Page 24 of Rio (Redcars #3)

SEVENTEEN

Lyric

My room was too quiet, and I refused to take the knockout pills Robbie said were good for me.

All they did was knock me unconscious and unable to protect myself, and I was over being an invalid and spending all my time with fuzzy edges.

Two a.m., and I sat on the side of the bed, legs pulled up, arms wrapped around them.

The silence pressed in on me. Midnight was way too heavy, and I was restless.

I’d promised Rio I’d put him on his knees, and yeah, maybe I hadn’t meant it, but fuck, now that was all I could think about.

Enzo was tonight’s Lyric-guard-duty, and Robbie was nearby too—the two were together in every sense of the word, and never strayed far from each other.

They would be in that room to the side, door shut, but I’d seen Enzo move when he needed to, and I wasn’t worried anyone could get in because I was familiar with the security of this place.

Jamie hadn’t needed to explain it—when he saw I’d already hacked the local network and traced every single camera and alarm.

I knew which doors were armed and which ones triggered an alert if they stayed open longer than six seconds.

He’d taken the hack I’d done and made the system safer for us all, which had to be a win, although he grumbled about me, which was kind of funny.

I could easily go downstairs, stretch my legs, because I was going out of my fucking head up here alone.

I’d set a real-time passive signal sniffer on my laptop, something to sweep for any outbound signature that might track me, and rerouted everything through layers of ghost proxies.

Now all I could do was wait to see if Kessler’s system was anywhere near finding me, although chatter on the dark web about the current contract on me was insane. It had gone up another ten.

And it was dark. And I was thirsty. And hungry. Yeah, there was a fridge in here, but everything inside tasted no better than wet cardboard.

I need to move .

Carefully, I swung my legs off the bed, eased upright, and padded to the door. The hallway was still and I stepped out onto the landing and peered down the twelve metal steps leading into the garage’s main floor.

I could do this. I needed five minutes. Air.

Movement. Something to convince my body it wasn’t still locked in that panic cage of survival.

Only as I stood waiting to move, there was a clatter, a door opening, and then a shape I knew was Rio appeared in the shadows.

He knocked on the door of the room where Robbie and Enzo were, and it opened immediately.

I couldn’t hear everything, but their voices carried—Enzo’s was clipped, sharp with anger, and Robbie’s softer, rushed, and anxious.

My pulse jumped.

Had someone found me? Had the signal sniffer caught something I’d missed? Was an assassin with a contract already close? What had I missed?

I crept down a step to peer through the gaps. Rio stood tense, his hand pressed to his side as if something hurt. He was wet with sweat, or was that blood? He moved a little into the wash of light from the room behind that door; it was obvious someone had beaten him .

“Have they found me?” I blurted, and all three men turned to stare at me.

“I need to leave. I’m not safe here. None of you are safe.

” Not if they were drawing heat, not if it put other people in danger.

I could go… somewhere quiet, somewhere I could vanish again.

Someplace I could finish what I needed to do before someone else got hurt.

“Go back upstairs!” Rio ordered, then coughed, the big, bad man bending at the waist.

“Fuck that.” I gripped the railing hard enough to make my knuckles ache. “Who hurt you? Are they here?”

No one answered.

Rio was wrecked—his breathing shallow, posture crooked, one eye starting to swell shut. His mouth opened as if he was about to speak, but nothing came out as he stood there, bleeding.

“What the hell happened?” I pushed. “Did someone hurt you? Fuck, did someone follow you here?”

Still no answer. But I saw the flicker in Rio’s eyes. Guilt. Or maybe shame. Maybe both.

“I hacked the security system. I know how airtight this place is. If something got in, it was because I brought it in,” I pushed, and my voice cracked.

“I’m a liability. Every second I stay here, I’m putting you all in danger.

” The words tore out of me harsher than I’d intended, but fear had a way of sharpening everything—my voice, my edges, my breathing.

I wanted to sound controlled, rational, as if I’d already made peace with the choice, but underneath it was nothing but panic clawing at my chest. “I need to leave, before it’s too late. ”

Robbie stepped in then, quiet and calm. “It’s okay, Lyric.”

“It’s not!” I swallowed, throat raw. “Did someone find us?”

“No,” Rio rasped.

“Then what the fuck happened!” I shouted, mentally grabbing my stuff and leaving. I didn’t know where I’d go—maybe nowhere—but if Jamie still knew where I was, then we had a shot. I could still do this. I could still win . But first, I had to get the hell out before I became a liability.

