Page 159 of Mason

Sloane got the easy death. Brando was right—thatwas mercy.

If I'd listened to the part of me that broke the second I saw her blood, he would’ve screamed for days.

My jaw tightens as I take the turn onto the main road. My house isn’t far now. The tires hum against the pavement, steady and low, like a heartbeat.

And maybe that’s why mine won’t calm down.

Because I’m almost there.

Almost home.

I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. But I need to see her, need to make sure we’re still okay, the both of us. Because there is nomewithouther.

The glow from the foyer spills out across the stone path and floods the front of the house as I pull into the circular driveway. There’s a flurry at my front door.

Voices. Movement. Light.

Something feels off.

I kill the engine and step out. My hoodie’s damp, my boots scuffed and dark at the soles. I know what’s on them without looking down to confirm.

My muscles are still strung tight from what Brando and I just did. That... wasn’t a job. That wasvengeance—cold, brutal, and ugly.

But I don’t even get a breath to process it before I hear his voice.

Saxon fucking North. He’s been sniffing around more than usual lately. And even though Lucky has told me we have nothing to worry about, I don’t like the special interest he’s taken in Shelby.

It carries down the front steps, calm and clipped in that way of his. Controlled. Like everything out of his mouth has already been cross-examined and filed.

I round the corner and see them—Mia, Maxine, and Shelby—standing just inside the threshold, framed in the warm light like a scene out of someone else’s life. And Saxon?

He’s right there in my doorway like he owns the damn place.

He spots me, and his expression shifts just a hair. His gaze drops to my boots. Lingers on the dried blood near the toe. Then trails upward—hoodie, knuckles, jaw.

He doesn't speak right away.

He justcatalogs.

Mia’s arms are crossed. Maxine’s got that look like she’s two seconds from swinging. And Shelby… she looks like she’s barely holding herself together.

I close the distance in slow, even strides. My pulse is a war drum behind my ribs as I step into the doorway, obstructing his view of the women.My women. My responsibility.

Douche has no business coming here when I’m not home.

“Agent North,” I say, my voice like gravel.

“Ironside.” He nods once, casual as ever. But his eyes are anything but. He glances past me to the women. “Didn’t realize you were out.”

“Now you do.” I let the words hang between us, but don’t give him a chance to respond. “What do you want?” I ask, keeping my voice level, low.

“I came to talk to Shelby.”

The hell you did.

“You came to questionher?”

He shrugs. “Talk. That’s all.”

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