Page 91 of Where Angels Fall

The room quiets instantly. Tension stretches tight between the walls.

I lift a brow in question. “Excuse me?”

Kaleb never swears at me. He never raises his voice. Not to me. Not in front of my men. The fact that he just did sits wrong in my gut.

He’s vibrating with it now, rage barely leashed, hands fisted at his sides, muscles drawn tight beneath his shirt.

“Kai,” he grits out through clenched teeth, each word a rasp from his throat. “Where. The. Fuck. Is he?”

I feel the blood rush out of head and dizziness hits me fast. Because Kai… is meant to be with my angel.

I storm into my office, and Kaleb follows, as well as Griff, Leon, and Matt, slamming the door shut behind them. My hands dive into my hair, pulling the strands until I feel a sharp sting on my scalp.

“Speak!” I bark, hearing the unhinged twinge in my voice. I’m spiralling. “Tell me everything, now.”

It sounds fuzzy when Kaleb speaks, the words dancing in my head like some cruel cosmic joke. “His bike is at the Dally building, along with her car, but they are nowhere to be found. Kai wouldn’t ever leave Shadow like that, not ever.”

“Fuck!” I roar, clearing the table off with a swipe of my hand.

My mind twists in every worst-case scenario possible, the most gut-wrenching of them all being that they are both already gone. That I left when they both needed me the most.

That the last thing I did, before whatever has happened to my angel, was pull my gun out and aim it at her stunning face.

She can’t be dead. She just can’t be.

Because if she is, then I’m done pretending this wrold deserves mercy.

I’ll reduce it to smoke, bone, and ruin until there’s nothing left to mourn.

And Kai. Knowing his love for Shadow, his bike, I know deep in my gut he would never leave her. Ever. And he knows what Maddison means to me; I know he’d give up his life for her... for me.

My goddamn brother. If I lost them both... there’d be nothing left of me. There won’t be anything human left to salvage.

“No, no, no,” I mutter, pacing the length of the office like a caged animal.

My boots slam against the floorboards, and my breath comes ragged and uneven. My hands are shaking, clenching into fists so hard the veins stand out like ropes. I feel Kaleb’s eyes on me, feel all of them watching me unravel, but I can’t stop.

The monster inside me is clawing to the surface, begging for blood.

“They were taken,” Griff says angrily, but the words don’t sound real. They scrape down my spine like nails on glass. “They didn’t leave. Someone has them.”

“Someone?” I snarl, whirling on him, my teeth bared. “Who the fuck is bold enough to put their hands on what’s mine?” My voice cracks, echoing too loudly in the room, too wild to be controlled.

I’m pacing like a wild animal, hands clawing at my hair, muttering to myself. Every wall, every chair, every object in this office is screaming at me. I can’t stop. I can’t focus. Kaleb steps forward, voice low but urgent. “Ash…look at me. Stop.”

I spin on him, eyes wild, teeth bared, and he flinches... but he doesn’t step back. “Don’t tell me to stop, Kaleb. You don’t get it!” I roar, slamming my fist into the desk, splinters biting my skin. My chest heaves.

Then Kaleb moves. He grabs my shoulders, trying to steady me, but I thrash. He can’t hold me. So he does the only thing that might make me listen. A sharp, precise punch to my jaw. The crack of knuckles against bone is deafening in my head. Pain blooms, white-hot and immediate, and for the first time today, the hurricane inside me pauses.

I laugh, ragged and broken, blood dripping onto my hands. “Again,” I mutter, not even realizing the words are out loud. Kaleb’s glare burns through me.

Maybe he thinks I’ve completely lost it. Maybe he’s right. But the pain steadies me. It’s a tether, pulling me back from the edge of my own madness. The world sharpens. My thoughts, which were scattering like ash in a windstorm, snap into focus.

Clarity dawns as I swipe the blood dripping out of my mouth and pick my laptop off the mess on the floor. I pull up the feeds I set up in my angel’s office, car, and house, confirming she isn’t at either.

“It’s him,” Griff mutters, his voice thick with frustration. “It has to be him.”

I nod because if they are in fact alive, that is where they’ll be. With Zeke. My heart twists in my chest, knowing the best-case scenario is that Zeke has kept them alive. The kind of torture he’d be inflicting on them at this very moment.