Page 83 of Victorious: Part 3

Typical Rosella carnage.

I duck beneath a wild swing, a blade whistling past my ear, and I drive upward before the bastard can recover. My combat knife punches through layers of flesh and sinew, sliding between his ribs with practiced ease. His eyes flare as I twist deep, pushing hard and fast.

Without guilt, without care.

I simply need him dead.

His weight collapses against me, and without a second thought, I shove him off, his body crumpling into a heap on the floor. I wipe his blood on my leather pants, letting out a small chuckle while another guard barrels toward me, boots slamming across the tiled floor. I bring my hands up in a‘come get me’gesture, but there’s no time for him to dodge when he lunges at me. I raise my Glock and fire once, clean through the center of his forehead. The shot echoes like thunder, and the fucking idiot falls mid-stride, skull smacking the marble with a wet crack,blood pooling like a beautiful canvas beneath his dead body.

“They’re always so fucking cocky,” I mumble. My pulse steady. My vision sharp.

Violence doesn’t shake me.

It sharpens me.

It fuels me.

If anything, it excites me.

I know, I’m a freak. But that’s why Alpha is going to marry my crazy ass.

To my left, Nighthawk becomes death incarnate. She moves like water, graceful, lethal, impossible to predict. One guard lunges at her with a stun baton, but she spins low, using his momentum against him. Her boot connects with his knee, shattering it sideways with a sickening crunch. He screams, and she cuts it off with a knife across the throat. The flow of blood across the floor in a chaotic pattern as another comes at her with a tactical blade.

Oh, dude. Bad idea!

She blocks his first strike, pivots in, and wraps her arm around his neck, yanking him into a rear chokehold. Her legs coil like a python, and he’s trapped. She jerks sharply, his vertebrae snapping with the pressure. His body slumps to the floor in silence.

Standing back with a proud smile on my face, I start a slow clap as she rights herself, glancing at me like I’m breaking her flow.

“You good?” she mocks, breath steady, flicking blood from her blade like it’s rainwater.

“Never better, just having a proud mama moment,” I answer, scanning for the next threat.

Nighthawk scoffs, flipping me the bird before she takes off ahead of me, raring for another kill. I chuckle and race up behind her. The corridor ahead is chaos with gunfire, shouting,and alarms. Peacock, Barn Owl, Rosella, Kite, and Magpie are wreaking havoc in front of us.

We’re carved from the same maker, fueled by rage. We survived the worst. Nowweare the worst they’ll face.

One of Javier’s soldiers storms out of a nearby door, shouting orders in Spanish. I don’t give him the chance to finish. I sprint forward, leap, and tackle him into the wall so hard that his ass breaks the plasterboard, and he falls, pushed back through it. My elbow flicks up, shattering his nose while he tries to grapple, but I beat him to it, my fist slamming into his temple. Bringing my knee up, I slam it into his gut with as much force as I can, causing him to hunch over trying to catch his breath. With a smirk, I grab a knife, then drive it into his clavicle and rip downward. My chest squeezes in delight at the push and pull of sinew as I drag. He gurgles, trying to scream, but blood pools from his mouth, then he slumps, and I pull him from the wall, spin him, and with my boot, I kick him in the back. His limp body falls to the floor.

Another one bites the dust.

Suddenly, a flashbang goes off ahead, Magpie’s doing, no doubt, and the hallway floods with light and commotion. Through the smoke, silhouettes begin to appear. Kite grabs my wrist and hauls me sideways into a room before a hail of bullets chews through the wall where we were standing.

“Timing, as always,” I murmur with a tight smirk.

She grins. “You’re welcome.”

Before the dust clears, we’re back into the fight. Nighthawk is beside me quickly, and we move as one, covering each other’s blind spots, anticipating the other’s rhythm. We learned this together, in a place worse than hell, but it’s second nature now. Nighthawk distracts with a flash of steel, and I finish with a bullet to the spine. I draw fire from a sniper post, Nighthawk finds the angle and takes out the shooter with a clean headshotthrough reinforced glass.

Our knives are extensions of our arms.

Our guns speak fluent vengeance.

And behind every move, every breath, we feel it.

This is for Poppy.

For every young girl they took.