His jaw clenches. I tighten my fist in his hair just a fraction, angling his head back until his eyes meet mine. He has to see it. I make sure he sees it.
This isn’t business anymore, no. This has become fucking personal.
“You’re not touching her,” I say softly.
His eyes flicker, and I can tell that’s the first crack.
Good.
Saint takes a hard left that presses us all into the doors. He’s breathing harder now, sweat on his brow, that broken wrist clutched tight against his stomach. He shouldn’t be driving like this one-handed. He is.
“Ash,” he grits out. “Status.”
“Clear for the next ninety seconds,” Ash says. I can hear keys, hear his breathing, hear the focus in it. “I’ve got you eating garbage route through estate cameras. Council thinks you’re a maintenance van. After that, you’ve got a bus lane camera you can’t spoof because it’s manual. So you’ll want to not be there in ninety seconds.”
“Lovely,” Saint mutters.
He guns it.
We shoot out of the estate, blow through a narrow stretch that smells like fried oil and cheap aftershave, and cut onto a quieter road lined in old brick and bare trees. The manor’s on the other side of the river. Ten minutes, maybe less at Saint’s speed.
Vale shifts his weight and groans, low. His hand goes to his head instinctively. He pulls it back and checks for blood. There’s a smear. Not much. He grins, lopsided. “Still pretty,” he mutters.
I roll my eyes. “You’re concussed.”
“Mildly,” he says.
“Stay awake,” I order.
“Buy me dinner and I’ll consider it.”
Saint exhales a laugh through his teeth. “You two sound married.”
“Don’t propose in my car,” Saint adds. “My wrist’s already ruined. I can’t sign anything.”
“Speaking of wrists,” Vale says lightly, leaning around the seat to get a look at Saint’s arm. “How bad?”
“Functional,” Saint says.
“Broken,” I correct.
Saint huffs. “Semantics.”
I glance back down at Damien.
He’s quiet now. Seething. But quiet.
I ease my grip in his hair, just slightly. Enough to let him breathe easier. Not enough to give him any fantasy of control.
I can feel my pulse finally starting to slow. Not by much. Just enough to let thought cut through the red.
We did it. It wasn’t clean. Definitely wasn’t elegant in the slightest, or perfect.
But we did it.
He’s in the car—aliveto boot.
Saint’s hurt. Vale’s rattled. We may have been seen. We may have faces on someone’s shaky phone. Ash will have to scrub that in the next hour before it spreads. But he’s in the car. And that changes everything.
