Beneath Her Teeth

Chapter 3: The Best Bad Option

By the time Corbin turned into Varga’s yard, the night had thinned into that dead hour before dawn when even the dark felt exhausted.

Varga’s place sat on the far edge of Briarwood, well back from the road behind a leaning fence and a stand of old pines. From the street it looked half-abandoned. That was deliberate.

Corbin killed the engine. His hands ached from how hard he’d held the wheel, and he had to force them open before he got out. Pain hit his side the moment his boots found the ground, deep and mean and slower to ease than it should have been. Beside him, Elena stared through the windshield, pale and rigid, holding herself together the same way he was—through sheer refusal to do otherwise.

He could still hear Sal’s voice. Get her out.

He had done that much. The rest could wait. Corbin forced it down and started toward the porch.

Varga opened the front door before they reached it. He was broad through the shoulders, gray at the temples, and fully awake in the way men like him always were when trouble arrived before dawn. His eyes went first to Elena, then to the blood on Corbin’s side, still soaking through his shirt.

“What the hell happened?”

“Someone made a coordinated move.” Corbin braced a hand against the doorframe. “Hit Sal’s place. Came for Elena too. Probably the rest of the family.”

Something in Varga’s posture went rigid. “Sal?”

“I don’t know. I was on the phone with him when the shooting started. That’s all I’ve got.”

Varga stepped aside and pulled the door wider. “Get her inside.”

A woman Corbin vaguely recognized led Elena toward the kitchen without a word. Varga stayed in the entry, his eyes on the blood spreading through Corbin’s shirt.

“You look half dead.”

“I’ve looked worse.”

“No,” Varga said. “You haven’t.”

Varga studied him a moment, then nodded toward a chair. “Let me see it.”

Corbin let him work because arguing would waste time. Varga cut the shirt away, swore under his breath at the torn flesh underneath, and packed the wounds tighter while Corbin sat in the straight-backed chair and kept his face blank through the worst of it. The rounds were gone, but the damage wasn’t. His body had been trying to knit itself back together since he left the house, but even the wolf had limits.

Varga wrapped his ribs and leaned back.

“That buys you a few hours,” he said. “Not many.”

Corbin pulled his shirt back down over the bandage. It would have to be enough.

“Stay until morning,” Varga said. “Let Elena get settled.”

Corbin shook his head and pushed himself up from the chair. “I’m going back.”

Varga looked pointedly at his side. “With that? You’ll bleed out in the car.”

“I need to get back there.” Corbin’s voice had gone flat with exhaustion. “Find out what happened. See what I can do.”

The look Varga gave him was long and unreadable. “Then go in with your eyes open.”

He turned toward the kitchen.

Elena stood at the counter with both hands around a mug she had not touched. The woman at the stove moved quietly, giving them space without pretending not to listen. Elena looked up when he entered, and for a second neither of them said anything. Too much had changed in too little time.

“You’re staying here,” Corbin said.

Her expression tightened. “And you’re doing what?”

“Whatever I can.”

She looked like she wanted to argue harder than she had the strength for. “We don’t even know what we’re up against, Corbin. I can make some calls, see how bad it is. We can figure this out together.”

“No. No calls. No one can know you’re here.” He held Varga’s gaze, making sure the warning landed with both of them. If the people behind this were watching the phones, one bad call could lead them straight to her.

He looked back at Elena. “I’ll go back, see what’s left, and figure out our next move.”

Her gaze dropped to the bandage beneath his shirt. “You can barely stand.”

“I’ll manage.” The words came out rougher than he meant them to.

She held his eyes. “That isn’t the same thing.”

No. It wasn’t.

She held his gaze, and he saw the question gathering again behind her eyes—the same one that had been there in the car, beneath the shock and adrenaline.

“You said I knew you.” Her voice was quiet. “Was that true?”

“Yes.”

The word sat heavy between them.

“Then come back,” she said, “before I start thinking I never knew you at all.”

For a second, he forgot the pain in his side. That hurt worse. He held her gaze and gave the smallest nod he could manage. Anything more would have required words, and he had none left.

She glanced at the keys on the counter, then back at him. “And that’s it? You go back out there, and I sit here and wait?”

His voice had gone flat with the effort of holding everything else down. “For now. If something goes wrong here, you listen to Varga. If he says move, you move.”

At last she nodded. It looked unwilling and angry and scared all at once. “Come back alive, Corbin.”

He didn’t trust himself to answer, so he gave her the best smile he could manage, then turned and left before he could second-guess the whole arrangement.

— ◆ —

The first thing he noticed when he turned onto Sal’s street was the quiet.

