Savage Saints Mc : Claimed By Four Monsters

Chapter 5

Isolde

It was Riot who found me crying. I wasn't being loud about it. I was sitting on the steps at the back of the clubhouse with my knees pulled up and my face turned away from the door, doing the quiet kind of crying that doesn't ask for anything from anyone. The kind I had learned after my father died. Small and contained and completely private.

Except Riot was suddenly sitting beside me on the step. He didn't say anything. He didn't ask what was wrong or tell me it would be fine or do any of the things people did when they were uncomfortable with someone else's pain. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, looking out at the narrow stretch of yard behind the clubhouse, and let me exist in whatever state I was in.

After a while the crying stopped on its own.

"Sorry," I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand.

"Don't be."

I looked at him sideways. Up close, without the tension of last night or the charged atmosphere of the main hall, he looked younger than I had first thought. The scar through his brow was older than his face. Like he had been through things early that left permanent marks.

"Do you have a family?" I asked.

He was quiet long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer. "Had a sister," he said. "Long time ago."

I didn't ask what happened. The way he said had said everything.

"I have a sister," I said. "Petra. She's twenty-two. She thinks I'm dramatic and I think she's reckless and we argue every time we're in the same room for more than an hour." I stopped. "She's the only person in the world who knows what I look like when I'm actually happy."

Riot looked at me then. Really looked at me.

"She'll be okay," he said.

"You don't know that."

"No," he agreed. "But you're not going back to them. So she has to be."

It was the most honest comfort anyone had ever offered me. No promises he couldn't keep. Just a quiet rearranging of what was necessary. I felt something loosen in my chest, some tight-wound thing I had been carrying since I ran out of that mansion barefoot and bleeding.

"Thank you," I said. "For last night. For what you did."

His jaw moved. "Don't thank me for that."

"I'm thanking you anyway."

He looked away again. But I saw it, the small shift in his expression, the thing he packed back down before it could become anything he'd have to explain.

I almost trusted them.

That was the thought forming in my head when the sound of engines reached us. Not one. Several. And not the familiar rumble of the club's bikes. Something heavier. More deliberate.

Riot was on his feet before I had fully processed the sound.

"Inside," he said. "Now."

The front of the clubhouse was already moving by the time we got through the door. Zephyr at one window, Soren at his phone, Kael standing in the center of the room with a stillness that the others organised themselves around. His eyes found me first, then moved to the door.

"Three vehicles," Zephyr said from the window. "Eight men at least. Armed." He paused. "And someone in a very expensive suit who looks like he just came from a board meeting."

My stomach turned to ice. I knew without looking. I knew from the way the expensive suit detail landed in my chest like a key turning in a lock.

"Don't," Kael said, but I was already at the window.

Marcus stood in front of the lead vehicle with his hands in his pockets like he was waiting for a valet. His jacket was charcoal grey. His face was calm. There was a bandage above his left ear where the vase had met his skull, and he wore it like a badge he was quietly proud of.

"Isolde." His voice came through the walls easily, loud enough to be deliberate. "Come outside. We can do this cleanly."

Nobody moved. Kael walked to the door and opened it. He stepped out alone, and the temperature of the whole situation seemed to drop several degrees just from the way he stood there.

"You're on my property," Kael said.

Marcus smiled the way men smile when they think the room is already theirs. "I'm here for my fiancée. Hand her over and this stays civil."

"She's not here."

"She's standing at that window." Marcus tilted his head toward where I was standing. "Hello, Isolde."

I stepped back from the glass. Kael didn't move. "Whatever you came here to negotiate, the answer is no. Get off my property."

"Here's the thing." Marcus clasped his hands in front of him. "I'm not negotiating. I'm informing. Isolde has twenty-four hours to come out voluntarily. After that, my family stops being patient."

"Your family stopped being relevant the moment they sent armed men to my clubhouse last night."

Marcus's smile didn't waver. "That wasn't us. That was a competing interest. You have more enemies than you know." He paused, let that settle, then looked past Kael directly at the door like he could see through it. "Isolde. Your sister is with us. Petra. She's comfortable for now. You have twenty-four hours."

The room tilted.

I was moving before I decided to move. Riot caught my arm. I didn't fight him because my legs weren't entirely working and some part of me knew that walking outside was exactly what Marcus wanted.

"She's fine," Marcus called out. "For now. That's entirely up to you."

"Leave," Kael said. One word. Final.

Marcus buttoned his jacket. He turned back toward his vehicle, then stopped like he had just remembered something small and incidental.

"One more thing," he said. He looked at Kael directly now. Something changed in his expression. The performance dropped, just for a second, and what was underneath it was something uglier and more deliberate. "Tell her who really killed her father."

The yard went completely silent. I heard my own breathing. I turned slowly. Kael was still facing the gate, his back to me, his shoulders set and still beneath his leather cut. He watched Marcus's vehicles pull away without moving a single muscle.

Then he turned around. His face was exactly the same as it always was. Unreadable. Controlled. The face of a man who had decided long ago that expressions were a liability.

He looked at me. And I looked at him.

And I waited for him to say something, anything, a denial, an explanation, a single word that would make Marcus's voice stop echoing around inside my skull. Kael said nothing. And that silence told me everything..