Page 2 of Rio (Redcars #3)

TWO

Rio

PRESENT DAY

I heard a voice—movement in the shadows—and the red mist dropped fast.

Everything else vanished.

No thoughts, no questions, only instinct and rage. My family was nearby. That was all I needed. Nobody got close. Not to them. Not unless I let them.

My pulse slammed into high gear, muscles tight as I launched forward. The world shrank to threat and reaction, the same way it always had when survival meant striking first.

I was halfway across the alley before I even saw him—short, wiry, leather jacket beaten to hell, jeans clinging to a frame too thin to be a real threat. Long dark hair messy around his face, eyes sunk deep with exhaustion and something worse. Haunted .

No weapon. No aggression. But that didn’t matter to the part of me that protected mine. That part didn’t see the details. It saw proximity. And proximity meant danger. It meant blood.

And I’d spill it gladly before I let anyone touch my family.

One second, the man was saying something; the next, his back hit the alley wall with a sickening crack, his breath exploding from his lungs in a strangled gasp.

I had him pinned, one arm across his chest, the other fist twisted in the collar of his jacket, lifting him clear off the ground.

His feet kicked uselessly in the air, scraping for leverage on the brickwork as he wheezed, ribs compressed under the force.

“What the fuck—Rio!” Jamie snapped, pushing in, but I didn’t budge. My jaw locked as instinct surged, my free hand checking him for weapons, adrenaline flooding every muscle while the danger reflex owned me.

“Who the fuck are you?” I snarled at the stranger.

The man clawed at my arm, choking on nothing, fighting me for every breath.

His eyes burned with raw determination, a stubborn fire that refused to die even as I pinned him, too weak to throw me off.

He squirmed under my hold, muscles straining, his strength failing him—but that desperate fight stayed alive in his eyes.

I needed it to break. I needed him to let it die. I needed him to submit.

Jamie shoved at my shoulder. “Jesus, let him breathe!”

But I didn’t let go.

Jamie was talking, answering something the pinned man must have said. I knew there was talking, but I was focusing on holding him and nothing else. I’d choke him out in an instant if he was here to hurt us.

“L-Lyric,” he forced out, and I tightened my hold as my heart stopped. Lyric? Lyric Thornwood, the man who’d been part of the organization that hurt Robbie? I shoved him hard against the wall.

“You fucker,” I snarled, my voice rough with fury.

He let out a rasping gasp, clawing at my arm before falling away, weak as shit, and his strength draining fast. His whole body trembled, feet dangling inches above the ground.

I could feel the fight bleeding out of him, breath hitching in shallow bursts.

Jamie was speaking, his voice cutting through the haze, but I didn’t register the words.

The man in my grip tried to speak, mouth opening and closing.

His head sagged, heavier with each heartbeat, as if he might pass out any second .

And still that fight remained.

“Nightjar!” he forced out! “Night… Jar…Root…”

Jamie asked questions as I squeezed.

“Let him down, Rio,” Jamie demanded, his voice strident now, cutting through the rush of blood pounding in my ears.

I could hear the edge of fear underneath his words—not just for the man I had pinned, but for me too, for how far I’d already gone.

My muscles resisted, still locked, heart hammering as if I were standing in the middle of a fight that hadn’t ended yet.

But Jamie’s voice anchored me, dragged me back enough for me to react.

I loosened my grip enough for his feet to find the ground, though his legs barely held him up, shaking under his own weight.

My hand stayed locked on his jacket, steadying him more out of instinct than mercy, ready to react if he so much as flinched the wrong way.

My hand was wet with his blood, the metallic scent flooding my senses.

It yanked me back to the ring, to the fights where blood on my knuckles meant control, dominance, survival.

But this wasn’t the ring. This wasn’t some opponent I was meant to take down.

And still, my body hummed with the same brutal satisfaction, the same instinct that kept me alive, even as my mind fought to pull me out of it.

“Talk,” Jamie ordered .

“Contract… kill me.” Lyric yanked at my arm, desperate, as if he were trying to break free or steady himself—I couldn’t tell.

My body moved before my thoughts caught up, muscle memory snapping into place.

I slammed him back into the wall, the impact echoing in the narrow alley.

His breath hitched, another ragged gasp spilling out as his head thudded against the brickwork.

