Page 80 of Grim

His jacket still hung on the hook.

His half-finished project, a rebuilt carburetor, sat exactly where he’d left it.

Grim stood there, staring at it, feeling something inside him crack.

Switchblade had been quiet. Steady. Reliable. The kind of man Grim respected without needing to say a word. The kind of man who didn’t flinch under pressure. The kind of man who paid attention.

And now he was gone.

Because Grim hadn’t been fast enough. Because the Reapers had been one step ahead. Because the world took good men and left the rest behind.

Grim reached out and picked up the carburetor. It was heavier than it looked. Solid. Real. Something Switchblade had touched hours before he died.

Grim’s hands shook.

He set it down carefully, like it might break.

Then he braced both palms on the workbench and bowed his head.

His breath hitched.

Once.

Then again.

He didn’t cry. But his shoulders shook, and his jaw clenched so hard it hurt, and the grief tore through him like shrapnel.

He stayed like that for a long time.

When he finally straightened, his eyes were dry, but something in him had shifted.

He looked at Switchblade’s jacket.

“I’ll handle it,” he said quietly. “I’ll make it right.”

His voice didn’t shake.

His hands didn’t either.

He walked out of the garage with a new kind of stillness, the kind that came right before violence.

Chapter 26

Sophia

Sophia woke to the sound of dripping water.

A slow, rhythmic tap… tap… tap… echoing off concrete walls.

Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. Her wrists burned where the zip ties had rubbed her skin raw. She blinked hard, trying to focus, but the world swayed around her like she was trapped inside a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.

A single bulb flickered overhead, casting a sickly yellow glow across the room.

Cold. Damp. Silent except for the dripping.

She wasn’t in the clubhouse. She wasn’t anywhere safe.

Sophia had grown up in a house full of voices: brothers shouting, parents arguing, Abuela humming in the kitchen. Silence had never meant safety. Silence meant something was wrong.