Page 137 of Hidden

Behind me, Doc made a disgusted noise. “You are absolutely not right in the head.”

“Jealous?” I shot back, just as someone grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me sideways.

I twisted on instinct and found myself face to face with a Rider I vaguely recognised from a bar scrap a couple of years ago. He didn’t get time to remind me of his name. I smashed my forehead into his nose instead, heard the wet crunch of cartilage, and then grabbed the back of his neck and bit down on his nose until I felt the tip of it burst in between my teeth.

The house was mayhem now. Proper fucking mayhem.

The front room had turned into a full-on bar fight, bodies slamming into furniture, lamps getting knocked over, glass smashing under boots. One of the poultry twins had someone pinned over the back of the sofa while the other was trying to hit a different Rider with what looked suspiciously like one of Rachel’s decorative candlesticks.

Monster had two of them on him at once and was swearing so violently I was half convinced his mother could hear him from beyond the grave. Dante had somehow ended up in the middle of the room with blood on his knuckles and murder in his eyes, laying people out with the kind of terrifying efficiency that reminded everyone exactly why he was president.

The dogs were running rampant, biting whoever was wearing a rival cut, and Rachel was losing her shit at the thought of her beloved Staffie taking a beating. She grabbed some of the darts off the dartboard and stabbed one of the Riders in the ear, before she scooped her hellhound up and placed him behind the bar.

And through it all, despite the chaos, despite focusing on the fight at hand, I kept waiting for the one thing that would tell me why they were here.

Because Dante had been right. It didn’t matter in the moment. Not really. Not when they’d come onto our land andinto our house and made themselves fair game. But it still sat there, needling at the back of my mind as I drove my shoulder into another Rider and sent him sprawling over the arm of the sofa.

I could only think of one thing. And if I was thinking it, no doubt Dante was, too.

The cameras.

They’d found the fucking cameras.

Which meant this wasn’t random. And it also meant that if they had enough intelligence to plug those cameras into a computer, they knew exactly what Gabby had been up to last night.

This wasn’t a drunken show of force or one of Nico’s usual pissing contests.

This was retaliation.

And the second that thought properly formed, the image of Gabriella hit me so hard in the chest I nearly missed the fist coming at my face.

I blocked it too late. It clipped my cheekbone, making my eye water, and before I could recover, the same bastard drove into me hard enough to send us both crashing into the bar.

Bottles shattered behind me.

Glass rained down.

“Fuck yes,” I muttered, grinning despite the pain as I shoved him off and swung back hard enough to split his lip. “Now we’re having fun.”

He lunged again, and we both went down in a tangle of limbs and broken glass, fists flying, boots connecting, both of us half slipping in spilled whiskey as we tried to get the upper hand. He managed to land one decent punch to my mouth, and I answered it by grabbing the back of his head and slamming it into the cabinet beneath the bar until he stopped moving.

Breathing hard, I pushed myself upright and spat blood onto the floorboards.

Then I heard it.

Not the fight.

Not the shouting.

A voice.

One of the Riders, half-dragged by Riley through the hallway, blood pouring from his nose and mouth as he kicked uselessly against being hauled deeper into enemy territory.

“You’re all dead anyway!” he shouted, wild-eyed and grinning through split lips. “Nico knows—”

My entire body went still.

Dante heard it too. His head snapped in my direction.