Chapter 30
I know something’s wrong before anybody says a damn word.
It starts as one of those tiny shifts you only catch if you’ve spent most of your life surviving rooms before they turn ugly.
The clubhouse feels…off.
Not loud. Not chaotic. Not dangerous in the obvious, immediate way.
Just tighter.
Too many brothers in the same place without the usual loose rhythm to it. Too much silence in the spaces where there should be background bullshit. Too many eyes cutting toward Logan’s office and then away again.
It’s barely after eight, and I’m already standing in the kitchen with a mug of coffee going cold in my hand while Raven sits at the table with Lexi in her lap helping her peel the wrapper off a cereal bar like the world hasn’t shifted under our feet overnight.
She’s wearing my sweatshirt again. Hair down. Sleep still soft around the edges of her face. No makeup. Bare feet tucked under the chair.
And Lexi’s got Bunny wedged under one arm while she argues with Raven about whether or not cereal bars count as “real breakfast.”
This.
This right here is exactly why the wrong kind of news hits harder than it should.
Because one second I’m looking at the two of them like they’re the only thing in the room worth seeing, and the next Logan appears in the kitchen doorway and says, “Joker.”
That’s it.
Just my name. But the tone of it tells me enough. I set the mug down without taking another drink.
Raven looks up immediately. Her body doesn’t tense the way it used to, not all at once, not like a cornered animal anymore, but I still catch the flicker.
That old instinct. That split-second alertness. That buried fear that wakes up fast when the atmosphere changes around her.
I hate that.
I hate that some part of her still lives like the world can tip without warning. And I hate even more that this time, it can.
Logan jerks his chin once toward the hall. “Now.”
I nod. No questions. Not here.
Because Raven’s already watching me too closely, and Lexi’s little enough not to understand words like threat and surveillance but old enough to feel when the adults around her stop pretending everything’s fine.
So I don’t give her anything to clock.
I just cross the kitchen, press a quick hand to the back of Raven’s neck as I pass, and murmur low enough only she can hear, “I’ll be back.”
Her amber eyes search mine immediately. Too sharp. Too intuitive. She doesn’t ask in front of Lexi.
That alone tells me she knows enough to be scared already.
I hate that too.
Then I follow Logan down the hall.
***
His office door shuts behind us with Dom, Shadow, Blaze, and Cain already inside.
Nobody’s sitting. That’s my first clue this is worse than annoying.
The second is Dom’s face.
He’s not expressive on a good day, but right now there’s a specific kind of focused, irritated stillness on him that means he’s found something ugly enough to piss him off intellectually, which usually means the rest of us are about to get pissed off in more violent ways.
Logan doesn’t waste time. “We’ve got a breach.”
The words hit my chest like a hammer, but outwardly I don’t move.
I just look at him and wait. Because if I move too soon, if I react before I know the shape of it, I’m gonna end up putting my fist through a wall and that won’t help anybody.
“What kind?” I ask.
Dom turns his laptop toward me. And that’s when I see it.
Raven.
It’s a photo. Taken from a distance. Grainy, but clear enough.
She’s outside the little grocery store in town from yesterday afternoon, Lexi on one hip, a bag in her free hand, hair up under a cap and sunglasses on but still unmistakably her if you know what the hell you’re looking for.
My entire body goes cold. Not hot. Not explosive.
Cold.
The kind of cold that means bloodshed is no longer theoretical. The kind that starts in the spine and moves outward until every part of you sharpens around it. I stare at the image long enough to make sure I’m not imagining it.
Then I ask, very evenly, “Who took it?”
Dom’s fingers move over the keyboard. “Not confirmed yet. It was sent to a burner tied to one of Grinder’s backup lines about thirty minutes ago.”
That gets my attention off the screen. “What’d it say?”
Dom’s jaw tightens. Then he reads it flat.
Pretty thing. Shame if she ran out of places to hide.
The room goes dead fucking silent.
I don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t breathe.
Because if I do, if I let myself fully react to those words right this second, there’s a good chance I’ll leave this room and start breaking every male body within a fifty-mile radius until I find the one that deserves it.
Blaze, to his credit, is the first one stupid enough to speak. “Well,” he says slowly, “that’s murder-y.”
Cain looks like he’s already mentally choosing a shovel.
Shadow doesn’t say a word, which is worse.
Logan’s gaze stays on me. Watching. Assessing. Probably measuring exactly how close I am to going feral.
