Chapter 42 Engines of Mercy
(Zuri POV)
The mountain groans behind us.
Smoke curls into the pale dawn like the ghost of everything we just burned. My lungs scrape raw with every breath, but I don’t stop running. The ridge road twists downward, narrow and slick with ash. Every step feels like walking through the remains of my own mistakes.
Amani’s bike waits where we left it—half hidden under brush, chrome smudged with soot and blood. He yanks it upright, scanning the horizon like he’s expecting the mountain itself to move. The air hums with pressure, that quiet before something breaks.
Then I hear it—low, steady, closing fast. Engines. More than one.
My pulse spikes. “He sent them already.”
“Yeah,” Amani says, swinging a leg over the seat. “Get on.”
I don’t argue. I climb behind him, my fingers locking against his chest. The machine roars to life, the sound vibrating through my ribs, and the world turns to motion. Gravel spits from the tires, wind ripping at my hair and burning my throat with smoke.
Behind us, black shapes break through the haze—three bikes, maybe four, all riding in formation. The Moretti crest flashes once on a gas tank: a serpent coiled around a crown.
My father’s symbol.
The thing I used to trace in the margins of his letters when I was a child.
Now it hunts me.
The ridge narrows to a single lane carved into stone. One mistake and we’ll be dust at the bottom. Amani leans low, cutting the bike hard around a bend. Sparks spray from the undercarriage. The drop on our left yawns open, a black mouth waiting to swallow us.
“Hold on, Zuri!”
I do. Every muscle burns, but I hold.
The pursuers close in, engines howling like wolves. Gunfire cracks through the wind; bullets ping off rock and sing past my ear. Amani jerks the bike sideways, using the slope as a shield.
“Can you shoot?” he shouts over the roar.
I grab the pistol from his belt, checking the chamber by instinct. “I can do more than that.”
I twist around, aim low. Fire once. Twice.
One rider veers off the cliff, his scream vanishing into the canyon below. Another swerves, skidding out, his bike cartwheeling into fire and silence. Two left.
Amani grins—sharp, reckless, like the chaos makes him alive. “Remind me never to doubt you.”
“Remind me to punch you for bringing me here.”
He laughs once, breathless. “Fair.”
The humor barely lasts a second before the world tightens again. A black SUV appears ahead, blocking the road, its headlights cutting through the haze. The Moretti crest glints again on the hood.
My stomach knots. “He’s cornering us.”
“Not yet.” Amani’s voice drops low, steady. “Hold tight.”
He guns the throttle. The engine screams, and the world blurs. The SUV’s doors burst open; men spill out with rifles raised. I see the flashes first—the white bursts of muzzle fire—before the sound even reaches me.
I squeeze the trigger before they can aim. Three shots, three sparks of red. One man drops. The windshield explodes.
Amani jerks the bike left, the cliff edge flashing beneath us. My breath catches as the tires skid, lose traction, then bite again. We fly through a wall of smoke into sudden silence.
For a moment, there’s only wind. No gunfire. No pursuit. Just the sound of our hearts pounding in sync.
The sun bleeds faintly over the ridge behind us, pale and cold. The engines that chased us fade, swallowed by distance.
We don’t stop until the ridge flattens into scrubland. The silence there feels alien. Amani kills the engine, and the sudden stillness crashes down around us. I slide off the bike, legs trembling so hard I almost stumble.
He turns, breath ragged. “You hurt?”
“Just my pride,” I mutter, checking my shoulder. The earlier wound from the vault throbs—warm, sticky, spreading.
He notices immediately. “You’re bleeding again.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
Before I can argue, he tears a strip from his shirt and presses it against the wound. His hands are rough but careful, grounding me with touch alone. For the first time since the vault collapsed, I feel something close to stillness.
The smell of oil, blood, and salt mixes in the air. The mountains behind us glow faintly, smoke still climbing into the sky like a funeral pyre.
“He planned this,” I say quietly. “He knew we’d come for the vault.”
Amani nods, jaw tight. “He wanted you to see him.”
“He wanted me to remember.”
He meets my eyes. “Then remember this instead—you walked out alive. That’s more than he expected.”
I want to believe him. But my father’s voice still whispers at the back of my mind: You can’t protect her forever, Amani.
The words stick like splinters in my throat.
“He’s not going to stop,” I whisper.
“Neither are we.”
There’s no hesitation in his tone. No fear. Just conviction carved into every syllable. It makes something in me ache—something soft I thought I’d buried years ago.
For a long moment, I just look at him—at the soot streaked across his jaw, the torn knuckles, the quiet fury that keeps him moving. The man who never asked to carry my war but does it anyway.
He catches me staring and almost smiles. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe I’m just thinking how stupid this is,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Running from a man who owns half the world.”
His voice softens, eyes still scanning the horizon. “Then let’s steal the other half.”
It’s such a ridiculous thing to say, but it breaks through the weight pressing on my chest. A laugh escapes me, shaky but real.
The wind shifts, carrying the scent of burnt fuel and wild sage. I close my eyes. The ache in my shoulder pulses with my heartbeat, but beneath it there’s something else—a strange calm, the kind that comes after chaos when you realize you’re still alive.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline fading. Maybe it’s the realization that for the first time, we’re not reacting. We’re choosing.
When I open my eyes again, the light has changed. The smoke thins, giving way to the raw orange of early morning.
“We need to find the rest of the Kings,” I say. “Regroup. He’ll move on them next.”
Amani nods. “Clubhouse first. Then Ghost’s contacts in the city. We hit back before he digs in.”
The word clubhouse hits like memory—neon lights, laughter, the smell of oil and leather. Home. For a second, I can almost hear it again—the low music, the banter, the life we had before everything fractured.
I tighten the strip of cloth around my shoulder and glance at the bike. “If the engines catch up again, we won’t have much time.”
“They won’t,” Amani says. “Not today.”
He starts the bike. The roar feels different this time—less like escape, more like promise.
“You ready?” he asks.
“As I’ll ever be.”
I climb on behind him, my arm sliding around his waist. The contact feels unspoken, necessary. The sun finally breaks over the ridge, bleeding gold through the smoke.
We ride toward it. Toward the next fight. Toward whatever waits in the ashes.
And as the engines roar to life again, I think maybe mercy isn’t something we’re given.
Maybe it’s something we take.