Page 56 of A Witchy Spell Ride

“Get off me,” he hissed.

“Walk,” I repeated, and when he didn’t, I let my thumb find the tendon that makes a man see stars without leaving a mark.

He walked.

Into the mouth of an alley with light at the far end and a gap in the middle where cameras always fail. Where Cross was anyway, because he knows where machines lie. Where Bones leaned against a wall pretending to text his ex-wife. Where Reaper stood at the exit casual as Sunday.

We didn’t beat him. Not yet. We let him stand in the knowledge of exactly how outnumbered he was. He looked at each of us and did the calculation and realized finally, finally, that his story was wrong.

“You’re making a mistake,” he told me, voice trembling with anger he’d mistake for righteousness. “She’s not safe with you.”

“You’re right,” I said, smiling without humor. “She’s safe withus.”

He lunged, not smart, not planned, a deer kicking because its body said try. Bones caught him with a hand to the sternum that stole breath and pride. He folded, just a little, and came back up wild.

“Badge?” he spat. “You think you can—”

“We don’t need badges,” Reaper said from behind him, and the man finally understood he hadn’t walked into a cop movie. He’d walked into a family.

I bent close, voice for him alone. “You put a nail in a closet for me,” I whispered. “I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

He went still. “You went back,” he said, like I’d broken a rule.

“I always go back.”

Something in him cracked then. Not his confidence, that had been flexible all along but the thin thread that kept his delusion neat. “She’s dirty,” he whispered. “You made her dirty. I’m going to make her clean.”

I broke his thumb.

Not out of rage. Out of math. A man who wants to grab, to hold, to claim, needs his hands. I gave him one he’d remember every time he tried to make a fist.

He screamed. Bones muffled it with a hand. Reaper didn’t blink. Cross’s camera blinked for him.

“We’re going to talk,” I told him softly. “You’re going to tell me how many times you went into her space. You’re going to list the places you watched from. You’re going to hand me the names of anyone who helped you breathe near her.”

He laughed, high, ugly. “She’ll come to me,” he said. “You can’t stop fate.”

“Then fear will do,” I said.

We walked him out of the alley like nothing happened and put him in a car that didn’t belong to us and did anyway. We didn’t take him to the clubhouse. We aren’t idiots. We took him to a place where men go to work out disagreements with the world in ways the world can’t hear. Cross called in favors I didn’t listen to. Bones whistled. Reaper drove.

I texted one word to Selene though I wasn’t supposed to: Soon.

She sent back: Good.

Notbe careful. Notdon’t go too far. Just good. Because she understood something essential that when a man puts a nail in your closet, you don’t ask me to be gentle.

You ask me to be done.

Back at the clubhouse later, I washed my hands and stood at the sink longer than necessary. I watched the water run red around a knuckle I hadn’t noticed split. I thought of the photo taken in the dark, her head on my chest, my hand on her back and the rage I’d folded tight and kept lit like coal.

I dried my hands. I looked up. Selene was in the doorway, shoulder against the jamb, hair shorter, eyes sharper.

“How bad?” she asked.

“Bad enough,” I said.

She nodded. “You, okay?”