Page 30 of The Vagabond

SAXON

I ’m pressed against the back wall, arms crossed so tight my biceps burn, jaw clenched hard enough that my molars grind like stone.

I haven’t slept in thirty hours. Maybe more.

The blood crusted into the creases of my knuckles isn’t even from my last op—that one blurred into the next, and the next.

The kind of blood that doesn’t wash off, not even with boiling water.

But all of that? The exhaustion, the pain, the bone-deep violence stitched into my every step? It’s nothing compared to the fire clawing through my gut right now.

Because someone just said her name.

“Maxine Andrade might be the perfect candidate to help with our investigation.”

At first, I think I misheard. I push off the wall slowly, like a man wading through molasses. The weight in my chest turns to lead.

“What did you just say?”

Silence. Everyone freezes like they can smell the storm rising in my bones. No one repeats it. Cowards.

S SA Moffatt clears his throat, pretending to be composed, but he’s already shifting his papers like they might shield him from the blast.

“She lived with Kadri for almost a year. She’s uniquely positioned—that might be our in. If she’s willing to cooperate, we might get the kind of access we’ve never had before. The intel?—”

I bark out a laugh. A short, ugly thing, sharp enough to cut glass. “She didn’t live with Kadri,” I remind the team. “She was a victim. I don’t know why you all have such a hard time remembering that.”

“She’s the closest link we have to the organisation,” he argues. “She’s seen things, members she could identify to give us a solid lead…”

My explosion isn’t loud. It’s nuclear . It doesn’t need volume to devastate—just presence.

It radiates through the bones of everyone in the room, a slow, suffocating pressure that warps the air and curdles the silence.

I stand there, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache, fists flexing like they’re moments away from doing real, permanent damage.

My vision tunnels. Red. Nothing but red.

Because I could end him. Right here. Right now.

I could tear through his throat like paper, feel his pulse stutter beneath my hands, watch the arrogance bleed out of his eyes.

And the only thing— the only fucking thing —stopping me is the last, brittle shard of respect I still have for the Bureau.

For what it used to mean to me. For the badge I wore like a second skin.

“Oh, you want to send a trafficking survivor back into the lion’s den? Use her like bait so you can pat yourselves on the back for catching a bigger fish? That’s what we’re doing now? Playing God with her life?”

“She’s not just a survivor, Saxon,” Agent Pettigrew says, tone soft like she’s explaining something to a child. “She’s strong. She’s intelligent. And she has a personal?— ”

“ She’s. Not. Bait! ”

My voice cracks through the room like a gunshot.

Sharp. Sudden. Final. Chairs shift. Shoulders tense.

Everyone flinches like they’ve been struck—but no one dares to speak.

I take a step forward. Then another. I don’t shout.

Don’t slam the table like they expect me to.

That would be too easy. Instead, I speak low.

Cold. Controlled like a wire stretched to the point of snapping.

“You want intel? Send someone trained. Someone who didn’t spend a year in a cell with chains for bracelets. Someone who doesn’t wake up at night gasping for air because she dreamed she was back in that fucking cage.”

I lean in closer, voice almost a whisper now.

“You want someone close to the Aviary? Maxine Andrade is not that someone. You leave her out of this.”

A file slides across the table. Photos spill out. And the second I see the top one, my world tilts.And that’s when I know. They’ve already decided.

Maxine is standing in front of her apartment. Head turned, keys in hand. Her eyes are wide, guarded. Alert. She knew. She felt it in her skin—someone watching her. Hunting her. Maybe someone other than me.

“These were taken during our surveillance of Ms Andrade,” Moffatt says. “You’ve been frequenting her place. We didn’t connect the dots at first, but now we know. You’ve been watching her for months.”

My hand shoots out before I can stop myself, snatching the photo.

My fingers tremble. I spread the photos across the table like playing cards.

One. Two. Dozens. Black-and-white stills.

Grainy. Surveillance angle. Me. Watching her.

Outside her apartment. Across the street from her university.

Leaning against my car in the rain while her window lights up like home. Every angle. Every hour.

My throat tightens .

Moffatt’s voice is like a scalpel now. Calm. Controlled. Cruel.

