Carrie
By the time I got downstairs, the sun had climbed just high enough to drag the fog off the low fields, burning the world to a pale blue hush. The steps were cold, but the sounds in the house gave me a warmth I didn’t know I’d been missing.
I glanced outside at the line of bikes and the crowd of bikers milling around, some smoking, some drinking. Shivs hadn’t been kidding about the club providing protection.
The bikes were matte black, chrome, and dirt, every one of them caked in last night’s rain, dew beading on their tanks.
Each ride had its own scars—missing reflectors, stitched leather seats, bars welded thicker than the law allowed.
They looked like cavalry on a break between raids, lounging in my driveway as if they’d always belonged.
The house itself had no business looking so untouched.
Sunlight glinted off the front windows, every pane immaculate, not so much as a fingerprint or a stray speck of glass.
The door, which had lost its hinges to a battering ram less than twelve hours ago, was back in place, hung straight and true.
Even the path leading up had been swept—literal broom marks in the residual mud.
I half expected to see a police cordon, or maybe yellow tape marking out the kill zones, but there was nothing.
Not even the ghost of a siren. The only movement was a crow picking at something in the grass beside the porch; it caught my gaze, cocked its head, and hopped away like it had better things to do.
My legs were waterlogged, every muscle still holding on to the tension of the night before. The last time I’d set foot in the living room, there had been a massacre, four dead men on the floor, and a naked werewolf bleeding out on my grandmother’s antique rug.
Today there was birdsong.
The house was cleaner than it had ever been.
Not just cleaned—sterilized. Bleach and wood polish in the air, undertones of lemon and alcohol.
The portraits in the foyer had been righted, the glass in the bay window replaced, and someone had even vacuumed the runner on the stairs.
I crossed the threshold, heels echoing, and paused at the spot where the wolf had lain.
Not a drop of blood, not a splinter. You could have hosted a wake right here, and no one would have known it had ever seen violence.
Somewhere in the back, a pan hissed. I followed the sound, wary, fists already balled.
The kitchen looked like the set of a bourbon commercial. Mahogany cabinets, granite counters, the vast old butcher block cleaned to a pale pink shimmer. At the stove, stood Shivs.
He wore only a pair of jeans, low enough on his hips that the V of his pelvis cut a line above the waistband.
Every inch of his torso was mapped with ink: not the curated kind you got at a Nashville shop, but prison-grade tribal, mixed with runes and skulls and lines that seemed to spiral with the movement of his muscles.
Across his left scapula, a fresh white scar intersected with an older, jagged tattoo of a wolf’s jaw.
The morning sun, angling through the window, threw all of it into relief—like he’d been carved from something harder than flesh.
He was flipping bacon in a cast-iron pan, his other hand busy with a digital forensics kit and a tangle of cell phones splayed out on the counter.
Each one was in some state of disassembly, screens cracked and innards exposed.
A French press sat on the edge of the sink, coffee so black it looked like motor oil. He didn’t look up.
“Sleep well?” he asked, voice casual as a handshake. The heat from the stove made the muscles in his back shine.
I tried to find my own voice. “You’re cooking.”
He turned, and for a second, I saw the wolf in the tilt of his jaw, the way his canines flashed in a grin. “You look like hell,” he said. “Sit down.”
I sat. I didn’t mean to, but my knees had other plans.
He poured a mug of coffee and slid it across the island to me. His hands, scarred and tattooed, handled the mug with a tenderness that was almost obscene. I took it, burned my tongue on the first sip, and didn’t care.
“You eat?” he said.
I shook my head.
He loaded a plate with eggs, bacon, and two slices of wheat toast cut thick enough to anchor a drowning man. He set it in front of me, slid into the chair opposite. For a moment, we were just two people at breakfast, the world not yet on fire.
“You want to tell me why my house looks like Martha Stewart’s panic room?” I said, shoveling bacon into my mouth.
Shivs shrugged, taking a sip straight from the carafe. “Club’s got standards. We don’t leave family in the shit.”
He cracked a phone open with a precision screwdriver, never looking down. “You’re not safe. Not even close. Last night’s hit was a first volley. There’ll be more.”
“Who hired them?” I asked, voice sharper than I wanted.
He smiled, not at me but at the phone as he pulled out a SIM card. “Professional. Not cartel, not federal. Best guess is a shell company—out of Illinois, maybe Jersey. All routed through burner emails and dead-end LLCs.”
