Chapter 18
Eighteen
Kon
The bullet that hit Onyx replays behind my eyes every time I blink.
The spray of blood above her left ear. The way her body crumpled sideways onto the gravel. The way her hand flew to her head and came away red while I was ten feet away fighting a man who doesn't matter instead of standing between her and the gun.
I beat Brennan until his body stopped twitching for what he did to Onyx.
Then I took two steps toward her and my knee gave out and the second wave of Seamus's men poured through the stairwell door and dragged her across the rooftop while I bled on crushed roses and reached for a hand that was already gone.
She might be dead.
That thought sits in my chest with the weight of a bullet lodged between my ribs and every breath I take pushes it deeper.
Luca found me on the rooftop eight minutes after the second wave pulled out.
I was on my knees in the garden, covered in blood, half of it mine and half of it Brennan's, trying to stand on legs that kept buckling.
He didn't waste time on questions. Grabbed my arm, hauled me down the stairs, shoved field dressings against the wounds and pushed me into the back of a black SUV before the first wave of shock could settle.
The left arm is a through-and-through. Clean entry, clean exit, missed the bone by a centimeter.
Hurts like getting stabbed with a hot poker but I've had worse.
The right side is a graze along the inside of my waist. Bled hard enough to soak through my shirt and convince Onyx it was a chest hit.
Superficial once you clean it. Still burns when I breathe.
Brennan emptied three rounds at close range and managed two grazes and one hit on the wrong person entirely. The man was two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle with the marksmanship of a drunk teenager. Any other day I'd find that funny.
Right now I can't find a damn thing funny because the woman I love is in the hands of a man who destroys women for sport and the last image I have of her is blood in her dark hair and her blue eyes going glassy as the light bled out of them.
"Brennan's men took her south." Luca drives the way he does everything, fast and precise, weaving through traffic with one hand on the wheel and the other scrolling through feeds on a tablet mounted to the dash.
"Cameras on the expressway picked up three vehicles heading toward the docks.
Black SUVs, no plates, standard Malone transport protocol. "
"How long ago?"
"Forty minutes. Maybe less." His gold-flecked eyes cut to the rearview. "I've got a location, Kon. South side warehouse near the stockyards."
My blood goes cold and hot at the same time.
The south side warehouse. The same warehouse Onyx identified for me over breakfast in her first week at The Foundry.
Guard rotations, camera positions, access points, shift changes at midnight and noon, three cameras, two blind spots on the east side.
She drew me a map on a napkin with a pen she stole from my desk and I memorized every line because that's what I do with intelligence.
Her intel. Her work. The information she traded across my kitchen counter while she ate my eggs and argued about encryption protocols and changed my life without either of us noticing.
And now that same information is going to guide me back to her.
My phone buzzes. Rafael.
"Talk to me." His voice fills the SUV through the speakers, calm and controlled, the voice of a man who has been running crisis operations for two decades.
"Seamus has Onyx. South side warehouse. I need everyone."
"Drake is ten minutes behind you. Rowan is coordinating with Massimo on the legal containment. I've got two additional teams en route." A pause. "How bad are you hit?"
"I'll live."
"That's not what I asked."
"It's the only answer that matters right now." My voice comes out raw, scraped down to the bone, and I don't try to smooth it over. "She's mine, Rafael. Whatever happens in that warehouse, she's mine."
"She's family, Kon." His voice drops, carrying a warmth he usually reserves for Persia and Sofia. "She's all of ours. Bring her home, brother."
The call ends. Luca pushes the SUV harder, the engine growling as we cut through an intersection on a yellow light. The city blurs past the tinted windows and every second that passes is a second Onyx is with Seamus and every second she's with Seamus is a second too long.
The leather seat sticks to the blood drying on my arms. Every bump in the road sends a jolt through the field dressings that makes my jaw clench, the gauze shifting against raw tissue. The SUV smells like gun oil and copper and the sharp antiseptic Luca poured over my wounds before wrapping them.
I stare at my hands. Blood under the fingernails.
Knuckles split and swelling. The viper tattoo on the back of my right hand is crusted with dried red.
