Chapter 10 #2
“There’s something else, though,” Deviant grunted. “That bike your woman stole? It’s registered to an enforcer for the Broken Skulls MC.”
“Fuck,” Kane hissed, his hands curling into fists.
The Broken Skulls were an MC in the next territory over. They were every bad thing you’d ever heard about motorcycle clubs. Had no problem crossing any fucking line—the prez would sell out his mother if it meant gaining more power.
“Broken Skulls did this?” Edge asked even though his mouth said he already knew the answer wasn’t that clean.
I shook my head. “Skulls don’t have that kind of polish on their paperwork.”
“The people we’re looking for,” Jax murmured, “they’d outsource. Hire mercenaries to grab the bag and keep their fingerprints off the panic.”
“The Skulls were muscle, along with the professional mercenaries, then?” Edge mused.
“Maybe,” Deviant replied. “Or they have an insider who told them about the handoff, and they tried to intercept the ball.”
Jax pointed at the screen with The Ledger still displayed. “Whoever bankrolled this is still in the dark. I’m sniffing, but if the buyer used a cut-out shell, it’ll take us time.”
“How much?” Kane asked.
Jax shrugged one shoulder. “Helix layers are like nesting safes. You crack one, discover the next has a different lock brand. But The Ledger itself—this is the game-changer. We don’t have to knock on doors with guns and hope one opens.
We have the addresses.” He turned the center screen back to us.
“The first thing we need to decide is—how loud do we want to be? Because the second I poke this wrong, the people who think they own this will feel it like a wire yanked out of their tooth.”
Edge had his knife in his hand again, rolling it between his fingers, the lazy motion the opposite of his eyes. “We don’t shout first. We listen. We use the ledger like a radio, not a grenade.”
“Agreed,” Kane said.
“But someone is coming for her,” I argued. My voice was steady, so I didn’t spook Ashlynn with what I was really feeling inside. “The ones who lost their toy. Or the ones who want it before we hand it back to its builder.”
Jax nodded once. “I can pivot the sandbox into a honeypot. Salt some fake keys, lay a breadcrumb path that points down a hall with a camera. If they sniff us, we’ll sniff back.”
Edge flicked the knife shut. “While you’re playing chess, we put bodies on fences. Nitro can talk to our friend at the county comms center about spikes in off-books chatter. Rev can pull street ears. We’ll find the van’s driver and make him tell us what he knows.”
Kane pushed away from the wall, his eyes glinting like steel. “Do it.”
“Good,” I snarled. “Because once we figure out who swung at her, we swing back. Hard enough they forget they were born with teeth.”
I caught Ashlynn’s gaze again. She’d gone pale under all that sass, her eyes distant like she was already somewhere else, running scenarios in her head. I didn’t like any of the ones I imagined.
The vest shifted when she breathed. The collar brushed her neck, and it hit me again—my cut on her, my patch on that leather, my possessive instincts climbing up the walls like vines. Not because she needed a brand. Because the entire fucking world needed a warning label.
She was quiet for too long, and I knew what was coming before she opened her mouth.
“Mason…”
I knew that tone. I hated it.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“But—”
“No,” I said flatly.
“You don’t even know what I’m?—”
“You’re about to tell me to let you walk. Save it.”
Her shoulders pulled back, and there was a stubborn set to her jaw.
The one I found so fascinating and so damn frustrating at the same time.
“I’m serious, Mason. I don’t want to leave.
But if I stay, they’ll bring this here. To you.
To them.” She nodded toward my brothers.
“You could all take the hit just for being in the blast radius. I won’t let that happen. ”
The air in the office thinned. Kane didn’t move. Edge didn’t blink. Jax looked everywhere but at us.
“Angel—”
“I think you’re underestimating who’s on the other side of this,” she argued, turning to face me.
The ring of gray around her pupils looked like stormwater cut by the sun.
“These aren’t thugs who shake people down behind bars and threaten to smash kneecaps.
They’re…clean. Professional. They have budgets and backup plans. ”
“They bleed like anyone else,” I said with a shrug. “They just think they don’t.”
Kane straightened off the wall. The change in his posture made Edge’s knife disappear into his pocket without him looking at it.
Meeting adjourned.
“We move quiet,” Kane commanded. “Jax, keep pulling. Deviant, sit on his shoulder, slap his hand if he gets cute. Edge?—”
Edge nodded. “Already drafting a patrol schedule. I’ll ride the line with Rev.”
Kane’s gaze slid to me. He didn’t have to ask if I was good.
He could see the answer. He gave me one short nod, then a softer one to Ashlynn.
A sign of respect, not a blessing to her plan.
Then he left as abruptly as he came. Edge followed, and Jax packed two of the laptops into the Faraday case and left one open, muttering to Deviant about key ladders and checksum drift as he walked out the door.
Ashlynn stayed still for a moment after the door clicked and then stood so fast her chair legs squeaked. Her hands found each other and clasped, then unclasped, nervous energy searching for an outlet. Her eyes cut to me, and the fight was already on her tongue.
“I can disappear. Take the heat somewhere else.”
My blood was already boiling. Not just from the thought of her gone, but from the fact she actually thought she could walk away from me. That I would ever let her go.
I stood, and the scrape of my chair legs seemed louder in the quiet tension thickening the air.
Her chin tipped up like she could stare me down.
“You think this is just heat?” I asked, closing the distance between us.
“I think it’s a freaking firestorm, Mason, and I’m the reason it’s at your door.”
“Angel,” I gritted, the word coming out like gravel as I stepped in close enough that she had to tip her head back to keep my eyes, “you’re in my world now.”
Her chin lifted, stubborn as hell. “And I’m trying to get out of it before I burn it down.”
“It’s not yours to save.” The muscle in my jaw ticked hard enough to ache.
I didn’t give her the chance to run. I caught her wrist, not rough but firm, and walked her backward until she was pressed against the wall.
I planted my hands on either side of her head, boxing her in, close enough to catch the rush of her breath.
“You don’t get to decide who I fight for. ”
Her eyes searched mine. “Why are you fighting for me?”
It wasn’t a taunt. Wasn’t even a test. It was the naked question of a woman who didn’t see how someone could look at her and choose the harder road.
I let my gaze drop and did a quick, possessive sweep from her eyes to her mouth, then down to where my cut hung over her frame like a claim.
My blood pounded loud in my ears, and my body was on fire, desperate to get her naked and under me.
But not before we cleared this shit up. “I protect what’s mine, angel. ”
Something flickered in her expression—heat, relief, the barest hint of surrender—but her voice stayed steady. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough.”
Her pulse jumped in her throat again, and I slid my hand over it to feel it under my thumb. I wanted to take her back upstairs and mark her in ways that would make anyone who looked twice think better of it.
“You shouldn’t have to take fire meant for me.”
“This isn’t about taking fire. It’s about making sure it never gets close enough to touch you.”