The crash is still a blur to me, even now.

We hit like thunder, the rotary blues shredding up the roof and shattering the other windows. The whole damn thing flipped, and that’s when the three of us jumped free, tucking and rolling away.

We came up firing.

Honestly, I wish I could say there was this big fire-fight, but that shit was fast. No one expected that entrance, for one. That and the helicopter itself took out about half of Cunningham’s guys as it went skidding and rolling across the roof.

The rest were just shocked that we were alive as we quickly made them very much not alive.

Gunfire raked the side of the wall next to me, and I roared as I darted out, dropping to my knees and leveling two more of the guys.

“Ash!”

I flattened as Oliver fired over me, dropping another goon with his shotgun.

The three of us shot our way past the last three of them before we went barreling into the stairwell and racing down the stairs to Cunningham’s penthouse.

“Not a step closer!”

We froze. There in the doorway of his place, all three of us bristling at the sight of Ryan brandishing a knife at her.

“Not a step,” he hissed, eyes darting around like a man who knows he’s cornered and just about out of options. “I mean it!” he squealed.

We kept walking.

The thing is, I knew Ryan Cunningham — we all did. We’d studied him and pieces of shit just like him like it was our religion, preparing for his take-down. And men like Ryan — men who enjoyed hurting women — were easy to figure out.

They were all weak, and when push came to shove they broke.

All of them.

Because it doesn’t take a strong man to beat on or force himself on women, it takes the weakest fucking kind of man there is. It takes a spineless piece of shit to do that.

Which is exactly what he was. It was also exactly why we knew he wouldn’t do it. It was why we knew he was a man of backing away, not a man of action.

Like us.

Because when push came to shove, Ryan Cunningham and men like him were really just big pussies.

He screeched as we rushed him, letting go of Mia in his haste to scamper away. I roared as my fist got him in the teeth, bloodying his mouth. Oliver’s swing got him across the face, breaking his nose and making him scream, and Erik’s elbow to the ribs most certainly broke a few.

We pulled Mia behind us as we pushed Ryan back, fists raining down on him as he stumbled further and further back in his futile attempt to get away from us.

This was for Amy. This was for Mia. This was for every single other woman he’d hurt over the years.

“Okay! Okay!” he screamed. “I’m sorry alright?! Fuck, keep her!”

We kept moving.

“You want money?!”

Oliver laughed bitterly.

Ryan’s face paled. “Well what the fuck do you want?” He gasped as he felt his back come against the shattered frame of his floor-to-ceiling windows, the wind from the city streets thirty stories below whistling past us.

“What the fuck do you want!?” he screeched.

“What do we want?” Erik said softly, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him close.

“We want our fucking sister back, you piece of garbage.”

The three of us grabbed him, and without a second’s hesitations, we pushed.

His heel caught, his body tripped backwards, his eyes went wide—

And we turned away.

Mia’s eyes were wide as we turned back to her, and I shook my head. “Before you say anything, before you tell us that was wrong, or murder, or—”

“I’m not going to say any of those things,” she said quietly, stepping over the rubble before she just gave up and ran into our arms. She melted into us as we held her tight, breathing in her scent, and letting the warmth of her radiate into us.

She lifted her face and pressed her lips tightly to Erik, kissing him fiercely before pulling away and moving to Oliver, who scooped her close. She pulled back and turned to me, her face flushed as she threw her arms around my neck and let my mouth sear itself to hers.

“I was just going to say thank you for flushing that piece of trash away,” she finally said as she broke away.

I grinned. “My kinda girl,” I murmured, as I leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

“Can we go home now?”

Oliver grinned. “Oh, it’s home now?”

“I could keep calling it the tower, where the wicked beasts have me locked up.”

“The locking up part could be arranged,” Erik murmured.

“I’ll wear my finest choker.”

We all grinned as we pulled her close, kissing her, claiming her.

Loving her.

Always.