Page 10

Kyle

I t had been a week since the gathering. A week of waiting, and nothing else had happened.

Well, yet .

But the silence feltwrong.

It wasn’t relief that we were all feeling about this—not even close. What we were experiencing was the kind of silence thatcoiledin your gut like a snake before it struck. A predator circling, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to sink its fangs in. The Knights felt it too. They were used to shit like this, too long stretches of unease before everything went sideways, but even they were getting twitchy. Their movements were sharper, their tempers shorter. Everyone knew the hit was coming.

It was only a matter of when.

But while we waited for that bomb to drop, we’d gottensomething else, a location. Demingo had been found. We knew where he was holed up, and if things weren’t already tense enough,Hunter and the rest of Valiant were about to join in on the fun. That should’ve been a win, but there was bad blood between Hunter and Preacher.

Hunter’s prospects had beenon watchthe night Piper was taken, but instead of doing their fucking job, they’d gotten distracted trying to find shelter from a storm. Basically, they’d fucked up, and in this world, fuckups cost lives.

I ignored the tension thickening the room and unrolled anaerial photoof the property Demingo was hiding in. Time to get to work.

“Data ran a search onhigh traffic movementin the area,” I started, voice steady. “Thenisolated the ones tied to Demingo.Twenty minutes ago, we sent drones to three locations and got this shot back fromCharlie Drone.”

I pointed at the massive sheet of paper on the table. The image looked like a generic forest clearing, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, but I knew.

“Atoh-nine-hundred hours, this was taken,” I continued, tapping an area that lookedemptyto the untrained eye. Except it wasn’t. Beneath thenettingdesigned to blend in with the surrounding terrain,a faint outline of rotor bladescould just barely be made out. “There’s a helo here.” I moved my finger across the image, stopping at another spot. “And here,” I pointed at a freshly flattened path in the tall grass, “is where they’ve been parking their vehicles.Poorly camouflaged but camouflaged nonetheless.”

I gave them a second to take it all in.

“They’ve got someone posted here,” Jagger spoke up, tapping at awooded areawhere abarely visible barrel of a long-range riflewas peeking through.

“Oh, goody,” Hunter growled, cracking his knuckles. “They want to play rough.”

I smirked. Ilikedthat look on him and my words coming out of his mouth.

Unrolling a second sheet, I laid it out over the first.

“Charlie Drone is a prototype created by the Ghosts,” I explained. “Wehaven’tpitched it to the government yet.Frankly, we probably won’t.”

I clenched my jaw, reigning in my thoughts before I gottoo sidetrackedwith my own issues on that.

“So,” I continued, clearing my throat, “Charlie Drone is a fucking beast.This was the mostcomplexof the three locations, which is why we sent it in. It’s basically thestealth bomberof military drones. It carriesextra charging cellsdistributed evenly throughout the frame, extending its range. Its camera’sstronger, higher-powered than Alpha or Beta models.It stays at anundetectable altitudewhile still getting us crystal-clear,high-res photos like these.”

I pointed down ateightsharp images. Demingo caught in variousintimatemoments. Two were of him in thebathroom, one of himpeering worriedly out a window. Another two showed him on theporch, smug as hell, eating breakfast whiletwo guards stood watch.

But the next ones were thegolden tickets. One of him lookingnervous as hellas his guards stepped away.

It was the last one that was my favorite. Him, dead asleep in his bed. That was the photo that wouldfuck with his headthe most.

Hunter chuckled—a dark, hungry sound. “I might have a plan,” he muttered.

I loved working with this guy. Unfortunately, Jared was gone,called away on some job, but something about him still felt off . I’d wanted Hunter’s read on him, but for now, we hadbigger problems.

One of Demingo’s so-called "orgy houses" had contained more than just bodies and secrets—it had housed a stash of weapons, and we had made sure to keep some. In our world, you never knew when something would come in handy, and tonight, we were about to put one to the test.

