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FINLEY
Idon’t know how this day went from bad to worse, but the punches just keep coming. The drive back from The Cage is tense and silent. Usually, I’m not one for being alone, but between the fury flooding my system and Mav’s nervous energy… it’s suffocating as fuck in this car.
My knuckles are white as I grip the steering wheel, trying to hold it together. Control is something I’ve craved most of my life. Lincoln and I are the same in that. He’s one of the few people I feel comfortable enough with to trust him with shit, but this… spiral, it’s too much. None of us are in control right now, and I feel so unfocused. Like there’s an elephant sitting on my chest, and no matter what I do, I can’t fucking move it.
Except, letting myself spiral isn’t going to help anyone. And it sure as fuck isn’t going to help V.
If she’s hurt…
Nope, not the rabbit hole to go down. Not today. At least not right now.
We’re going to find out who took her, who shot East, and then fucking deal with it.
Whoever it is might be a Knight, but we’re the fucking legacy and junior Conclave. Never in my life did I think I’d be thankful for that, but right now… right now it means we have the might of the Knights at our fingertips if we decide to use it.
I know Lincoln will want to leave them out of it if we can, especially because we don’t know who this sick fuck is, but I’m not averse to using the monsters we have in our closets if it means she’s okay.
I’m willing to unleash hell on fucking Earth if it means we get her back unscathed.
The drive back takes too fucking long, even with my lead foot.
We need to clear the house, check the bodies, dispose of the fucking bodies, clean up as best we can, and see if there are any traces of whoever the fuck took her left behind.
Even just listing it out in my head slows my heart rate.
I have shit to do.
That’s what I need to focus on.
That’s what’s going to bring her back.
I just keep seeing her face as he grabbed her. The way she tried to fight him off. The way he dragged her by her fucking hair after he drugged her.
I let out a deep breath, trying not to let my anger boil over and take control.
That’s not going to end well for anyone, and I don’t have time—V doesn’t have time—for me to lose it.
By the time we pull back up at the house and get the gate closed, Maverick is so restless I think he’s going to burst out of his goddamn skin.
“I need something to do, Finn. Someone to question, someone to bleed. I can’t just keep sitting doing nothing.” He looks at me, and all the raging emotions that simmer under my skin are written clear as day on his face. I’m envious of his ability to just feel everything and channel it, even if he does channel it into making people bleed.
“There will be plenty of time to make people bleed. We need to clean up the house, call Smithy, see if we know the bodies. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you. Maybe some manual labor will keep you distracted.” I smirk and he punches my arm. Asshole. “Yeah, I probably deserved that, but still. We’ve got shit to do. Suck it up for now, and we’ll make this dickhead bleed when we find him.”
He nods, looking more than a little lost. It’s almost unnerving. I haven’t seen him look like this since the day Stone left with V. “Okay. You guys have a plan, right? How to find her?”
“We have a plan. We’re going to get her back.” I say it with way more bravado than I feel, but I have to believe the words as much as I need him to believe them. We can’t all come undone at the seams, otherwise she is as good as dead.
Her stalker might’ve said that no one could protect her like him, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in danger.
I climb from the car; the front door of the Royal home is still hanging from its hinges, and as I push it open, the metallic stench of blood and the heavy, putrid scent of death hits me. My stomach doesn’t even roll anymore. It’s just another smell, like grass after a rain or burning wood. It’s just there—a normal part of my day.
Pretty sure that’s really fucked up, but if I puked at every dead body I saw, I’d never fucking eat.
“We really made a mess,” Mav comments as he pushes past me to the first body on the floor and rips off the guy’s ski mask. “You recognize him?”
I shake my head, moving toward them. “We need to check them to see if they’re branded.” I absentmindedly rub the scar on my wrist, my own reminder that I’ll never escape. Mav pulls up the guy’s sleeves but there’s no brand. “Nothing on show… but it could be somewhere else.”
“Nah, the Knights are fucking ritualistic with that shit. It’d be in the same place as ours if he had one. Let’s check the others just in case, but if this one isn’t branded, I’d put money on the rest of them being clean. Which means they’re private hires, and we have another fucking dead end.”
