002

Rae’s POV

“Clock’s ticking, Rae. What’s it gonna be?”

The words sat heavy in the cell.

I lifted my head slowly. The single bulb overhead swayed a little, throwing weak light across the cinder block walls. Even half in shadow, Killian Cross was not a man you could mess with.

It wasn’t just his size, though he had that too. It was the stillness. The way he stood like someone who had never once needed to raise his voice to get what he wanted. That kind of quiet had its own weight. It pressed against your skin and just… stayed there.

I let out a short laugh. It scraped coming out.

“Ride with you,” I said. “And then what, Killian?”

I pushed myself upright even though everything hurt. The place where the mate bond used to sit was a dull, constant burn, like a cigarette pressed into skin that wouldn’t go out. My legs were unsteady. My shoulder throbbed from where I’d hit the floor in the garage.

But I was not going to sit on the ground in front of this man.

“You want me as what, exactly… your enforcer? Someone you pull out when things get messy and put away when the job’s done?” I shook my head. “I’ve already lived that life. I know how it ends.”

He didn’t answer.

“Help’s never free. Not from men like you.” I curled my fingers into my palms. “So tell me something honest, Killian. Why does the President of Northline Brotherhood care whether I live or die tonight?”

My voice came out steadier than I expected.

“You should be at a bar somewhere laughing about this. Iron Hollow taking itself apart from the inside… that’s good news for you.” I took one step toward the bars, chains dragging on the concrete. “So what is it you actually want from me? Because if this is some kind of trap, just say so. Don’t stand there and dress it up like you’re doing me a favor.”

I held his gaze.

“I would rather stay in this cell than walk out of here into something worse.”

That was the moment something changed in his expression. Not much. Just a small shift behind the eyes.

He looked at me the way people look at something they weren’t expecting to find.

The silence stretched out. He studied me slowly, like he was looking past the split lip and the dried blood and the chains and trying to find whatever was underneath all of it.

Then he spoke.

“You’ve got one thing wrong.”

I waited.

“I don’t collect people,” Killian said. “And I don’t go looking for weapons. If I wanted a weapon I’d buy one.”

A short, humorless smile pulled at my mouth. “Then maybe look harder next time.”

His eyes dropped briefly to the chains on my wrists, the blood on my jacket collar, the bruise forming along my jaw. Then he looked back up.

“You used to be someone worth watching,” he said.

The words knocked the breath out of me in a way the slap in the garage hadn’t.

For a second the cell disappeared.

I was back on the road… an older one. Empty highway at three in the morning, no club behind me, no patch on my back, no one’s name anywhere near mine. Just me and a tank of gas and the kind of freedom that only exists when you have absolutely nothing left to protect.

I remembered what it felt like to make a decision in half a second and not second-guess it. I remembered being fast, cold and completely sure of myself. I remembered not being afraid of anything because I had already survived the worst thing I could imagine and come out the other side.

And then I remembered the morning I decided to stop being that person.

I remembered thinking that love was something you could choose. That if you just stayed still long enough, softened enough, made yourself small enough… you could belong somewhere.

I had believed that for five years.

I was in a storm cell in chains now.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said quietly.

“I know more than you think.” His voice was even. “I know what you were doing before you ever came near Iron Hollow. I know what they called you on the Reaper side. I know there’s a reason certain men went very quiet when your name came up.”

My jaw tightened.

“And then you disappeared,” he continued. “Traded all of that in for a patch with someone else’s name on it. Everybody figured you’d just… changed.”

He paused.

“I didn’t buy it.”

I swallowed.

“That life’s gone,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “And look where you ended up.”

His words landed like a blow to my chest.

I was quiet for a moment. When I spoke again I kept my voice flat.

“We’re not exactly on the same side here, Killian. Northline and Iron Hollow have been at each other’s throats for twenty years. You’ve got no reason to pull me out of this.”

“You know their operation,” he said.

