Page 18 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

T he lights are too bright.

Everything at the Gatti Community Ball glimmers like it’s trying too hard—too much crystal, too much perfume, too many secrets wearing designer gowns and fake smiles. It’s all choreographed. Pretty and poisonous. The kind of party where people toast with one hand and sharpen knives with the other.

And I can’t breathe.

Not because of the corset laced too tight under my dress, or the heat from the chandelier melting down onto my skin. It’s him.

Saxon North.

He walks into the ballroom looking like sin, and my blood goes cold.

He doesn’t even belong in this world, but he wears the suit like he was born for it.

Broad shoulders. Clean jawline. That unforgiving green gaze that scans the room like he’s cataloging threats, measuring distance, reading lies on people’s lips.

He’s a Fed. And he’s here.

My heart stutters. Not because I’m afraid of him—but because of everything he represents from my ugly past .

Mason sees him a second later. I know it by the way his glass stills in his hand, his entire body snapping from relaxed to coiled in a blink. Brando doesn’t need a verbal cue—he’s already pushing off the wall like a storm about to hit land.

I slip through the crowd before the thunder cracks. My heels click against the marble as I cut toward the edge of the ballroom, trying to look calm. Composed. Like I didn’t just feel every cell in my body light up like a damn fuse when Saxon’s eyes found mine.

He moves toward me. Of course he does. Like I’m the only thing in the room he came for. We move toward each other like two magnets fighting for purchase. I want to run. But I don’t.

“Maxine,” he says, voice low, familiar. It hits me in the gut and tastes like heat and heartbreak. I can stop him from coming to my place, but I can’t prevent him attending a public function.

“You shouldn’t be here.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. Or maybe not sharp enough.

“Didn’t realize the Gattis were gatekeeping charity now.”

I scoff. “This isn’t about charity and you know it.”

He flicks a glance over my shoulder — probably catching sight of Mason stalking closer like a loaded gun with no safety — and lets out a sigh, the kind that’s part annoyance, part surrender.

“I’m working a lead,” he mutters.

I arch a brow, sharp and cold. “Is that why you’ve been shadowing me? Tail me long enough, hoping I’ll spill something on the Gatti family?”

His face twists, caught off guard. “What, no… that’s not?—”

I cut him off, my voice like a blade. “Because I need you to understand something real clear: I’d never turn on them. Not now. Not ever.”

He exhales hard, tension bleeding into his jaw. “The investigation into the Aviary is still live. ”

I take a step back and regard him carefully, my eyes scanning his eyes like the truth might shift if I blink.

Altin Kadri, who headed the human trafficking ring known as the Aviary, died in prison a few months ago.

Funny thing, that. The monster of my nightmares didn’t die by bullet. Or blade. Or riot. He didn’t go out in a blaze of glory like the beast he pretended to be. No. Altin Kadri died choking on a fucking peanut.

Anaphylactic shock. In prison. One bite of something he wasn’t supposed to eat, and his throat closed up like a steel trap. By the time the guards found him, he was already blue.

I should have laughed. Instead, I just sat there, stunned—numb in that quiet, untrusting way trauma teaches you to be.

But later? In the aftermath, when things started clicking into place, when I remembered how eager Uncle Mason was to get himself locked up on some half-baked misdemeanor? A traffic violation? Really?

That’s when it hit me. Mason is an enforcer.

It’s what he does best. He organises things, makes them happen.

And Kadri? Kadri was his target. It wasn’t just some random allergy mishap.

It was an execution, served cold and clinical.

No mess. No prints. No headlines screaming vengeance.

But I knew. God, I knew. And I didn’t care.

Mason may not have pulled the trigger, but someone did.

Someone wearing the Gatti name like a blood oath.

It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that they did it—for me.

For us. They slayed my monster. And that?

That’s something I’ll carry forever. No one will ever be able to prove it.

There’s no trail. No smoking gun. But deep in my gut, in the place where fear used to live, I feel it.

That bone-deep certainty. Kadri died because the men who love me decided his existence was an insult they could no longer tolerate.

And I owe them. Not just a thank you. Not just loyalty.

I owe them my life. My sanity. Everything.