“We’ve been watching you watch her , Saxon.”

The room goes silent. I feel every eye on me. Like they’re waiting to see if I’ll implode or detonate.

“You’re compromised,” he continues. “You’ve been making decisions based on personal attachment. You disappeared from protocol the same week she moved out of the compound. You withheld intel. You diverted surveillance.”

“You’re reaching,” I say, voice gravelly.

But they’re not. And I know it.

“She’s a civilian,” Carson pipes in, tone clipped, like he’s reading from a manual. “You’ve turned her into a liability. And now you expect us to believe we shouldn’t use her as a resource?”

I drag my gaze across the table—slow, deliberate, almost bored.

The kind of look that makes men forget their own names.

One by one, they shift. Shoulders tighten.

Throats clear. Averted eyes. Because this isn’t a conversation anymore.

It’s an ambush. But they’ve got it backward.

They think they’ve got me boxed in. Cornered.

What they don’t realize is… I’m the one hunting.

But it’s disarming, I’ll give them that. The fact that they were surveilling Maxine without my knowledge? That tells me everything I need to know.

I’m burned. They’ve known for a while now. Known I’ve gone rogue. That I stepped out of line and never looked back. That I stopped being theirs the moment I let her in. And this? This is how the Bureau plays when they want to break you. They isolate. They box you in.

They aim straight for the softest part of you—and they twist.

They’re not just questioning my judgment. They’re weaponizing the only person I’d die to protect. And if they think that’s going to scare me into submission? Then they’ve forgotten who the fuck I am .

“She’s part of an ongoing investigation into organized crime,” I say coldly. “One that goes deeper than this whole fucking task force wants to admit. You want me to compromise that for a shortcut?”

“No,” Carson says. “We want you to stop lying to yourself.”

He taps the stack of photos.

“You’re not protecting her. You’re obsessing . And that makes you dangerous.”

I breathe in slow. Controlled. Because the violence is right there . In my bones. In my blood. Sitting just beneath the surface of my skin, begging to be set loose.

“You’re not in control anymore,” Moffatt says, and there’s no smirk now. “And if you can’t prove you’re still useful, we’ll have you pulled off this case and have your clearance suspended.”

I stand slowly. Deliberately. And the air shifts.

“I’m the reason any of you are still sitting upright,” I say. “I’m the one who found the safehouses. Who leaked the auction footage. Who tracked Kadri’s shipments while you were too busy debating protocol.”

Carson shifts, but I don’t let him speak.

“I bled for this op,” I growl. “I burned every relationship I had. I went dark for months. And now you want to crucify me because I refused to hand over the one person who’s survived the hell you all ignored for years?”

Carson’s quiet. Studying me. And then?—

“Then prove it,” he says. “Prove she’s not in your head. Prove she’s just another name.”

I lean in. And smile like a wolf.

“I said no .” The growl is low, animal, a warning in every syllable. “I said she’s off-limits. You do not want to mess with the Gattis and Mason Ironside.”

The room doesn’t push back. But I see it in their eyes—the quiet calculations, the silent cost-benefit analyses. Like they’re trying to decide whether she’s worth the fallout. I don’t tell them that nothing is worth falling out with the likes of the Gatti Empire.

And with that, I turn and walk out before I rip someone’s throat out. Because they’re right. She’s in my head. She’s in everything. But that doesn’t make me weak. It makes me willing to kill for the right reasons. And if they push me again? They’ll see exactly what that looks like.

In the hallway, the world feels wrong. Tilted. Dizzy. My fists go into my pockets so I don’t punch the wall.

Maxine. She’s the ache under my ribs. The ghost in my bed. The only thing that’s ever felt like home. And now the Bureau wants to feed her to the wolves again, because they think she’s their only in to the Aviary.

No. Hell no. If they send her in, she’ll get hurt. And there’s no way I’m letting that happen. So they can talk all they want. Plot, plan, push. But if they think they’re using Maxine Andrade? They’ll have to go through me. And my very short leash just snapped.

I don’t remember the drive.

One second I'm in that suffocating meeting room, a photo of Maxine burning a hole in my hand, and the next—I’m outside her apartment building, headlights off, fists clenched tight on the wheel.

