Chapter Twenty-Five #2
We slide in across from them without ceremony. I don’t offer a hand, nor does Roman. We’ve never done that, and there’s no reason to start now.
Roman is in his mid-forties. Silver hair, a suit that costs more than most people’s monthly wage, eyes that have spent decades looking at men across tables and calculating the distance between what they say and what they mean.
He looks at me with calculation, and I let him look, because what he’s going to find is exactly what I intend for him to find.
“Sin,” he says.
“Roman.”
He gestures. “I have to say, I was surprised to get your message. Given the circumstances.”
“The circumstances are why I’m here,” I say.
I don’t grab the folder straight away. My hand rests on the edge of the table for a second, fingers spreading slightly, feeling the worn grain of the wood under my palm. The table is solid, anchored, unlike everything else in the room.
The weight of attention settles in, quiet but unmistakable. Cutlery pauses mid-air at nearby tables. A low murmur from the bar carries and thins.
Then I reach inside my cut.
It’s a small movement, ordinary, but it lands like a trigger.
Chairs shift behind Roman. Not loud, but sharp enough to cut through the background noise. His men move in sync, hands already halfway to weapons, jackets pulling tight across their shoulders, their eyes locking on me with trained, immediate focus.
I feel it all without looking.
I slow, stopping just enough, my hand paused inside my leather cut. My gaze lifts, tracking across them, one by one, letting them see that I’ve noticed exactly where their hands are, and exactly how fast they’re willing to move.
A faint smirk pulls at my mouth. “Bit early to start pulling guns in a packed restaurant, don’t you think?” I say, conversational, like we’re discussing the wine list instead of escalation. “We haven’t even ordered.”
The waiter hovering two tables over freezes completely, tray balanced mid-air.
No one laughs.
The tension tightens instead, stretching thin across the space, waiting for someone to snap it.
Roman doesn’t raise his voice. He simply waves his hand dismissively. “Stand down.”
It lands like a decision already made. The movement unwinds just as cleanly as it began. Hands ease back. Jackets settle. Shoulders drop a fraction, but the focus doesn’t leave me.
Once his goons have stowed their weapons, only then do I finish the motion, sliding my hand free and placing the object on the table between us.
Which is definitely not a gun.
It’s just a Manila folder.
Creased at one corner, softened from being handled too many times. Plain paper inside. No letterhead, no names, nothing that tells a story except the one written in the numbers.
I set it down between us and slide it across the table. “Take your time,” I say.
Roman looks at me for one full second before he opens it. One of his flanking men reaches forward, but Roman stops him with a small movement of his hand.
He opens the folder himself.
He reads.
I watch his face.
I’ve been watching faces across tables for a long time, and I am good at it.
I know what the first moment of recognition looks like, the slight stiffening, the recalibration behind the eyes.
I know what it looks like when a man who is accustomed to being the person with the most information in any room realizes he is not that person tonight.
Roman turns three pages without speaking. His left hand, resting on the table, goes very still. “Where did you get this?” he grumbles. It’s not a question. It’s something different.
“Jonas McClane kept meticulous records,” I say.
“Three years of them. Ever since you kidnapped his daughter. Every payment, every account, every confirmation. He was a very careful man…” I pause.
“You should have thought about that before you took his documentation and pointed it directly at my prospect.”
Roman closes the folder and sets it flat on the table. His expression holds, unchanged to anyone who isn’t looking closely.
But I notice.
“That’s a significant collection of documents,” he says.
“It is.”
“I’d like to discuss—”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” I say, my voice flat, like I’ve already worked this through and the answer doesn’t change.
You. Are. Fucked!
“You tried to put one of mine in prison using a dying man’s records.
You extorted Jonas McClane for years to keep his daughter safe from you, and then you used his own documentation of your crimes as a weapon.
” I let that sit. “That file goes out at midnight tonight,” I continue.
“The Gaming Control Board. The IRS. The FBI. And two journalists who have been trying to write this story for years and have never been able to get the documentation to support it.”
