“Talk,” Jamie ordered.
“Contract… kill me.” Lyric yanked at my arm, desperate, as if he were trying to break free or steady himself—I couldn’t tell.
My body moved before my thoughts caught up, muscle memory snapping into place. I slammed him back into the wall, the impact echoing in the narrow alley. His breath hitched, another ragged gasp spilling out as his head thudded against the brickwork. His eyes were wide open—panic flashing there, raw and immediate—but right beneath it, something else burned. Hatred. Not fear alone, but a hard, jagged edge of loathing aimed right at me. His nails scraped at me, his muscles twisting with sheer grit, fighting me as if it would make a difference. Every breath was a struggle, every attempt to yank free full of desperate, furious determination. I had him pinned. He was too weak. But the fight in him wouldn’t die. I yanked him forward, more into the light. Long hair around his face, blood on his temple—had I done that?— and pale blue-gray eyes, bloodshot, capillaries threading red like cracks in glass.
For a split second, I was lost in the past, seeing that final hit when Danny Carbone crumpled after my punch, lifeless. This man might look like Danny, but it wasn’t him. His face didn’t carry the same dead, hollow expression I’d seen in Danny—that emptystare that haunted me. He was all hatred, sharp and cutting, but it cracked, bleeding into raw, naked fear. His eyes went wide, panic swallowing the loathing, and his fight just… stopped. But that grit, that stubborn refusal to break, flickered at the edges. I wanted it gone. I wanted to end him for daring to come near us, for thinking he had a right to.
“Pl-pl…” he pleaded. “P-please.”
Jamie touched my arm, voice gentler now. “Let him go, big guy. Come on, he’s not here to hurt us.” His hand was warm on my skin, grounding me, pulling me out of the haze. My breath stuttered, muscles twitching as I tried to separate now from then. The weight of the man in my grip, the fear in his eyes—it all blurred into that night, into Danny. But this wasn’t Danny. This one was alive, and I was about to hurt him worse.
I stumbled back a step, releasing him. He dropped like a stone, crumpling to the ground with a sickeningthud, his head striking the concrete.
Fuck.
This can’t be good.
My stomach twisted, the adrenaline draining fast and leaving behind a hollow, sick churning in my gut. Shame burned under my skin. I’d lost control. Again. And if he didn’t wake up…
“Fuck!” Jamie cursed, and Killian was on his knees, checking for a pulse. Talk of cleaners being needed, washing blood, and then…
“I’ve got a pulse.”
“I’m calling Doc.”
Killian and Jamie carried him upstairs, laying him out on the bed in the apartment. Jamie hovered nearby, pacing tight circles, hands flexing at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with them. I stayed against the wall, muscles locked, standing guard. My eyes tracked every shallow rise and fall of Lyric’s chest, counting each breath, waiting for any sudden change. Every small sound—the creak of the bed frame, the distant noises outside the window—had my shoulders tensing, my stance shifting to keep my balance ready. My eyes never left the unconscious man—Lyric—watching for any twitch, any flicker that said he was faking or waiting for an opening. I’d seen fight in him—raw, stubborn, a kind of vicious grit that didn’t match his size—and I wasn’t about to underestimate that again. No one argued when I welded a hook to the bed-frame and cuffed him there. If they had, I’d have told them to fuck off. This man might have been small, might have looked half-dead, but I knew better. He was a fighter. And there was hate in his blood.
Jamie kept talking. Something about hacker names, about how this guy was someone he used to talk to online—Nightjar, RootNightjar, whatever the hell it was. I didn’t care. None of it mattered right now. Not to me. Not when this stranger was in our space, in our home. I didn’t let my guard drop. Nothing—nothing—was getting past me to hurt my family.
Jamie broke the silence first, voice low but urgent. “You okay, Rio?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You lost control.”
“He’s fucking dangerous!” I shot back, my tone clipped.
Killian huffed and stepped into my space. “He’s half your fucking size, and now we have a potential dead man at our door, Rio, that’s not how this works.”
“He’s fucking breathing! And I was protecting all of you,” I yelled.
Killian’s eyes flashed. “Jesus, Rio, you were gonna murder him!”
“Says the man who’s fucking the arsonist.” I crossed a line there, but adrenaline was still pumping around my body, and I was wired as hell. My pulse hadn’t slowed, my hands still tingled with leftoverenergy, and part of me wasn’t ready to come down yet.
Jamie said nothing for a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was tight. “Fuck off, Rio,” he said, hurt flickering in his expression, his jaw rigid as if my words had hit deeper than I intended.
“I grab one potential asshole by the throat, and you pretend I’m different to you or Enzo?” I barked a humorless laugh. “You’re a fine one to talk, Jamie. How many times have you lit shit up without thinking it through? How many times have you burned first and dealt with the consequences later? Don’t throw self-control at me as if you’re some fucking saint.”
“Not on our fucking doorstep,” Killian said.
I pointed at Killian. “Ours? You left Redcars a long time ago, asshole.” Killian raised a hand, trying to defuse the heat rising between us, but I wasn’t done.
I jabbed a finger toward Lyric, still unconscious on the bed. “And if this guy has anything to do with what Lassiter was involved with, he’s dead anyway. You know that, right? Perhaps we shouldn’t bother calling Doc again. Maybe we just let him go and see how long he lasts.”
The room went silent for a beat, and Jamie’s fists curled at his sides.
“If he’s RootNightJar, from back when I was hacking, then IthinkI know him, and if he’s in trouble?—”