The file’s still on the passenger seat. Open. Her photo catching the last of the streetlight. She’s smiling in it. One of those rare, accidental moments when she thought no one was looking. Except someone always was.

I stare at her front door like it might vanish if I blink. My whole body’s wired, tight, burning under my skin. My fury is fearless.

They crossed a line today. And now I'm here because she deserves to know the rules of the game they’ve shoved her into.

I push the car door open and move. Rage has a rhythm and mine is pounding in my ears.

Up the steps. Two at a time. I don’t knock like a man. I knock like a warning. Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Maxine.”

Nothing. I knock again, louder.

“Max. Open the door.”

There’s a shuffle inside. A pause. Light spills through the crack under the door like she’s trying to decide whether to answer or disappear. It opens a sliver. Her face peeks through—tired, wary. Beautiful in a way that wrecks me.

“Saxon?” Her voice is small, confused. Soft. Then her eyes land on mine. “What’s happened?”

I push the door the rest of the way open, stepping inside without waiting. I’m already past apologies. Past patience.

She doesn’t stop me. Just closes the door slowly behind me, eyes tracking me like she’s trying to figure out which version of me she just let in.

Her place is quiet. Neat. Like she’s been busy trying to scrub the world off her skin.

I drop the file on her kitchen counter. Photos spill out. Surveillance shots. Her building. Her coming and going. The details of her life reduced to timestamps and grainy images—taken without her knowing.

She stares at them. Her hand trembles when she picks one up.

“What... what is this?”

I stay silent. Let the weight of it settle over her.

“I don’t understand—why do you have these? ”

“They’ve been watching you,” I say, my voice stripped down to steel. “Tracking you. For weeks. Every time you left the house. Every time you got coffee. Every person you talked to.”

Her mouth parts. Her breath stalls.

“Who?”

“The Feds. They think you’re leverage.”

She sways where she stands, but catches herself.

“For what?” she asks.

“To get to the Aviary.”

A beat of silence passes. Then, she realizes exactly what I’m trying to say. “They want to use me.”

I nod once. “They want your help to identify the major players. To bring down the Aviary.”

Her eyes glaze. She sinks onto the edge of the sofa, hands in her lap like she doesn’t trust them to hold anything.

“They said I was compromised,” I continue, quieter now. “That I can’t make rational decisions. That you make me weak.”

“And what do you think?”

I drop to a crouch in front of her, eyes on hers.

“I think you’re the only reason I’m still human.”

She exhales—shaky, uneven. Her hands find mine. Her fingers slip between the cracks like she’s searching for something real, something steady.

“I can’t do it again,” she whispers, eyes locked on the floor like the memories might rise up and drag her back under. “I’ve already been passed around, handed over, used until there was nothing left. I can’t be that person again.”

I feel every word like a blade.

She swallows hard, voice thinner now. “I’m tired of being someone’s weapon. Someone’s strategy.”

I lower my voice. Not to calm her—but to ground it in truth.

“You’re not a weapon, Maxine. ”

She looks up, and it breaks me—how much doubt lives in her eyes.

“You don’t belong to anyone.” I lean in, just enough. “But if they try to turn you into a victim again—if they so much as breathe like they own a piece of you—then I swear to God, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing they ever do.”

Her breath hitches. And still, she looks at me like she wants to believe it.

“I don’t want to be scared anymore,” she says.

“Then don’t be,” I whisper. “Not with me.”

She doesn’t respond. She just leans in, slow, deliberate. And when her lips brush mine, it’s not forgiveness. It’s surrender. It’s a storm breaking open between us.

I pull her closer, hands on her face like she’s the last soft thing in a world full of sharp edges.

“I haven’t touched anyone since you,” I murmur against her lips. “Because no one else exists for me. Just you.”

She closes her eyes. And kisses me like she’s still learning how to breathe in my space.

Like she wants to believe this world might finally give her something that doesn’t hurt.

Her eyes glisten. Her breath catches. And I lean in, without being forceful.

Not demanding. Just... there. Hovering. Letting her decide.

And when her lips part, when her eyes flutter shut, when she whispers my name like a secret, I kiss her.

And it feels like war.