His eyes were wide open—panic flashing there, raw and immediate—but right beneath it, something else burned.

Hatred. Not fear alone, but a hard, jagged edge of loathing aimed right at me.

His nails scraped at me, his muscles twisting with sheer grit, fighting me as if it would make a difference.

Every breath was a struggle, every attempt to yank free full of desperate, furious determination.

I had him pinned. He was too weak. But the fight in him wouldn’t die.

I yanked him forward, more into the light.

Long hair around his face, blood on his temple—had I done that?

— and pale blue-gray eyes, bloodshot, capillaries threading red like cracks in glass.

For a split second, I was lost in the past, seeing that final hit when Danny Carbone crumpled after my punch, lifeless.

This man might look like Danny, but it wasn’t him.

His face didn’t carry the same dead, hollow expression I’d seen in Danny—that empty stare that haunted me.

He was all hatred, sharp and cutting, but it cracked, bleeding into raw, naked fear.

His eyes went wide, panic swallowing the loathing, and his fight just…

stopped. But that grit, that stubborn refusal to break, flickered at the edges.

I wanted it gone. I wanted to end him for daring to come near us, for thinking he had a right to.

“Pl-pl…” he pleaded. “P-please.”

Jamie touched my arm, voice gentler now.

“Let him go, big guy. Come on, he’s not here to hurt us.

” His hand was warm on my skin, grounding me, pulling me out of the haze.

My breath stuttered, muscles twitching as I tried to separate now from then.

The weight of the man in my grip, the fear in his eyes—it all blurred into that night, into Danny.

But this wasn’t Danny. This one was alive, and I was about to hurt him worse.

I stumbled back a step, releasing him. He dropped like a stone, crumpling to the ground with a sickening thud , his head striking the concrete.

Fuck.

This can’t be good.

My stomach twisted, the adrenaline draining fast and leaving behind a hollow, sick churning in my gut. Shame burned under my skin. I’d lost control. Again. And if he didn’t wake up …

“Fuck!” Jamie cursed, and Killian was on his knees, checking for a pulse. Talk of cleaners being needed, washing blood, and then…

“I’ve got a pulse.”

“I’m calling Doc.”

Killian and Jamie carried him upstairs, laying him out on the bed in the apartment.

Jamie hovered nearby, pacing tight circles, hands flexing at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

I stayed against the wall, muscles locked, standing guard.

My eyes tracked every shallow rise and fall of Lyric’s chest, counting each breath, waiting for any sudden change.

Every small sound—the creak of the bed frame, the distant noises outside the window—had my shoulders tensing, my stance shifting to keep my balance ready.

My eyes never left the unconscious man—Lyric—watching for any twitch, any flicker that said he was faking or waiting for an opening.

I’d seen fight in him—raw, stubborn, a kind of vicious grit that didn’t match his size—and I wasn’t about to underestimate that again.

No one argued when I welded a hook to the bed-frame and cuffed him there.

If they had, I’d have told them to fuck off.

This man might have been small, might have looked half-dead, but I knew better.

He was a fighter. And there was hate in his blood .

Jamie kept talking. Something about hacker names, about how this guy was someone he used to talk to online—Nightjar, RootNightjar, whatever the hell it was.

I didn’t care. None of it mattered right now.

Not to me. Not when this stranger was in our space, in our home.

I didn’t let my guard drop. Nothing—nothing—was getting past me to hurt my family.

Jamie broke the silence first, voice low but urgent. “You okay, Rio?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You lost control.”

“He’s fucking dangerous!” I shot back, my tone clipped.

Killian huffed and stepped into my space. “He’s half your fucking size, and now we have a potential dead man at our door, Rio, that’s not how this works.”

“He’s fucking breathing! And I was protecting all of you,” I yelled.

Killian’s eyes flashed. “Jesus, Rio, you were gonna murder him!”

“Says the man who’s fucking the arsonist.” I crossed a line there, but adrenaline was still pumping around my body, and I was wired as hell. My pulse hadn’t slowed, my hands still tingled with leftover energy, and part of me wasn’t ready to come down yet.

Jamie said nothing for a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was tight. “Fuck off, Rio,” he said, hurt flickering in his expression, his jaw rigid as if my words had hit deeper than I intended.