Author's POV
The boss laughed.
It was not a pleasant sound.
Liam had only just regained consciousness, still tied securely to the chair. His eyes fluttered open. Ruz gave an almost unnoticeable shake of her head. Understanding immediately, Liam let his head slump forward and pretended to be unconscious once more.
"I did not expect," the boss said, his voice dripping with mockery, "that she would send children to save her son."
He looked around at the group Ruz, Adrian, Josh, Mira, all of them standing in the dim light with their hands still raised, weapons pointed at them, the blood of his men already on their knuckles.
"This is embarrassing," he continued. "For me. I have been beaten by grown men. I have been shot at by professionals. I have survived things that would make your nightmares look like children's stories. And now..."
He gestured toward them like they were insects he had found in his food.
"...now I am supposed to feel threatened by teenagers?"
Ruz stepped forward.
Not dramatically. Not aggressively. Just one step.
"Try us," she said. "We haven't disappointed anyone yet."
The boss raised an eyebrow.
"Kiddo, what do you think you are? Some kind of warrior who walked out of a storybook?"
Adrian smirked and said,
"Or maybe she thinks of herself as the Queen of Infernos."
Zayn, Rifat, Nika, and the others let out quiet chuckles, treating it like nothing more than a joke.
Beside Ruz, Liam's shoulders twitched. his head still lowered.
Without missing a beat, Ruz lightly smacked the back of his head.
Liam immediately stopped laughing and returned to his "unconscious" act.
Ruz and Adrian exchanged a glance.
Brief. Quick. Almost invisible.
But something passed between them at that moment.
A slow, mysterious smirk tugged at the corner of Ruz's lips, as though the title amused her far more than it should have.
Because to everyone else, Queen of Infernos sounded like a dramatic nickname.
But to those who knew the truth, it meant something entirely different. Something far more real.
The boss's smile faltered. Just slightly enough.
"You think titles scare me?" he asked.
Ruz tilted her head.
"No. But actions do."
Ruz stomped her foot once. Sharp. Loud.
That was the signal.
They all moved. Not at the exact same millisecond but close enough that the guards only had time to blink.
She moved, not toward the boss, toward the man who is closest to her and Liam. His gun was at his side, barrel down. Before he could lift it, her foot slammed into his wrist. The gun skidded across the floor. She followed with an elbow to his jaw. He dropped.
Her hand closed around the barrel.
She twisted his wrist.
The gun clattered to the floor. She picked the gun.
Adrian disarmed the man nearest to him. Smooth. Efficient. The weapon changed hands before the man even realized what was happening.
Josh swept the legs out from under another guard, sending him crashing to the ground.
Mira appeared behind a third guard, her arm wrapping around his throat. She squeezed. Not hard enough to kill just enough to cut off blood flow. His struggles weakened. Ten seconds later, he went limp.
Nika grabbed a metal pipe and swung it into a guard's stomach. He doubled over. The gun fell from his grip. She kicked the gun far from the chaos.
Aira fought with fury. Every punch was personal. Every kick was meant to hurt. She was not fighting for strategy. She was fighting for Liam, and that made her more dangerous than anyone else in the room.
Zayn moved like water. Flowing around attacks, redirecting momentum, using his opponents weight against them. He did not waste energy. Did not waste movement. Every action had purpose.
Rifat was brutal. Efficient. Cold. He did not fight like someone who enjoyed it. He fought like someone who had been taught that losing was not an option, and he had never forgotten that lesson.
Enzo, Marco, Diego, and Eren fought like they had been fighting together for years. Covering each other's blind spots, switching targets seamlessly, communicating with grunts and glances and the kind of trust that came from surviving things together.
Each person knew their role, knew their target, knew exactly where to be and when to be there.
And Ruz…
Ruz was a force of nature, fighting like a raging storm. She had no need for the gun. Instead, she tucked it back into her waistband and continued the fight.
Reckless but controlled. Wild but precise. She moved through the chaos like she had been born in it, like the noise and the shouting were her natural habitat, like she was more comfortable here than anywhere else in the world.
Guns hit the floor. Bodies followed.
The boss's men were trained. They were armed. They had experience.
But they were not ready for this.
They were not ready for teenagers who had been fighting their whole lives. Who had learned to survive before they learned to read. Who had turned their trauma into weapons and their pain into strength.
A man dropped beside Ruz.
Not because she had put him there, someone else had, Josh. He landed close enough that his blood splattered across her palm.
Warm. Wet. Red.
When she saw the blood, she froze.
Not for long. Just a heartbeat. Just a second.
But it was enough.
The blood on her hand was not just blood anymore. It was something else.
Her vision blurred.
The sounds around her, the shouting, the crashing, the grunts of pain faded into something distant, something muffled, like she was hearing them from underwater.
