Chapter 13
KEVLAR
The undercurrent of tension in King’s office was easily felt, but only someone truly attuned to this brotherhood would have picked up on the edge of violence.
It was the dark and lethal part of the club.
It didn’t rule us, but it was always there.
Although I’d seen it fade more and more when my brothers were around their wives and children.
But when the danger was directed at their families, that edge turned into something fierce.
I’d never fully understood before now. Because I’d never felt anything so strong until I claimed Maren.
Blaze stood near the bar, arms folded, a glass of whiskey in hand, wearing an easy expression.
Tomcat had parked himself in one of the oversized armchairs, leg bent, his ankle propped on the other knee.
He and Rebel were engaged in a conversation that had them both smirking.
Ace was pacing slowly at the back of the room, his brows furrowed as he tapped on his tablet.
Cruze was sprawled on the couch playing with the locking mechanism for a safe like it was a Rubik's Cube. As one of our enforcers, he was the one leading the breach tonight. Before he’d patched with the Hounds, he’d been a ghost—one of the most elusive thieves in the world.
His identity was never confirmed, though, and his alias was still whispered with awe in certain circles.
Now, he used those skills for the club. Mostly.
Wizard was seated at the head of the conference table, his laptop open and the screen angled toward him. I stood behind him, my arms crossed, spine straight, and my whole focus locked on the screen.
We weren’t planning a takedown. Not yet. This run was about intelligence gathering. Strategy. The kind of precision work that made sure we didn’t get sloppy—or dead.
I pointed at something on Wizard’s computer, and he nodded, then tapped the table once to get everyone’s attention. “All right. We finally pinned it.”
He’d connected his laptop to the flatscreen in the office, so he was able to throw the image up on the screen. It showed a squat, concrete building on the outskirts of Riverstone, half hidden behind chain-link fencing and scrubby trees. At first glance, it looked dull and forgettable.
I took the chair next to Wizard as he went on to explain.
“That is officially listed as a municipal utilities depot. Water pressure regulation, electrical redundancy, and emergency infrastructure storage. That kind of shit.”
Ace snorted quietly. “And unofficially?”
Wizard’s mouth curved into a humorless smile. “A major pipeline node. Storage, staging, and redistribution. Clean paperwork, but a dirty purpose.”
My jaw tightened as I studied the image Wizard had shown me this morning. I’d driven past that building more times than I could count. We all had. The idea that it had been sitting there the whole time, quietly feeding something rotten into our territory, made my blood burn.
Blaze pushed off the wall. “You’re sure?”
Wizard didn’t respond, just shot him a glare that would have made a lesser man wet his pants.
Blaze held up his hands in surrender and chuckled. “Stupid question.”
“Damn straight,” Wizard grumbled, turning his attention back to his screen.
“Security?” Cruze asked. I’d never seen him rattled by anything. It was gonna be fun watching him lose control when he met the right woman.
Wizard tapped the corner of his screen, switching to a schematic of the warehouse compound.
“Front-facing business looks like the typical utilities depot, but that’s smoke.
Security is layered. Heat sensors along the fence line, infrared-triggered floodlights, and rotating digital locks on both entry points.
No exterior signage. No traffic in or out unless it’s controlled. ”
He zoomed in, highlighting camera placements across the perimeter.
“Twelve high-res cams with thermal, all patched to a remote loop. Facial recognition on gate access. The night crew rotates every three nights—same faces, different order. They run a four-man rotation from eleven to five, plus an off-site response team on standby two miles out.”
Cruze muttered, “Efficient but not subtle.”
“Exactly,” Wizard agreed. “They want it quiet, but if it goes loud, they’re ready to bury the problem and bleach the floor.”
Cruze leaned forward, his fingers steepled as he studied the map. “Don’t need to go loud. You slip the IR with a blackout field, time the patrol shift on a soft loop, and crack the gate sync with a cloned badge. From there, it’s just a matter of not breathing too loud.”
“Money trail checks out, too,” Ace added. “Payments routed through three shell accounts, then buried under public works contracts. It’s clean enough that no auditor would blink unless they already knew where to look.”
King had been silent through all of it. Watching, listening, and weighing. When he finally spoke, the room went still.