These hands have killed more men than I can count.
They've broken bones and ended lives and enforced the Syndicate's will across three decades of violence.
And three hours ago they were cupping Onyx's face while she kissed me in a doorway and tried to tell me she loved me.
I close my eyes and replay that moment instead of the bullet. Her damp hair between my fingers. The taste of coffee on her lips. The way her eyes went soft and open and she took a breath to say the words I've been waiting to hear since the night I whispered them in Russian while she slept.
She was going to say it. Right there in our bedroom. And then glass shattered and the world came apart and now she might be dead in a warehouse with the taste of those unsaid words still on her tongue.
I open my eyes. Press my palms flat against my thighs. Lock down every emotion except the cold, focused fury that has kept me alive since I was twelve years old.
The file. I push it forward in my mind because the alternative is drowning in fear.
SYNDICATE RESEARCH. The folder name was right there on her laptop screen, visible for a split second before Brennan's men came through the door.
My jaw tightened. My hand stilled on her hip.
She started explaining, rushing through words, panic in her voice.
And then the glass broke and the file stopped mattering because nothing matters when the woman you love is in danger. Nothing.
I filed it. The way I file everything. A data point to be processed later, after I've gotten her back, after I know she's breathing, after I've put my hands on her face and felt the warmth of her skin and confirmed with every sense I have that she is alive.
Everything else comes later. All of it. First, I get her back.
"Two minutes out." Luca's voice cuts through my spiral. "Six guards minimum based on thermal scans. Main entrance is the loading dock, side entrance on the east. Same layout she mapped."
"Drop me at the loading dock. Take the east side."
"You sure you can handle the front on your own? You're bleeding through your dressing."
"Luca." I meet his eyes in the rearview. "Drop me at the loading dock."
He doesn't argue again. He's known me long enough to recognize the voice that doesn't accept debate.
The warehouse rises from the dark like a steel and concrete tomb. No lights in the windows. Two vehicles parked near the loading dock, engines off, doors open. Sloppy. Seamus sent the B-team for cleanup duty because his A-team is scattered across my rooftop with broken bones and missing teeth.
I step out of the SUV and the night air hits my wounds with a sting that clears the last fog from my head. The docks are quiet except for the low hum of a generator somewhere inside the warehouse and the distant lap of river water against the concrete pilings.
The place smells like diesel and dead fish. The field dressing on my arm is soaked through. The one on my side is holding but the edges are damp. I've got maybe thirty minutes before blood loss starts affecting my motor function.
Thirty minutes is twenty-nine more than I need.
The first guard outside the loading dock dies quiet. My hand over his mouth, my arm around his throat, pressure on the carotid until his body goes limp. I lower him to the concrete and step over him.
The second guard hears the first one drop and turns toward me with his weapon half-raised. I close the distance in two strides, catch the barrel, twist it out of his grip, and drive the stock into his solar plexus. He folds. I put him down with a knee to the temple.
I move through the warehouse the way I moved through Volkov's compound at twenty. Cold and methodical, each step placed with intention, my breathing steady through my nose, my wounded arm tucked close to my ribs while my right hand does the work.
Two more guards enter the corridor. The first one swings a baton at my head and I duck under it, drive my fist into his kidney, and slam his face into the concrete wall hard enough to leave a dent in the plaster.
The second pulls a knife and I catch his wrist, twist it behind his back until his shoulder pops, and drop him with an elbow to the base of his skull. He hits the ground twitching.
A third one at the far end of the corridor takes one look at his two colleagues crumpled on the floor and runs. I let him go. He'll spread the word about what's coming.
I reach the central room. Kick the door off its hinges. And there she is.
My heart unclenches for the first time since I saw her get shot.
She’s not dead, I repeat over and over until my head believes what my eyes are telling me.
She's on her feet in the middle of the warehouse with blood on her face and fire in her blue eyes and Seamus Malone doubled over behind her, clutching his jaw.
She hit him.
Good girl.
My woman punched the most powerful man in the Malone empire in the face and she's standing with her fists clenched and her chest heaving and she is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen in my life.