Page 173 of Deacon

My breath caught as blood spread beneath a man I had once trusted enough to sleep beside. Jude looked at it without flinching. “Now it’s just you and me.” He gave a small, practical shrug. “And don’t worry about your kid. I don’t even have the brat. It was just a lucky break on the scanner.”

For a second I didn’t understand him. Then I did, and relief hit so hard it almost hurt. Jade wasn’t here.

Relief and rage hit so violently together that I grabbed the first heavy thing within reach, a ceramic lamp from the side table, and threw it at his face with everything I had.

It connected with a crack. Jude staggered, swearing, one hand flying to his face as the lamp shattered and blood opened along his brow.

I ran for the kitchen and the back door beyond it, shoes slipping on hardwood as I fought for speed. I had no plan beyond outside, distance, somebody hearing me. I almost reached the kitchen before Jude hit me from behind.

The impact drove me forward before I could get my hands out. My body struck the floor hard enough to blank my vision, and pain burst through my side, deep and sharp, stealing every scrap of air from my lungs. A scream finally came when I could breathe again.

I twisted under him, clawing for whatever I could reach. My nails caught skin. I kicked, bucked, dragged myself an inch toward the cabinets before his hand closed in the back of my hoodie and ripped me toward him.

“Fuck! Stop fighting.” I bucked again before the command was fully out of his mouth.

He caught my hair and slammed my face into the floor. My lip split against my teeth, blood filling my mouth, and before I could orient myself he dragged one arm behind my back. Something shifted in my shoulder with a wet pop, and pain erased the room.

My scream came from somewhere outside thought, raw enough to tear my throat. Jude drove my cheek into the floor while my vision doubled and swam. Blood and dust coated my tongue. Above me, his breathing had turned ragged. I had broken his calm. Somehow that frightened me almost as much as the gun.

Metal clicked close to my ear. He trapped one wrist and snapped a handcuff around it.

“That’s enough,” he said, breathless now. “You’ve made your point.”

A laugh scraped out of me and tasted like blood. “My point?”

Jude leaned close enough that I could smell the copper of his blood mixing with mine. “That you need to be taught slower than I hoped.” His fist tightened in my hair, drawing my head back until nausea rolled through me. “I gave you years to choose right. I waited while you kept throwing yourself at men who didn’t deserve you, men who used you, men who left you. I waited while you played at being a mother and a nurse and whatever else made you feel noble enough to ignore what was right in front of you.”

Every breath hurt. “You are not right,” I spat. “You are insane.”

He smiled as if my refusal amused him. “You know what your problem always was, Lila?” he asked softly. “You mistake intensity for love. Chaos for devotion. Damage for passion.” Bloody fingers brushed the side of my face with grotesque tenderness. “Mason thought you needed tenderness. I knew better. You need structure. Certainty. Somebody who’ll stop letting you ruin your life with your own impulses.”

I turned my head and snapped my teeth at his hand. He swore and shoved my face harder against the floor. “Still fighting,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Jesus. Still.”

A low rumble rolled somewhere beyond the house, faint at first beneath the ringing in my ears.

Jude froze over me. I stopped fighting long enough to listen through the pain, and the sound grew until there was no mistaking it. Motorcycles. More than one, engines rolling into the street with enough force to vibrate through the floor beneath my cheek.

Jude’s weight shifted, uncertainty finally cracking through his control. “What the hell—”

Pain still burned through my shoulder. Blood filled my mouth. Mason lay dead in the next room, and Jude still had a gun. None of that changed the sound growing outside.

Jackson was here. I smiled against the floor.

“You’re so fucked.”

46

Deacon

We rolled up with my rage burned down to something cold and quiet. Priest killed his bike beside mine and swung off in the same motion. Ink and Ghost came in behind us, engines dying almost together, while Graves broke left and Nomad cut right on foot. Castor had the back. With him, that was enough. The man carried silence like a second skin, and if he said he had an exit covered, I believed him.

I tore off my helmet and stared at the house. One downstairs light burned behind drawn curtains. The lawn was neat, the street quiet, every ordinary detail scraping against the tracker location glowing on my phone.

Priest caught my arm before I made it three steps. “You go in blind and angry, you get her killed.”

I jerked free, but I made myself stop. He was right, and I hated him for being right. “Then don’t let me go in blind.”

That earned the smallest nod. We moved.