Chapter 44
Knox
We're late. The detour cost us forty minutes, and by the time we roll through the gates, the lot is full. Phoenix's black SUV is parked near the entrance. Malachi's bike is at the front. East's truck. Nash's ride. Everyone's inside.
I kill the engine and swing off. Sloane pulls her helmet free, shakes her hair loose, and slides off the bike.
She's in her scrubs from the shift and no jacket. The night air raises goosebumps along her arms. I pull a flannel from the saddlebag and drape it over her shoulders before she can argue.
"I'm fine."
"You're cold." I tug the collar up. "Wear it."
She draws the flannel tighter, rolls the sleeves once. It swallows her. My hand settles on her lower back as we walk.
The door shuts, and the clubhouse breathes in around my spine.
Layered sound hits. Chairs scrape. Someone laughs too hard at the bar. Glass on wood. Boots on concrete. A cue ball cracks, followed by groans and a barked "Bullshit" from someone who just lost ten bucks.
They've been here a while. Drinks half-finished. Jackets off. The room has that settled weight of people who stopped checking the door an hour ago.
Until we walk in.
Sloane steps with me, close enough that the flannel sleeve brushes my arm. My hand stays on her lower back.
"Easy," I murmur.
"I'm walking," she answers, dry, mouth twitching.
My eyes jump from one anchor to the next. Bar. Pool table. Stairs. Hallway. Windows. I clock who's standing. Who's seated. Who's angled toward the entrance.
Malachi is at the bar with his weight braced on one forearm.
Candace stands beside him, posture loose, eyes sharp.
East is leaning against a post, arms crossed.
Frankie's near the back table with a mug, attention fixed on Sloane.
Nash stands by the pool table, one hand on the felt, marking angles.
Ruby is sitting at the bar with her phone and water.
Darla's beside her, cup cradled in both palms, tracking Sloane the moment we enter.
Arden is against the far wall near the stairs, arms folded, watchful and still.
"Door's loud tonight," East says.
"It's the same door," Nash answers.
"Feels louder."
Ruby glances over. "Everything feels louder when everyone's auditioning for a funeral."
Candace's eyes cut to her. "We aren't."
Ruby lifts her water in mock toast. "Could've fooled me."
"You good?" Frankie asks Sloane, stepping closer.
"Yeah. Just tired."
Candace flicks her attention to me. Her brow lifts. A question she won't ask in front of the room. I give her a short nod. Later.
The side hall opens, and Phoenix steps through. McKenzie's with him, her shoulder nearly brushing his bicep. Amelia follows, posture straight, eyes forward. Felix brings up the rear, carrying the same stillness Malachi does. Both of them have it. The kind that runs in the blood.
The room absorbs them. That tells me everything.
East murmurs, "He walks as though he paid for the floor."
Ruby laughs. "He walks as though he'll bill you for breathing wrong."
Candace tilts her head. "He walks as though he's making sure nobody else does."
Phoenix sweeps the room once. When his eyes land on me, his jaw sets. A nod so small it barely counts. We hold the look a beat longer than necessary.
McKenzie tracks faces. Watches hands. She stands the way people stand when they've trained the flinch out of themselves.
Amelia pauses just inside the light, chin lifted. She lets the room come to her.
Malachi does.
The change is immediate. He shifts his weight, planting it through both boots, and stays where he is, but his whole posture reaches. His sister. The muscles in his jaw work once, twice, before he gets himself under control.
Candace touches his arm. "You okay?"
He doesn't look away from Amelia. "Yeah."
"That sounded as though it cost you."
He exhales. "It sounded controlled."
Amelia meets his look. Holds it. Neither of them would break it first, not if the walls came down around them.
Candace hooks two fingers into Malachi's belt loop, a silent anchor, drops away. She knows what this is. She was there when they found her. "Hey," she says to Phoenix.
"Candace." Just her name.
East slots himself at Darla's side with a hand at her hip. She melts into the contact.
"Hey," he murmurs near her ear. "You with me?"
"I'm here."
East glances at the faint curve of her belly. Repositions himself so his body blocks the door's line of sight.
Ruby grins. "If you hover any harder, you're going to start photosynthesizing."
East doesn't look at her. "Good."
Candace smirks. "He's in his nesting era."
East's eyes flick up, sharp, warning-bright. "Say that again and I'm charging you rent."
Darla threads her fingers through his at her hip and gives them a small squeeze.
Kyle drifts from the pool table with a beer he isn't drinking, eyes too alert.
Nash flicks a glance at him. "Gonna pace a trench into my floor?"
