Page 68 of Riot’s Revenge

I honestly thought I could have both. Thought I could keep one part of my life separate from the other. Like fucking Brandi didn’t mean anything because it never had before.

But Maria looked at sex differently. Hell, maybe normal people did. To her it meant intimacy and trust. Choosing somebody even when they weren’t standing right in front of you and I’d failed that without even realizing I was making a choice.

I scrubbed a hand across my jaw hard enough to sting. Shadow was right. My head wasn’t there lately.

His voice dragged me back into church before I could sink any further. “We hit this place hard and fast,” he said. “Nobody gets distracted. Nobody loses focus.” His eyes locked onto mine deliberately. “Especially you.”

Irritation flared hot beneath my ribs, not because Shadow was wrong, but because he was right. I gave a short nod. “Understood.”

The tension in the room eased slightly after that. Shadow shoved back from the table first. “Move.”

Ghost grabbed his gun from the table while Boxer tucked a knife into the back of his jeans with practised ease. Violence rolled through the room, familiar and steady, settling something restless inside me for the first time in weeks. Brothers checked weapons. Chairs scraped across concrete. Whiskey glasses got abandoned half-full on the table while everybody slipped easily into the kind of chaos we understood best.

Simple, because violence was always simple. You found the problem and hit it until it stopped breathing.

Feelings were another matter entirely.

The Kings’ hideout sat on the edge of the industrial district behind a rusted chain-link fence and two abandoned garages. It was too quiet. Not even one guard outside. That alone should’ve been enough warning.

Bikes lined the alley behind the building while weak yellow light spilled from filthy upstairs windows. Somebody shifted behind the curtains for half a second before disappearing again.

“They know we’re here,” Spider muttered beside me.

“Good,” Shadow growled. Then he drove his foot through the front door hard enough to splinter the frame.

Chaos erupted instantly. Gunfire cracked through the building as brothers stormed inside yelling over each other. The smell of smoke, sweat, and stale beer slammed into me as a King came charging from the hallway, swinging a metal pipe toward my head.

I caught his wrist before the swing connected and buried my knife beneath his ribs, feeling the resistance give way beneath the blade. Blood spilled hot across my hand.

A King slammed into Boxer near the stairs while Ghost pistol-whipped another hard enough to send teeth skidding across the floorboards. Somewhere upstairs, glass shattered, followed by Reaper yelling, “Get the fuck down.”

After that, everything blurred together into noise, violence and bodies hitting walls. The kind of chaos club life trained into your bones until reacting stopped being thought and became instinct. Only that night something inside me felt off. I was too angry, too wound tight.

Every punch landed harder than it needed to. Every hit felt personal in a way it normally didn’t, like all the shit I’d been choking down for weeks had finally found somewhere to go.

Maria crying in the apartment bathroom flashed through my head so suddenly it nearly stopped me cold.

Take a fucking shower, Ricky.

Rage slammed into me hard enough that I barely saw the King rushing from the side until pain ripped across my shoulder.

“Riot!” somebody shouted.

I staggered as the blade tore deep into me, but the bastard didn’t get time to enjoy it. I grabbed him by the throat and drove him straight through the hallway wall, plaster exploding around us both.

Then I hit him. Again. Again.

My knuckles split open while blood sprayed across the wall beside us. The guy stopped fighting somewhere around the fourth punch, but I kept going anyway until Shadow grabbed the back of my kutte and hauled me off him.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” he snarled.

The King beneath me barely moved anymore. I wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand, breathing hard enough that my ribs ached. “I’m fine.”

Another King came charging down the stairs with a shotgun before Ghost dropped him with two clean shots to the chest.

Silence settled over the building slowly after that. Brothers moved through rooms checking bodies while smoke drifted through shattered plaster and broken glass. Somewhere upstairs a man groaned in pain before Boxer told him to shut the fuck up.

Shadow stepped over a body and looked around once. “We done here?”