Chapter Ten
Preacher
Moe had cracked around three in the morning, according to Reaper’s text. Took less persuasion than I’d expected from a man whose whole reputation hinged on keeping his mouth shut. Turns out silence was easy when you weren’t zip-tied to a chair with a wolf’s teeth marks still bruising your forearm.
The intel was clean. Royce operated out of a warehouse off Route 9, the old textile building that had been “under renovation” for the past four years.
Two guards on rotation at the front. One at the loading dock in back.
Royce himself kept irregular hours, but Moe confirmed he’d be there tonight for a shipment.
Hammer was stable at Temptation Memorial—broken jaw, shattered kneecap, three cracked ribs from the beating I’d delivered before he’d been dumped him at the ER doors.
According to Dr. Haaz, Hammer wasn’t walking out of there anytime soon. But Royce was the head. Cut that off and Hammer became nothing more than a broken man in a hospital bed with no one left to answer to.
I stood at the workbench in the garage bay, spreading the hand-drawn map Moe had scratched out with a shaking hand.
My rings were back where they belonged, the silver warm against my knuckles.
Contrary to popular belief, silver wasn’t lethal to wolves and the moon had no effect on them.
I shook my head at humans and their vivid imaginations.
The cut on my shoulder pulled when I leaned forward, but the stitches held. Trent’s work was solid.
My mate was inside, asleep on the couch with some action movie still playing on the TV. I’d covered him with a blanket before slipping out. He didn’t need to know about this part. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if I could help it.
Crowbar appeared at my shoulder, his swollen hand wrapped in gauze and his toothpick back in place. The man looked murderous and not just because of the poison oak.
“Route’s clear,” he said, tapping the map where the access road met the highway. “Riot did a drive-by an hour ago. Two vehicles in the lot. Sedan and a panel van.”
“Matches what Moe gave us.” I traced the entry points with my finger. “Loading dock’s the quietest way in. Mayhem takes the front guards, keeps them occupied. You and I go through the back. Ghost handles the perimeter in case anyone tries to rabbit like last night.”
“And Royce?”
“Mine.” My wolf pressed close to the surface. This man had loaned money to a junkie then pointed that junkie at my mate like a loaded weapon. He’d sent Silent Moe to shoot up my clubhouse with Trent inside. Whether he knew Trent was there or not didn’t matter. The bullets hadn’t cared.
Crowbar nodded, rolling his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Reaper and Deadeye?”
“Staying here. Someone’s gotta hold the fort.” I straightened, folding the map and tucking it into my back pocket. “My mate doesn’t leave this building. He wakes up, he stays inside, and nobody tells him where we went.”
“He’s gonna be pissed.”
“He’s gonna be alive.” I met Crowbar’s eyes. “That’s what matters.”
The night air was cold when we rolled out, four bikes in a tight formation down County Road 21.
No headlights until we hit the main road.
The engines were barely above idle, a low rumble that blended with the wind moving through the trees.
My wolf was awake and prowling behind my ribs, hungry for the hunt.
We split at the junction. Drift peeled off toward the front approach, his bike disappearing around the curve.
Ghost killed his engine a quarter-mile out and vanished into the tree line on foot, rifle slung across his back.
That left Crowbar and me rolling silent toward the loading dock, cutting our engines two hundred yards from the building and walking the bikes into the tall grass off the access road.
The warehouse loomed against the sky, a dark rectangle with two lit windows on the second floor.
The loading dock’s floodlight was burned out—or had been busted deliberately.
Either way, it worked in our favor. Shadows pooled thick around the concrete platform, and I could smell the single guard before I saw him.
Cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, the metallic tang of a holstered weapon.
Crowbar moved first. He was silent for a man his size, years of practice making his boots soundless on gravel. I watched him close the distance in my peripheral vision while I stayed pressed against the cold brick wall, counting heartbeats.
The guard never heard him coming. One arm around the throat, a controlled squeeze, and the man’s legs gave out without a sound. Crowbar lowered him to the concrete, zip-tied his wrists and ankles, then gave me the signal.
I moved up the loading dock steps, testing the rolling door. Locked from the inside, but the personnel door beside it had a deadbolt that was older than my mother. Crowbar’s lockpick set made quick work of it, the click barely audible over the ambient noise of the building’s ancient HVAC system.
Inside, the warehouse smelled like dust and chemicals. Not the sharp burn of meth—Royce wasn’t that stupid—but the sweet, cloying scent of packaged product.
Pallets stacked in rows created a maze of narrow corridors, and the overhead fluorescents were off on the ground floor, leaving only the emergency lights casting everything in a sickly green glow.
My wolf mapped the space by scent. Two men on the ground floor, one near the far wall by the stairs, another somewhere in the maze of pallets to our left.
Royce was upstairs. His scent was distinct, expensive aftershave layered over nervous sweat.
The man knew something was coming. Maybe not tonight, maybe not from me specifically, but he’d been looking over his shoulder since Moe hadn’t reported back.
Crowbar tapped my shoulder twice. He’d caught the same layout I had. I pointed left then up. He nodded and split off, moving between the pallets toward the man on the ground floor with the kind of quiet intent that made my sergeant at arms worth every ounce of trust I’d given him.
I took the right side, heading for the stairs.
The man by the wall was leaning against a support beam, phone in hand, face lit blue by the screen.
He was scrolling, completely absorbed. Sloppy.
Royce’s operation ran on fear and debt, not discipline.
These weren’t trained soldiers. They were thugs with guns who’d never faced anything that pushed back.
