Page 50 of Malice

“Who sent you?” Carter’s voice has dropped to something low and scraped out, the kind of sound a person makes when they’ve stopped caring what comes next. “Who the FUCK sent you?”

The driver is clawing at Carter’s wrists, his masked face turning red, then purple through the gaps. I push myself to my feet, my hands scraped raw, my knees burning, and my mother is already at my side, her arm around my waist, holding me up.

“Carter.” My father’s voice cuts through the chaos. He’s still got the second man pinned against the van’s open door, one hand twisted behind his back at an angle that makes the shoulder joint scream in protest. “Carter. Look at me.”

Carter doesn’t look. His hands tighten.

“Carter.” My father’s voice drops. Not louder. Lower. The voice of a man who has commanded rooms full of SEALs and gotten them to listen. “You kill him here, we lose everything. You understand me? We lose the trail. We lose the why. Look at me, son.”

I watch the tension bleed from them, not all of it, not even close, but enough. His grip loosens by a fraction, and the driver sucks in a desperate breath.

“Get them in the van,” my father says. His eyes find mine over the chaos, and there’s something in them I’ve never seen before, a cold, methodical fury that matches Carter’s but burns slower, more controlled. “All three of them. We’ll take them to the clubhouse. Greyson needs to see this.”

Carter drags the driver to his feet. The man stumbles, coughing, and Carter shoves him toward the open door of the van with enough force to send him sprawling across the back seats before going back to the alley to retrieve the first masked man from the bookstore. My father follows with the last man, wrenching his arm higher until the man screams behind his mask, and then he’s in the van too, shoved on top of the first.

Carter shoves the side door shut. The sound echoes off the alley walls like a gunshot.

He turns to me.

The shaking is worse now. I can see it in his hands, his arms, the way his jaw keeps tightening and releasing like he can’t decide whether to speak or stay silent. He crosses the distance between us and pulls me against his chest, and I can feel his heart slamming against my cheek too fast, too hard, the frantic rhythm of a man who almost lost everything.

“I’ve got you,” he breathes into my hair. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

His hand finds the back of my head, his fingers threading through the tangled mess of my hair where the man grabbed it, and he presses his palm flat against the throbbing spot on my scalp like he can heal it through sheer force of will.

“You’re shaking,” I whisper against his chest.

“I know.” His voice breaks on the word. “I know, Trix. I can’t stop.”

My mother’s hand finds my shoulder. “Baby, are you hurt? Your knees.”

“Scraped. I’m fine.” I pull back just enough to look at Carter’s face. His eyes are wild, the gold flecks almost drowned in the dark of his pupils, and there’s blood on his cheek, not his, the driver’s, from the broken window. “I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

He doesn’t look convinced. His thumb traces the line of my jaw, then the bruise forming on my arm, then the raw skin on my palms. Cataloging. Memorizing every injury. His expression tightens with each new mark, each fresh wound, and I can see the calculation happening behind his eyes, not the tactical kind, the kind I’ve watched him do in the ring, but something deeper. Something that’s keeping a running tally of every bruise and scrape and torn hair follicle and filing it away for later.

For whoever did this.

“Let’s go,” my father says from the driver’s seat of the van. He’s behind the wheel now, the engine still running, his face grim in the rearview mirror. “Before someone calls the cops.”

Carter guides me toward the passenger side of the van, his hand never leaving the small of my back. My mother climbs in behind me, and Carter follows, pulling the door shut with a heavy thud that seals us into the dark, windowless interior.

The three men are on the floor between the seats, zip-tied—my father’s doing, efficient and practiced—their masks askew but still covering enough to hide their features. The driver is conscious, his eyes tracking us with something that looks less like defiance and more like the dull, animal awareness of prey that knows the trap has closed.

Carter sits across from them, and the look on his face makes my stomach go very still. It’s not the rage from the alley. That was fury, hot and immediate. This is something colder, something that’s settled deep in his bones, a quiet, killing cold. His eyes haven’t left the three men on the floor since we pulled away from the curb.

The van rocks as my father takes a corner too fast, and I grab the metal rail beside me to steady myself. My scraped palms burn at the contact, but the pain is distant, secondary to the adrenaline still flooding my system.

“Trixie.” Carter’s voice pulls my attention. “Your head.”

I reach up, fingers finding the raw spot on my scalp where the man grabbed my hair. The skin is tender, a few strands caught between my fingers when I pull my hand away. Blood. Not much, just enough to stain my fingertips crimson.

“I’m okay,” I say, but my voice sounds strange to my own ears, thinner than it should be, stretched too tight.

My mother hands me a tissue from somewhere, and I press it against my scalp, wincing at the sting. Her hand finds mine, squeezing once before releasing.

The van surges forward, and the alley quickly fades from view through the windshield. My father is at the wheel, focused and intense, like he’s done this before. Not the kidnapping, but getting out clean. His eyes dart between the road and the rearview mirror, scanning for tails, flashing lights, anything that could make this mess even worse.

Carter stays frozen, his body tense, fists clenched on his knees, fingers pressing hard into the cuts until they stop bleeding. The silence in the van presses on us, broken only by the engine’s grumble and the occasional whimper from the zip-tied men on the floor.