Chapter 45
Knox
The flowers are sitting on our doorstep when we get home the next morning. White roses. A dozen. Wrapped in expensive paper, tied with black ribbon. The kind of arrangement from a high-end florist. Professional. Calculated.
I see them before Sloane does.
My hand tightens on her hip. My eyes cut to the street, scanning parked cars and windows for the rental two streets south that Arden flagged last night.
The sedan isn't visible from here, but I know it's there.
Someone watched our house long enough to time a delivery while we slept at the clubhouse.
"Knox? What—"
She sees them. Her steps falter.
"Stay here," I say.
"Knox—"
"Stay. Here."
I move between her and the door. The flowers are pristine. Fresh. Delivered in the last few hours. Someone was on this porch while the sun came up.
I crouch, pull the envelope free. It's blank. Expensive cardstock.
The note is typed. Clean. Looking forward to seeing you again. No signature. None is needed.
My breathing turns even and controlled as my hands go still. My eyes start mapping exits, timelines, the distance between here and every resource I can reach in under ten minutes.
"What does it say?"
She's right behind me. I didn't hear her move.
I turn. "Go inside."
"Knox, what does it—"
"Inside. Now."
Her eyes flash. Defiance, jaw set. "It's from him." I nod. "Show me."
I hand her the note.
She reads it. Once. Twice. She crouches beside the arrangement, checks the stems, the wrapping, and the ribbon. Studies the card stock, turns it over. Looks for a florist's name, a printer's mark, anything traceable. Nurse hands. Evidence hands.
"He was here. At our house."
"Or he sent someone. Either way, Arden was right. They know when we're gone."
"The hospital. The café. Now this."
"Yeah." I take out my phone. "He's done circling."
Malachi answers on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Harrison Mercer sent flowers to my house. With a note. 'Looking forward to seeing you again.'"
A beat of silence on the other end. "You sure it's him?"
"Sloane's sure. Good enough for me."
"Bring her in. We move the timeline up."
"Copy."
I turn to Sloane. "We're going back to the clubhouse."
She nods, crouched beside the roses. "What about those?"
"Leave them."
"Knox—"
"I said leave them." I step closer, hand at the back of her neck, tilting her face up. "He put them here so you'd carry them inside. So you'd look at them every time you walked through the door. We're not giving him that."
Her jaw clenches. She stands. "Okay."
I drop a kiss to her forehead. "Pack a bag. We're staying at the club until this is done."
She moves inside.
I photograph the arrangement, the note, the doorstep, the angle of the porch, the street. Text Nash.
Knox: Harrison sent flowers to my house. Need security sweep. Now.
Nash: I'll send a prospect. Don't touch anything.
Knox: Too late.
Nash: Of course it is.
Sloane reappears with a duffel bag. I take it, draw her into me with my free arm. She comes willingly, face pressing into my chest, fingers curling into my cut.
I kiss her once. Hard. Claiming. "Let's go."
I leave the flowers exactly where they are.
The clubhouse is locked down when we arrive. Bar closed. Lights low. The room stripped to essentials.
Malachi's call went out before we came through the gates. The shift is immediate.
James locks the front door and checks it twice.
Maggie finishes a careful circuit, cataloging faces, signals Malachi.
People arrive in pairs. East and Darla together, his body angled over the curve of her belly.
Ruby with a tablet, pulling data. Frankie with a mug and shadows under her eyes deeper than yesterday.
Kyle and Rider, coiled and taut. Nash takes the wall nearest to the door, arms crossed.
Phoenix enters unhurried, McKenzie at his side. Felix peels off to the far wall, choosing sightlines over a chair.
The door opens again. A man I don't know walks in first. Broad, solid, scanning the room the way I scan rooms.
Phoenix gestures toward him. "Tobias. My head of security."
Sloane's hand crushes mine. I look at her. She's white-faced, staring at Tobias, one hand gripping the edge of the table.
"Sloane?"
"I know him," she breathes. "I went to him. Years ago. When I tried to get Anna out." Her throat works. "He tried to help me. We were too late."
Tobias finds Sloane across the room. He inclines his head. The kind of nod that carries years.
The door opens again. A woman steps through behind Tobias, smaller than I expected from Sloane's stories. Reserved. Eyes moving the way Sloane's used to in those first weeks. Cataloging exits. Measuring distance. But she walks in on her own legs, and when she finds Sloane, her chin lifts.
Sloane's whole body goes rigid beside me. "That's Anna," she whispers. "Knox, she's here."
"Yeah." I hold her hand. "She's here."
McKenzie catches my eye from across the room and tips her chin. Phoenix flew them in. That's all I need to know. Amelia enters last, attention sweeping the room.
