Page 26 of Lawless Rivals

“He better not be full of shit,” I say, flicking the safety off my gun and sliding it back into the holster. “Dragging us out here at dawn for nothing won’t end well for him.”

A few miles east of the stud, Dane steers the car onto a narrow lane with overgrown hedgerows blurring as the car hurtles past.

Eventually the road forks, and we take the track that leads to a dense pine forest where problems could be buried without witnesses.

When Dane kills the engine next to the buyer’s old Jag, we sit there in silence with only the faint ticking of the cooling hood.

“Where the fuck is this asshole?” I shove the door open and step onto soft mud.

Dane climbs out and peers inside his vehicle.

“Yoh!” he calls. “Don’t piss me off, Eion.”

In the mud, there are fresh sets of footprints that veer away from the Jag. Our guy didn’t come alone, and I didn’t give him permission to invite anyone else to our meeting.

Dane moves ahead, checking the edges of the clearing. “Something’s up, Saint. I think we’ve got trouble.”

“Yeah,” I say, drawing my gun. “Let them come.”

A twig snaps in the treeline. The buyer appears, stumbling out of the dense foliage.

He’s jumpy, pale, and already talking too fast. “I swear to fuck, Saint, I came alone⁠—”

He’s scared of me. But something behind him scares him more.

Movement explodes around him.

A man with a shaved head and a butcher’s build comes through the undergrowth, machete raised for Dane’s throat.

I put a bullet in him then glare at the buyer. “Who did ya bring?”

Another figure moves to my right. The first swing hits my forearm instead of my throat. A second follows fast.

The blade opens the back of my bicep. Heat spills under my sleeve as my hand locks around his throat and I drive my forehead into his nose.

He staggers backward into the nearest tree, its thin branches rattling and a rain of needles falling around us.

Blood pours from his nose, staining his gnashing teeth.

When he spits blood at my face, I don’t give him a reaction.

“Bet ya thought the Tallons ruled the whole county,” he pants. “Seems you’re slipping.”

I squeeze the hollow of his throat until the next breath catches halfway up. His eyes widen, all that borrowed courage thinning out fast.

“Unregistered stock,” I say, pressing the barrel beneath his jaw. “On my land.”

He claws at my wrist. “Everyone…uses someone’s…land.”

“Not mine.” I jab the barrel in harder. “Whoever sent ya can pay me for the privilege, or they can lose men until they understand my rules.”

His eyes glass over and his body starts making small, useless bargains for air. When he goes still, I let him drop and glance at the blood trickling down my fingers from under my sleeve.

“Go back and tell them it ends now.”

I wipe his blood from my cheek with my thumb.

“Next time, I won’t send anyone back.”