"That's my girl."
He kissed her. Hard and fast and claiming, a brand on her lips that said mine louder than words ever could. Then he pushed her toward the hallway.
"Go."
Diana went. He heard the bathroom door close, the lock engage, and forced himself to stop listening for her.
Time to work.
Vice killed the lights and took position behind the kitchen island—solid oak, good cover, clear sight lines to both entry points. The front door was reinforced, but the back slider was a vulnerability. They'd come through there first.
Glass shattered.
The first man came through the slider in a spray of glittering shards, weapon up, sweeping the room. Vice put two rounds in his chest before he finished his arc, the suppressed shots no louder than hard coughs. The man dropped.
Second man through the gap, using his dead partner's body as cover. Smart. Not smart enough.
Vice adjusted his angle and fired through the drywall. The round caught the second man in the throat. He gurgled, staggered, fell across the first body.
Two down. Four to go.
The front door exploded inward.
Vice dove as automatic fire raked the kitchen, wood splinters showering around him, rounds punching through cabinets and embedding in the floor. He rolled, came up shooting, dropped another man in the doorway. But more were pouring through, too many, and he was running out of cover—
Engines roared outside. Headlights blazed through the shattered windows.
Maverick's voice cut through the chaos: "SENTINELS!"
The cavalry had arrived.
Vice used the distraction to move, putting a round through the knee of a man who'd made it to the living room. The guy screamed and dropped, and Vice finished him with a shot to the head before pivoting toward the hallway.
Because Craig Phelps was standing at the bathroom door, trying the handle, and Vice's vision went red.
"PHELPS!"
The fixer spun, weapon rising, face a mask of fury behind the tape job on his broken nose. He'd come personally this time. Come to finish what he'd started.
Vice closed the distance in three strides.
Phelps got one shot off—wild, wide, punching through the ceiling—before Vice was on him. The gun went flying. Vice's hand found Phelps's throat and slammed him against the wall hard enough to crack plaster.
"You came back," Vice said, his voice barely recognizable. "I told you what would happen if you came back."
Phelps clawed at Vice's arm, feet kicking, face going purple. "Barron—Barron will—"
"Barron can't help you." Vice leaned in close, watching the terror bloom in Phelps's eyes. "Nobody can."
"She's just—she's just a fucking daycare—"
"She's mine."
Vice drove his knee into Phelps's gut, doubling him over, then grabbed his head and slammed it into the wall. Once. Twice. The plaster caved in. Blood sprayed.
Phelps collapsed, barely conscious, moaning through a shattered face.
Vice stood over him, breathing hard, and thought about Friday night. About Diana behind her desk, terrified but defiant. About Phelps walking into her daycare like he owned it, threatening the children who played there, treating her life like a minor inconvenience.
"You wanted the building that badly?" Vice drew his piece and aimed at Phelps's head. "You can have it."
He fired twice.
The hallway went quiet.
Vice stood over the body, chest heaving, the adrenaline dump making his hands shake. Behind him, the sounds of combat faded—fewer shots, more controlled, Maverick and Wraith cleaning up the survivors.
The bathroom door cracked open.
"Vice?"
Diana's voice was small. Scared. But she was alive. She was unharmed.
Vice turned and caught her before she could see the body, pulling her against his chest, blocking her view of the carnage with his own bulk.
"It's over," he said into her hair. "Don't look. It's over."
"I heard—I heard you—"
"Phelps came for you." Vice's arms tightened around her. "He's not coming for anyone ever again."
Diana shuddered against him, her hands fisting in his shirt, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Not crying—processing. The woman who'd spent her life protecting children was learning what it felt like to be protected in return.
"Brother."
Vice looked up to find Wraith in the hallway entrance, deliberately not looking at the body on the floor. The big man's expression said he'd seen everything and approved.
"We clear?"
"Clear. Six down, all hostile." Wraith's eyes flicked to Diana, then back to Vice. "Neighbors will have heard the shots. We need to move."
"Give me two minutes."
Wraith nodded and disappeared.
