Page 62 of Twisted Steel

“No,” I say honestly.“But I’m in it.”

Savage nods.“Then keep your head.Because if she matters, you don’t get the luxury of losing it.”

The warehouse lights appear in the distance twenty minutes later.Rusted fence.Broken windows.Too many shadows.Clearly, a trap.

I check my gun.Then my knife.Then the bandage on my hand.

Savage cuts the headlights and the vans roll into darkness.Men get quiet around me.This is what I know.Blood.Breath.Timing.The moment before violence opens its mouth.But tonight, under all of it, something new lives in my chest.

A command that isn’t from my president.A promise that isn’t to my club.

Come back.

So, when the first Vulture steps out of the shadows with a gun in his hand, I don’t charge.I don’t roar, I don’t become worse, I become precise.

And the night starts bleeding.

Chapter Nine

The Man Who Came Back

Harper

Waiting is worse than blood.

Blood gives me something to do.Pressure here.Tourniquet there.Airway.Pulse.Pupils.Orders snapped clean and fast because panic hates structure, and I am very good at structure.

Waiting gives me nothing.Waiting leaves me sitting in a hospital hallway with Dante in surgery, two Sons of Sin guards posted near the elevators, and Steel somewhere in the dark doing what men like him do best.

Violence.Precise violence, I told him.Like I have any right to prescribe the shape of his brutality.

I rub both hands over my face and inhale the sterile bite of antiseptic.County is awake around me in the miserable way hospitals always are at this hour.Monitors beep.Nurses move with tired efficiency.Someone cries behind a curtain.Someone laughs too loudly near the vending machines because fear makes people strange.

I check my phone.No messages from Steel.Again.But Milo texts every fifteen minutes because he is emotionally attached and has no respect for my blood pressure.

Milo:Still alive?