Page 34 of Rio (Redcars #3)

TWENTY-FOUR

Rio

Lyric slept and I held him close, the gun Enzo had given me loose in my hand, safety off. My finger hovered near the trigger the whole damn time, and there was no way I was closing my eyes.

If someone was coming through that door, they’d be met with a bullet between the eyes. I’d already mapped every crack in the parking lot, every possible angle of entry, and I kept Lyric tucked against me, my body a shield, eyes on the door as if it was the mouth of hell.

No one came. Not yet.

Lyric shifted in his sleep, the edges of his dreams tugging at him—face drawn tight even in rest. He whimpered once, a choked sound as if he was trying to breathe through something heavy. I smoothed a hand down his spine, felt the way his muscles stayed tense, as if he didn’t trust the peace.

His lashes twitched. Cheek pressed to my chest. He looked young, vulnerable in a way that made me ache.

He might be confident and strong when awake, when thinking, when planning—but here, asleep in my arms, he was something else entirely.

He was mine. He’d be mine for as long as we were alive.

Was it obsession? Or the raw, aching knowledge that I couldn’t survive without him?

I needed him as lungs needed air, or blood needed a heartbeat.

I craved him in the quiet and the chaos.

And when he was near, the noise in my head dulled.

I breathed easier. I breathed because of him.

If all we had was tonight… and he didn’t make it through tomorrow because someone got through me…

then God help whoever touched him. I’d hunt them to the ends of the earth and make them regret breathing.

His breaths came unevenly, as if he was still fighting in his dreams, jaw clenching every few seconds before relaxing again. His fingers were anchored in my shirt, and I could feel every tremor passing through him, every shift as though his body couldn’t accept peace.

I wanted to shield him from all of this, take him somewhere else so he didn’t have to go to Kessler’s tower, but I couldn’t. My man was stubborn, and fuck him, he was right.

A little before three a.m., the burner buzzed, loud and sudden in the stillness. Lyric jerked awake with a gasp. I caught the phone before he could lunge for it and handed it over.

He blinked at the screen and swallowed hard.

“What does it say?”

“You took the contract,” he said, and glanced up at me, his voice rough with sleep but not a single ounce of dread. “We have an address.”

“Where?”

“KessTech.”

“And was it Kessler who confirmed?”

Lyric shrugged. “Jamie and Caleb have no clue.” Then he held out his hands, his wrists red from what we’d practiced. I placed the zip tie and adjusted it until he nodded. No one could have reason to question that.

“Hit me,” he said,

“Fuck no.” I stepped back as if his words had burned me.

“Hit me,” he repeated, low and fierce.

All I could see was Danny, lying on the floor, smaller than me, not fighting back. Blood blooming under his temple. My hands shaking. I couldn’t do it. Not again.

“I can’t,” I said, voice rough. “I could hurt you if you want to make it look real?—”

“Make it real,” Lyric growled.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

He stared at me, eyes burning. I think he knew. I think that was the point.

And before I could stop him—before I could even reach for him—he turned and slammed his head into the corner of the wall by the bathroom. A sickening crack before he staggered sideways—and did it again.

“Jesus, Lyric—” Blood trickled down his temple. He swayed and then blinked at me as I caught him before he could fall. “What the fuck did you do?”

He blinked up at me, eyes clear. “Now it’s real.”

And it was. Too fucking real.

Panic lit through me, ice water in my veins.

My gut twisted, brain screaming to do something , fix it , stop it —but I shoved it down, hard.

Buried it beneath instinct, behind the armor I’d worn since I killed Danny.

He needed me calm. He needed control. I couldn’t fall apart now, not when he’d just chosen violence to protect us both.

I cradled his face with shaking hands, wiping blood from his temple with my sleeve, breath catching.

His skin was clammy, and his eyes—God, his eyes—still steady, still defiant, even through the haze of pain.

“I love you,” I said, voice breaking on the words I hadn’t meant to say out loud, not here, not like this.

His mouth twitched, and it wasn’t a smirk this time.

“Back at ya, big guy,” he whispered.

“We’re not dying today,” I said.

He gave me an up-nod. “No. We’re not.”

KessTech’s HQ towered above downtown LA, all glass and steel, reflecting the sky.

Too clean. Too quiet. The alley behind the building was clear at this early hour.

No cars. No foot traffic. No security behind the smoked glass doors; the metal barriers to the parking lot were wide open.

Even the sidewalk felt wrong—too polished, too empty.

As if the whole place had been evacuated in a hurry, or scrubbed clean of life.

My boots scuffed against it, too loud in the stillness, and it freaked me out that there was no one here at all.

Where is everyone? Security to take Lyric from me? No single staff member pulling an all-nighter, or coming in early? Even a freaking someone with a suitcase full of cash, and yeah, my mind was going to some weird places right now.

I kept my hand on the back of Lyric’s neck as we walked—a message.

A performance. Anyone watching would think I was delivering him like a package I didn’t care about. Playing the bad guy. Keeping control.

But the truth was, I wanted to turn us both around and get the fuck out of here.

