Page 118 of Ruthless Reign

As they hauled her out the rear door and she dropped to the pavement, mo mhuirnín twisted, burying the knife I gave her through the meaty hand of the Son who had his fist in her hair. She staked it to his thigh; the blade went through several layers of flesh and sinew so fully that I knew it had to be close to hitting bone.

That’s my girl.

Behind me, I heard the clatter of a can and swung an arm around, but I’d been too distracted. A hard blow to my wrist knocked the gun from my grip and another, harder blow with the butt of a firearm against the back of my skull rang in my ears and made my vision pinhole, the edges darkening, going distant.

No. I needed to stay conscious.

I fell to my knees, blinking hard as my head spun.

Stay conscious…you useless…fuck.

I clung to everything. Anything. Like Da taught me.

The smell in the alley, acrid and heavy. Like old piss and sweet rot.

The dampness seeping into the denim covering my knees from this afternoon’s rain still wetting the pavement.

The cold of it.

I faded anyway.

Until rough hands jerked my arms behind my back, sending signals into shot nerve endings.

And then she screamed, and I was fucking back, the raw sound like an injection of adrenaline straight to the chest. It rolled through my body like a wave, making skin bristle and muscle clench in its wake.

A plastic zip tie cinched my wrists.

“Your da is going to have a hay day with you, boy-o.”

“Want to fucking bet?”

I stood in one swift motion, putting distance between us, lifting my arms to bring them back down hard against my hip to snap the ties.

He lifted his weapon, but I barrelled into his middle and a shot ricocheted off something metal above us as he went down hard on the pavement. I didn’t let him have even a second to collect his thoughts or his lost breath as I slammed his arm against the ground to disarm him and then grabbed each side of his head.

I knew him, I realized. He’d been with Da for years now. Lived in the same town I grew up in and everyone in Belfast knew why his wife and daughter never left the house.

An animal sound left my lips as I smashed his head into the cracked pavement once, twice, three times until I heard the crack that meant his skull was shattered.

I shook my head, trying to clear the haze still clinging to the edges of my vision. Making my ears fill with the blare of sirens.

I stumbled to my feet, snatching both his gun and Becca’s before I lost my footing and my shoulder connected with the alley wall as I fell into it.

Becca cried out again and I pushed off the wall, out of the alley and into the bloody street, stepping past bodies as I searched for her.

Kaleb was on the ground, a booted foot about to connect with his head. I closed one eye, breathing steady to bring clarity to my vision as I aimed and fired. The Son went down, and Kaleb rolled, getting to his feet. His cold steel gaze connected with mine, his face covered in blood.

He looked toward the narrow gap between the transport truck and the corner of the apartment building.

“I’ll bring her back,” I called as he winced, clutching the side mirror of a parked sedan to force himself back to his feet.

“Kaleb!”

He turned back to me, and I flicked the safety back on the Son’s weapon and threw it to him. By the weight of it, it still had some lives left in it to end.

Hardin fought with three other Saints from the minivan, dispatching the remaining Sons one by one, but he was distracted, too, trying to mow through them to get to that gap. The gap where little drops of blood made a path out of the carnage and away.

Away from here.

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