“I know their lies,” I said back immediately. “I know how Colt runs things when he thinks no one’s watching. I know which officers he actually trusts and which ones he just keeps around because they’re loud. I know where the gaps are.” I looked at him steadily. “And I know you already knew all of that before you climbed down here.”

Something that might have been amusement moved across his face. Gone before I could be sure.

He stepped closer to the bars. Close enough that I could feel the shift in temperature, that particular cold that seemed to follow him around like a second shadow.

“Being kind never kept anyone breathing,” he said.

“Then stop pretending that’s what this is,” I said. “Tell me straight up… Why should I trust a single word coming out of your mouth?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said simply. “Trust’s for people who still have something they can afford to lose.”

I hated that that made sense.

“They’re not planning to let you walk out of this,” Killian said. His tone didn’t change. No drama in it, just fact. “When morning comes, they’re going to bring you out in front of the whole club and they’re going to make an example of you. They’ll call it justice so everybody feels better about it.”

My stomach dropped.

“They don’t actually believe you did it,” he went on. “Not all of them. But you became a problem they don’t know how to solve any other way. You got too important to keep around and too dangerous to just let go.”

I thought about Colt’s face in the garage. Dessa’s voice cracking open in front of everyone. Thirty men standing along the walls in silence while I bled on the floor.

Not one of them moved.

“You were too much,” Killian said quietly. “That’s the whole story.”

I closed my eyes. Just for a second.

Everything I gave that club. Every run I backed up, crisis I helped manage, nights I stayed up keeping things from falling apart. None of it counted for anything in the end.

“What exactly are you offering me,” I said, voice low.

“A way out,” he said. “Not a clean one or a comfortable one. But a real one.”

I leaned back against the wall. The burn where the bond used to be pulsed dully. Grief and anger had been sitting so close together inside my chest for hours now that I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

They were going to kill me in the morning.

“You told me the truth at least,” I said quietly. “About how this would go.”

“Truth was never what they were after,” Killian said. “You were the problem.”

I opened my eyes.

Something had settled. The fear was still there but it had moved to the back somewhere. What was in front of it now felt sharper. More useful.

I was done.

“Alright,” I said.

The word came out quiet but it didn’t waver.

I stood up straight and looked at him directly.

“Get me out of here,” I said. “I’m not dying in this cell for something I didn’t do.”

He looked at me without blinking.

“Help me get out,” I said, “and I’ll help you. I know this club front to back. I know how Colt thinks, where he’s exposed, what he’s afraid of. I won’t burn it to the ground for you… But I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll open the right doors.”

I paused.

“And when it’s over, I walk away, owing you nothing. I leave and you let me go.”

The silence between us felt thick.

Then Killian nodded once. Slow and certain.

“Done,” he said.

The relief that hit me was so sudden my knees nearly gave. I locked them and stayed standing.

He turned toward the stairs.

“You’re coming back, right?” The words came out before I could stop them. A little rougher than I wanted.

“Before sunrise,” he said, and didn’t look back.

After his footsteps faded I slid down the wall and sat with my back against the cold cinder block.

Maybe he wasn’t coming back. Maybe this was just another version of the same thing I’d been living through all day.

I stayed with that thought until footsteps hit the stairs. More than one pair this time. Heavy boots and raised voices coming down fast.

“Get her up. President wants her outside now.”

The door swung open hard.

Two guys came through, hands grabbing at my arms before I could get my footing.

Then the air changed.

Something heavy hit the floor.

“Where did you get the audacity from?,” a voice said, very calm, “that you could put your hands on her?”

One of them went down fast. The other lasted maybe three seconds longer.

Killian stepped through the doorway. Behind him his guys were already moving through the hall, quiet and completely in control.

He crouched down in front of me, looked at the chains for about half a second, and then just… broke them. Like they were nothing.

Then he picked me up.

The darkness came up around us as he carried me through the back of the compound and out into the cold night air, his guys covering every exit, nobody left standing who might’ve wanted to stop us.

I let my head fall against his shoulder.