Page 40 of The Vagabond

The 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’dneverturn 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 howeagerUncle 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. Forus.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 lawfailed 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 monstersdodie. 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.

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