Page 6 of Mason

The silence stretches. Then?—

“Tell me.”

I shake my head.

Her jaw clenches. “You can’t be fucking serious.”

The scrape of my chair against the floor is loud in the tense quiet. Maxine stands in the corner, rocking on her heels, biting at a nail.

“Go home to Brando, Mia.”

She freezes.

“I don’t want you coming here again,” I continue, voice even, final. I’ll do anything to get her out of here and into the safety of her husband’s arms. I’m sure he doesn’t know she’s here right now; if he did, he’d lose his shit. “You don’t belong here.”

She swallows, her throat working around something thick and unspoken.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispers.

“I’m not asking, Mia. I’m ordering you.”

Her hands curl into fists, her whole body trembling with fury. “What are you up to, Ironside?”

Smart cookie. She’s on to me.

But the less she knows, the safer she is.

The door to the visitor’s room swings open before she can push further. A man steps in, moving with the quiet confidence of someone who never questions if he belongs in a room.

His suit is sharp, tailored, not a single wrinkle in sight. Dirty blonde hair, parted just enough to make him look like a Boy Scout. But the emerald-green eyes that cut through the room say otherwise.

My stomach knots.

What the actual fuck?

Maxine stops fidgeting. She looks at the man like she’s seeing a ghost. Her fingers fall away from her mouth, lips parting, but no words come out.

He notices her. Recognizes her. Something flickers in his eyes, though it’s only brief before he rights himself and turns to me.

“Good to see you again, Ironside.”

I exhale sharply, my spine going rigid as I glare at him.

Saxon.

The fucking vagabond.

Women consider him a handsome bastard.I consider him a disease. All charm on the outside, filth on the inside. And right now, he’s standing in front of me like he doesn’t expect me to put him through a wall.

The first time we met him, he was undercover and dressed like a vagrant, and that’s how he got the nicknameVagabond.He hates it, but it’s a name that stuck. And I love it for him.

He’s a Fed.

And still, somehow, he’s tangled himself inourworld.

He helped—once. When Allegra Gatti and Kanyan’s woman, Lula, vanished into the fucking wind, he showed up just long enough to be useful. Just long enough for us to believe he was on our side.

Then he turned on us.

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