“He’s clean,” Isla called out.
“Of course, I’m clean,” Mick muttered, sounding as if he were in a trance, maybe in shock. “They kidnapped me. They dragged me out of that hospital and brought me here.”
The man’s eyes were darting around, and there was fear, confusion, maybe guilt. But no defiance.
Avery stayed behind cover, her weapon still raised, gaze locked on Warren. The bastard was still snarling in the mud, but the fight was gone from him now, smothered under pain and failure.
Mick’s expression changed the moment Warren’s words sank in.
Jackson saw it happen. The flash of confusion, then disbelief, then something darker, sharper. Rage.
“You…” Mick’s voice cracked, raw and hoarse. “You killed my mother?”
Warren lifted his head, blood smeared across his face, and gave that same hollow, mocking laugh. “I told you. The bitch deserved to die,” he said, voice rasping through clenched teeth. “She brought it on herself.”
“Mick,” Noah barked, stepping forward, his hand raised. “Don’t—”
But Mick wasn’t listening. He staggered a few steps closer, the anguish written all over his face. His chest heaved, breath coming in ragged bursts.
“You killed her?” he said again, quieter this time, almost a whisper. “You murdered your own—” He choked off the word, unable to finish it.
Warren sneered up at him, his tone turning cruel. “You never did understand what this was about, boy. Your father knew. He built something bigger than you’ll ever—”
“Stop,” Jackson ordered, but Warren didn’t.
“—and you? You’re just like your mother. A traitor. You don’t appreciate what he was, whatwewere. You think you’re better than us?”
Mick’s hand was shaking as he stared down at him. His eyes flicked to the ground, and Jackson followed the movement too late.
The gun the surviving Brotherhood soldier had dropped was half-buried in the mud, only a few feet away.
“Mick—” Avery started, but by the time the warning left her mouth, Mick had already moved.
He snatched up the weapon, his hands slick with rain and blood.
“Mick, don’t do it,” Noah shouted, voice breaking through the storm.
Warren laughed again, ugly and defiant even as he lay pinned beneath the concrete. “Go on, then! You’ve got your father’s blood. Let’s see if you’ve got his guts!”
The gunshot cracked through the clearing before anyone could move.
Jackson flinched at the sound, the echo bouncing off the ruined bunker and dying in the rain.
Warren’s head slumped sideways. The sneer was gone, replaced by nothing at all.
For a long, breathless moment, no one spoke.
Mick stood over him, the gun hanging limp at his side, smoke curling faintly from the barrel. His chest heaved once, twice. Then he looked up—eyes empty, face pale—and dropped the weapon into the mud.
Jackson felt his stomach start to churn. It was over for Warren, sure. But what Mick had just done, what it would do to him, was only beginning.
Cal and Garrett came out of the smoke, silhouettes forming in the dull orange glow of what was left of the Brotherhood’scompound. They were splattered with mud and soot, eyes red from the smoke, but on their feet and moving.
Garrett was the first to speak, his voice rough. “We checked the grounds,” he said. “There’s no one left. Anyone who was in that building was blown to bits.”
Cal gave a grim nod beside him. “It’s a graveyard out there. Nothing but fragments.”
Jackson let out a slow breath and looked around the clearing. The rain was washing away the last of the smoke, but not the stench of it, the bitter, metallic smell of fire and blood. The debris still smoldered in places, jagged pieces of concrete jutting up like tombstones.