“It’s okay,” Rio said, his lip split, his voice hoarse.

“It’s not fucking okay?—”

“Calm down,” Enzo ordered, “we got this.”

And, oh no, I wasn’t having that. I wasn’t going to be told what to do as if I was some kid witnessing their parents argue and being sent back to bed.

I shoved off from the railing and stormed the rest of the stairs—only it wasn’t a clean descent.

It wasn’t so much storming as slip-sliding down half of them, a yelp escaping my throat as pain lanced up my side.

By the time I hit the garage floor, I was breathless, shaking, and furious.

Angry, yes—but scared too. Every muscle was taut, my lungs dragging in air that felt too thick.

No one moved toward me. No one stopped me moving and I was right there with them now, in their space, no longer the fragile person upstairs.

My body screamed in protest, but I stood tall, defiant, waiting for someone to say something— anything.

No one did.

Instead, they exchanged looks, and finally, Rio sighed. “I was fighting, but it was a cage fight, and this is just me coming home and getting Enzo to stitch me up.”

He wasn’t telling the whole truth. That much was obvious from the way wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.

But I could live with it— if this was just about fists and bruises and pride, and not anything involving assassins, rogue AI, or Kessler’s long shadow creeping back into my life.

If this pain written across Rio’s face came from something clean—even something brutal—I could breathe.

But I wasn’t sure .

And that uncertainty was a splinter I couldn’t dig out.

“Kitchen,” Enzo ordered, and Rio jerked, and then strode to the small kitchen, sitting at the table. Robbie and Enzo exchanged yet another unspoken thing , and Robbie went back through the door, which led to a room full of filing cabinets and a bed. Okay then.

I followed and took another seat at the table, across from Rio.

I watched as Enzo tugged a heavy-duty first aid kit from the top of the fridge—one of those army-style green metal boxes, with rusted corners and dented sides.

He cracked it open, rummaged through the supplies as if he knew exactly what he needed.

He pulled out antiseptic wipes, gauze, surgical tape, and a pack of butterfly stitches. No words. No soft hands. He grabbed Rio’s chin, tilted his head toward the overhead light, and inspected the cut over his eye with a huff.

“This is gonna sting,” he muttered, and then scrubbed the wound clean with one of the wipes. Rio didn’t flinch, but I did. The skin split wider under Enzo’s thumb.

After he was satisfied, Enzo tore open the packet and applied two butterfly stitches with clinical efficiency, pressing them across the gash .

“You get punched in the same place every time, or do you ask for it?” Enzo said dryly.

Rio didn’t answer. Just stared straight ahead, his knuckles white against the table.

“Did you win?” I asked, to fill the silence.

“Yes,” Rio said. That was it—one word. But Rio closed his eyes for a moment. “Knocked him out,” Rio added. “He had a seizure. Doc was there. We owe Doc a favor.”

“A what now?” Enzo snapped the question, horror in his tone.

“Don’t ask,” Rio muttered.

“Fuck!” Enzo cursed. “Since when is Doc making deals?”

“I was fucking desperate,” Rio whispered. His hands were clenched in his lap, shoulders drawn in on themselves, heavy with guilt—or maybe regret.

Enzo sighed heavily. “We’ll deal with whatever that asshole wants when it happens.” Then he grasped Rio’s shoulder. “Go home, Rio. Take some meds, okay?”

They bumped fists, then Enzo disappeared into the back room where Robbie was, the door clicking softly shut behind him.

The moment it closed, the room felt heavier—quieter somehow.

Rio sat in silence, hunched, eyes on nothing.

I wonder how many times Rio had needed to be fixed?

It had to be a lot because Enzo dealt with it as if he were used to it.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Everything in me still buzzed from adrenaline and fear, but it had nowhere to go. I shifted in my seat. Then, for some reason—maybe because I couldn’t stand the silence—I spoke.

“You know, I’ve trained in a few styles.

Nothing flashy, just stuff that works. I have to be clever.

Use my size to my advantage.” Rio didn’t react, so I pressed on.

“I know grappling. Dirty boxing. Pressure points. That kind of thing. I don’t win with strength—I win by making people overreach.

By making them think I’m weaker than I am. ”

He finally glanced at me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. So what do you do?”

He deadpanned, “I punch people.”

I blinked.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I stared at him for a beat, then let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Well. I guess it works.”