Not peace. It was the silence that followed violence—not before, not during, but after. When it had already done what it came to do.

Sal’s house looked torn open. Windows blown out. The front door hung crooked. Burn marks blackened the stone near the garage, and glass glittered across the drive in the weak morning light. Two patrol cars sat at the curb, but nobody had bothered pretending to care too much.

Corbin parked half a block away and came in on foot.

Smoke, wet wood, blood, burned wiring—he caught it all before he reached the steps. He had known what he was going to find the moment he turned onto the street. The body lay in the front hall beneath a sheet, but the sheet did nothing. He knew that scent too well.

He didn’t pull back the sheet. He didn’t need to.

The next hour gave him more of the same. A warehouse near the river had been torched. A social club Sal used for quieter meetings sat with smoke staining the brick above the doorway. A smaller house on the south side, had been emptied so thoroughly it looked abandoned. Not one hit. A sweep.

By the time he let himself into his apartment, the truth had settled into him hard and final.

He couldn't stay in Greymoor. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.

The place looked exactly as he had left it. A bed. A chair. A scarred kitchen table. Clothes he could replace. Dishes he barely used.

He pulled a duffel from the closet and moved through the apartment without wasting motion. Two changes of clothes. Ammunition from the kitchen drawer, spare magazines. The shotgun from under the bed, the pistol from behind the cans in the pantry. Then he crossed to the shelf by the window and stopped.

The photograph. He was younger in it — someone the world hadn't gotten to yet. Sal stood between them with Elena tucked under his arm. He studied it for a moment, then slid the photo free of the frame and folded it into the side pocket of the duffel.

The small black notebook was behind a loose panel in the closet. Numbers. Addresses. Account information. Names too important to trust to memory and too dangerous to leave behind. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat.

After that he knelt by the bed, spun the dial on the strongbox, and emptied the cash into the bag.

When he zipped the duffel shut, the apartment looked almost exactly the same.

— ◆ —

Ravenport was the best bad option he had. The city had a reputation for swallowing desperate men and deciding later whether to spit them back out. Close enough to Greymoor to matter, far enough outside Sal’s circle to give him room to think. Vincent Gallo ruled it with a patient kind of brutality Corbin had always respected. That distance mattered now.

All Corbin wanted was a drink and a dark room. One hour where the world left him alone.

Evening had settled over the river by the time he crossed Horizon Bridge. He didn't go looking for the right place—too tired for that, too raw to care. He took the first bar that looked open and rough enough not to ask questions.

Ironsides sat on a rundown corner under a flickering sign with half its letters burned out. Two men leaned near the door with the kind of loose posture that fooled no one. They watched Corbin come up the walk and sized him up without bothering to hide it. They weren't Vincent's people. Corbin wasn't sure if that made the place safer or just dumber.

Inside was narrow and dim. Scarred wood. Stale beer. River damp worked deep into the walls. A television ran with no sound. Two men hunched over bottles near the middle. A card game dragged on in the back beneath a buzzing light. Conversation thinned when Corbin walked in, then picked up again around him, lower than before.

The bartender looked him over once—the blood at his side, the duffel at his feet—and decided not to be curious.

"Whiskey."

The glass hit the bar. Corbin took it and chose the far end where he could see the door in the mirror behind the bottles.

He drank half in one swallow and let the burn settle. For the first time since the raid, he stopped moving. The stillness did more damage than the pain. He thought of Elena at Varga’s. Sal under the sheet. Greymoor tearing itself apart around the hole Sal had left behind.

They named me.

The thought surfaced slow. Sal’s voice in his ear. The way he’d said Corbin Grayson like it meant something. Not just an enforcer caught in the sweep. A name. A target.

Three stools down, one of the locals was already watching him too openly.

— ◆ —

Kat was halfway through dressing down one of Vincent's men when a runner slipped close enough to cut her off. He kept his voice low, but not the urgency. Someone from Moretti's crew had just crossed Horizon.

"Who?"

He dropped his voice another register. "Corbin Grayson."

Kat straightened. "You sure?"

"Positive. Came over the bridge not long ago. Ditched the car after Mercer."

Her voice went flat. "Where is he now?"

The runner hesitated. He knew why the answer mattered.

"Ironsides."

Of all the places.

Kat closed her eyes for half a second, then swore quietly. Her wolf shifted against the leash—restless, interested. When she looked up, she was already on her feet.

One of the men by the door noticed. "Problem?"

She reached for her coat. "Depends how stupid the crowd at Ironsides feels tonight."

She shrugged into the black leather jacket, checked her gun, holstered it, and jerked her chin toward the two men by the door.

"You two. With me."