At first, there’d been rage at seeing her in the car with Sutton. Then there’d been disbelief. The second I laid eyes on her, I felt myself soften a bit, melting under her smile, until the memory of her betrayal struck my ego like a knife.

Ayda had lied to me.

The one person who spoke of truth, honesty, and being open. The woman who had made me want to believe that trust was something you could not only feel but touch, too. I could reach out and touch it on her skin, wrap it around me and breathe it in from her.

Trust.

Because Ayda didn’t lie. Not even when most people thought she probably should. She didn’t lie… until she did.

I got back on the bike, and I let the engine drown out all the anger I felt, pushing myself hard as I tore through the streets in a way I hadn’t torn through them in months. The sound of my tires screeching around corners mixed with the roar of the bike let everyone around me know who I was and what kind of fucking mood I was in.

I took the long route back to The Hut, needing to spend some time with my eyes on the road, enjoying the silence being on the bike gave me in my head. There were no thoughts. Just… feelings. Mainly hurt. I was fucking hurt she’d kept that shit from me.

Eventually, I slowed to a crawl and rode through the gates of the yard, parking in my usual spot and taking a minute to try to calm my breathing. I sat on the bike for far too long, just staring at the ground, until I shook my head and let everything I felt tear through my veins.

She’d been shooting with Sutton, and while she might not have been around for me to say something to, I knew a man who was. Sutton’s car sat in one of its usual spaces, giving me purpose.

Peeling myself off the bike, I rolled my shoulders in my cut and swung my arms from side to side as I marched across the yard with strides that should have made the devil quake beneath me. I hit the stairs and jumped onto the porch before I pushed on the door of The Hut with all the force I had, not even flinching when it smashed into the wall and made everyone inside stop what they were doing and turn my way.

I didn’t make eye contact with anyone as I stormed through, my face set in stone and my eyes glancing around to find Sutton.

“Hey, Drew,” Deeks greeted me.

I had no desire to make small talk, but one look at him and I knew there was something I had to do before I lost my shit.

“Deeks. Go sit with Ayda at Rusty’s.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just stay with her. No matter what her stubborn ass says. Do not let her leave your sight. Got it?”

“Understood.” With a firm nod of his head, Deeks was leaving and following his orders like the good brother he was, leaving me to continue marching on my one-man crusade.

“Drew?” Slater called from somewhere behind me.

“Where is he?” I barked back.

“Who? What? What’s happened?” Jedd pulled up by my side, matching me step for step. “Why do you look like you’re about to kill someone?”

“Because I am.”

“Shit,” Jedd hissed. “What’s Kenny done now?”

“Not Kenny.” I stopped and spun around, searching through the bodies around the bar. “I’m looking for Sutton.”

A silence descended over the room, but not before I heard the collective gasp of a few women who were sitting on the leather sofas. It had been my law that Sutton wasn’t to be touched, sneered at, or even breathed on in the wrong way. Now there I was, seeking him out, ready to rip him a new asshole.

“Drew, you better tell us what he’s supposed to have done,” Harry said behind me. Everyone seemed like they were behind me, just voices trying to drift over my head and cut through the rage that was desperate to pour out. “‘Cause unless it’s murder, son, I’d say you need to calm do—”

“Don’t!” I snapped, cutting him off as I growled through gritted teeth. “Do not tell me to calm down, Harry.”

I took off down the corridors, looking for Howard in any of the bedrooms that had been left unlocked before pushing through into the toilets. Fuck. They were all empty.

“Sutton!” I called out. “You better get your skinny cowboy ass out here. The longer you hide, the worse it’s going to be.”

“What the hell has he done?” Jedd asked, hot on my heels.

I flared my nose like a raging fucking bull, releasing a long exhale before I looked Jedd in the eyes.

“He’s been teaching Ayda to shoot behind my back.”

“Shoot?”

“Guns, Jedd. Fucking guns.”

His eyes widened, understanding shining from him all at once. Holding his hands up in surrender, he took two steps back and let me pass by, back out into the bar again. I’d only taken a few steps into the bar area when I saw Sutton walking through the front door with a huge smile on his face and his eldest daughter, Sloane, on his arm.

Bingo.

His eyes shot up the second he sensed my stare, and all the color the chief had ever possessed drained from his face, dripping down onto the floor beneath his feet.

“You,” I hissed, raising my hand and pointing a finger at him as I began to stalk forward.

“Drew?” Sutton’s brows pulled together and he tried to back up, but unfortunately for him, his daughter was blocking his escape, and all he did was push her back, causing her to yelp in surprise and confusion. “Sloane, get out of here,” Sutton muttered under his breath.

“Dad?”

“Now. Go and wait in the car.”

Sloane took one look at me before she did exactly as her father had instructed and scurried out of there as quickly as she could.

“There’s only one reason you could be that pissed with me,” Sutton started.