She punched the man she had been fighting. Once. Twice. He went down. The punches were so hard they did not look like they belonged to a teenage girl. Two punches were enough to knock him unconscious.
But she did not see him fall.
While everyone was focused on the fight, Liam discreetly worked at the rope binding his wrists. Ruz had loosened it earlier when she tried to free him, leaving the knot barely secure. A little effort was all it took. With one final pull, the rope came loose, then snapped. He was free.
On the other hand, Ruz was somewhere else.
She heard a woman's voice. Screaming. Desperate.
"Leave her alone! She's just a kid! She has nothing to do with this!"
A man's voice. Loud. Cruel.
"You're useless." A pause. "You're both useless. You should die."
"No. For God's sake, don't do this to her." The woman's voice cracked, crying and begging.
Ruz sat frozen on the floor.
A guard noticed her and lifted his gun.
Liam reacted instantly; he lunged at him, seized his wrist, and twisted. The gun dropped to the floor.
In the same motion, Liam drove a punch into him and finished with a knee strike to the face, dropping him instantly.
Ruz's head throbbed violently.
She clutched it, her fingers digging into her hair as fragments of memory flashed and shattered in her mind.
She couldn't hold onto them. They slipped away, incomplete, painful.
Her breathing turned uneven.
She moved her hand toward her mouth.
Toward the blood.
She was going to taste it.
A hand caught hers.
Mid-air. Firm. Steady.
Liam.
"What are you doing?" Liam whispered.
"Look at me. Ruz. Calm yourself. Take a deep breath," he said quietly.
Ruz blinked once. Took a deep breath. A few seconds.
He let go of her hand.
The warehouse came back into focus. The sounds returned. Her friends were still fighting around them, still winning, still protecting them while she sat on the floor like a broken thing.
"How did you…" she started.
"Not now," he said. "Are you okay?"
She looked at his face. Into his eyes. The way he was looking at her, he was not surprised by what he had seen. Like he knew something.
"I'm fine," she said.
"Are you sure?"
Ruz stood up.
Rolled her shoulders. Cracked her neck.
"Any doubt?"
"No."
"Good."
She did not know whether to be grateful or terrified.
The fog in her head cleared not completely, but enough. Enough to fight. Enough to win.
She looked at the remaining men. There were fewer now. Her friends had been busy while she was gone.
"Let's finish this," she said.
She did not wait for an answer.
The fight resumed. Faster now. More desperate. The boss's men knew they were losing; they could see it in the way their numbers were shrinking.
They fought harder.
It did not matter.
Ruz took down two more. Adrian took down three. Enzo and Nika worked together like they had been partners for years, covering each other, setting up combos, taking down opponents twice their size.
Mira was everywhere and nowhere appearing and disappearing, a ghost with fists.
Zayn and Rifat pushed toward the boss.
He backed away.
"Stay back," he said. "I'll…."
"You'll what?" Rifat asked.
"Fight?" Zayn said.
"Run?" Rifat added.
"Beg?" Zayn finished.
The boss glanced at the back door.
Rifat and Zayn caught the look.
They moved instantly, trying to cut him off.
The boss sprinted out of the warehouse.
They chased after him.
The front door burst open.
Cops.
Uniforms. Flashlights. Shouted commands.
"FREEZE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! HANDS IN THE AIR!"
And behind them,
Azmain.
And Mrs. Luna.
Ruz blinked once, processing her surroundings and trying to understand how they had found this place.
Adrian caught her eye. Nodded once.
He had messaged Azmain. Had told him everything: the location, the need for backup.
Through the back door out of the warehouse into the darkness the boss escaped before the Zayn, Rifat and cops could reach him. His men scattered, some caught, some fleeing, some surrendering with their hands raised.
He disappeared.
The private hospital's emergency waiting area was almost unnervingly clean.
Bright white lights reflected off polished floors. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and coffee from a nearby vending machine.
The group occupied nearly half the waiting room.
Ruz sat in a chair with her arms crossed. A nurse had already cleaned and bandaged her bruised knuckles, but the swelling was beginning to show beneath the wrap.
Beside her, Adrian held an ice pack against his split lip. White tape covered several cuts on his hands after a doctor finally convinced him to let them be treated.
Across from them, Josh sat stiffly in a wheelchair. His shoulder had indeed been dislocated. It was now back in place and secured in a sling, though judging by the look on his face, he was still deciding whether he hated the injury or the fact that he had needed help more.
Nika had a gash on her forehead. She winced as the nurse dabbed it with antiseptic. "That stings," she muttered.
Mira sat quietly with an ice pack wrapped around her finger. She had let the nurse set it. Her face was pale, but she didn't cry.
Zayn finally let someone clean the cut above his eye after Ruz told him to stop being an idiot.
Aira had bruises covering her arms, her ribs, her face. She looked like she had been hit by a truck. Still, she was smiling.