Vice took Diana's face in his hands, tilting it up so she had to look at him. Her eyes were huge, shellshocked, but underneath the fear was something else.
Trust.
"We're going to the compound," he said. "The club. It's the only place safe enough now."
"Okay."
"It's going to be loud. Crowded. A lot of men who look like me, act like me." His thumbs traced her cheekbones. "But you'll be protected. Every brother in that building would die before they let anyone touch you."
"Because I'm yours?"
The question came out quiet. Almost wondering.
Vice felt something crack open in his chest.
"Yeah," he said roughly. "Because you're mine."
Diana's hands came up to cover his on her face. She didn't pull away. Didn't argue. Just held his hands against her skin like she was memorizing the feeling.
"Then take me there."
Maverick had the SUV waiting in the driveway, engine running, while Wraith finished securing the scene. Vice put Diana in the back seat and climbed in beside her, keeping her pressed against his side while Maverick peeled out before the door was fully closed.
"Six guys," Maverick said, eyes on the road. "Professional hit squad. This Barron doesn't mess around."
"He'll mess around less when we're done with him."
Maverick's grin was feral in the rearview mirror. "That's what I like to hear."
Diana was silent against Vice's side, processing everything she'd witnessed. He could feel her pulse racing under the arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders, could see the slight tremor in her hands.
But she wasn't falling apart. Wasn't screaming or crying or demanding explanations.
She was adapting.
"The safehouse," she said quietly. "That was supposed to be where no one could find me."
"Phelps was good at what he did. Property records, ownership trails—he found the connection." Vice's jaw tightened. "It won't happen again."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because the compound doesn't show up on any records." Maverick glanced back at them. "Titan's been running clean ownership through shell companies for years. Even the tax assessor doesn't know who really owns that land."
Diana absorbed this. "So I'll be hiding with a motorcycle club instead of hiding alone."
"You won't be hiding." Vice turned her to face him. "You'll be under the protection of thirty brothers who just watched their people get attacked. That's not hiding. That's having backup."
"And Barron? He knows about you now. Knows you killed his fixer."
"Good." Vice's voice went cold. "Let him know. Let him understand what happens when he threatens things that belong to the Sentinels. He thought he was buying a building and bullying a daycare teacher. Now he knows he picked a fight with something bigger."
Diana studied him in the darkness, the streetlights strobing across her face as they drove.
"You killed him," she said. "Phelps. I heard the shots."
Vice didn't look away. "Yeah."
"He would have killed me. If you hadn't stopped him, he would have broken down that door and—"
"He's dead," Vice cut her off, gentler than before. "He can't hurt you. Can't hurt anyone. That chapter's closed."
"And the next chapter?"
"We find Barron. We end this." His hand found hers in the darkness. "And when it's over, you go back to your daycare and those twelve kids, and nobody ever threatens them again."
Diana was quiet for a long moment.
"Promise me something," she said finally.
"Anything."
"Promise me you'll be careful. Promise me you won't..." She trailed off, then forced herself to continue.
"I spent Sunday night listening to you talk about the faces that visit you.
The people you couldn't save." Her grip tightened on his hand.
"I don't want to become another face that visits someone. I don't want you to become one either."
Vice pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin, feeling her heartbeat against his chest.
"I promise," he said.
He meant it more than he'd ever meant anything in his life.
The compound appeared ahead, lights blazing despite the late hour. Word had spread. Brothers were waiting.
Barron had thought Diana Marsh was just an obstacle. A daycare owner who couldn't fight back, a lease that needed breaking, a minor inconvenience on his path to expansion.
He'd thought wrong.
He'd lost his fixer—the man who'd orchestrated weeks of sabotage and harassment, who'd walked into that daycare like he owned the children inside. Craig Phelps was dead in a hallway, and the woman he'd threatened was riding toward thirty armed men who'd just declared her one of their own.
Whatever came next, Barron was going to learn what happened when you targeted something the Sentinels had claimed.
Vice looked down at Diana, her face peaceful against his chest despite everything she'd witnessed tonight, and felt the certainty settle into his bones.
She was worth everything.
And he would burn anyone who tried to take her.