“Yeah?”

“She’s told you.”

I’d closed in on him in three big strides, my forearm slamming him back into the wall before I pushed it up under his chin, cutting his air supply off and applying all the pressure I could to his neck.

“Fucking guns, Sutton. Fucking guns! That’s my girl you’re messing with. Mine.”

His mouth parted and his cheeks quickly turned red as he kicked his feet out and tried to bat me off, but he was no match. I was gone. In another headspace. Just like old times.

“She… begged… me,” he spat out, his words strangled and broken.

“I don’t care if she fucking blackmailed you or threatened to murder your babies in their sleep. When it comes to Ayda, you don’t keep shit from me. Nothing! Do you understand?”

“Y-yes.” His hands gripped my arm as he struggled to take enough oxygen in.

I released him for three seconds before I slammed him back into place and applied more pressure.

“I brought you into my home, into my family, and into this life because I owed you. You saved my life. I’ll never forget that. But that does not give you a free pass to keep secrets from me, to betray me. To make me look a… a… a fool.”

The embarrassment at being kept in the dark was too much, and all my judgment was clouded by the need to blame someone instead of facing the fact that Ayda hadn’t trusted me enough to come to me instead of the chief of goddamn Babylon police.

“Drew…” Sutton gasped. “Please.”

“How dare you? How fucking dare you?” I ground out. “Both of you.”

“Enough, Tucker,” Harry said, just as he reached up for my arm. He tried to pull it away, but I was rigid. Like stone. “Enough,” Harry repeated, his tone softer.

I snapped my head to look at him, eyes creasing shut as I stared at my friend and willed him to tell me what to do.

Harry gave me one small nod, closing his eyes briefly before he opened them again and pulled on my arm. “Let Sutton go. This isn’t him. This is Ayda. If you’ve got a problem with her, find a way to deal with that, not Sutton.”

“But…”

“This is her. Not him. It ain’t even about the guns. Everyone shoots in Texas. Your issue is with Ayda. Everything else is irrelevant.”

My arm relaxed involuntarily, and I heard Sutton’s gasp for air. I didn’t release him, though. I wasn’t ready.

“Let him go.”

I turned to look back at the chief, whose face was now purple, his eyes bloodshot and tired as he pressed both his palms to his neck and waited.

“I told her you’d kill us both,” he eventually admitted in a croaky whisper. “But she’s scared, Drew. She wants to be able to fight for herself. This isn’t about you.”

My top lip curled as I stared at him in disgust. “Don’t do that. Don’t you fucking talk to me like you know her better than I do.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Don’t you stand there and tell me what is right and what is wrong for her like you’re the one who lays down beside her at night. Like you’re the one who was willing to be chained up and cut open, even if it took ten days to bleed out, just so she could live. Don’t you fucking patronize me, Sutton.”

“I didn’t—”

“Drew,” Jedd muttered on my left, his hand on my shoulder, while Slater’s hand landed on my right. Three of the Hounds were now trying to pull me away.

Shrugging them all off me, I released Sutton and watched as he fell to the floor like he didn’t even have legs anymore.

“Go to the training room,” Harry suggested quietly so only the five of us could hear him. “Work on the bag. Get your anger out. Clear that goddamn head of yours.”

“It’s clear,” I said calmly. “It’s real crystal fucking clear right now. Don’t worry. I’m out.” And with that, I marched out of The Hut, jumped down the steps and stormed across the gravel pathway before I hit the yard.

Pushing into the room where the bag was, I stripped from the waist up, kicking off my sneakers, too, until all I was left standing in was my jeans. I didn’t even bother to put gloves on before I found myself throwing out some nasty combinations that would kill some fucker if they were standing in front of me.

Flashes of Hernandez’s face under my bleeding knuckles flickered in my mind.

Memories of the Emp I pulled to pieces in the forest floated in front of me.

The men I’d killed in the warehouse.

The torture I’d inflicted on Cortez in his final moments.

Every slice of his skin I cut off. Every scream of pain, the sound deafening as I pushed my fingers into his eyes and made him feel agony he’d never felt before. The bones I broke with a smile on my face. The blood I pulled from him and smeared over his tattooed patch of skin. The revenge I’d taken.

The state I’d left him in, begging and pleading for his life as we made threats to do the very same to his family, just so he went that little bit crazier in Hell.

Every man and woman I’d ever hurt were on that punching bag as I tore into it, smashing left and right, left and right, left and right, my legs kicking it until the swing was too much, sending me ducking down, to the side, back and forth over and over again. Sweat poured down my back, and the old ache I used to feel when hurting something or somebody like this returned to me like a long-lost friend.

I’d missed it.

I’d missed the violence.

Everything was black and red, dirt and blood, death and rage as I punched and swung until I had no breaths left in me. I wasn’t even on the same planet anymore.

I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to return.