Hunter and his team were locked in position while Data had us patched into an untraceable system, every feed secure, every line clean. I was stretched out at my own vantage point, watching and waiting, my pulse steady as the cool night air wrapped around me. Overhead, Charlie Drone hovered silently, capturing everything in real-time.

The first text landed on Demingo’s phone, and I watched the moment unfold through my scope. A single photo of him, asleep in his bed. His reaction was instant. He lurched upright, the phone slipping from his grasp and bouncing onto the floor as he scrambled to his feet. Panic flickered across his face as he ran a hand through his hair, pacing, trying to steady his breath. Then another text arrived. He hesitated, staring at the phone like it might explode before cautiously picking it up. His expression shifted as panic gave way to something sharper—rage.

And then, the third text came through. His face crumbled, and the phone hit the floor again, his entire body rigid as the realization of what was happening fully set in. A moment later, a familiar sound crackled through my headset, playing softly at first before rising in volume— Danza Kuduro .

I nearly choked on a laugh. The same song we had caught him dancing to in the bathroom footage earlier was now blaring from his phone. Data had overridden his phone, preventing it from locking, and the screen flickered to life, looping the footage on his screen—Demingo, shaking his ass, singing into a toothbrush like a goddamn idiot.

“What the fuck?!” he bellowed, stumbling back as if the device had burned him. His rage boiled over, his voice cracking as he roared into the darkness. “Come out, you fucking coward!”

Grinning, I murmured into my comms, "Well, that’s rich. We’re not the ones hiding in the boonies now, are we?"

A soft ping on my screen signaled it was go time. I confirmed my position, my scope steady, my trigger finger light as I waited for the next move. Then, Demingo’s phone flashed again, but this time, the screen split in two. The top half displayed a live feed from his front camera, reflecting his own wide-eyed, panic-stricken face, while the bottom half showed a night-vision feed, a long-distance shot of his property.

His eyes flickered with confusion before a smug expression briefly returned, as if he still believed his walls and reinforcements would keep him safe. But he was wrong. So fucking wrong. And he was about to find out just how badly he’d fucked up.

The weapon we’d seized was a military prototype—something that wasn’t supposed to exist outside of classified operations. Smaller than an RPG but just as lethal, its explosive rounds carried a payload powerful enough to tear through reinforced structures like paper. The fact that Demingo’s men had them made my blood boil. It meant that somewhere, someone high up had either sold these off or let them slip through the cracks. And when I found out who, they were going to fucking suffer. But that was a problem for another day.

Right now, I had a shot to line up.

Lying prone, I adjusted the sight on my rifle, factoring in wind speed, direction, and drop. Every movement was precise, every breath measured. When I was locked in, I double-clicked my throat mic. Tonight, this was Hunter’s call. His fiancée had been taken, his world nearly ripped apart by the same bastards holed up inside that building, so this was his show.

Through the scope, I tracked Demingo’s movements. He was still pacing, still caught up in the mindfuck Data had orchestrated, his phone playing his own humiliation on an endless loop. Then, I heard the click, my signal.

I squeezed the trigger.

The round fired with deadly precision, striking the side of the house just as Jagger and the team detonated the explosives we’d wired minutes earlier. The world fucking shook. A shockwave blasted outward, rattling the ground beneath me, sending debris and smoke into the air.

And then, I fell out of the fucking tree, and the landing was not graceful.

I hit the ground with a hard thud, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. “Fuck me,” I groaned, coughing as dust filled my throat.

My hand instinctively went to rub my neck, and I realized I’d forgotten about my throat mic. The open line meant my moment of humiliation had just been broadcasted to every single person on comms.

There was beat of silence, then, “Kyle!”

Jagger’s voice, sharp with alarm, cut through my earpiece. I groaned again, half in pain, half in sheer fucking embarrassment. Boots pounded against the dirt as he and Preacher ran toward me, but the real insult was Duke. The big, smug bastard stood near the base of the tree that had just betrayed me, arms crossed, shaking with laughter.

