Page 29 of Edge
The world narrowed down to a single point. “Not happening.”
“You don’t have a choice,” the fucker sneered. “We’ll text you a number. Call when you’re ready to trade. Otherwise, we cut pieces off her and mail them back until nothing’s left but scraps. Tick-tock, Mr. Beckett.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the screen for a long beat before lowering the phone. My hand didn’t shake. My face didn’t move. My pulse didn’t jump. It dropped. Slowed to the steady cadence of a metronome, a sniper’s heartbeat. Everything inside me slid into place with the clean certainty of a bolt closing on a chamber.
The part of me that lived on the edge of sanity? I walked past it. No line. No railing. Just a long black drop and the calm that comes when you stop pretending you’re not going to fall.
Boots scuffed behind me. Kane’s reflection loomed in the glass of his office window before I even turned. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He’d heard enough.
My brother's green eyes pinned me, calm but carrying the weight of knowing exactly where I stood. He’d been here himself—different battlefield, same burn. He knew the fear. The fury. The hollow where logic used to live.
I dragged in a breath, my chest too tight.
“They touched her, Kane.” My voice was raw. “I’ll fucking peel them alive.”
His nod was slow and steady. He wasn’t trying to drag me back. He wasn’t trying to soften it. He was giving me what I needed—space to be the monster I already was. “Then we ride.”
I jerked my chin up in agreement. The phone felt small in my fist. I slipped it into my back pocket, and the leather of my cut creaked when I rolled my shoulders, the weight of it as familiar as a rifle sling. “They want my blueprints.”
Kane’s jaw flexed. “They’re never getting your plans.”
“No, they’re getting a funeral instead.” My smile felt wrong on my face—sharp, off-kilter, the one Nitro called my crash grin. “Closed casket.”
Behind us, our brothers stirred like a hive. Chairs scraped. Boots hit wood. No one asked for a briefing. No one asked if I was sure. They didn’t need details—they’d seen the shift in me, and that was enough. They smelled the rage, the thin metallic taste of a brother going quiet in a way that meant bodies would drop—and moved.
“Traffic-cam scrape running. Give me five,” Jax tossed over his shoulder, already walking away, laptop under his arm and his phone to his ear.
Nitro leaned on the doorframe, dark eyes watching me closely. “Tell me we’re hunting.”
“We’re hunting,” Kane confirmed.
He nodded and muttered, “Good. Been too fucking quiet lately.”
Drift cracked his knuckles. “What’s the play?”
“Armed,” Kane rumbled, the word carrying steel. “Locked. Loaded. Ready to bleed ’em dry. Move.”
The air thrummed with purpose. Brothers moved fast—strapping on weapons and checking ammo. The sound of magazines locking home with clean clicks, steel sliding intoholsters, and bolts snapping into place was a symphony I knew by heart.
In the armory, I grinned as I slid open the drawer on my bench to show row after row of neatly labeled instruments that the state would call illegal and I called insurance.
I took what I always used when I stopped pretending I was civilized.
Three blades—one boot, one belt, one reverse on my vest strap. Pistol at my hip, two spare mags in the inner pocket. The short carbine I’d built to break down under a jacket, quiet as a whisper and mean as a cornered dog. And in the bottom holster, tucked like a secret—my baby. The Vindicator. I hadn’t planned on field-testing it tonight, but fuck it. If they wanted to see what kind of weapons I built, I’d give them a demonstration they wouldn’t live to talk about.
When I was armed, I slid my cut over my shoulders, leather heavy with years of blood, loyalty, and ghosts. Then I checked each weapon again with muscle memory born of obsession.
Jax barreled into the room, glasses crooked, pupils blown wide from the speed his brain ran when the stakes were blood.
“Tracked the van.” His voice was clipped and precise, sharpened by adrenaline. “Pulled traffic cams, rerouted city feeds. Got a hit on them cutting west.” His fingers flew over the screen of his tablet, pulling up an overhead map. “Industrial sector. Empty building. Same one I flagged last week when I was tracing Rye’s shell companies. Odds are ninety-nine they’re holding her there.”
“Good enough.” I took the tablet, memorized the cross streets at a glance, and handed it back. “Kill their eyes.”
“Already looped the city cams,” he replied, once again typing as if he could set the screen on fire. “Gimme sixty seconds for the building. Can’t go through their router without a noise spike, butI can light them up enough that they think they’re alone while I scrape signals.”
Kane clapped his shoulder once. “Do it.”
