Chapter 359: Please Be Fast

Lucas pulled back from the hug.

Rechelle did not let go at first. Her fingers stayed locked in the fabric of his shirt, knuckles white, body still pressed tight against him like the contact was the only solid thing left in the house. He felt the fine tremor still running through her. For a moment he simply stood there and let her hold on, one hand steady between her shoulder blades.

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

He patted her back once, slow and firm, while his eyes already moved past her shoulder and across the ruined floor. Bodies. Blood. Shell casings. The hole in the wall. The work that still had to be done.

Little by little her grip loosened.

When she finally stepped back, her arms fell to her sides as if the strength had gone out of them. She turned slowly and looked at her own mansion properly for the first time since the attack ended.

The place was a wreck.

Broken furniture. Dark streaks across the polished tile. Dust still hanging in the air from the gunfire. The staircase looked like a battlefield. Rechelle’s face shifted through several emotions at once ~ shock, exhaustion, and something sharper underneath.

Regret.

She had fired every staff member weeks ago. Every maid, every guard, every person who used to move through these rooms. She had done it for safety, or what she thought was safety, after realizing too many of them seemed closer to Aaron than to her. She had been too busy, too distracted, too certain that emptying the house would protect her.

Now the silence she had created felt different.

It felt like a mistake.

While she stood there taking it in, Lucas had already moved.

He went to the biggest of the fallen Saints first ~ the heavy man who had held the gun to her head. Lucas hooked his hands under the man’s arms and started dragging. The body was dead weight, thick and awkward. Boots scraped across the tile with a rough, continuous sound. A dark trail of blood followed, smearing in uneven lines behind them as Lucas pulled him toward the front entrance.

He did not rush.

Each pull was controlled. Practical. The kind of movement that belonged to someone who had decided the fight was over and the cleanup had begun.

When the big man was at the door, Lucas went back for the next one.

This one’s head was a mess from the earlier impact. Blood had already pooled under him and spread in a wide, dark stain. As Lucas dragged him, fresh drops kept falling from the torn skin and hitting the floor in soft, steady pats. The smear behind them grew longer. The smell of iron hung heavier in the air.

One by one, Lucas gathered them.

Body after body. Across the parlor. Past the broken chair. Over the scattered glass. Each trail of blood joined the others until the path to the entrance looked like something out of a slaughterhouse. He worked without speaking, breath steady, expression flat, as if this was simply the next task on a list only he could see.

At the doorway he paused once, adjusted his grip on the last man, and pulled him into the growing pile with the rest.

Outside, the evening air waited.

Inside, Rechelle had not moved from where she stood.

She stared at the bodies now lined up near her front entrance ~ the same men who had broken into her home, put a gun to her head, and tried to drag her out of her own life. Her face was pale. Her hands hung useless at her sides. Whatever anger or fear she had carried through the fight had settled into something quieter and heavier.

---

Lucas pulled the back doors of the van open hard.

He had half expected the space to be empty ~ rope cut, doors kicked out from the inside, Aaron already gone into the dark. The engine was still running. That alone had put him on edge. A tied man should not have been able to do anything useful.

But Aaron was still there.

He was exactly where Lucas had left him, wrists bound, body jammed against the side panel next to the dead driver. The only difference was the phone pressed tight between his shoulder and ear, eyes wide, mouth moving fast in a low, urgent stream of words.

"~please be fast, I don’t know how long~"

Lucas’s hearing caught every syllable.

Aaron froze mid-sentence the second the doors slammed wide. The phone slipped a fraction against his cheek. Whatever was on the other end of the line went quiet for half a breath.

Lucas reached in and tore the phone out of his grip before Aaron could finish another word.

The screen was still lit. No name. Just a number. On the far side of the call, whoever had been listening must have heard the sudden scuffle and the change in Aaron’s breathing. The line died at once. The screen flipped to the call-ended display and then went dark.

Lucas looked at the dead phone in his hand, then at Aaron.

Fear hit the man like a physical thing.

It showed in his face first ~ color draining, eyes going too wide, throat working like he could not get enough air. Then it showed in his body. His shoulders curled inward. His bound hands flexed uselessly against the rope. The strong smell of blood rolling off Lucas’s clothes and skin filled the closed space of the van, thick and metallic, and Aaron’s breathing turned short and sharp under it.

He knew what that smell meant.

Lucas’s voice came low and deep, edged with the same anger that had carried him through the house.

"Whatever useless plan you were running ends here."

He closed his fist around the phone.

Plastic and glass gave way with a sharp, ugly crack. He did not stop at breaking it once. He crushed the pieces further between his hands and let the broken fragments fall in a small, scattered pile on the van floor right in front of Aaron’s knees.

Lucas did not waste another second on him.

He slammed the back doors shut again, hard enough to rock the van, and moved to the driver’s side. The engine was still idling. He climbed in, dropped into the seat, and put the vehicle in gear.

The short drive through the main gate was clean and controlled. Once the van was fully inside the compound, Lucas killed the engine, stepped out, and walked back to the heavy gate. He pulled it closed with a solid, final sound and locked it in place.

Only then did he turn and head back toward the house.

Behind him, inside the dark van, Aaron sat in the sudden quiet with a dead phone in pieces at his feet and the smell of blood still clinging to the air.