“Let’s get this done. I want to know what the fuck we’re dealing with so we can shut it down.”
“Dunbar?” Rebel asked, sensing there was more to King’s statement.
“All of it. But we’ll start with the motherfucker poisoning our territory.”
“When?” Tomcat asked.
Wizard glanced at me before answering. “Three a.m.”
I nodded.
“Maren gets off shift at two,” Wizard added. “I want her back here before we move.”
King’s gaze cut to me, sharp and assessing. “You staying put with her until then?”
“Of course,” I replied evenly.
“This is a recon-first operation,” Blaze stated. “We get eyes inside, confirm contents, tag anything that needs tracking, and get out. We’re not burning it down tonight.”
Tomcat cocked his head, deadpan. “Guess that’s why you’re not coming along.”
Our VP had earned his road name because he was an expert in fire. During his time in the military, Blaze had earned a Ph.D. in Combustion Science and had become a pyrologist. His talents came in very handy when we needed to fake a death by fire or destroy evidence conspicuously.
Although it didn’t take fire for him to be dangerous. He was a lethal motherfucker with any kind of weapon, something we all respected.
Blaze sipped his whiskey before responding. “I don’t need flames to get shit done. I just like the smell of victory better when it’s charred.”
“I rest my case,” Tomcat smirked.
King huffed in annoyance, making it clear he wanted to return to the matter at hand.
Rebel glanced at the TV before his gaze landed on the prez. “I get it’s recon. In and out, but what if we run into trouble?”
King didn’t hesitate. “Handle it. Quietly.”
We hammered out a few more details until everything was aligned—the timing, location, purpose, and how it would go down. All that was left was execution.
As I leaned back in my chair, arms crossing over my chest, the weight of what we were walking into didn’t settle heavy on my shoulders. It felt familiar. Like something I’d been carrying too long, and now it was just finally time to put it down.
Dunbar.
That name had sat like rot in my bloodstream for years.
Poison without an antidote. Back then, when we were searching for him, I’d told myself it wasn’t my place to take him out.
I figured that command would handle it, assuming he’d never see the light of day again.
That the system, broken as it was, would catch up to him eventually.
I expected his trial would end in his execution after all the shit we’d discovered—the trail of bodies he’d left behind him.
But the truth was simpler.
I’d left it to someone else to pull the trigger.
And now he was here. In the light of day. In my town. My territory. Circling my woman like she was some piece to be removed from a board he thought he still controlled.
This time, I was the system. And there wouldn’t be a damn trial. I’d already seen the damage he could do.
If I hadn’t been watching after Maren flinched that night in the diner, she might’ve vanished before we ever had a name.
No. That wasn’t happening.
This time, I was pulling the trigger.
And I wasn’t aiming for mercy.
Echo was already in place when we rolled out.
He’d parked across the street from the depot three hours earlier, hidden in the shadow of a derelict auto shop, monitoring Wizard’s tap into the exterior feeds and dragging nearby security cams into our network loop.
He was also listening, via his sophisticated surveillance equipment, to what was happening inside.
Movement patterns, the sounds of a TV or stereo, and any conversation that could give us intel that would make our breach easier.
By the time Rebel, Tomcat, Cruze, and I pulled up behind the warehouse, he’d already flagged blind spots and verified no incoming traffic since the guard rotation hit at one thirty.
We slipped through the perimeter fence without a sound, boots gliding over cracked asphalt, weapons low, and comms open.
Cruze bypassed the keypad with a homemade chip he soldered together last night, then popped the door with a quiet snort like the system had personally offended him.
We were inside less than five minutes after we arrived.
At first glance, the space looked like it was just a high-security storage warehouse. Metal shelves lined the interior, crates sealed and marked with innocuous shipping codes and municipal cover labels. Somehow, Cruze managed to silently peel one open with a crowbar.
“What the fuck?” he grunted. It was so quiet we wouldn’t have heard him without the comms. Tomcat glanced inside and whistled low through his teeth.
Once I saw what it contained, I understood their reactions.
Rifles. Brand new and military grade. Still in the foam casings.
