The Syndicate boys freeze, look at him — take in the looseness of his stance, the calm, the way his hands don’t so much as tremble — and I watch it hit them. He’s not bluffing. He’ll put them down and not blink. They take a slow step back. Then they turn and bolt, yelling down the block.
“Forty seconds,” Ash snaps. “You’re about to have half the street looking your way. Get him in the car.Now.”
“On it,” I say. “Vale—”
“Already ahead of you,” Vale sings.
He shifts his grip in a way that should not be possible at that angle — one hand sliding from Damien’s throat to clamp across his jaw, the other hooking behind Damien’s knee. He wrenches, pivots, and in one vicious, practiced motion he flips Damien over his own shoulder and dumps him forward.
Damien hits Saint’s car hood with a hard, breathless grunt.
Saint winces. “Mateo,” he scolds. “Paint.”
Vale laughs. “Tell Caelum to buy you a new bonnet.”
Saint sighs. “He already owes me for the last one.”
“Move you bloody fools,” Ash snarls in my ear.
We move.
I grab Damien by the back of the neck and shove him, hard, toward the passenger door. Vale yanks it open. Damien tries to twist free, finds Vale’s hand already on his belt, finds Saint already sweeping his legs. He hits the seat face-first with a strangled sound.
“Try to run,” Vale croons, leaning in over him. “Please.”
Damien spits something that’s meant to be a threat and comes out a wheeze. Saint swings around to the driver’s side, but the second his hand hits the door there’s motion at the alley mouth — more bodies, faster now, voices raised and angry.
“Company,” Saint mutters, urging us forward.
This is the ugly part. You can plan for timing. You can plan for angles. You can’t plan for the way adrenaline makes men who should run decide to be heroes.
Three more Syndicate boys round the corner, fast and clumsy. Two knives, and one gun. The gun comes up first, hands shaking. Amateur, which means the odds are in our favor. Saint moves to block, and I already know what he’s about to do.
“Down,” I snap.
He doesn’t go down. He steps forward, reaching for the barrel instead of ducking it — hand snapping up to twist, mouth already opening to say something like repent—Bang.
The world snaps white for a second, and my heart stops. Saint staggers, just slightly. The bullet doesn’t hit his chest — thank God — but the guy with the gun didn’t know how to hold his own recoil, and when Saint wrenched his wrist, the round grazed high and wild and Saint caught the backspin.
He doesn’t cry out. He just grunts and pivots, slamming his shoulder into the shooter and driving him into the wall with a sick crack. The other two rush in on instinct, trying to swarm Saint.
Vale explodes out of the passenger side like a demon set loose. He meets the first one halfway, headbutts him so hard I hear the crack from here, then grabs the second by the collar and bounces his skull off the car roof.
It works—for a moment.
But the idiot with the knife still swipes. Vale jerks back half a heartbeat too slow — too high, too eager — and the handle of the blade, slams into the side of his head with a hollow, ugly thud. He goes stumbling back a step, eyes wide for a split breath. Not down. Just rattled.
His smile disappears for the first time. Something cold spikes through my chest.
“Mateo?” I bark.
“I’m fine,” he snarls, then sways a little, blinks hard, and bares his teeth. “Motherf—”
Saint takes the choice away from him.
He’s already got the shooter by the collar in one hand. With the other, he snaps his wrist out at the last Syndicate idiot’s knee. The angle is brutal, fast. The man screams and goes down. Saint drops them all.
Then he steps back toward us, face pale under that tanned skin, jaw tight. My eyes widen, and I see it now. When the shot went wild and he twisted, he must’ve slammed his wrist into the edge of the brick doorframe.Hard. The joint is already swelling. Wrong angle. The kind of wrong angle you don’t walk off.
