17. Gideon
GIDEON
The compound floodlights cut harsh shadows across the gravel as I return from the outer perimeter sweep, my boots crunching through the pre-dawn silence.
The taste of mountain air clings to my throat after six hours riding fence lines, checking motion sensors, and confirming that the cartel hasn't tried to probe our defenses while the world slept.
I kill the engine on my Harley and swing my leg over, already mentally cataloging the security report I need to deliver to Dante.
Three deer triggered the eastern sensors around midnight.
A logging truck passed the southern checkpoint twice—probably lost, but worth noting.
Nothing that screams immediate threat, but in this business, paranoia keeps you breathing.
Then I see her.
Savannah emerges from Dante's office like smoke given form, her silhouette unmistakable even in the dim wash of security lighting.
She moves differently than she did three weeks ago when the marshals first dumped her at our gates.
The hypervigilant tension that used to coil through her shoulders has softened into something resembling peace.
Her stride isn't the calculated prowl of someone mapping escape routes anymore—it's the walk of someone who chooses to be here.
The realization wounds me like a blade sliding between ribs, precise and devastating.
She's not just surviving Hell Court anymore. She's home.
My hands clench around my riding gloves, the leather creaking under pressure.
The rational part of my brain—the part that kept me alive through foster homes and underground fighting circuits—knows this was inevitable.
Dante commands through quiet authority and strategic patience.
Of course she'd gravitate toward stability after eight years of cartel chaos.
Of course she'd choose the man who offers protection without possession, leadership without domination.
But knowing something and accepting it are different animals entirely.
The jealousy that claws through my chest isn't clean or simple.
It's not just wanting Savannah—though Christ knows I do, with a desperation that borders on pathological.
It's deeper than that, more twisted. It's watching someone I've claimed as mine choose someone else's sanctuary.
Someone else's trust. Someone else's bed.
I force my legs to carry me toward the garage instead of Dante's office, because the alternative involves putting my fist through his door and demanding explanations nobody owes me. The metal roll-up door screeches as I yank it open, the sound echoing through the empty bay like a scream.
The heavy bag hangs in the corner like a leather-wrapped invitation to violence.
I don't bother with hand wraps or gloves.
My knuckles split on the second punch, blood smearing across the black surface as I drive my fists into the bag with enough force to snap the mounting chain.
Each impact sends shock waves up my arms, but the physical pain feels cleaner than the emotional storm tearing through my chest.
Left hook. The bag swings wide, chains groaning.
Right cross. Leather splits under my knuckles.
Another left. Another right. The rhythm becomes hypnotic, primitive, the only language I've ever truly mastered.
"Planning to kill it, or just maim it beyond recognition?"
Dante's voice slices through the garage like a blade through silk. I don't stop punching, don't turn around, don't give him the satisfaction of seeing how close I am to losing control completely.
"Bag's not the problem," I growl, driving another hook into the leather. Blood spatters across the concrete floor, my knuckles screaming in protest.
"No. It's not."
His boots echo against the concrete as he steps into the garage, the sound measured and deliberate. He doesn't approach—Dante's too smart to corner a wounded animal—but his presence fills the space like smoke.
"You saw her leaving my office."
It's not a question. Dante's always been able to read people like tactical manuals, parsing body language and micro-expressions with the same precision he uses to dismantle explosive devices. Of course he knows exactly what triggered this spiral.
I slam my fist into the bag hard enough to send it careening into the wall. "Congratulations, fucker. You won."
"This isn't a competition, Gideon."
"Bullshit." I finally turn to face him, my chest heaving, blood dripping from my split knuckles onto the garage floor. "Everything's a competition when you want the same woman."
Dante studies me with those calculating brown eyes, his expression unreadable.
He's still wearing the same clothes from yesterday—tactical pants and a black t-shirt that stretches across his broad shoulders—but there's something different about his posture.
Softer. Satisfied in a way that makes my teeth ache.
"She chose to stay," he says quietly. "Not me. Not you. Not the club. She chose to stop running."
The words hit me like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Because he's right, and I hate him for it.
"You kissed her, didn't you?"
The words come out flat, controlled, but they hang in the air between us like a loaded weapon. Dante doesn't flinch, doesn't deny it, doesn't even have the decency to look guilty about crossing a line that changes everything.
"Yes."
That's it. Just yes. No explanation, no justification, no apology for claiming something that wasn't his to take. The simplicity of his admission makes my hands shake with the effort of not wrapping them around his throat.
"Three weeks." I wipe blood from my knuckles with the back of my hand, the motion deliberate and slow. "Three weeks she's been here, and you decide now to stake your claim?"
"It wasn't about taking anything." Dante's voice remains infuriatingly calm, measured like he's discussing weather patterns instead of the woman who's been unraveling all of us from the inside out. "She needed?—"
"Don't." The word cracks like a whip through the garage.
"Don't you dare tell me what she needed.
You think I haven't been watching her? You think I don't know she flinches when anyone gets too close, that she counts exits in every room, that she carves those damn birds when the nightmares get too loud? "
Something flickers behind Dante's eyes—surprise, maybe, or recognition that I've been paying attention to details he thought only he noticed.