“How much C4 did you use?!” I croaked into my mic, still wheezing from the impact. Duke’s laughter only got louder. “Warn me next time, you dickheads.”

That’s when the pain in my arm registered, a sharp, radiating burn that made me hiss out a string of expletives. Jagger and Preacher reached me then, their hands immediately checking for injuries. I hated being fussed over, hated feeling like I needed help. And I sure as hell hated the fact that I had fallen like a fucking amateur.

Swatting their hands away with my good arm, I grumbled, “Fuck off.”

Jagger scowled. Preacher grunted. And Duke was still laughing his ass off.

That son of a bitch was going to pay for this.

JAGGER

Things had finally started to settle. The Valiant team had returned to their compound, the Ghosts were back at ours, and for the first time in a long time, we had breathing room.

For exactly five minutes, then the shit storm we’d all been waiting for hit. It started with a call from Data, and the news was bigger than any of us could have expected. The leak in the MC was the President of the 412 MC.

Turns out, the bastard had a twenty-eight-year-old daughter—Olivia. I vaguely remembered hearing about her, but what we hadn’t known was that he had sold her out to traffickers. To the same fuckers we were fighting.

We had trusted him, let him into our conversations, given him intel on our operations. All the while, he had been lining his pockets with blood money, feeding information straight to the enemy.

We barely had time to plan our next move when the first rounds of gunfire struck the side of the building. They had snuck up on us. Somehow, they had gotten past our guards. Worse, they knew the layout of our compound—knew exactly where to hit, where we were vulnerable.

Preacher’s roar split through the air. “Fucking shit!”

We ran for the armory, grabbing our assault rifles as standard defense protocols kicked in. Kyle, Duke, and the Ghosts, they knew what to do. But the fact that Kyle wasn’t at my side was a distraction I couldn’t afford right now. I had to trust her. She was lucky her arm hadn’t been broken that night, just bruised, so she could still fight and defend herself.

And fuck, was she fighting.

The second we took position, I got a good look at the sheer number of men that had breached our perimeter. This wasn’t just a warning, it wasn’t intimidation, and they weren’t here to scare us. They were here to wipe us out.

The first shots rang out from inside the building. The Ghosts were already picking them off, moving with practiced precision. I barked orders to the MC, and together, we unleashed hell. Bullets tore through the night, bodies hit the ground, the air thick with gunpowder and blood.

Then, Gauge’s voice cut through the chaos. “Anyone else notice they’re not shooting at us anymore?”

I blinked, my grip tightening on my rifle. Then, I saw it—their firepower had shifted. They weren’t firing at random, they had a target.

And then the explosions hit. I didn’t need to look to know it was Kyle.

She had brought out the prototype weapon we’d taken from Demingo’s men, and it fucking worked. The force of the blast sent bodies flying, the sheer destruction of it making the attackers hesitate. They realized, too late, that they were outmatched. One by one, they turned tail, bolting for the open gates, scrambling over each other to escape.

I had one rule—never shoot a man in the back. But these fuckers had come onto our land. Attacked us in our home. These were different rules forced by their decision, so I lifted my rifle back up and started shooting at them again.

I didn’t call the stand-down until I was damn sure they were all gone.

As the smoke cleared, I stepped outside and took in the damage. Bullet holes pitted the walls, but none had made it through the thick structure. We had held our ground and had survived. But something wasn’t right. My eyes lifted, scanning the rooftop, and that’s when I saw it.

Kyle, perched above, rifle still in hand.

And beneath her position was proof of where they’d concentrated their firepower. The deliberate targeting. They hadn’t just come for us, they had come for her.

A roar ripped through the air, loud and furious. I turned just in time to see Preacher’s face twisted with rage. He had seen it too—they had tried to take out his daughter. That was why they hit us here. They had used the battle as a distraction, long enough to single her out.

Preacher’s voice boomed through the clearing, his fury echoing like thunder. “Get the President of the 412.” His tone left no room for argument. “Find him and bring him here.”

This shit was ending. Now.