“Shit,” Rebel muttered, crouching near one of the crates. “This is high-end distribution, not pass-through. Look how they’re staged.”
He was right. This wasn’t just inventory waiting for the next truck. It was order fulfillment.
Cruze ran a slow circle around the far side of the warehouse, then dropped into a crouch by a low wall section that looked off. “Hidden office. Tucked behind the eastern pallets. Vents wired for sound capture. My guess? Admin space for on-site ops.”
Which meant they were planning to manage from here. Not move through.
I stood in the center of it all, surrounded by crates of blood money. Every breath came slower. This wasn’t just about transport. This wasn’t a step in the path.
Dunbar wanted Riverstone as a base.
Covered by our name.
Fury twisted in my gut. This was exactly the kind of move he’d make—hide in the open and gamble that no one would come looking for him in Hounds territory.
My fingers itched to take down every guard, torture them until they gave up Dunbar’s location, and then put the motherfucker in the ground.
But there was a reason this mission was strictly recon. Acting on instinct could get me killed, which would leave Maren vulnerable, something I would never willingly do.
On the way out, something grabbed my attention—no reason, just instinct.
A black contractor bag leaned half-open near the exit.
I crouched, pushed it open, and found shreds of paper.
They were small and precise, the cuts following a pattern.
Shredded documents that looked too clean to be routine disposal.
I didn’t think, just grabbed the whole damn bag.
Back at the clubhouse, we handed everything over. Wizard and Cruze ran digital recovery, but we gave the analog shit to the prospects. Let them dig through shredded paper that needed to be manually pieced together.
They stayed up all night, bent over card tables with tape, tweezers, and probably cursing fits that got more creative with each hour.
I crashed for a while, but it was barely after sunrise before someone was pounding on my door.
“Hold up!” I called out.
Maren bolted up in bed, but I kissed her softly and urged her to lie down and go back to sleep.
When I opened the door, with every intention of beating the shit out of whoever it was for waking Maren, I stopped short. Blaze stood there with a hard expression and a paper in his hand. “Get dressed. Now.”
Without a question, I quickly dressed, kissed Maren’s forehead, and followed Blaze downstairs.
King, Wizard, and Ace were already waiting at the table when we walked into my office, which sometimes doubled as a war room, in no small part because it was next to the armory. Knowing our inventory was vital to our plans.
Blaze handed me the memo without a word, and I read it twice before I really understood what was on the page.
It was a kill order. For Maren.
Issued after the failed grab. Directed to Dunbar, not from him.
He wasn’t the first link in the chain. I’d assumed this was his operation because he’d always worked alone in the past. But this was proof that he answered to someone. Before we even touched the syndicates selling and buying the merchandise, we had to deal with whoever Dunbar was in bed with.
He had obviously tried to pass the failure off by requesting permission for the "elimination" of Maren Whitlock instead. And whoever sat higher in the chain gave him one answer.
Elimination request granted.
Maren wasn’t just a loose end to Dunbar; she was a loose end to whoever he answered to.
King’s face was a mask of steel. “This isn’t about a weapons pipeline anymore. It’s a territorial incursion from a syndicate that thought we wouldn’t notice until it was too late.”
Rebel’s knuckles cracked. Tomcat said nothing, but his eyes had gone dead cold.
“We find out who gave the order,” King added. “Then we burn their whole fucking operation to the ground.”
He didn’t need to tell us what to do next. We all knew.
Prep for war.
When I got back to my room, the adrenaline was still pumping. I stepped inside and saw Maren curled up on the bed, wearing my shirt, and something in my chest locked tight.
Maren blinked awake as I crouched beside her. “Hey, you okay?”
“No,” I murmured. “But I will be when you’re safe.”
“What’s happened?” she asked, sounding more alert now.
She didn’t need to know the full truth. “There’s more to this than we thought.”
Her brows furrowed, but she didn’t press.
I smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her once.
“You’re on lockdown, baby,” I whispered. “Until this is over, you don’t step a foot outside the compound.”
She blinked, then nodded, trusting me without question.
Warmth swirled around the tight knot in my gut, and I almost told her that I loved her. But she deserved to hear it for the first time when nothing was hanging over us, and she knew without a doubt that I meant it.