Chapter Five
WILL
The Next Morning
Ghost doesn’t pace when something’s bothering him. He goes dead still instead, which is honestly a whole lot more unnerving than watching somebody wear grooves into the floor.
He’s standing in front of the main screen in the tech den with his arms crossed, watching the data scroll past with that tight, locked-in focus that usually means he’s already figured the problem out and is waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
Sin stands beside him, one shoulder propped against the wall. His poker chip turns between his fingers, slow and unhurried, one rotation, then another, at odds with the tight set of his jaw.
“How far back?” Sin asks.
“Six months.” Ghost’s voice carries no inflection.
He taps the keyboard, and the screen rearranges itself into a timeline, rows of encrypted traffic spiking at irregular intervals across six months.
“This is not reactive. They didn’t start watching the mine because of Friday night.
Friday night was a consequence. They’ve been building a picture of the property for months.
Access points, security rotation, and floodlight positions.
They know what the cameras cover and, more importantly… what they don’t.”
The silence in the room takes on weight.
Nitro’s big arms are crossed, his jaw hard.
Deek is leaning back in his chair with his expression flat and careful, which is the expression my dickhead brother wears when he’s keeping his reaction from showing.
Koa keeps glancing at me sideways, like he’s checking whether I’m going to say something or whether he needs to say it first.
I’m a prospect for another nineteen days…
So I don’t say anything.
I stand at the back of the room with my hands in my pockets and watch the timeline on Ghost’s screen, reminding myself, steadily and without success, that this is a tactical briefing. That this is information, not a fire to run toward.
“They didn’t go in the other night to take anything,” Ghost continues.
“The two individuals Millie observed were reconnaissance. They confirmed what the surveillance traffic had already been mapping. They’re ready to move.
Friday was merely confirmation. The next phase will be something more direct. ”
Sin’s chip goes still in his palm. “Timeline?”
“Could be days. It could be weeks. This escalation pattern isn’t patient.”
A beat passes where nobody moves, the tension loosening for a second before reality crashes straight back in.
Sin pushes off the wall and looks around with the kind of unhurried authority that never needs to announce itself.
“Chapel. Now… you too, Prospect,” he says, and that’s the end of Ghost’s briefing.
We all make our way out of the den and head toward the Chapel.
Deek smirks at me, his shoulder bumping into mine as we head toward the Chapel. “Making it into the big leagues early, little bro. I don’t think any prospect has been to this many Church meetings. I always knew you were special.” He emphasizes the last word for dramatic effect.
I groan at him as we make it into the meeting room, the brothers all taking up their spaces around the table. Years of decisions made inside the same four walls have soaked into the place, leaving it with a weight of its own.
When I’m allowed in this room, my place is against the wall. Not at the table. Not even beside it, but close enough to hear if they want me to, close enough to move if I’m told.
Most of the time, I don’t get past the door.
Church is patched business.
Prospects wait outside unless someone decides they’re useful enough to be brought in.
Today, I’m allowed.
That fact isn’t lost on me.
Privilege in this room isn’t comfort. It’s an expectation of pressure, and the unspoken understanding that whatever happens next, I’m being measured while it does. Soon, I’m supposed to step across that invisible line and sit where the real decisions are made.
This morning, nineteen days feels like a lifetime.
Sin bangs the gavel on the table, hushing the voices in the room. “All right fuckers, shut up. Ghost, go ahead,” he says, and the room settles.
Chairs scrape once, then still. Every set of eyes goes to the head of the table.
Ghost leans forward slightly, forearms on the wood, already halfway into whatever he’s been compiling since Friday night.
“Two unknown males on Jonas’ perimeter,” he says.
“Deliberate movement. Survey behavior. Plates pulled from the dashcam, but they’re likely clean or cloned. No immediate digital flags.”
Nitro exhales through his nose. “Alliance?”
“Too early to tell,” Ghost replies. “But they sure as fuck weren’t tourists.”
Sin’s poker chip rolls once between his fingers, slow and rhythmic. “We treat it like a precursor,” he says. “Not an incident.”
