Page 61 of Beautiful Obsessions
I turned back to the room.To what made sense.
Blood.Injury.Control.
The things I knew how to handle.Things I could fix.
Because this—whatever had just passed between us—was a no go zone.
I grounded myself in what mattered.
My family.My loyalty.The people I would bleed for without question.
That was my world.That was the line.Everything else—didn’t belong.
18
Archie
The salon looked like a war zone.
Blood smeared across white tile.Glass shattered into glittering fragments underfoot.
Gunfire always left something behind—an echo that clung to the edges of your hearing like the world hadn’t quite caught up to what you’d just heard.
My gaze tracked across the room automatically, cataloguing everything without conscious effort.Bodies.Bodies.More bodies.And blood.There was so much of it, I knew it would take days to clear the mess and debris.Absolute chaos had turned the room on its head.
Tone was crouched near the back, stitching up one of the last men still breathing—one of ours.Her hands were steady, precise, like violence hadn’t touched her at all.
I leaned back against one of the broken stations, arms loose at my sides, watching her work.She didn’t rush or fumble.Every movement had purpose, each touch calculated.
Atlas stood a few feet away, phone in hand, his expression shifting as he read something on the screen.It was a subtle change, one that most people wouldn’t catch.But I wasn’t most people.
His jaw tightened.Then he lowered the phone and looked up.Something had changed.
“Raze,” he called.
The shift was immediate.Every one of them stilled—not like strangers reacting to a voice, but like something instinctive had been triggered.Gianni stopped mid-motion, cloth still in his hand.Raze’s head turned before Atlas had even finished saying his name, his body already angling toward him.Even the subtle movements—the tightening of shoulders, the way their weight shifted onto the balls of their feet—spoke of something deeper than awareness.
It was reflex.Not learned, but lived.
I’d seen men work together before.Crews.Soldiers.Teams trained to move as one.This wasn’t that.This was something forged over years—shared walls, shared fights and blood.They didn’t need instructions spelled out for them.They read each other in glances and silence, in the smallest shift of tone.
Like a clock that had been set once—and never lost time.
That kind of connection didn’t come from loyalty alone.It came from growing up with each other.From knowing where the other would stand before they even moved.From trusting—without question—that when things went bad, they’d be there.
Atlas didn’t waste the moment.
“There’s a problem at the warehouse,” he said, his voice tight.“We need to make a stop.”
Raze didn’t ask what kind of problem.Gianni didn’t question the timing.They just moved.Because whatever it was—they were there for it.
Raze straightened.“Let’s go, then.”
Atlas’s gaze shifted to me.
“Take Tone home,” he said.“Do not leave her on her own.”
Before I could respond—Tone did.
