Page 49 of Malice

“Trixie,” my mom says, placing a hand on my shoulder. I turn to see her, hair wild, leather pants scuffed at the knees, knuckles reddened and swollen. There’s a dark streak on her cheek that could be blood, but it’s hard to tell whose. Her eyes are bright and fierce, filled with pride.

“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice breaking.

“I’m fine, baby. I’m fine.” She pulls me close, her arms trembling with adrenaline, a fierce grin playing on her lips. “You were incredible. Both of you.”

Behind her, Carter is back by the man on the ground, checking his pulse with shaky hands. When he stands, he’s trembling so much he balls his hands into fists. The knuckles on his right hand are split and bloody, his jaw clenched tight, muscles tense like cables.

He pulls his phone from his back pocket, and his thumb is unsteady on the screen. I watch him scroll, find the contact, hit call. His voice when he speaks is barely recognizable—low, guttural, stripped of everything but rage.

“Get to the bookstore on Fifth. The loading alley behind the mall.” A pause. “No. I need you here now. Someone just tried to take Trixie.”

He hangs up and stares at the man sprawled on the ground, his face a jumble of emotions I’ve never seen on Carter before. It’s not that cold, focused rage I’ve watched him pour into the ring. This is something closer to a man losing his fucking mind, jaw working, eyes unfocused. His chest heaves. Blood drips from the cut on his knuckles, splattering the concrete, but he doesn’t even flinch.

He calls again. This time I hear Matthew’s name.

“Get your ass down here. Now.” The words come out clipped, each one bitten off like he’s afraid of what might follow if he opens his mouth too wide. “And bring Greyson. This is club business now.”

He pockets the phone and turns to me, and for a heartbeat the rage in his eyes softens into something that looks almost like grief. He crosses the distance between us in two steps and pulls me against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat hammering, erratic, nothing like the controlled rhythm I’ve learned to match my breathing to during sparring. This is the heart of a man who just watched his worst fear play out in real time and got there a second too late.

“I called the guys,” he says, and his voice drops to something barely above a growl, the words aimed at no one and everyone. My father appears in the emergency exit, his jaw set like he’s already decided what comes next, his own phone already in his hand. “Let’s get this fucker to the clubhouse,” he adds, “and find out why the fuck someone tried to snatch my ole lady.”

The words land in my chest like a struck match.

My ole lady.

It’s not the careful, measured language he’s been using, the ‘no pressure’ routine. This is his other language, the one from the world of cuts and clubhouses. It’s a word that doesn’t ask, it claims. A word that feels like a blood oath.

My eyes lock with my mother’s over Carter’s shoulder. She’s heard it too. I can tell by the way her eyebrows lift, her mouth twitching at the corners, not quite a smile, but close. It says I knew it, finally, and about damn time all at once. Her eyes meet mine, bright, fierce, alive, and something passes between us, wordless yet clear, a shared secret nestled in the heartbeat’s pause.

I feel the grin spread across my face before I can stop it. Small, private, absolutely unrepentant. My mother’s matches it, the same crooked, knowing tilt of the mouth that I’ve inherited, that my father says will get us both into trouble one day.

Carter doesn’t see it. He’s already turned back to the man on the ground, one hand still locked around my wrist like he’s afraid I’ll evaporate if he lets go. My father is on the phone, his voice low and urgent, and I can hear the rumble of his engine somewhere in the front lot. He must have left the keys in the ignition when he came tearing through the bookstore.

The man on the ground groans. Carter’s grip on my wrist tightens.

I’m still riding the high, still buzzing from the fight, the chaos, the plunger, and my mom’s fierce fists. And then there’s Carter, looking at me like I’m the only real thing left in the world. My arm aches where that guy grabbed me, and my knees keep wanting to quit on me, but I’m here. I’m standing. I fought back, I won, and Carter called me his.

The man on the ground groans, and his hand twitches toward his pocket. Before Carter can react, a high-pitched beep cuts through the alley—a signal. A black van screams around the corner, its side door already rolling open. The man behind the wheel wears the same mask, his eyes fixed on us with calculated speed.

“No—” The word leaves my mouth as the van pulls parallel, and a hand reaches out from the open door—gloved, impossibly fast, and closes in my hair.

The pain is immediate and blinding. My scalp ignites as fingers twist and yank, and my feet leave the ground before I can brace myself, dragging my body sideways toward the open door of the van. I scream a raw, animal sound and my hands fly up, clawing at the glove, at the wrist, at anything I can reach.

“TRIXIE”

Carter’s voice rips through the alley, raw and broken. I feel his grip on my wrist break as the force of the pull wrenches me sideways, and for one terrible second I’m airborne, suspended between the van and the ground, my hair the only thing keeping me from being swallowed whole by that dark, open door.

Then the world erupts.

The emergency door, still propped open, becomes a blur of motion. My father launches himself from the doorway. He hits the figure in the van door with the full force of his body, a brutal, calculated impact that sends the man reeling.

The grip on my hair releases with a sickening rip, and I drop, hitting the concrete on my hands and knees hard enough to send shock waves through both wrists.

Above me, my father has the second man by the throat, half dragged out of the van, and he’s not being gentle about it. The sound that comes out of the man’s masked face is a wet, strangled gurgle that I’ll hear in my sleep for weeks.

Carter is already at the driver’s side door. He doesn’t try the handle—he drives his elbow through the window. Safety glass spiderwebs and crumbles inward. The driver shouts as Carter’s arm, already bleeding from a dozen small cuts, snakes through the broken window, and he’s got the man by the collar. He’s pulling, and the door is opening from the inside because the driver is trying to escape, and Carter meets him halfway.

The driver hits the ground. Carter is on top of him before the man can roll, one knee planted in his sternum, both hands around his throat. The van idles behind them, door hanging open, engine still running, the sound of it filling the alley like a panicked heartbeat.