Lyric moved like someone walking to their own grave. He didn’t fight my grip, didn’t flinch, just kept his eyes locked on the front doors, on the single strip of black between two sheets of glass. His pulse beat fast and furious under my palm.

The bleeding had stopped, but his face was splashed with blood—sharp streaks across his cheekbone, a smear drying on his jaw.

He stumbled, and all that kept him upright was my grip, fingers digging into his arms as if I could anchor him to this world.

I knew it was all for show. We needed it to be convincing.

But fuck, seeing him like this—hurting, vulnerable, bleeding—tore me up.

It didn’t matter that this was part of the plan. My body didn’t know the difference. All it saw was the man I loved, and the blood on his face looking too damn real .

We had no idea what to expect—Kessler had been missing for all these weeks, the system that wanted Lyric dead was manipulating fuck knows what—and I was scared for Lyric.

Fucking terrified.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I muttered, staring at the ground for a moment. I wanted him to hear me, I wanted him to say that we could go.

He didn’t answer.

The doors slid open without a sound. No reception desk. No buzzing lights. A sign for deliveries, and through that open door, a marble floor that stretched into a rear lobby, soaked in shadow, elevator doors gleaming at the far end.

I tightened my grip. Not because I needed to.

Because I needed to feel he was real. Alive.

I stopped and yanked Lyric to a stop under the first camera I saw, staring up at it, making sure the camera got a good view of my gun at Lyric’s side.

This was all about stalling, getting loud, and making the focus on me bringing in Lyric for money.

He needed a few seconds for Jamie and Caleb to locate the part of the room I needed to drag Lyric to.

“He’s here. Where’s my money?” I shouted.

Silence, and the door to the far elevator slid open.

I dragged Lyric that way, and he let out a low, strained groan that cut straight through me.

Fuck—was I hurting him? His knees buckled, body sagging into mine as if he couldn’t hold himself up anymore, and still, he didn’t say a word.

Just kept moving forward. My chest ached with it—every step he took because I asked him to.

Every inch closer to danger when all I wanted was to carry him the other way.

We stepped inside. No buttons to press. No ID scan.

As if the building had been told to open its mouth and swallow us whole.

What if this was the trap? The elevator rising to then drop us both—fast, brutal, final.

One press of a button and it’s done. Problem solved for Kessler.

Clean. Efficient. God, why was this hitting me now?

I wanted to glance at Lyric, to say something, anything, but I couldn’t risk showing fear. Couldn’t risk him seeing it in me.

At least we’ll go together.

Thank fuck we headed down, and we rode in silence.

I watched our reflections in the mirror-polished walls. Lyric’s face was stone as he slumped, but I looked as if I’d aged ten years. The longer we stood there, the more my muscles screamed to act—to grab him, to drag him back to the car, to run.

But this wasn’t a job we could walk away from. Not now .

The elevator dinged. The doors opened.

We walked into the shadowed core of KessTech—the place Lyric and Jamie said was the digital heart of LyricNight, the AI that had learned how to protect itself. The one that had started killing to survive.

We stepped into a corridor lit by the glow of banks of computers behind glass, and the air was cold, sterile, blinking lights watching us.

There were no footsteps but ours. No alarms. No voices.

“Where the fuck are you?” I shouted into the silence. I knew the AI didn’t need people—just power. I wasn’t expecting wires or gears or some blinking, monstrous eye. But still, some part of me wanted something to face. Something to fight.

Kessler.

We came to a reinforced door—no handle, no keypad, nothing but smooth metal and tension humming in the air.

For a beat, there was silence. Then, with a soft mechanical click , a seam appeared down the center.

The door split open and rolled back, slow and deliberate, as if the building itself was making a decision to let us in.

Fucking creepy.

We stepped into a cavernous space lit by LED strips and the glow of computers stacked floor to ceiling behind more glass walls. In the middle, sealed in a large secondary chamber, sat someone I hardly recognized. Kessler.

He looked like death.

He had a scrappy beard—patchy, thin—the kind that came from weeks without grooming.

His eyes were sunken, haunted, his skin grey under the flicker of failing fluorescents.

Not the man I’d seen in photos. This wasn’t a tech billionaire playing God.

Bottled water. Open food containers. Torn paper.

A haphazard pile of chemical toilets, one on its side spilling the contents.

Had he barricaded himself in? Or was he a prisoner?

Was that what his messages to Lyric meant?

That this fucked up computer had somehow locked him in?

He was breathing harshly, staring at us. It was fucking scary.

I jerked to a halt, arm snapping out to catch Lyric before he could take another step.

Play the game, Rio, snap out of it. He stumbled into me, unsteady, and I felt the heat of his breath against my shoulder.

We stood frozen, side by side, staring into the hollow eyes of the man sealed behind glass.

I braced for threats—gunfire, alarms, some show of power.

Something violent. Something expected. But Kessler stood there, unmoving.

As if he couldn’t believe we were real. Then, slowly, as though every step hurt, he crossed the floor to the glass.

His knees buckled, and he crumpled, hands splayed against the barrier as if it was the only thing holding him together, his voice cracked, echoing from speakers outside the room.

“Help me.”