"I'm acclimating."
"To what?"
"Being in a room with people who could kill me without spilling their drinks."
Frankie calls out, "That's everyone in this room, Kyle."
Kyle points his beer at her. "Exactly."
I guide Sloane into the seat beside me and brace forward, elbows on the table. Might as well start with what I know.
"Harrison showed up at the hospital today."
The room goes still.
"Second contact," I continue. "First was the café. Today he escalated. Approached Sloane during her shift. Cornered her at the nursing station." My jaw locks. "Grabbed her wrist when she tried to walk away."
Candace's spine goes rigid. East straightens off the post.
"He let go when I got there. Played it off. Polite. Reasonable." The word tastes of rust. "When we left, his car was in the lot. Far corner. Engine off, window down. Watching us leave."
Malachi's fingers drum once against the bar. "He's done testing."
"Yeah," I say. "He's planting flags."
Sloane sits motionless beside me. Her hand finds my thigh under the table, fingers digging in.
Arden's voice carries from the far wall, measured and unhurried.
"It's worse than flags." Heads turn. He pushes off the wall and steps forward, arms loose at his sides.
"I've been running surveillance on Harrison Mercer for the past seventy-two hours.
He's not operating solo. He's got two men rotating outside the hospital.
Different cars, different plates, same parking pattern.
They've been logging Sloane's schedule. Start time, end time, which entrance she uses, who picks her up. "
Sloane's grip bites deeper into my thigh.
"There's a third on the clubhouse perimeter. Drives by twice a day; photographs the gate. He also has someone on the house. Knox and Sloane's house. From a rental two streets south, leased under a shell company out of Chicago."
The silence that follows is heavy enough to hold.
Nash's hand drops from the pool table felt.
His jaw locks, a muscle firing once, and his eyes stay fixed on Arden with the controlled stillness of a man recalculating every assumption he's made in the last two weeks.
"That's on me." Flat. No deflection. "Rotating contractors under shell cover.
I was scanning for known faces, not hired ones. "
"How long?" I ask. My voice is level. The rest of me isn't.
"At least a week. Possibly longer. They're patient. Methodical."
"A campaign," Phoenix says, low.
Arden nods. "He's mapping your entire life. Routines. Relationships. Pressure points. He's building a case file for an extraction."
Sloane's breathing changes beside me. Turns shallower. Faster. I lay my hand over hers on my thigh and hold.
"Stay with me," I murmur. Just for her.
She nods. Her breathing evens by a fraction.
Malachi looks at me, at Sloane. "We handle this."
Phoenix steps forward. "We're cleaning house. The old structure is gone. Anyone who fought that has been removed from access. Influence cut. Resources frozen."
East snorts, hand on Darla. "Sounds expensive."
Phoenix's mouth twitches. "It was."
His eyes move to Candace. Measured. Weighted.
"Alice?" Her voice holds, but her knuckles are white around the edge of the bar.
He doesn't look away. "Handled."
"By you."
"Yes."
Candace's jaw works. Malachi's hand finds her waist to anchor her. She stays exactly where she is.
"Her network," Phoenix adds, barely above a murmur. "Dismantled. Every contact, every pipeline, every account she funneled through. None of it exists anymore."
"When?"
"Before I came here."
She dips her chin, sharp, final. Her fingers curl into Malachi's forearm, white-knuckled, release. "Good."
Phoenix inclines his head. "I'm building it out," he says. "Bigger than it was."
Heads turn.
"The power belongs to the women now. If a woman decides to sell her time, her company, her body, she chooses it. She sets terms. She can stop. She can walk. Any man who treats that access as something he's owed gets removed."
"Removed," Nash echoes, voice low.
Phoenix tips his chin in confirmation.
Frankie sets her mug down. "Predators don't get second chances."
Arden clears his throat. "People compensate. They adjust. Leaks don't always come from greed. Sometimes from fear."
Phoenix nods. "We build smarter. Cut anyone who confuses a woman's choice with his right."
Nash taps the pool table, single, decisive. "People get sloppy when they think nobody's watching."
East rocks back. "I'm never sloppy."
Darla's brows lift. "That is a lie."
"Babe."
"You once lost your keys in the fridge."
Kyle barks a laugh. East points at him. "You're dead."
Candace folds her arms. "He's constantly sloppy."
Ruby lifts her phone. "I have receipts."
Phoenix lets the moment breathe, draws it back. "We're cutting points of failure."
McKenzie steps in. "Fewer people make decisions. The ones who do answer for them."