He reached across, grabbed my phone off the counter, and placed it next to the gutted corpses of the others. “Marcus Ellery,” he said. “Your board’s power broker. All roads lead back to him, even if you can’t see the fingerprints.”
I stopped chewing. “Marcus wouldn’t—he’s a snake, sure, but he doesn’t do wet work.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Shivs replied. “He outsources. That’s how your kind plays the game.”
He caught the way I flinched at “your kind” and gave me a look, half apology and half challenge. “You want the real, or you want the polite version?”
“The real.”
“Alright. Marcus Ellery works as a consultant for the Bourbon Heritage Alliance. The hit came from their security fund—deep background, corporate warfare. They clean up loose ends before they go public. You’re a liability.”
The room was too quiet. Even the appliances seemed to be listening.
I took another gulp of coffee, steadier now. “I should call the police.”
He laughed, sharp and low. “You do that, you’re the one in cuffs. They’ll say you hired me to kill those men. The bodies are gone, but the story sticks.”
“My prints—my house—” I started.
“Scrubbed. The club’s cleaner handled it. No evidence left but the rumors.”
It was too much. I stood, nearly knocking over the chair. “So I’m just supposed to sit here, let Ellery finish the job?”
He stood, mirroring me across the island. He was a full head taller, the kind of tall that looked like it hurt to pack into a car or a suit. The muscles in his chest bunched as he leaned forward, hands flat on the marble.
“You want to go to war with a man like that, you need allies,” he said, voice low. “You think the bourbon families play fair? They’ll ruin you before you even hit the front page.”
I stared at the counter, at the scatter of phones and tools. Each time I looked up, I found myself tracking the scars on his forearms, the strange symmetry of damage and healing. I hated the way it made me feel—like I was staring at a weapons cache and wanting to touch every piece.
I managed a breath. “You’re not a bodyguard.”
He shrugged. “No. I’m worse.”
I tried to think of a comeback, but my brain got stuck on the word “worse,” the way he’d said it like a confession. My eyes dropped, not by choice, and I caught the line of his abs, the way the jeans hung off his hips—barely legal, and not at all accidental.
He noticed, and the corner of his mouth twitched. I blushed, hating myself for it.
He straightened, walking around the island. “You ever think of leaving all this?” he asked, not unkind.
“Every day.” I tried to turn the words into a joke, but it came out too soft.
He poured me another coffee, this time adding a slug of bourbon from the bottle on the counter. “Don’t. That’s what he wants. He’s trying to smoke you out, make you panic.”
He slid the mug to me, close enough that our fingers brushed. His hand lingered for a second, thumb grazing my knuckles before he pulled away. Static shot up my arm, or maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe just hunger in a new and dangerous form.
I drank, the heat mixing with the burn of the whiskey. “What happens now?” I said.
Shivs set the phone down, finally meeting my eyes. His gaze was predatory—not cruel, but searching, the way a wolf might measure the distance before a leap.
“Now you outsmart him,” he said. “You show up to work. You act like you own the place. You make them chase you in daylight.”
He wiped bacon grease from his hands, then from mine, using a linen napkin so soft it almost made me laugh. I looked at his face, at the jaw that could cut glass, at the impossible green of his eyes.
“You don’t trust me,” he said, almost an accusation.
“I don’t trust anyone.”
He smiled again, wider this time, and I realized it was the first real smile I’d seen from him. “Good,” he said. “It means you might make it.”
For a moment, we just stood there, the sun painting both of us in the awkward hush. I wondered if he felt the charge in the room, or if I was just a rookie at this kind of closeness. I wanted to break the silence, but didn’t trust my own voice.
He moved first, gathering up the phones into a battered old ammo case. “I’ll have someone take this to Lexington. Might shake something loose.”
“You guys must do this a lot,” I said.
He nodded, pride in his smile. “More than I’d like to admit.”
“So what do I do? Stay in hiding?”
He paused in the doorway, silhouetted by the morning glare. “Be seen. Act alive. Make them work for it.”
“Good answer.”
I sat at the counter, the plate of food untouched, and let the morning wrap around me. For a moment, I let myself believe that I was safe, that the monsters outside were at bay. I closed my eyes, savoring the warmth in my chest—the coffee, the bourbon, the echo of his fingers on my hand.