Rifat had vanished ten minutes ago and was currently being hunted by a nurse after he wandered off in search of coffee despite having a concussion evaluation scheduled.
Enzo, Marco, Diego, and Eren were scattered around the room, each sporting fresh bandages, ice packs, or both. Every one of them insisted they were fine.
They were not fine.
Liam was in a private examination room undergoing a full medical evaluation.
His mother remained by his side throughout the process. Whenever the doctors needed space to examine him, she stepped back, only to return to his bedside moments later.
She had no intention of leaving him alone.
Azmain walked into the waiting room.
His footsteps were slow but deliberate.
The kind of slow that meant he was controlling his anger.
Everyone straightened.
He stopped in the center of the room.
He looked at each of them.
One by one.
Then
"What," he said, his voice low and dangerously calm, "were you thinking?"
No one answered.
"I asked a question," he said. "What were you thinking? Driving to an unknown location? Entering a warehouse full of armed men? Starting a fight with no backup, no plan, no way of knowing if you would survive?"
"We had a plan," Adrian said.
"What plan?"
"Win."
Azmain stared at him.
Silence stretched between them.
Then Adrian added, "It worked."
"It worked," Azmain repeated. His voice did not change. "You won. Against fifteen armed men. You think that makes it okay?"
"Correction more than fifteen," Ruz said.
"Are you kidding me?" Azmain's anger bled into his voice. "You promised me you wouldn't get into any problems, any fights. Where were your promises?"
"My friend was kidnapped," Ruz said. "I had to do something."
"You could have informed me. You could have called the cops. But no, you ran off, to fight outnumbered armed men by yourselves. You could have been killed. All of you. In a warehouse. And no one would have known where to find your bodies."
Ruz met his eyes.
"But we're safe now," she said. "No one got killed."
Azmain looked at her for a long moment.
Then he exhaled.
"...You're all grounded," he said.
"For how long?" Josh asked.
"Forever."
"That seems excessive."
"It's not."
Adrian leaned back in his chair.
"Worth it."
Ruz nodded. "Absolutely."
Azmain pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I'm too young to have this many gray hairs."
"Blame genetics," Ruz said.
"I blame you."
Mrs. Luna came out of Liam's room an hour later.
She looked exhausted. Wrung out. Like she had been crying and now her body did not know what else to do.
But her eyes were clear.
She sat down in the chair across from them. She looked at each faces the bruises, the bandages, the exhaustion.
"Thank you," she said. "For bringing him back."
No one knew what to say.
"Who were they?" Ruz asked. "And why did they kidnap him?"
"Ruz," Azmain warned.
"It's okay, Azmain," Mrs. Luna said.
She paused.
"They deserve to know the truth."
She continued: "He is Kairo."
The name landed like a stone dropping into still water.
"Kairo and Miguel….Liam's father, were business partners once," she said. "They built a company together. Successfully. And that made both of them wealthy."
Her voice hardened.
"But Kairo was not satisfied with wealthy. He wanted more. He started cutting corners. Hurting people. Drug running, smuggling weapons."
She looked down at her hands.
"My husband found out. He tried to stop him, tried to report him, tried to do the right thing."
A pause.
"Kairo didn't like that."
Her voice cracked.
"He threatened us. Our family. He said that if Miguel did not back down, he would make sure we regretted it."
She swallowed.
"Miguel didn't back down. He cancelled his partnership with the company and almost destroyed Kairo's empire."
She looked up.
"But Kairo... he killed him."
Silence.
"He made it look like an accident," she continued. "A car crash. A drunk driver. No one suspected. No one investigated. No one cared. After that, I started running the company. I tried my best."
She looked at Ruz.
"But Kairo never forgot. He never forgave. He came again and again after the company. I tried my best to keep it professional, keep Liam out of this.But I failed."
Her voice dropped to barely a whisper.
"He's been waiting. All these years. Waiting for the right moment to hurt us again. Next month, Liam will turn eighteen, and by law, he will inherit his ancestral property and gain ownership of the company. That's why Kairo is after Liam."
Ruz's hands curled into fists.
"Now he has his moment," she said.
Mrs. Luna nodded. "But he didn't win. You made sure of that."
Ruz looked at her friends.
At their bruises, bandages and their tired eyes.
"No," she said. "We made sure of that."
A couple of hours later, Ruz stood by the window of the hospital room, looking out at the city.
The sun was rising, the same colors as yesterday, the same sky, the same world.
But everything felt different.
Liam was asleep in the bed behind her. His mother sat beside him, holding his hand, not letting go.
The others were scattered around the room, some asleep, some talking quietly, some just sitting in silence and processing what had happened.
Adrian walked up beside her.
"Kairo," he said.
"I heard."
"He got away."
"For now."
Adrian looked at her. "You should stay away from this."
Ruz did not answer.
She just stared at the horizon.