Chapter 351: Three Masked Men

Lucas put the phone back in his pocket.

For a moment he only looked down at the bastard still on the floor ~ swollen, bloodied, and watching him with the kind of fear that came from knowing one wrong word could end everything. Then he bent down, grabbed Aaron by the collar, and yanked him up hard.

Aaron’s feet scraped across glass and dust as Lucas dragged him through the wrecked living room and out of the Airbnb. He barely had the breath to protest. By the time they reached the outside air, his legs were shaking under him.

Lucas released him.

Aaron stood at once, close beside him, shoulders hunched, hands empty at his sides. He did not try to run. He was too afraid of being yanked again, too aware that every movement was being measured. He simply stayed there like a man waiting for the next order.

Lucas stepped toward the road and stopped a taxi.

When the car pulled up, he gave the driver the destination and waited for the agreement. The moment the man nodded, Lucas grabbed Aaron again and dragged him into the back seat. Aaron nearly fell across the cushion as he was shoved inside. Lucas climbed in after him and shut the door hard.

The driver glanced once at the rearview mirror. What he saw was enough to make his hands pause on the wheel. One passenger looked calm and controlled. The other looked recently beaten ~ swollen eye, blood near the mouth, clothes wrinkled and dirty, body held too stiffly against the seat. It did not look like two friends sharing a ride. It looked like trouble that had decided to travel across the city in daylight.

The driver opened his mouth.

Lucas met his eyes through the mirror.

"Drive."

The man faced forward and pulled away from Value Lodge.

The journey would take two hours.

That fact sat in the car like a second passenger.

For the first stretch, nobody spoke. The poorer streets slid past the windows in tired rows of faded buildings and narrow shops. Aaron kept his head down at first, breathing through the pain in his ribs, then slowly lifted it again as fear overtook the shame. His good eye flicked toward Lucas, then toward the driver, then back to his own hands. Every mile increased the same thought in his head: if they arrived too late, he would not live long enough to care about swollen flesh or unpaid debts.

He made the mistake of whispering.

"I can still call them. If we~"

Lucas’s hand closed hard around his wrist under the line of the seat, out of the driver’s full view, and squeezed until Aaron’s words died in his throat.

"Quiet."

Aaron went still.

In the front, the driver noticed the sudden silence and the way the beaten man had flinched. His eyes returned to the mirror for a second longer than before. Suspicion was plain on his face now. He had driven enough strange fares to recognize when one man was not free to speak. Still, the tone Lucas used left little room for questions. The driver only adjusted his grip on the wheel and kept going.

Minutes stretched.

The city began to change outside the glass. Old blocks thinned into wider roads. Commercial stretches appeared, then disappeared again. Traffic thickened and loosened in turns. Two hours was long enough for imagination to become dangerous, and Aaron felt every minute of it. He wanted to talk. He wanted to explain routes, windows, the Saints’ habits, anything that might keep him useful. But every time his mouth even shaped a sound, Lucas’s presence beside him was enough to shut it down.

At one point Aaron shifted and muttered under his breath, almost soundless.

"Left side is faster after the bridge."

Lucas did not look at him. He only answered loud enough for the driver to hear, calm and flat:

"Take the faster route after the bridge."

The driver nodded and obeyed, though his eyes returned to the mirror again. The beaten man had spoken once, barely, and the other man had translated it into an order without emotion. Whatever this was, it was not a normal passenger argument. It was control.

---

Across the city, Rechelle had decided to cook.

She told herself it was practical. Lucas had gone out for what he called a long stroll and a few errands. Whether he returned before evening or later than that, there should be something ready on the table. Under the practical reason sat another one she did not say out loud. The mansion felt too large when it was empty. The rooms held too much silence. A pot on the stove gave her hands work and gave her mind fewer open spaces to fill with worry.

She left her phone in the living room.

In the kitchen, she washed her hands first, then took out what she needed from the cabinets and the fridge. The familiar motions settled her a little. Cutting boards. Knives. Seasoning. Oil warming in the pan. The air filled slowly with the smell of food, rich and ordinary, the kind of smell that belonged to a normal house on a normal day. For a while she almost let herself believe that was what this was.

Her thoughts still drifted.

She remembered the way Lucas had kissed her cheek before leaving. Light. Calm. Certain. *Nothing to worry about.* She had wanted to believe it. She still wanted to believe it. But the memory of men storming into her life before ~ violence arriving without invitation ~ sat under the afternoon like a bruise that never fully faded. Cooking did not erase that. It only kept her moving.

She stirred the pot.

She tasted from a spoon.

She lowered the heat and set plates near the counter for later.

By the time the main part of the meal was done, the light outside the kitchen window had changed. Afternoon was thinning. The edges of evening had started to press in, soft and gray, making the garden look quieter than before. Rechelle wiped her hands on a towel and looked around the kitchen once, satisfied enough with the work. Only then did she realize how long she had been there without checking her phone.

She walked back toward the living room.

The house remained still around her. No television. No footsteps except her own. The kind of silence that could feel peaceful in the right mood and suspicious in the wrong one. Today it leaned toward the second. She crossed into the living room and saw her phone on the table where she had left it, screen already lit with notifications.

Missed calls.

Several of them.

All from Lucas.

Her chest tightened at once.

One call could have been ordinary. Two might have been impatience. But this many, one after another, left a different taste in her mouth.

She picked it up immediately, thumb moving toward the return call, pulse already climbing in her throat. He had told her there was nothing to worry about. These missed calls said otherwise.

She was half a second from dialing when movement outside caught her eye.

Through the front-facing window, beyond the line of the gate and the clean stretch of street, a van was parked where no van should have sat so long.

Rechelle’s thumb froze over the screen.

As she watched, the side door slid open.

Three masked men stepped out first, boots hitting the road with the steady confidence of people who had already decided what they were here to do. Their faces were covered. Their clothes were dark. One of them turned his head toward the mansion wall while another checked the street with a short, practiced glance. Behind them, more movement shifted inside the van, enough to suggest three was only the beginning of the count.