Chapter 165
Ethan's POV
The fan DM came through at 2:47 AM on a Tuesday, three words that made my blood run cold even through the phone screen.
Found your guy.
I was in our apartment, couldn't sleep, had been pacing for the last hour while Emily slept in her bedroom. The photo loaded slowly—grainy, taken from a distance, but unmistakable. That face. The same face from the security footage, older now, more weathered, but the same cruel set to the mouth.
Huddled under a highway overpass, wrapped in a filthy sleeping bag, surrounded by empty bottles.
The location pin dropped a second later. Less than fifteen miles from here.
I forwarded it to Alex without thinking, then stared at the screen, at that pathetic figure who'd put those bruises on Emily's face, who'd made her bleed, who'd made her afraid—and something in my chest twisted so tight I couldn't breathe.
Alex's reply came back in under thirty seconds.
Give me ten minutes.
I found him in the garage, pulling on a dark jacket, his movements precise and controlled in that way that meant he was about to do something he'd been planning in detail for days. He tossed me a second jacket without looking up, and I caught it on instinct.
"You're coming," he said. Not a question.
"Damn right I am."
"Mason stays with Emily." Alex's voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but there was something underneath it—something sharp and cold and absolutely final. "Someone needs to be here when she wakes up. Someone she trusts."
I nodded, already texting Mason, who replied immediately despite the hour—I've got her—and then we were in Alex's car, the engine purring to life in the pre-dawn darkness.
The drive was silent except for the low hum of the heater and the occasional ping of Alex's phone as he coordinated something I couldn't quite follow—contacts, I assumed, people who owed him favors, people who knew how to make things disappear.
I should have felt something. Hesitation, maybe. Doubt. But all I could see was Emily's face when she'd finally told us the truth, the way she'd flinched when I reached for her too quickly, the careful way she'd been moving around the apartment like her ribs still hurt.
"You ever done this before?" I asked, more to fill the silence than because I actually wanted to know.
Alex's hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles going white. "No. But I've thought about it every single day since I saw that footage. Every single second she was in pain, I was planning this."
There was no hesitation in his voice. No moral conflict. Just cold, absolute certainty.
We parked three blocks away and walked the rest, keeping to the shadows, our breath fogging in the frigid air. The overpass loomed ahead, a concrete monument to urban decay, and beneath it—there.
Still asleep, or passed out, curled up in that filthy sleeping bag like the pathetic waste of oxygen he was.
I felt my pulse kick up, adrenaline flooding my system the way it did before a big game, that sharp-edged focus that narrowed the world down to a single point. Alex put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed once—wait—and then moved forward, his footsteps silent on the cracked pavement.
He crouched down next to the sleeping form, and for a long moment just stared at him, and I wondered what he was thinking, what calculations were running through that brilliant, ruthless mind.
Then he reached out and grabbed the edge of the sleeping bag, yanking it down in one sharp motion.
Jack Grey jerked awake with a strangled gasp, eyes flying open, unfocused and bloodshot. He stared up at Alex, confusion giving way to something that might have been recognition, might have been fear.
"Who the—"
Alex's fist connected with his jaw before he could finish the sentence.
The crack of bone on bone echoed under the overpass, sharp and visceral, and Grey went sprawling backward, blood already streaming from his split lip. He tried to scramble away, but Alex was already on him, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him up like he weighed nothing.
"Who the fuck are you?" Grey spat blood, his voice slurred and panicked as he tried to twist free from Alex's grip.
Alex's expression didn't change, his voice remaining conversational, almost pleasant, completely at odds with the violence of his hold. "Me? I'm the person who's been taking care of your daughter. The one who makes sure she eats. The one who holds her when she has nightmares about you."
He leaned in closer, his grip tightening on Grey's collar.
"I'm the one who saw the bruises you left on her face. Who watched her hand over ten thousand dollars because you threatened her mother. I'm the one who's going to make sure you never touch her again."
Alex slammed him back against the concrete pillar, and I heard the air whoosh out of Grey's lungs, heard his head crack against the stone. He sagged in Alex's grip, dazed, and Alex leaned in close, his voice dropping to something quiet and deadly.
"She gave you ten thousand dollars. Money she earned working herself to exhaustion. And you took it and came back for more."
"She's my daughter—"
"She's mine." The words came out like a gunshot, sharp and absolute, and Alex's hand moved to Grey's throat, squeezing just enough to make him gag. "And you don't get to touch what's mine."
I moved forward then, some part of me recognizing that Alex was about to cross a line neither of us could come back from, but before I could intervene, Alex shoved Grey toward me.
"Your turn," he said, his voice still perfectly calm, perfectly controlled. "I'm not going to ask you to hold back."
I caught Grey by the shirt, felt the greasy fabric bunch in my fists, and looked down at him—really looked at him. This pathetic, broken-down drunk who'd spent Emily's childhood beating her, terrorizing her, making her believe she was worthless.
The man who'd made her afraid to be loved.
I thought about the way she'd apologized to me in that apartment hallway, like she was the one who'd done something wrong. I thought about the way she still flinched sometimes when I moved too fast. I thought about the bruises I'd seen on her face just days ago, the split lip, the terror in her eyes.
And I stopped thinking altogether.
My first punch caught him in the ribs, and I felt something give under my knuckles—a crack, a crunch—and the sound he made was somewhere between a wheeze and a scream. I hit him again, and again, each impact deliberate, controlled, targeting the places I knew would hurt the most without killing him outright.
The athlete in me knew exactly how to make this last.
He tried to fight back at first, throwing wild, desperate punches that I barely felt, but I was stronger, faster, angrier, and within seconds he was just trying to cover his face, trying to protect himself the way Emily never could.
I hit him again, this time in the jaw, and felt his head snap back, blood spraying across the concrete. My knuckles were screaming, probably split open, but I didn't care. All I could see was Emily's face, all I could hear was her voice saying I don't want to be alone.
Another punch. Another. The satisfying crack of cartilage giving way under my fist.
I thought about her asking us not to leave. I thought about the way she'd curled into us last night, so small, so vulnerable, so desperate for protection we hadn't been able to give her when it mattered.
I hit him again.