Page 6 of Ruin

If we were lucky, they weren’t paying enough attention to have heard it at all. I could only hope they were that lazy and drunk. Though I’d met Devil, and I didn’t think it was a reach to expect them to be several beers in at this point.

“You ready for this?” I whispered, waiting as Mandy slid off the bike. She smelled like Gemini’s cologne, and I wondered if it had rubbed off on her or if she’d sprayed it on herself to keep him with her.

“Are you kidding?” she asked, walking around and leaning against the handlebars. “I was born ready. I’ve been aiming for this guy since I realized what he did to people. Seeing what he did to Saraya...” She drifted off, her eyes slashing past me toward the compound, cold and hard and ready.

I nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Let’s go.”

The men we’d brought with us—only three of them—parked around my bike, and I gestured for them to follow the two of us. As we walked, Mandy and I went over the new plan. She was going to pull the hood of the sweatshirt over her head and walk toward the main house, where we assumed Devil lived. Look as downtrodden and defeated as possible, like she was there to turn herself in and didn’t want to.

Do her best impression of what Saraya would be feeling in that moment.

Once Devil came out of the house, she was going to get her shot. Pull the gun out of the pocket of the hoodie, aim at him, and pull the trigger. The moment I heard the shot, I’d move in with my men, guns blazing, while she ran for the bikes and safety. The moment she got to the bikes, I told her, she was to get out of there. Grab the first bike she saw—there’d be four, all with keys in them—and head home.

We’d take care of Devil, then get into the house and find Tinker, and I didn’t want to have to worry about having her with us. I wanted to know she was on the way back to Gemini and safety, so I could keep my mind on finding Tink.

It wasn’t the original plan, but given the situation and the very real chance of this being a trap, it was better. I wasn’t going to go into that house until we knew Devil was dead and had given the people inside enough time to come running out too. I wanted to see exactly what they were packing, no pun intended, before I made a move.

Mandy stopped and stared up at me, then slipped her arms around my neck and hugged me. “Thank you for being such a good man,” she whispered. “You’re a great leader, and you’re the best thing for this club. Gemini and I both believe in you.”

I frowned, confused, but hugged her back. “The club is just as lucky to have you,” I told her truthfully. “Put a bullet in Devil’s head, and we’ll be even luckier.”

She laughed, pulled back, and flipped the hood of the sweatshirt over her head. “Consider it done.”

Then she was walking away from me toward the driveway, and I was creeping after her as long as I could, slinking from cactus to cactus to try to keep myself hidden. I couldn’t go all the way with her, and I hated that, but I’d get as close as I could. I wasn’t going to let her walk into the night—and a possible ambush—by herself.

I came to a stop behind the last cactus in the group and leaned around, watching her walk toward the pavement of the compound’s parking lot. Damn, the girl was brave. She was walking quickly, no hesitation in her step, and though she had her face turned to the ground, the way we’d agreed she would, she also looked like she was ready for whatever happened.

I closed my eyes, praying for her to get through this okay.

Then my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

I jumped so hard that I nearly went right into the cactus and slapped the pocket, panicked. Who the fuck was calling me now? It was the middle of the night, and everyone on my crew knew exactly where I was—and that I wouldn’t be answering my phone.

When I yanked the phone out of my pocket, I saw that it wasn’t a call. It was a text, and it was from Saraya.

I didn’t even open the thing. She knew where I was and what I was doing. She should have known better than to bother me right now. Any distraction at this point could cost me my life or Mandy’s. Whatever Saraya wanted, it would have to wait. And she’d have to understand why I couldn’t answer her when I was in the middle of a fucking ambush.

CHAPTER 5

SARAYA

I WATCHED THE TEXT go to ‘delivered,’ and my breath caught in my throat as I waited for some sort of reaction from Knight. Some response. Some sign that he’d seen my thread and cared even a little bit that we were currently under attack and Gemini and I were the only ones here. A girl that didn’t have a weapon and a man who was still wounded and vulnerable to any violence that might come our way.

But nothing came. The fucking text didn’t even go to ‘read.’ He hadn’t even bothered to open the thing.

Gemini screamed my name, yanking my eyes up from my phone, and I ducked just as a chair came flying in my direction, shoving the phone into my back pocket and starting to run in the same motion. The inside of the clubhouse was pure chaos, and though Gemini and I were the only ones home, I felt like there had to be at least twenty people in here, all of them shouting and grunting and throwing things. As I dashed through the kitchen, I saw Gemini on the other side of the bar, caught in the arms of a man wearing a mask and hoodie—and colors that clearly named him a member of the Steed. Gemini was big, but the other guy was even bigger, and I had the split-second realization that Devil had in fact sent some of his guys after us while we were alone and defenseless.

And some of his biggest guys, if the man was any indication.

Hell, I probably knew the guys who had been sent to kill us. If I could get a look at them, I’d probably know their names and be able to recall conversations I’d had with them. Not that I’d call them friends.

Because if they were part of Devil’s crew, it meant they were also part of the crew that had regularly taken part in the gangs that beat me up when Devil was too tired or too distracted to do it himself.

In that way, I guessed it made total sense that he would have sent people I knew to kill me. They’d been trying to kill me for years. This time they’d just get to use guns, knives, and whatever else they’d fucking brought with them.

When I looked at them again, Gemini was drawing his head back and bringing it flying forward, hitting the other guy right across the bridge of his nose, and the man cried out and went to the floor. I felt a moment of pure elation and almost ran to Gemini, but before I could move, another man ducked through the doorway from the garage and sprinted toward my friend, his hands out to grab at him.

I screamed, and Gemini turned on a dime like I’d given him directions, his hands coming up to ward off the blow from the new intruder. He punched the man in the face once, and then twice, but before he could do anything more, someone else appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him around the waist. This guy lifted Gem up and looked like he was about to body slam him down on the floor.