Close.
Very fucking close.
“What else?” I ask.
Because there has to be more. There’s always more.
Logan nods once toward Shadow.
Shadow pushes off the wall and folds his arms. “One of our town eyes called in around dawn. Said a detective badge got flashed at a motel clerk near the interstate last night. Guy was asking about out-of-state women, one with a little girl. Not by name. Fishing.”
That makes the cold in my body settle deeper. More precise.
“Description?”
“Matches Cal close enough to piss me off,” Shadow says.
“Vehicle?”
“Rental. White SUV. Tennessee plates. Probably temporary.”
Dom cuts in before I can ask the next question. “And if that wasn’t enough, one of Cal’s family-linked names pinged a gas station card purchase in Bartsville just before midnight.”
I turn slowly toward him. “What?”
He nods once, jaw tight. “Brother-in-law or cousin, something adjacent. One of the names connected to his family’s local political donor network. Used a card at a station three miles out.”
That one lands harder than the rest. Because a picture and a threat are one thing. A detective sniffing around town is another. But one of Cal’s people physically being here?
That’s not pressure. That’s proximity. That’s feet on the ground. That’s the kind of thing that turns a situation from dangerous to active.
I look back at the picture of Raven on Dom’s screen.
At Lexi’s little legs wrapped around her mother’s waist. At the grocery bag in Raven’s hand. At the ordinary shape of the moment. And all I can think is that some motherfucker stood somewhere close enough to photograph them while they were just living.
Just breathing. Just existing in the smallest, most normal way. And he thought that was his right.
The room is still talking around me.
Logan saying something about tightening perimeters. Cain mentioning gate rotation. Blaze already listing likely entry routes if someone’s trying to move from soft surveillance to contact.
I hear all of it. I process all of it. But underneath every word, there’s a darker, simpler thought moving through me like a second heartbeat.
He got eyes on them.
That alone is enough to make murder feel like a reasonable administrative task.
“Joker.” Logan’s voice cuts through whatever the hell is happening in my head.
I look at him.
His expression is flat and calm and knowing. He knows me too well not to understand exactly what’s sitting under my skin right now. And because he’s not stupid, he says the thing I need him to say before I go make a terrible decision out of instinct. “Not yet.”
That’s all.
Not calm down. Not be smart. Not don’t do anything stupid.
Just, not yet.
Meaning…
We will if we have to.
I know where your head is.
Don’t force my hand before we have enough to close around his throat properly.
I hold his gaze for one beat. Then nod once.
Because he’s right. Because rage is useful only if you leash it first. Because I can’t protect Raven and Lexi if I go full animal before I know where to aim.
But Christ, it’s close.
Real close.
The hardest part of the morning isn’t the picture.
It isn’t the message.
It isn’t even the fact that Cal’s people are physically close enough to start breathing down the edges of our life. It’s the fact that I have to walk back out into that kitchen and look Raven in the eye and tell her the danger isn’t theoretical anymore.
I don’t want to. Not because I think she can’t handle it.
She can. She’s handled more than anybody ever should’ve asked her to.
But because for the last couple weeks, despite the fear under everything, despite the planning and the cameras and the extra eyes and the contingency routes and the constant background hum of threat, she’s had something that almost looked like peace.
Not perfect peace. Not permanent. But enough. Enough to laugh. Enough to breathe. Enough to let Lexi start acting like a little girl again instead of a witness.
And now I have to be the one to put a crack straight through the middle of it.
I find her in my room.
She must’ve read enough off my face when I came out of Logan’s office to know I wasn’t coming back with good news.
Lexi’s not with her.
That’s the first thing I notice.
The second thing I notice is Raven standing near the bed, arms folded tight over her middle, amber eyes locked on the door before I even fully step through it.
The second I shut it behind me, she asks, “What happened?”
No preamble. No pretending. No false softness. Just straight to the wound.
I lean back against the door for half a second and look at her.
Actually look. At the tension in her shoulders. At the way she’s trying to hold herself upright by force. At the fact that she’s already scared and still standing there anyway.
“Talk to me,” she says quietly.
So I do. Because there’s no version of this where lying helps.
I tell her about the photo first.
Her face drains of color so fast it almost makes me stop talking altogether.
Then I tell her about the message. Then the motel clerk. Then the detective badge. Then the family-linked gas station purchase. And by the time I’m done, the room feels too small to hold all the fear that just flooded into it.