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“I love you,” I say. The words come out raw, stripped of everything but the truth.

Her breath hitches. One tear escapes. She doesn’t wipe it away, doesn’t acknowledge it, and she reaches up with her bandaged hand, her fingers finding the side of my face with a gentleness that makes my chest crack open.

“I love you too, Carter.” Her thumb traces the line of my jaw, the stubble, the scar near my ear from a fight three years ago. “Don’t let them take anything else from you. Promise me.”

I press my forehead against hers. Close my eyes. I memorize the feel of her against me, the warmth of her breath, the steady rhythm of her pulse beneath my fingertips.

“Go,” I whisper.

She kisses me. Not gently, hard, desperate, her bandaged hand fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her like she’s trying to fuse us together through sheer force of will. I kiss her back with everything I have, pouring every promise, every vow, every dark and violent thing I’m about to become into the press of my mouth against hers.

When she pulls away, her eyes are wet, but her expression is fierce. Resolved. She opens the back door of the SUV and climbs in without looking back.

Tiana follows, sliding in beside her. I catch her eye for a brief moment—she looks terrified, but she reaches over and takes Trixie’s bandaged hand in both of hers. Something in the gesture makes my throat tighten.

The door slams shut.

Kane and Sydney appear at my sides. My father’s hand grips my arm, his quiet authority grounding me without a word. My mother presses a hand to my chest, and her eyes hold mine for a long, silent moment.

Ryan gets into the driver’s seat of the SUV, his hands steady on the wheel as his gaze scans the parking lot with practiced efficiency. Kane circles to the passenger side, and Sydney slides into the row behind Trixie and Tiana, her hand finding Trixie’s shoulder through the gap between the seats.

The engine revs.

I watch through the windshield as Trixie looks at me one last time. Her face is composed, that stillness she wears like armor when she’s holding back a flood, but her eyes are wide and dark, carrying a grief so unguarded it makes my knees buckle.

The SUV pulls forward.

I stand in the parking lot and watch it go. The taillights recede, growing smaller, then turning the corner at the end of the block, and then they’re gone, swallowed by the gray predawn light, carrying the most important thing in my life away from me because it’s the only way to keep her safe.

My hands are shaking. Not the fine tremor from yesterday, something deeper, something that lives in the architecture of my bones. The gauze on my knuckles has gone dark with blood, and I can feel the split skin pulsing with each heartbeat.

Behind me, the clubhouse door opens. Matthew steps out, his phone in one hand, a duffel bag in the other. He stops beside me, following my gaze to the empty street where the SUV disappeared.

“They’ll make it,” he says. Quiet. Certain. “Ryan’s driving. Kane’s riding shotgun. Between the two of them, nobody gets within a mile of that convoy without us knowing.”

I don’t answer. Can’t. The rage is building again, that cold, methodical fury that’s been simmering since the alley, and now with Trixie gone, with the distance between us widening into something I can’t close, it has room to breathe. Room to grow.

Matthew’s hand finds my shoulder. “We’ve got work to do, brother.”

I turn from the empty street. A muscle in my temple pulses, a painful rhythm against my clenched teeth. The parking lot stretches around me, empty, cold, the security lights casting everything in harsh relief.

“Yeah,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone colder. Someone who’s already made peace with what comes next. “Let’s go find Caldwell.”

Chapter 17

Trixie

The cabin is two hours and seventeen minutes north of the clubhouse, according to the GPS. I know this because I’ve been counting every minute since the SUV pulled out of the parking lot, my bandaged hands folded in my lap, my gaze fixed on the road ahead.

Ryan drives with the focus of a man who’s done this before, which, given his history with my mother and the Devil Souls, he probably has. His hands are steady on the wheel, his eyes moving constantly between the road and the rearview mirror, checking for tails, for anything that doesn’t belong.

Kane rides shotgun, his posture relaxed in a way that belies the alertness I can feel radiating from him. He hasn’t said much since we left, just the occasional low murmur to Ryan about route adjustments, back roads, the particular way you drive when you’re trying to be invisible.

Beside me, Sydney sits with her phone in her lap, her fingers moving across the screen with quiet efficiency. She’s been coordinating with Greyson—relaying our position, confirming checkpoints, running logistics for an operation that feels increasingly military.

I watch the trees blur past the window, pines and birch and the occasional skeletal oak, their branches reaching toward a sky that’s still caught between night and morning. The road narrows, the asphalt giving way to gravel, then dirt, then something barely wider than a deer path. Ryan navigates it without hesitation, the SUV rocking gently over ruts and roots.

My phone buzzes, another one of Carter’s fifteen-minute check-ins. Almost there, I type back, my bandaged fingers feeling clumsy.