Because when the law failed me, when the system looked away, when the world shrugged like what happened to me was just one of those things—these men looked vengeance in the eye and said ‘we’ll handle it’.

And they did. Without hesitation. Without regret.

And for the first time since I crawled out of that hellhole, I feel something close to peace.

Because monsters do die. And mine? Mine choked on a peanut in a cell, screaming into the void for help that never came.

“Maxine?”

Saxon brings me out of my too-cold thoughts.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Someone slid into Kadri’s seat, and I need to find that someone.”

“You think you’re going to find that someone here ?”

His gaze flicks back to mine. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

He smiles, just barely. “Sounds like that would make you sad.”

“More like I’d be the first one dancing on your grave, Fed.”

He doesn’t get a chance to answer as Mason barrels in like a wrecking ball in a thousand-dollar suit.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mason’s voice cuts the air in half.

Brando’s right behind him, suit jacket pushed back just enough to flash the gun holstered at his hip. Classic Brando.

I slide between them, palms up like that’ll stop the testosterone from exploding all over the marble.

“Mason, stop ?—”

“He doesn’t belong here.”

Saxon barely moves. “I’m not here for you.”

Mason’s mouth twists into something cold. “No, you’re here for her. ”

“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t make this about me. ”

Brando steps in closer. “We’ve got enough problems without suits sniffing around. You trying to make us targets again?”

“I’m here on offical business,” Saxon growls. “Aviary business.”

“Kadri’s dead,” Brando reminds him.

“That may be,” Saxon says, green eyes piercing through my brother in law, “but the Aviary is alive and kicking.”

The room goes silent around us. Not really—but in my head, it’s all static and adrenaline. My pulse is thunder. My breathing is fire.

Saxon North is relentless.

I grab Saxon’s wrist and pull him away before someone throws the first punch. He lets me. Of course he does. There’s that same sick, familiar tension between us—magnet and metal, orbit and destruction.

We end up near one of the tall windows, the music distant now, our reflections flickering in the glass like ghosts.

“You can’t be here,” I hiss, stepping into his space like I can physically shove him out of mine. “You know that. They hate you. They’ll bury you.”

My heart is thundering. My palms are sweating. And every cell in my body is vibrating with adrenaline—the kind that screams run, even while something deeper whispers stay .

Saxon doesn’t flinch.

“I’m not scared of Mason Ironside or Brando Gatti.”

“You should be.” My fists clench at my sides, nails digging into my palms. I stare up at him, jaw tight, fury trembling just beneath my skin.“They will kill you in between breaths, and you won’t even have a chance to sneeze.”

That should scare him. Hell, it scares me. But instead of backing off, instead of taking the very obvious warning tattooed in my voice, Saxon smirks. That lazy, lopsided grin that disarms me like a switchblade .

“Now it really sounds like you’re worried about me.”

I hate how his words land like a sucker punch to my chest, because— God —I am. I don’t want to be. But I am. My heart skips, trips, fumbles its next beat like it’s never learned how to protect itself.

His eyes find mine, those piercing jungle-colored eyes that hold too much of my past, too much of what we never got to be.

And for a second—just one heartbeat—I forget how to breathe.

I hate that a part of me still aches for him. For the way his hand brushed mine when the whole world was darkness, and he was the only match I had left.

“You’re playing with fire,” I say, voice thick. “You keep showing up like this, and they’ll think you’re coming for them.”

“Maybe I am.”

I step back. That’s it. That’s the line.

That’s the reminder I needed. He’s not like us.

He can pretend to understand what it’s like to survive the things I did, but he’ll never live with it the way I do.

I carry it in my blood. He carries it in a file folder.

And the worst part? He’s still beautiful.

Still broken. Still mine in a way that makes no sense at all.

“You’re a Fed,” I whisper. “I’m a mafia daughter. Whatever you think this is, it doesn’t work.”

“I’m not trying to make it work,” he says, eyes burning. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

I blink back the sting. “Don’t you get it? That’s the problem.”

He looks like he wants to reach for me. Like he wants to pull me in and kiss me the way he did the night he disappeared. But he doesn’t. And I’m glad for that, because if he touches me again, I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to let go.

“Maxine,” he says softly.

But I’m already walking away. And this time? I don’t look back.