Chapter 356: Job Done

Inside the mansion, the sound of a woman screaming pulled every man still searching toward the same place.

Rechelle’s voice tore through the upper hallway, raw and unbroken. The man carrying her was huge ~ broad across the shoulders, thick through the arms ~ and he had her thrown over one shoulder like a sack. She hit him with both fists, heels kicking, body twisting as hard as she could. Every blow landed. None of them mattered. Her hands felt like paper against him. He only adjusted his grip and kept walking, a satisfied smile already on his face.

Job done.

He took the stairs without hurry, boots heavy on each step, and brought her down into the main floor where the others were gathering. The three who had gone upstairs met the ones already waiting below. Six men in total, masks still on, weapons loose at their sides. The moment they saw the struggling woman, the mood in the room shifted into something ugly and pleased.

One of them pulled out his phone.

"Get the bus ready," he said into it. "We have her. We’re coming out."

Joy sat on all their faces. The hard part was over. The house had given them what they came for. All that remained was to walk her out, load the van, and disappear before anyone on the quiet residential street decided to look too long.

Rechelle kept screaming.

Her voice cracked on the edges now, throat already raw, but she did not stop. The huge man only tightened his arm across the back of her legs and waited for the call to finish.

---

Outside, Lucas cleared the high gate in one clean motion, hands catching the top edge, body swinging over without a single wasted second. He hit the ground hard, knees absorbing the impact, and he was already running before the sting in his legs registered.

The open lawn blurred past.

He didn’t slow at the front door. Didn’t bother testing the lock. His eyes had already found what he needed ~ the broken side window, the same one the Saints had used to force their way in, glass still hanging jagged from the frame like teeth. He went through it without breaking stride, shoulder first, the last shards raining down around him as his boots hit the polished parlor floor.

Two men stood in the open living space.

They barely had time to turn before he was on them.

The first punch landed clean, full weight behind it, and the man with the phone in his hand never saw it coming. His feet left the floor entirely. The device spun out of his grip and skittered across the tile as his back slammed into a low chair hard enough to splinter the wood beneath him.

The second man was already turning, mouth opening on a warning that never made it out.

Lucas closed the gap and hit him once, a short, vicious strike to the jaw that snapped his head sideways and buckled his knee. A second hit finished it, dropping him the rest of the way down. Both men hit the floor within seconds of each other ~ one groaning weakly, the other completely still.

For half a heartbeat, the parlor went quiet.

Just the low hum of the air conditioning. Somewhere deeper in the house, faint and muffled, Rechelle’s voice.

Then a third man stepped out from the kitchen doorway, gun already rising.

The first shot cracked through the room before Lucas had even fully turned toward him.

BANG.

He moved on instinct, throwing his weight sideways as the round tore past where his chest had been a half-second earlier, punching a ragged hole into the wall and spraying plaster dust across the floor.

The second shot came almost on top of the first.

Lucas dropped low, rolling his shoulder into the fall, the bullet screaming past overhead to shatter a glass ornament on the far shelf into a bright, scattered explosion of fragments.

The third shot went wide, rushed, less controlled than the first two ~ the gunman’s aim already fraying under the pressure of a target that refused to go down.

It buried itself into the floorboards inches from Lucas’s boot.

He didn’t stay down.

His hand closed around the leg of a heavy side table, and he ripped it clean off the floor in one violent motion, momentum carrying it in a wide, brutal arc across the room.

It slammed into the gunman’s chest and forearms with a heavy, sickening thud.

The impact knocked his aim completely off-line, the weapon jerking sideways as he staggered backward, grunting hard, fighting to keep both his footing and his grip on the gun at the same time.

He managed neither.

Lucas was already moving, closing the last of the distance in three fast, driving steps before crashing into him full-force. They hit the kitchen doorway together, the frame groaning under the combined weight, the gun spinning loose and skidding across the tile out of reach.

Lucas didn’t let up.

A knee to the ribs. A forearm across the throat. A clean, final punch that put the man flat on his back hard enough to knock every ounce of air from his lungs in one broken wheeze.

He tried to rise anyway; some last, stubborn instinct refusing to accept it was over.

Lucas didn’t give him the chance. One more strike ended it completely, and the man’s body went slack against the base of the counter, eyes rolling back, arms falling limp at his sides.

Silence dropped over the kitchen.

Blood marked the tile in dark, scattered streaks. Broken furniture littered the parlor behind him ~ a shattered chair, a ruined table, glass glittering across the floor like scattered ice. The first two men he’d dropped were still down; one unmoving entirely, the other twitching weakly, still trying and failing to push himself upright.

Lucas straightened slowly, breathing controlled, steady, barely elevated despite everything that had just happened in the space of maybe thirty seconds.

His eyes lifted.

Toward the staircase.

Toward whatever was still waiting above him.

---

Upstairs, the remaining Saints froze the instant the first gunshot cracked through the house.

Three sharp reports, one after another. Then the heavy crash of something breaking. Then silence ~ the kind of silence that somehow felt louder and far more dangerous than the noise that came before it.

Whatever confidence had carried them through the break-in drained out of their faces all at once.

Hands moved fast, instinctive, snapping toward weapons. Metal slid against metal, rounds seating into chambers with quick, nervous clicks that filled the hallway like a warning bell nobody wanted to hear.

The huge man still holding Rechelle tightened his arm across her legs until she gasped, the grip turning bruising, punishing.

She twisted hard against him anyway, chest heaving, but his hold only hardened further, refusing to give even an inch.

"Move," one of the men hissed, voice low, tight with tension. "Slow. Stay tight."