Roman goes very still.
“You have until midnight to make sure your people are nowhere near McClane Mining, nowhere near the people connected to it, and nowhere near anyone with a patch from Las Vegas Defiance. That message goes to everyone in your organization. Tonight. Before the hour.”
I hold his gaze. “You understand leverage. You’ve been using it for decades. So, I know you understand what I’m telling you.”
A long silence stretches. One of the flanking men shifts, draws, and aims the gun directly at me. Suddenly, a woman screams, and the room fractures.
People are on their feet instantly, chairs scraping, glasses tipping, bodies pushing toward the exits in a sudden, desperate rush.
I don’t flinch.
I don’t even blink.
“And if we choose not to comply…” Roman says, his voice smooth and practiced, the kind that has never answered to anyone, “… with your… ultimatum.”
Behind him, the restaurant crumbles into noise and movement, people shouting, running, scrambling for the exits.
Roman doesn’t even look. His attention stays locked on me, unbroken.
“The file still goes at midnight,” I say. “The only choice you have to make is whether this turns bloody here or not. Your man pulled the gun first, and people are panicking right now, so from where I am sitting, if we have to draw our weapons, we will be the ones claiming self-defense here.”
Roman turns as the room erupts, a woman crying out, chairs slamming back, feet pounding across tile as people surge for the exits. A child is pulled past us, half-carried, half-dragged.
Roman huffs, irritated by the disruption, and signals lazily to his man to lower the gun.
He hesitates, but reluctantly does as his capo instructs.
I pick up the folder and slide it back into my cut. “You don’t get a copy,” I say, standing. “This was a courtesy. So, you can’t say you didn’t know it was coming.”
I look at Roman one last time. The calculation in his eyes has shifted into something else now, more serious, like he’s finished the math and doesn’t like the number he’s landed on.
I don’t enjoy it.
I expected to, and I don’t.
What I feel instead is something much simpler.
Finality.
“Jonas McClane sends his regards,” I say.
And then I nod at my brothers, and we leave.
***
The clubhouse is loud when we get back.
I expected a subdued version of the place, brothers waiting with beers and measured tension.
Instead, I walk through the door, and the main room is full.
Not just the patched members who were in the Chapel.
Will is here, as I expected, anxiously waiting to see how it went.
Bear is here, standing by the bar, the way Bear always stands near a room’s exit when he’s waiting for something.
Victoria is on the sofa with Millie beside her, which I did not expect and should have, because Millie and Victoria have been moving through this thing together, and I should have known Millie would be here when it ended.
She looks up the second I walk in. Her eyes lock onto mine straight away, tense and searching, like she’s been bracing for bad news and is trying to figure out if this is finally the moment everything breaks open.
I find Will across the room. He’s standing against the far wall, arms loose at his sides, watching me with the patience that is his version of barely held stillness.
I hold his gaze for a second.
Then I nod.
Something shifts in his face. Barely.
Deek, who misses nothing despite appearing to observe nothing, starts clapping.
Slow at first, then faster, then Koa joins in, and Mace after him, and within about four seconds the whole room is slow-clapping, brothers and women both, Ro included, standing on the bar step to get some height, Marley laughing into her hand beside Nitro.
Ghost comes in behind me and stops in the doorway, looking mildly horrified by the noise level, which is exactly the reaction I predicted from Ghost, and I find it briefly, exhaustingly satisfying.
I let it run for a moment, then raise a hand, and the room finds its way back to itself.
“Not done yet,” I say. “File goes at midnight. We wait.”
“Can we wait with drinks?” Deek calls out.
“Jesus, Deek, anyone would think you’re an alcoholic,” Bear grumbles.
“I’m just asking. It’s a reasonable—”
“Fuck yeah,” I chime, because we’ve earned it and because the alternative is standing here in tense silence for hours, and that is not how this club operates.
“We can wait with drinks.” I slide the poker chip in my pocket, leave my hand there, and take one long, slow breath that goes further down than the ones I’ve been taking for the last several weeks.
Now… we wait.