The buyer is on his knees now, blood running from a split lip where Bricks’ fist landed, his expensive suit ruined by dirty concrete and fear. Sol watches him for a moment, then crouches in front of him with the cigar held away from his body.
“Try again.”
The buyer spits red on the floor. “Fuck you.”
Bricks hits him, the punch delivered with enough force to snap the buyer’s head sideways and send blood across the concrete in a bright arc. The buyer coughs and tries to curl in on himself, but Bricks catches him by the hair and keeps him upright for Sol.
I swallow hard, forcing myself to look even as my stomach turns. I’ve seen violence. I grew up inside the Rogues. Men came back bloody, men disappeared, men made jokes about things no one should survive saying out loud. But I was never brought to this part. I cleaned up afterward in ledgers and revised payments, in missing inventory and quiet corrections, in numbers that made violence look like loss or expense oradjustment. Standing close enough to smell blood before it cools is different.
Sol’s voice stays almost gentle. “Give me a name, and I’ll spare your life. You’ll owe me everything attached to it, but you’ll breathe long enough to regret that. Keep wasting my morning, and I’ll send what’s left of you back through your broker in separate bags.”
The buyer looks at Saint, then Bricks, then the man bleeding out beside the table.
Bricks tightens his grip in the man’s hair. “Name.”
The buyer’s answer comes out broken. “Maverick.”
Saint’s expression doesn’t change, but the air around him hardens.
Sol tilts his head. “The Reapers paid you to complain?”
“They didn’t pay. They pushed.” The buyer starts speaking faster, blood on his teeth, panic making him sloppy. “They said Obsidian’s got a monopoly, said everyone’s tired of bending for your price, said if enough buyers started questioning quality, the market would open. We just—”
Sol’s boot catches him in the chest and knocks him onto his back. The buyer wheezes, hands clutching uselessly at his ribs as Sol stands over him.
“You just sold me whatever business you thought you owned by being stupid enough to let another club use your mouth.”
The buyer tries to speak, but only a wet cough comes out. Sol looks at Saint, then at the room.
“Boys, clean it up.”
Cade starts zip-tying the man he hit and Bricks drags the buyer upright again, less for questioning now than to make sure the lesson isn’t over before Sol decides it is.
Sol turns toward me. Every bit of air I managed to pull into my lungs turns thin. He walks over slowly, cigar in one hand, eyes on my face. Saint shifts beside me, subtle enough that no oneelse might read it as warning, but Sol stops just before it would become a challenge.
“Be glad this wasn’t your father’s doing,” Sol says.
I hold myself still because I can’t think of a single safe movement.
His smile carries no warmth. “I was all set to send your head back to Canon on a platter. As it is, you’ll be marrying my son tomorrow. It’s too bad. I was excited for a funeral.”
Then he walks out, leaving cigar smoke and dread behind him. For several seconds, no one seems willing to disturb the shape of his exit. The warehouse is full of blood, gun oil, breathing, and the harsh chemical brightness of XR3 from the open vial on the table. The buyer is groaning on the floor. One of his men is kneeling with his hands zip-tied behind his back. The dead man’s hand rests palm-up near my boot, fingers slack and already wrong-looking in their stillness.
I shudder in disgust, the last standing man from the buyer’s side taking a chance he shouldn’t. He must have been closer than I realized, half-hidden by the table after Cade hit him, ignored for one second too long because the room was looking at Sol. He lunges from the side, one arm locking across my chest and the other crushing against my throat hard enough that sound dies before it reaches my mouth. My back slams into him as he drags me backward so fast the floor slips under my boots.
Saint’s gun snaps up but he freezes as there’s no clear shot, probably just what the man figured out. The man’s forearm grinds against my windpipe, and his breath scrapes hot against my hair as he hauls me backward.
“Let us walk,” he snarls. “Let us fucking walk, or I’ll break his neck.”
Saint lowers the gun. For a heartbeat, that frightens me more than having it aimed in my direction.
He doesn’t negotiate. He doesn’t threaten. He drops the weapon to the concrete with a hard metallic clatter and stalks forward. One second, Saint is several feet away. The next, his hand catches the wrist at my throat and twists. Bone gives with a wet crack that turns my stomach. The man screams as his grip on me loosens, Saint ripping me out of his hold with such force that I stumble straight into Bricks’ arms. Bricks catches me against his chest, one arm across me like a bar, and holds me there when my knees try to fold.
Over Bricks’ arm, I see Saint. I thought I understood why people feared him. I had absolutely no idea of the truth. The monster Tally warned me about is quiet. That’s what makes it worse. Saint doesn’t roar or curse or make a show of what has been unleashed. His face goes blank, stripped of every human irritation and every private calculation, leaving something merciless underneath. The man with the broken wrist tries to swing with his other hand. Saint catches him, drives him backward into the table, and brings his knee up so hard the sound that leaves the man doesn’t resemble language.
The other men move as well, though when Saint turns on them, it’s clear who’s going to be walking out of here. The warehouse devolves into violence. A fist drives into a throat. A head slams against the metal table, once, then again, blood spraying across the scattered vials. Someone fires and misses, the bullet cracking into concrete near the roll-up door, and Saint crosses the distance before the man can correct his aim.
He breaks the man’s arm against the edge of the table, takes the gun from his ruined grip, and uses the butt of it to cave in the side of his face. Cade takes down the man near the door, and Bricks releases me only long enough to shove me behind a support beam before he puts two shots into the one trying to crawl toward a fallen weapon.
