Page 79 of Grim

He just nodded once.

“We all are.”

Grim slammed his fist into the wall, cracking the plaster. “Where is he?!” Grim’s breathing turned ragged, animalistic. His hands shook. His vision blurred at the edges.

Ledger spoke again, voice tight. “They split up when they left. I can see bikes heading in three different directions. They planned this. They covered their tracks.”

Grim’s jaw clenched. “So we don’t know where they took her.”

Ledger shook his head, guilt twisting his features. “Not yet.”

“Then find out,” Grim growled.

“I will,” Ledger said. “I swear it.”

But one thing cut through the haze:

The sheet being pulled over Switchblade’s body.

His boots stuck out from underneath, scuffed and worn and laces uneven. Grim had teased him about those damn laces a hundred times.

His throat tightened. His chest cracked open.

Switchblade had been a soldier. A prospect. A brother.

And he’d died protecting Sophia.

Grim stepped forward, dropping to one knee beside the body. He rested a hand on the sheet — just for a moment — jaw clenched so tight it hurt.

Havoc looked away. Rook bowed his head. Fish closed his eyes.

Stone’s voice softened, just barely. “He died a Saint.”

Grim’s voice broke. “He shouldn’t have died at all.”

Stone didn’t argue. He didn’t offer comfort. He didn’t lie.

He just stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, the way brothers do when the world falls apart.

Grim rose slowly, every muscle trembling with barely contained rage.

He looked at the destruction. At the blood on the floor. At the smoke curling through the air. At the empty space where Sophia should have been.

His voice was a whisper, cracked and raw. “Hold on for me, Sophia.”

The rage carried them through the next hours, boarding up windows, clearing debris, checking the perimeter, tending to the wounded. Orders were barked. Tools clattered. Boots thudded across scorched floors. The clubhouse breathed like a wounded animal, every groan of the damaged beams a reminder of what they’d lost.

But eventually, even fury burns itself out.

One by one, the brothers drifted away, some to clean up, some to collapse from exhaustion, some to sit in silence with their grief. The noise faded. The adrenaline ebbed. The night settled heavy and hollow around them.

Grim couldn’t sit. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop seeing it, Switchblade falling and Sophia screaming and Spider’s hand in her hair.

He needed air. He needed space. He needed something that didn’t hurt to look at.

So when the clubhouse finally went quiet, when the last door shut and the last voice faded, Grim slipped out the back and walked to the garage.

Switchblade’s tools were still on the workbench.