Page 166 of Hidden

But the thought stayed there anyway, ugly and impossible to ignore now that it had finally clawed its way to the front.

If I found her dead, I was not walking away from this place without her.

Not this time.

Not ever.

There would be no leaving her here for these bastards to touch, to move, to bury, to claim as some part of their fucking story.

I looked back toward the compound, toward the clubhouse where the Riders still moved around unaware that I was standing out here in the dark, deciding what parts of myself I was willing to lose before sunrise.

After that, I honestly didn’t care what happened to me.

That was the truth of it.

The real truth beneath the lie I had just fed my brothers with a calm I did not feel.

I had no intention of surviving a world that didn’t have Gabriella in it.

Maybe that made me weak. Maybe it made me pathetic. Maybe it made me exactly what Nico and men like him had always assumed I was beneath the laughter and the charm and the stupid fucking mouth.

It didn’t matter.

Because I had spent years watching that window, years taking scraps and shadows and brief moments where she was still mine in some quiet secret way, years surviving on hope and memory and the belief that one day, somehow, I would get her back properly.

And if that chance had been taken from me now, then there was nothing left in me worth preserving anyway.

I pushed away from the tree and adjusted the gun at the back of my jeans, checking the knife at my belt more out of habit than necessity before casting one final glance toward the compound.

The Devils were gathering.

The charters were coming.

By tomorrow, all hell would break loose.

But tonight was still mine.

And one way or another, I was leaving this place with Gabriella.

Chapter 43

Vienna

Now

The first one died with my hand over his mouth.

He hadn’t heard me coming. Hadn’t sensed the shift in the dark behind him, or the quiet displacement of air as I stepped out from the trees and into the edge of the compound where the shadows were thickest. He was too busy staring out across the perimeter with a cigarette hanging from his lips and his cut half open, one hand tucked lazily into his pocket like he genuinely believed standing watch meant he was safe.

He didn’t even get a chance to turn.

My hand clamped over his mouth and my knife slid cleanly into the side of his throat in one swift movement, the blade cutting deep enough to silence him almost instantly. His whole body jerked violently against mine, boots scraping uselessly against the ground as I dragged him backwards into the dark and held on until the fight left him completely.

Then I let him drop without any warning or big speech. Just quick, ruthless death.

I wiped the blade against his jeans, crouched low for a second to make sure the body was hidden enough not to be immediately spotted, and then moved on.

The compound was crawling, just not in the organised way Nico probably thought it was. Too many men had been posted in all the obvious places. The gates. The garages. The path around the back. Windows. Doorways. Patrol routes that made sense to anyone who had only ever defended a place from the outside. But I wasn’t outside.