But it doesn’t matter. Every road and every choice leads back to her anyways.
“I’m counting to three,” Barnes says quietly.
I don’t blink
“One.”
Her face tightens, but she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t give them what they want.
“Two.”
My heart slows. My eyes don’t blink.
“Three,” Barnes almost whispers. The gun hammer cocks with a hard, metal click.
“Time to die, Oliver.”
“Oy, cunt.”
Barnes turns. The rest of his guys turn. I turn, and my fucking jaw drops.
Me—or at least, the mirror version of me—smiles at Barnes while he pushes the gun right against Barnes’s forehead.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off my brother.”
He pulls the trigger, and suddenly Barnes’s head is just gone in a mist of red. It takes about a quarter of a second before the reality of what we all just saw hits the crowd, but I’m moving before Barnes’s body even hits the floor.
I slam up, catching another guy in the chin and knocking some teeth out as he goes tumbling back. The mirror version of me whirls, calm as a fucking cucumber as he squeezes off two more rounds, and then two more, dropping four of Barnes’s guys. Jay is screaming like a chicken without a head, and I roar as I rush him and catch him square in the face with the top of my head. His nose crumbles even more, and he screams and falls to the ground.
“Oy!” I roar at the other me. He whirls, and I hiss as the snick of his knife catches a bit of skin on my hands as he slices through my binds. I don’t have time to look at him, or say a word, I just grab Jay’s gun from his jeans and charge, blasting away and dropping two more of them.
One of them goes for Delphine, but she screams and stamps down hard on his foot and elbows him in the face. He tumbles back and gets her knee in his bollocks, and when he lunges back up, my bullet catches him through the throat.
The last of Barnes’s guys start to run off down the length of the old warehouse, but suddenly, there’s the roaring sound of engines. Six bikes come blazing in through a loading dock, and I grin when I see Shepherd, Rowan, Lucy, Bishop, Bastion, and Hush come thundering in, guns out. Barnes’s guys fall to their knees and throw their hands up as the bikes skid to a stop, and my friends round them up, kicking them to the ground.
I don’t even blink or stop though, I just keep running until I catch Delphine in my arms. She sobs into me as I grab her tight, wrapping my arms around her like I’ll never, ever let her go.
“I’m here,” I hiss quietly into her neck. “I’m here, love. And it’s over. It’s all over.”
“Gauge!” Shepherd roars, pulling my attention. I look up, and he nods. “You whole?”
I nod and look down into Delphine’s eyes. “Are you hurt?”
She frowns. “No, I…” her eyes swivel past me, and her face pales. “I—”
“What the fuck am I looking at?” Bastion yells.
I turn to follow all of their confused gazes, and my lips pull back in a grin as I lock eyes with the mirror me who just dropped Barnes.
“Guys, meet Asa.” I grin.
“My twin.”
Chapter Seventeen
Delphine
“You okay?”
I smile, and when he pushes the cup of hot coffee into my hands, I sigh contentedly.
“Yeah, I’m fine, really.”
“You sure?”
Oliver frowns in concern as he settles down behind me, and when he wraps his arms around me, I grin as the heat blooms through me.
“Well now I’m great.”
He chuckles, kissing the back of my neck as the fire flickers in front of us. We’re not alone, either—there are more than a few other faces sitting around the fire pit up at the Lost Devils compound—Shepherd, Rowan, Lucy, Bishop, Bastion, and an especially huge guy covered in tattoos who’s been introduced to me as Hush, with a gorgeous tanned girl sitting in his lap named Catalina.
Oh, and of course, Oliver’s freakishly identical twin brother, Asa.
It’s been a hell of a day, and in fact it’s so late that it’s actually early. The sun is probably twenty minutes from rising, but that hasn’t stopped the whole club from coming out to sit down and talk and make sure everyone’s okay. It’s… bizarre, but in this warming way that feels like a family.
And speaking of which, my family—my Grams, that is—is still sleeping away in one of the guest quarters. Safe, sound, and apparently everyone’s new favorite chili chef. Scarlett’s back to sleep too in another guest room, after learning what had happened and that I was safe and sound.
But the important thing after all that’s happened is that we’re all safe, and all whole, and all okay. And that this whole thing is over.
Back at that warehouse on the outskirts of Dark Water Falls, Shepherd made some executive decisions. The handful of Barnes’s guys who were still alive were low-level, non-local guys. Most of them were just working for Barnes for a small paycheck and maybe a little taste of the crime life. But none of them were career thugs or bad guys, and they were all more than happy to get the fuck out of Dark Water Falls and never, ever come back or mention what’d happened.
I mean, especially not when a guy as big and scary looking as Hush loomed over them promising to pull their heads out through their assholes if he ever saw them again or heard they’d talked.
As for the rest of them? Well, the Lost Devils basically just called in an anonymous tip to the shambling, mostly nonexistent Dark Water Falls police department about “some sort of gang shootout” out at the warehouses. Hey, it’ll be a nice win for those guys, and trust me, no one’s going to be missing Bryce Barnes.
“So, yeah,” Oliver clears his throat behind me and reaches past me for his beer. “Guys, this is Asa. Asa, these are the guys.”
“It’s…” Rowan frowns, leaning back in his chair with Lucy leaning back again his chest on his lap, sipping his beer. “It’s freaky.”
I grin, glancing over at Oliver’s twin. Rowan’s not wrong, it’s insane how similar they are, down to similar tattoo styles, same hair, and same beard. And of course, those same stormy blue eyes. Only, where there’s a sort of playful humor that surrounds Oliver like an aura, you can definitely tell there’s more of a darkness around his brother.
“He could always shave his beard to make it easier,” Oliver shrugs with a grin.
“Sod off,” Asa mutters back, arching a brow and grinning as he sips his beer. “Shave yours.”
He smirks and raises his beer to the whole crew. “Pleasure to meet you all.” His eyes stop on Shepherd, and he grins. “Fuck me, Shepherd Kade in charge of… well, fuck, anything.”
Shepherd grins. “Stranger things, huh?”
“You two know each other?” Hush growls.
Shepherd nods. “We met once, what, five years ago?”
Asa shrugs. “Something like that.”
“Asa was stateside, and Shep and me needed some extra hands for… uh…” Oliver grins. “Some work.”
I turn to him, arching a brow.