Men started reaching under coats and toward pew corners. People screamed. Somebody yelled God’s name. Many people hit the floor.
We went to work. That was where the link between the Cartiers and the Street Kings looked like it had existed for years instead of days. One man covered while another advanced. One noticed what the other had already anticipated. Lux crossed left while Lowe stayed half a beat behind and to the right, and they worked like two pieces of the same weapon. When a man rose from the fourth pew with his hand halfway to a pistol, Lux dropped him before he could pull it. When another man came out of the side chapel, Lowe dropped him before he knew what was coming.
Big A came up the center with Saint. Saint stayed on his shoulder, and when one of Matías’ men lunged from behind a column with a gun up, Saint shot him so fast he dropped where he stood.
Saint stepped over him, taunting the dead, “Damn, you didn’t even know today was your funeral too, my boy.”
Legend cleared his side of the church with the kind of efficiency that made it obvious why he was who he was. Even with smoke, screaming, and gunfire bouncing off the walls, Icon was still controlling the hit. He called out orders, corrected pressure points, and kept us from being sloppy. “Push altar side!” “Back hall clear!” “Do not let him break right!” He neverstopped being the eye over the storm even when he was in the middle of it.
I knew I was deadlier than usual. Every time I pulled the trigger, I saw Ava and Cairo in my head. Every time another Crown body dropped, all I could think was that if we didn’t end this now, these niggas could breathe in my family’s direction later. That made me merciless in a way the other men clocked it.
“Gawd damn, Reek, save me some bodies,” I heard Saint joke over the noise.
Then I saw Matías.
He was exactly where Jamir said he would be, up front near the family section, trying to sneak out through the confusion with two of his men around him. His face matched the picture so perfectly that I got happy the second I locked on him.
I drove harder toward the front. Wise and Prodigy were already closing from the side aisle. Vega came in from the back right. Legend held the center. Icon stepped up behind the smoke like he knew exactly where the escape would be before Matías did.
Matías figured it out too late. He tried to pivot toward the sacristy door, probably thinking the side exit would buy him time. One of his men peeled off to cover him, and that was when I pushed too hard. I broke forward chasing the finish, and one of his shooters came out from a pew angle I had not personally cleared. He came up with his gun aimed right at my chest from maybe ten feet away. It was close enough that I knew I was too late. And in that half second before he squeezed the trigger, my life flashed before my eyes exactly how people always say it does. But I didn’t see my childhood. I didn’t see the streets. I only saw Ava in our bed that morning with tears in her eyes telling me not to die. Then I saw Cairo.
It was happening so fast that I couldn’t react, but it was as if his trigger finger was squeezing in slow motion.
Then Wise’s round caught the shooter through the side of the head before the trigger pulled. The shooter’s body folded sideways across the end of the pew.
Wise never even looked at me afterward. He was already tracking the next move, and I got back in it.
By the time I reached the front again, Matías had nowhere left to go. Prodigy had cut the sacristy lane. Vega forced him off the wall. Legend held the center. Icon stepped into the open and closed in on Matías who clawed backward on his elbows, face twisted in panic, suit torn and soaked red from a graze on his shoulder. Icon lunged, seized Matías by the hair and yanked his head back hard against the wooden altar rail, then drove his knee into Matias's balls with a wet crunch that made him howl, doubling him over before Icon flipped him face-down and stomped his spine, grinding the heel until vertebrae popped.
“You had the nerve to try to take my wife, you motherfucka!” Icon bellowed, voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling as he jammed his knife into Matias's lower back. He twisted it slowly to sever nerves while Matias bucked and screamed, shitting himself in agony.
Blood bubbled from his mouth when Icon hauled him up by the collar and rammed the blade through his cheek into the jaw, sawing side to side to shred tongue and teeth before yanking it free in a spray and plunging it deep into the gut, pumping in and out so many times I stopped counting. Loops of intestine spilled onto the altar amid Matias's gurgling pleas that faded to wet rasps as his eyes rolled back lifeless.
Once Matías dropped, it stopped feeling like war and more like cleanup. A few more men went down trying to return fire through smoke they couldn’t see through. Women and children screamed as they took cover on the floor and under pews. A couple men tried to break through side doors and got caughtthere. The church belonged to us by the time the last real threat stopped moving.
I stood there breathing hard, gun hot in my hand, and understood something clear as hell. Ava’s love had softened the parts of me that needed softening. But there was still something lethal in me strong enough to be a killer if it meant I got to come home to her and my son.
Icon looked over the church and said, “We’re done here. Let’s roll.”
TWO MONTHS LATER
28
AVA REYNOLDS
Reek’s strokes felt like he was fucking me from his soul. Every thrust was deep as he filled me completely. His dick slid in and out of my pussy slowly, stretching me just right. His head dragged along my walls until I gasped and clutched at his shoulders, pulling him closer. Sweat slicked our skin where we pressed together. His chest pressed against my fuller breasts that still leaked a little milk from the last feeding with Cairo, and he kissed me there soft between strokes.
"Baby, you feel so good," he murmured against my skin. His voice was rough with need but laced with that tenderness I never saw coming from him before.
He appreciated every bit of patience I gave him through his dark days, the way I stuck by him when he was lost in his own head, and now he gave back exactly what I needed.
His hands roamed my hips, and his thumbs traced the new stretch marks from carrying our son, like he worshipped every change my body went through for him.
No man had ever loved me this right, knowing my trauma deep down, the scars from before him that made me flinch sometimes even in his arms, but Reek took the time to learn itall, to move with me gentle when I tensed, to hold my gaze and whisper things that healed the aches inside me.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, and my heels dug into his ass to urge him in deeper. He groaned low, picking up the pace just enough to make my clit throb against his pelvis with every grind.
"Reek, yes... " I breathed.