Everyone in the room shifts. Precursor means escalation, means planning, means the club doesn’t wait for confirmation before moving.
“Millie can’t stay exposed,” Koa says.
“She won’t,” Sin replies, letting the silence sit for a beat.
Something in my chest loosens, the sense of a weight shifting position instead of crushing straight down.
Then he speaks again, “Millie gets a formal security detail until we know what we’re dealing with.”
My jaw tightens before I can stop it.
Good.
Necessary.
Also, not enough.
No one argues. No one even looks like they are considering it. Of course they aren’t. This isn’t about preference, this is about territory, about what happens when someone tests the edges of something the club considers its own.
And she is…
… whether anyone says it out loud or not.
This is the part where leadership stops being a discussion and becomes direction.
Sin’s gaze moves around the table, measuring agreement without asking for it. I feel it before it reaches me, the way pressure builds before a storm breaks.
“Objections?”
None.
“Good.” He nods once. “Then we formalize it.”
Hands lift in sequence. I watch them go up like a series of small, irreversible decisions, wishing more than anything I could raise my hand. Put my vote in to protect her.
But I am a fucking prospect.
What I want doesn’t count.
But this is what protection looks like here. It is structured, controlled, and goddamn effective.
My brain keeps circling back to the moment Sin told us.
Not the specifics, but the tone. The way he shifted from listening to acting in the space of a single breath.
I didn’t hear her voice, but I heard what fear sounds like when it reaches this table.
That was enough.
The vote carries without opposition. It was never going to go any other way. I knew that before Ghost finished talking. I knew it the second Sin told us what happened.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t on that call.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t hear her.
My body made the decision first.
Because once something threatens her, it stops being a club issue.
And it becomes mine.
Sin’s eyes land on me. That’s deliberate. Prospects don’t vote, but this isn’t about voting. This is about who’s willing to stand in front of whatever comes next.
“You in?” he asks, focused directly on me.
There isn’t a version of this where I say no, but I hesitate, purely because I am nineteen days out, and Millie has been the one distraction I’ve been actively trying to avoid in stopping me from getting my patch.
“Will?” he asks, knocking me out of my rambling thoughts.
“Yes,” I say, before he finishes the question.
Nitro, across the table, lets out a heavy exhale. He looks at the surface of the table, then back up at me, and whatever he’s thinking stays behind his eyes where it belongs.
Sin’s chip resumes its rotation, and Deek smiles at me in that older brother way that tells me I just royally screwed myself in the ass.
But it’s my father’s expression that really shocks me.
He half smiles, giving me a small head bob in what appears to be approval. That’s not what I was expecting at all.
Sin clears his throat, banging his gavel on the table once more.
“Well then, now we have that shit settled. Will is on Millie while the rest of us figure out if it is the Alliance that is scoping out the mine. Nitro, put a call out to Jonas… I want him to come in so we can fill him in on everything we know so far.”
Nitro bobs his head in understanding. “Got it.”
Sin’s eyes meet mine across the room with a knowing stare. “And prospect…” I raise my brow in response. “You’re close to your patch, don’t do anything fucking stupid.”
“You got it, Pres,” I tell him.
Sin waves his hand through the air with a heavy grunt. “Right, everyone get the fuck out, and someone tell Liam to get me a beer. These prospects are too damn lazy.”
I smirk as the rest of the guys stand from the table, and we start heading out of the Chapel.
The first thing I do is head for Liam to tell him to get Sin a damn beer.
***
Jonas arrives at the clubhouse at two in the afternoon, same as he does every month.
He parks his truck in the same spot he always uses, comes through the same door, accepts the same offer of whiskey from Ro, who appears from somewhere, and hands it to him before he has time to ask twice.
There’s a syncopated rhythm to Jonas McClane at the clubhouse that the whole place seems to reorganize itself around when he walks in.
He’s not club, and everyone knows it, but there’s a quality to the way he carries himself through these rooms that isn’t civilian either.
He occupies the space between those two things with an easy comfort, as if he’s long since made peace with living in the gray.
He and Sin disappear into the Chapel for forty minutes.
While I wait.