Chapter 358: It’s Over

The gun stayed pressed hard against the side of Rechelle’s head.

The big Saint’s hand was shaking. Sweat ran from under his mask and down into his collar. His arm was locked across her throat so tight that every breath she took came thin and shallow. She could feel the cold circle of the muzzle against her temple, the tremor in his fingers, and the heat of his chest against her back. Under the panic, one clear thought cut through: this could be the end.

Below them, Lucas did not stop.

He came up the stairs without a word. No demand. No warning. No attempt to talk the man down. His eyes stayed locked on the only threat left in the house. Blood was still wet on his knuckles and the front of his shirt. Every step was measured. None of them were careful. He had already decided how this would end.

"I said don’t move!"

The Saint’s voice cracked. He jammed the gun harder against her head and dragged her back one more step toward the upper landing, trying to buy distance that was already gone. Her bare feet scraped the wood. A small, broken sound left her throat as his arm cut deeper across her neck.

Lucas kept coming.

The man’s eyes flicked from Lucas’s face to the bodies on the stairs below, then back again. The calculation he made in that second was ugly and final. He no longer believed he was walking out of this house alive. If that was true, then the woman in his arms was no longer leverage. ℴℴ𝘮

She was a last act of spite.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

Lucas had been watching that hand the entire way up.

Not the gun. Not the man’s face. The finger. The exact pressure building against the metal. The moment the decision passed through the Saint’s body and into the trigger, Lucas moved.

He launched up the last steps in one hard burst of speed.

There was no wasted motion. He hit the arm holding Rechelle and the arm holding the gun at the same time, ripping her sideways out of the grip with pure force. She tore free with a sharp cry and went down hard onto the stairs. Her shoulder and hip struck the wood as she scrambled for the railing.

The shot fired a fraction of a second later.

The muzzle had already been forced off her head. The round punched into the wall behind where she had been standing and blew a ragged hole straight through the plaster into the next room. Dust and broken pieces exploded outward. The sound slammed through the stairwell, raw and final, leaving a high ringing in its wake.

Rechelle hit the steps fully, gasping, one hand flying to her throat where the arm had crushed her. The big Saint staggered from the sudden loss of her weight. The gun was still smoking in his hand. His eyes were wide with the knowledge that his last card had just failed.

Lucas did not give him time to recover.

The missed shot was still ringing when he closed the last of the distance. The first strike was a hard open-handed blow across the face that snapped the Saint’s head sideways and broke what little balance he had left. Before the bigger man could even lift the gun again, Lucas followed with a clean punch to the jaw, then another to the ribs, then a third that drove the air out of him in a broken grunt.

The Saint staggered back.

Lucas hit him once more ~ a final, full-weight strike that took the last of his footing. The heavy body went over the edge of the upper steps and fell.

Rechelle was still on the stairs, half-risen, breath ragged from the shove that had saved her life. She saw the huge shape tipping toward her in a blur of dark clothes and dead weight. Instinct took over. She pushed herself up and scrambled hard into the corner of the landing, back pressed to the wall, as the body crashed past.

The big man hit the stairs with a deep, rolling impact.

The whole staircase shuddered under the force. The heavy frame bounced and tumbled down the remaining steps, striking the railing, the wall, and the lower landing in a messy sequence of hard thuds. When the body finally stopped at the bottom, it lay twisted and still among the other fallen men, one arm flung out across the polished tile.

Silence returned in pieces.

First the last echo of the fall.

Then the soft rain of plaster dust.

Then only the air conditioning and Rechelle’s rough breathing in the corner of the landing.

Lucas stood for a second longer, eyes moving once over the bodies below to make sure nothing still moved. When he was satisfied, he turned and went straight to her.

Rechelle was pressed into the corner, one hand still at her throat, the other braced against the wall. Her legs looked ready to give. Lucas stopped in front of her, close enough to catch her if she fell, and checked her over with a quick, hard look ~ eyes, neck, arms, the way she was standing.

"You hurt?"

His voice was low. Rough from the fight, but steady.

She shook her head once, small and unsteady. Then the last of the fear broke through. She pushed off the wall and went into him hard, arms locking around his neck, face buried against his shoulder. The sob that left her was raw and sudden ~ the kind that had been held back through the entire nightmare and could not stay down any longer.

Lucas held her.

One hand stayed firm at her back. The other braced the back of her head as she shook against him. He did not rush the moment. He let her cry into the blood and dust on his shirt while the house settled around them.

"It’s over," he said quietly. "You’re safe now."

She only held on tighter.

Over her shoulder, Lucas’s eyes moved once more across the ruined parlor and the bodies on the stairs. The fight was finished. What came next was quieter, but no less serious.

Six men. Six bodies. Blood on the tile. Shell casings scattered across the floor. A hole blown through the wall. The kind of mess that could not be left behind without consequences.

He would have to move them. Clear the worst of the evidence. Make sure nothing in this house pointed straight back to Rechelle ~ or to him ~ before anyone else showed up asking questions. The work would be heavy, ugly, and necessary.

And then he remembered.

Aaron was still in the van.