The war room door closes with a clean, final sound.
Sloane and I take seats near the center. Her hand finds my thigh under the table before she's finished settling.
Malachi takes the head. He stands, both hands braced on the table. Looks around once, making sure every chair that should be filled is.
His attention lands on Phoenix. He nods. "You've got the floor."
"Chicago." Every spine in the room straightens.
"It's where her father operates openly. Where the old Society still thinks it can function without scrutiny.
" Phoenix scans the table. "Which makes it the right place to end both.
We finish the restructuring publicly. Cleanly.
And we remove a man who's been hiding behind that structure for too long. "
Sloane speaks, level and clear. "He showed up at the hospital. At the café. Now at our house. He's been watching us for at least a week. He grabbed me." Her voice stays even. Her hands lie flat on the table. "He's building toward something and waiting lets him choose when it happens."
Candace's fingers flatten against the table. "That means we choose first."
"This auction gets exposed," Phoenix continues. "Reframed. Used as the last act of a system that's dead."
"The venue?" Sloane asks.
"The Blackwell."
The air shifts beside me. Just a fraction. I feel it through the flannel she's wearing.
"I know it." Her voice sharpens. "My father used me as medical staff at three of his events.
I came in through the east service entrance every time.
They prep the girls two floors down. No windows.
No clocks. I saw the service corridors, the staging areas, the flow they keep hidden from the main floors. "
Anna stiffens across the table. Tobias's hand moves to the back of her chair.
"Exits?" I ask.
Sloane closes her eyes for a second, pulling it from memory. "Three functional. One decoy. The decoy is the one they show the girls. It leads to a service elevator that loops back to the prep level."
Nash exhales. "Classic."
Phoenix meets my eyes. "This takes care of two problems. We expose the structure. And we remove a high-profile anchor holding it together."
Anna's voice cuts through, thin but steady. "I need to hear you say it one more time. In front of everyone in this room." She stands with her hands at her sides, shoulders back, Tobias a solid wall behind her. "The girls choose. That's the line. No matter what else happens in that building."
Phoenix holds her gaze. "That's the line."
Anna nods once. "Good. Because I've been on the other side of a room where no one said that."
Sloane turns toward her. "That wasn't always true."
Anna holds her gaze. "That's why it ends here."
The silence holds.
"And the Society going forward?" Darla asks, voice low.
"Choice," Phoenix says. "Real consent. Anyone who stays chooses it. Anyone who leaves walks clean."
The screen on the far wall flickers to life.
Two faces appear. Luca, Phoenix's New York contact, is the man building the Society's expansion on the East Coast. Dark suit, sharp eyes, the kind of calm that comes from knowing where all the money lives.
Wendy sits beside him, sure and direct. She's the woman who walked into Phoenix's reformed Society by choice and came out the other side running operations.
"We can control timing," Luca says.
"Optics matter," Wendy adds. "Exposure has to land clean. If this looks like a raid, the story becomes about chaos. If it’s dressed up as ' looks a reckoning, the story becomes about the women."
"Extraction?" Malachi asks.
"On your signal," Luca says. "We've got transport staged. Wendy's coordinating safe placement for anyone who comes out."
Sloane leans forward. "How many girls are we expecting inside?"
Wendy checks her notes off-screen. "Our intel says twelve to fifteen. Varying levels of awareness about what they walked into."
"I can help with medical," Sloane says. "On-site. After."
I look at her. She looks back. Her jaw is set. This isn't a request.
I nod once. "We'll be there."
Malachi looks around the table. At every face. Every pair of eyes.
Luca and Wendy confirm final details, and the screen goes dark.
Malachi retrieves the Blackwell blueprint from where he pinned it last night and spreads it across the table, layering it beside the routes Nash marked on the wall map.
The room breaks into clusters. Nash stands with Phoenix to go over entry points. East drags Darla's chair closer to his. Kyle bends over a tablet with Rider. Frankie and Arden are in the corner, heads together, speaking low.
Sloane stays beside me. Her hand hasn't left my thigh.
Across the table, Anna watches Sloane. Sloane watches her back. Anna mouths something across the table. I catch the shape of it but not the words. Sloane does. Her eyes fill, and she nods.
Tobias adjusts behind Anna, one hand firm at her shoulder. She leans back into it without looking.
My grip cinches on Sloane's thigh. She covers it with hers.
The war room hums with low voices and the scratch of markers on maps. Outside, morning light pushes through the high windows, catching dust in the air.
My phone buzzes. Nash's prospect, from the house. A photo. Our porch. The flowers are gone. Someone came back for them.