"Then you know she stopped belonging to any one of us the moment she became emotionally necessary to all three."
The statement hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest, stealing my breath and leaving me staggering. Because he's right, and I hate him for seeing it so clearly when I've been drowning in possessive rage for weeks.
Savannah isn't just the woman I want anymore.
She's become something essential, woven into the fabric of Hell Court so completely that removing her would tear us apart from the inside.
Dante needs her strategic mind and unflinching loyalty.
Malachi craves her ability to see through his masks and accept what she finds underneath.
And me—Christ, I need her in ways that terrify me, ways that have nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with the fact that she makes me feel human instead of just a weapon pointed at whoever deserves to bleed.
"She's not something we can divide between us like territory," I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, they taste like lies.
"No." Dante steps closer, his boots crunching over scattered drops of my blood. "She's not. But she's already embedded herself differently into each of us, hasn't she? What you have with her isn't what I have with her. What Malachi offers her isn't what either of us can give."
The truth of it sits between us like a live grenade, waiting for someone stupid enough to pull the pin.
The garage door screeches again before I can respond to Dante—a sound I'd recognize blindfolded because Malachi never lifts it all the way.
He saunters in like he owns the place, balancing three steaming mugs between his scarred fingers, his long hair tied back in a loose knot that does nothing to hide the sharp amusement in his dark eyes.
"Hey kids." He hands Dante a mug, then holds one out to me without flinching at the blood still dripping from my knuckles. "You two looked like you could use caffeine before the inevitable homicide."
I snatch the coffee just to have something to grip besides Dante's throat.
Malachi leans against the workbench, sipping his own drink with deliberate calm, but his gaze flicks between us like he's reading the tension in the air. He exhales through his nose. "Ah. So we're finally admitting this is happening."
Dante's jaw tightens. "You knew?"
Malachi's smirk doesn't reach his eyes. "Please.
You think I didn't notice the way you've been devouring her with your eyes since day one?
Or how Gideon here looks like he wants to chew through steel every time she walks into a room?
" He swirls his coffee. "I just assumed we were all politely ignoring it until someone snapped. "
I grind my teeth. "There's nothing to snap over."
"Bullshit." Malachi sets his mug down with a sharp click.
"I stopped pretending weeks ago. You think I bring whiskey to just anyone's cabin at midnight?
You think I let just anyone see past the performance?
" His voice drops, raw in a way I've never heard from him before.
"She's not temporary. None of us are treating her like she is. "
The silence that follows is suffocating.
He's right.
Dante exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. "Christ."
Malachi laughs, but it's hollow. "Exactly."
I open my mouth—to argue, to deny it, to fucking scream—when movement catches my eye.
The side door's cracked open, shadows shifting just beyond the threshold.
Then I see her.
Savannah stands frozen in the doorway, her eyes wide, her lips parted around an unsteady breath. The second our gazes lock, her expression shutters—fast, practiced, like slamming a vault door—but it's too late.
She heard. And the way her throat bobs tells me she understood every damn word.
My pulse hammers against my ribs.
Because now she knows.
Now she has to choose.
And none of us are ready for what comes next.
The door clicks shut before the air even stops vibrating from Malachi's confession. She moves like a ghost when she wants to—silent, untouchable, leaving nothing but the faint scent of gunpowder and mountain rain in her wake.
I’m moving toward the door before I realize it, my boots heavy and clumsy compared to her retreat.
"Don't," Dante says.
His hand catches my shoulder, a solid weight that feels like a mountain anchor.
I want to shake him off, to roar at him, to chase her down and force her to look at me until the fear and the confusion and the buried heat in her eyes finally make sense.
But I don't. I stop, my chest heaving, the blood from my knuckles finally starting to itch as it dries.
Malachi hasn’t moved. He’s staring at the spot where she was standing, his usual mask of amusement shattered into jagged, unrecognizable pieces. He looks smaller. Human.
"She heard everything," I rasp, the words sticking in my throat.
"She needed to hear it eventually," Dante counters, though his voice lacks its usual iron-clad certainty. He lets go of my shoulder and looks at his hands, then at the garage filled with machines and weapons and the history of men who thought they only needed each other to survive.
The silence isn't just heavy; it’s permanent.
I look at the blood smeared across the heavy bag, then at Malachi, then at the man who gave me a life when I was nothing but a stray dog in a fighting pit. The realization settles into my marrow, cold and absolute. This isn't just about a woman or a war with the Sombra Cartel anymore.
Savannah didn't just infiltrate our defenses; she dismantled our isolation. She’s the gravity holding three broken men in orbit, a sun we’re all too close to, and we’re already starting to burn.
The three of us. All of us. Bound to a woman who has every reason to hate the world, yet somehow became the only thing in it worth protecting.
"None of us are walking away from this," I mutter, realized the truth as soon as I say it.
"No," Malachi agrees, his voice a ghost of its former self. "We're not."
Dante looks toward the compound, toward the room where Savannah is likely already counting the exits and carving a bird to keep the ghosts at bay.
"Get cleaned up, Judge," Dante orders, but there’s no authority in it, only exhaustion. "The war's coming. And now we finally know what we're fighting for."