Page 43 of Knuckles & Knives

Because this is what I wanted, what I chose. All of them.

But right now, this is his moment. Mine and his.

When I come again, it’s with a scream muffled against his shoulder. He follows a breath later, teeth buried in my neck as he spills inside me with a shuddering growl.

We collapse together, bodies slick with sweat, limbs tangled in expensive silk sheets.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

Outside the windows, the city glitters with danger and possibility.

Inside this room, I feel claimed. Wanted. Worshipped.

But not tamed.

Never tamed.

“What happens now?” I ask, tracing patterns on his chest.

“Now we figure out how to navigate the war your return is about to start.” His arm tightens around me. “My familywon’t accept my defection easily. They’ll see it as betrayal, as weakness.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m more than okay with it.” He tilts my chin up so I’m looking at him. “For the first time in my life, I’m exactly where I want to be with exactly who I want to be with. Let them rage about it. Let them threaten and scheme and try to tear us apart. I’ve made my choice.”

“They’ll come for us,” I warn. “All of our enemies will see this as an opportunity. The Sterling heir choosing the Blackwood daughter over family loyalty? It’s going to paint a target on both our backs.”

“Good.” His smile is sharp, dangerous, full of the predatory intelligence that makes him so formidable. “I’ve been playing defense my whole life, letting other people set the rules and dictate the moves. It’s time to go on the offensive.”

“And what does that look like?”

“It looks like you and me and your other three dangerous men turning this city upside down until everyone remembers why the names Blackwood and Sterling used to make people cross themselves.” He pulls me closer, his lips finding mine in a kiss that tastes like promises and declarations of war. “It looks like building something new from the ashes of what came before.”

As he kisses me again, deeper this time, more possessive, I realize that Kieran Frost has just declared war on his own family for the right to stand beside me. The perfect heir, the obedient son, the strategic asset has chosen love over loyalty, desire over duty.

And somehow, that makes him more dangerous than he’s ever been before.

Because a man with nothing left to lose is capable of anything.

Even destroying the empire he was born to inherit.

CHAPTER 15

The underground archives smell like dust and ghosts. I haven’t been down here since I was sixteen—when Vincent Blackwood still ruled this city’s shadows.

Axel’s silver-streaked hair catches the light from my phone’s flashlight as he crouches beside me, his movements eerily silent in the cramped space. Even down here, surrounded by cobwebs and memories, he radiates that restless energy that makes him impossible to ignore, but tonight, there’s something different about his stillness, a tension that speaks of secrets about to surface.

“You know,” I say, pulling another dusty box from the metal shelving, “when Marcus said there were gaps in your background that needed investigating, I didn’t expect to be spelunking through my father’s old files at midnight.”

Axel’s laugh is hollow, lacking its usual wild edge. “Marcus thinks he knows everything about everyone, but some ghosts are buried deeper than his databases can reach.”

I pause in my search, studying his profile in the dim light. “Is that what you are, Axel? A ghost? Your nickname a little too on the nose?”

“We’re all ghosts down here,brujita.” He runs his fingers along the spine of a leather-bound ledger. “The question is which version of ourselves we’re haunting.”

Before I can respond, I find what I’ve been looking for, a box labeled “Underground Circuit Records 2018-2019.” The year before everything went to hell. The year before my father died and I disappeared into the shadows to plan my revenge.

Inside, I find what Marcus’s research suggested might exist: fight records, photographs, and registration forms from the underground circuits that operated before the Sterling Syndicate consolidated power.