Tonight, something was pushing back.
I closed the distance in four strides. My hand found the back of his skull before his thumb finished swiping.
His face met the support beam with a wet crunch that told me his nose was done.
The phone clattered. He slid down the metal like his strings had been cut, and I caught him before he hit the ground loud enough to alert anyone upstairs.
Zip-tie. Gag. Move.
From somewhere in the maze, I heard the brief scuffle of Crowbar handling the second man. A choked sound, a thud, then silence. My earpiece crackled once—Crowbar’s signal that his target was down.
Two clicks from Ghost on the perimeter. All clear outside.
The stairs were metal, industrial, the kind that wanted to ring with every step.
I took them slow, shifting my weight to the outer edge where the bolts met the wall.
My wolf was straining, wanting out, wanting to finish this on four legs with teeth.
I kept it leashed. Royce needed to see my face.
Needed to know exactly who was taking his empire apart.
The second floor was a converted office space. Drywall partitions, a desk visible through a half-open door, the blue flicker of a computer monitor. Two voices. Royce and someone else.
I pressed my back flat against the wall beside the doorframe and listened.
“—told you we should’ve sent more than two.” The second voice was reedy, anxious. “Moe still hasn’t checked in. That’s eighteen hours, Royce.”
“Moe’s probably drunk in a ditch somewhere.” Royce’s voice was smoother, practiced, the cadence of a man who’d learned to sound calm even when he wasn’t. But I could smell the sweat underneath the aftershave. His heart rate was elevated. “He’ll turn up.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then he doesn’t, and we adjust.” A chair creaked.
“Just got word Hammer didn’t survive, which means the Holloway debt defaults to the brother. Mike’s no good for it. He’s broke. But his brother’s got a job. Kid’s also been hanging with the bikers. Deluca’s got some kind of hard-on for protecting him, which means—”
I stepped through the door.
The men in the room froze. Royce was behind the desk, leaned back in a leather executive chair that looked absurd in the bare-bones office.
Mid-forties, thinning hair slicked back, a gold chain nestled in chest hair visible through an unbuttoned collar.
The man beside him was younger, narrow-shouldered, holding a tablet like a clipboard.
An accountant. The numbers guy. He took one look at me, and the blood drained from his face so fast I thought he might beat Trent’s fainting record.
“Get out,” I told the accountant. The Glock at my side wasn’t raised.
He ran out of the room.
Royce didn’t move. His hand was resting on the desk, six inches from the top drawer, and we both knew what was in that drawer.
“Deluca.” He said my name like he knew me personally. “Breaking and entering. That’s beneath you.”
“Shooting up my place wasn’t beneath you.” I stepped farther into the room. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed, one tube flickering, making the shadows jump. “So here we are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His fingers inched toward the drawer.
“Move that hand another centimeter and I’ll take it off at the wrist.”
Royce’s hand stopped. His jaw worked, the smooth facade cracking at the edges.
“Moe gave you up,” I said. “Every detail. The route, the rotation, the shipment schedule, and the part where you sent two men with rifles to put holes in my building while my people were inside.” I let the pause stretch. “While a civilian was inside.”
Something flickered in Royce’s eyes. He was running the math, trying to figure out which angle would buy him another sunrise.
“The Holloway kid? He’s nothing."” Royce leaned forward, and the chair groaned under him.
“That’s what this is about? Some skinny waiter who can’t keep his junkie brother in line? Come on, Deluca. You’re smarter than this. He’s a means to an end. Mike owes me forty-two grand. I don’t care where it comes from.”
That was a hell of a lot more than I’d been told. Royce was an idiot for allowing the debt to get so high.
“It’s not coming from him.”
“Everything comes from somewhere.” Royce spread his hands like he was being reasonable, like we were negotiating a car deal instead of a life. “You want to cover the debt? Fine. Write me a check and the kid walks. Business is business.”
“This stopped being business when your man put a gun to his face.” I took another step. “When Hammer punched him hard enough to crack bone. When you sent shooters to my property. You escalated this beyond money, Royce. Beyond business. Far Beyond anything a check can fix.”
Royce’s tongue darted over his lips. The sweat was visible now, a sheen across his forehead that the overhead light turned greasy. “So what do you want?”
His hand shot for the drawer. Fast for a human but not fast enough for me.
I cleared the desk in one motion, and my hand closed around his wrist before his fingers found the grip of whatever he’d stashed in there.
I wrenched his arm sideways, felt the joint pop, and slammed his face into the desktop hard enough to split his lip against the wood.
“That was stupid,” I said into his ear.
“Fuck you.” His voice was muffled against the wood.
I yanked him to his feet, my hand around his throat. “He’s not nothing. He’s everything. And you threatened what’s mine.”
My hand tightened.
The crack was small. Almost gentle. Like a branch snapping underfoot in a quiet forest.
Royce’s body went limp, and the fear drained from his face along with everything else. I released him, and he dropped.
My wolf settled back behind my ribs, satisfied. Not triumphant. Just done. So was I. My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pulled it out, expecting Drift’s status report.
It was a text from Sledge.
Your mate’s awake.
I pocketed the phone, stepped over Royce without looking down, and walked out of the office. Crowbar met me at the top of the stairs. The toothpick rolled once across his bottom lip, and he fell into step beside me the way he’d done for the better part of a decade.
We descended the stairs in silence. Ghost materialized from somewhere near the loading dock.
Time to go home to the man who’d handed over my name with a prayer, not knowing I’d answer it.
THE END