Chapter Thirty-Two #2
I hold up two pieces of broken plastic between my fingers before dropping them into his palm. “Handled.”
His jaw flexes once as he closes his hand around them. “He alone?”
“So far.”
“You search him?”
“Phone’s in my pocket. Driver’s license too.”
His eyes lift to mine. “Name?”
“Ryan Gilbert.”
He repeats it quietly, committing it to memory the same way I already have. “What else?”
“He was here early, already taking shots of me and the layout.”
That gains everyone’s attention.
Nitro stops where he is.
Bear mutters a low, “Fuck.”
Slate’s head comes up.
I keep my voice even. “He was waiting to take pictures of the meeting.” I glance toward the shattered camera lying beside the pallets. “He was building a file… parking lot, entrances, club cuts, faces.”
Sin looks toward the catwalk for a long second before his attention comes back to me. “You tell anybody else?”
“No one here to tell.”
He gives a single nod. “Good.” His gaze sweeps the warehouse. “We stick to the plan.”
“You sure?”
“If we change it now…” his eyes harden, “… Calloway knows he rattled us.”
I nod once.
Fair point.
“Leave him where he is,” Sin says quietly. “We’ll deal with Gilbert after.”
The sound of tires crunching across gravel drifts in through the open roller door, and every head in the warehouse turns.
Sin checks his watch. “Right on time.”
A black SUV rolls into the warehouse yard, another pulling in behind it.
The first driver’s door opens, and Calloway steps out, adjusting the cuff of his jacket like he’s arriving for a fundraiser instead of walking into a room full of bikers.
Two men climb out behind him. I clock them before their feet hit the concrete. Haircuts, posture, and the way their jackets hang just a little heavier on one side.
Not staff, politicians, or bodyguards hired last week—professionals.
My eyes flick to Sin. “You told him to come alone.”
“I did.”
Calloway smooths the front of his jacket before starting toward the warehouse doors without a hint of concern.
Guess he decided the rules don’t apply to him.
Koa moves before the door finishes closing.
Bear shifts his weight, and the entire room draws tight around the senator like a fist closing.
Sin doesn’t raise his voice. “Your men wait outside.”
“That’s not going to be possible.” Calloway barely gets the last word out before someone in a pristine suit shifts behind him.
My attention snaps to the guard on his left, watching his hand disappear beneath his jacket.
“Don’t!” Sin’s voice cuts through the warehouse, calm enough that most men would have stopped.
This one doesn’t.
The pistol clears his suit.
“Gun!” Koa yells.
Static hits the guard from the side before the barrel can come level, driving him sideways through a row of folding chairs. Metal screams across the concrete as both men disappear in a tangle of limbs, the pistol flying free and skidding beneath the table.
The second guard reacts exactly the way he’s been trained to.
Protect the boss.
His hand dives inside his jacket, dragging another weapon free just as Koa launches across the space between them. They collide hard enough to shake the table, Calloway stumbling backward as Koa’s shoulder buries itself in the man’s ribs.
A shot cracks through the warehouse.
Concrete erupts a foot from Bear, chips spraying across his boots as everyone moves at once. “Get him!”
Nitro catches Calloway by the front of his jacket before the senator gets two steps, hauling him backward so violently the expensive suit tears clean down one side. “You ain’t going nowhere.”
Calloway swings an elbow, catching Nitro high in the cheek.
Wrong decision.
Nitro smiles. “That all you got?”
Behind them, Koa and the guard crash into a steel support beam with a deafening clang. The weapon slips loose for half a second.
But half a second is all the bastard needs.
He lunges.
I beat him there.
My boot pins the pistol to the concrete just as his fingers brush the grip.
He looks up, and I shake my head. “Bad choice, asshole.” He comes off the floor anyway, driving into me with enough force to shove us both sideways.
We slam into the edge of the table, paperwork scattering across the concrete as he throws a wild punch toward my head.
I duck underneath it, and my elbow folds into his ribs.
Once.
Twice.
The air leaves him in a harsh grunt, but he keeps coming.
Stubborn bastard.
I catch his wrist, twist until I feel his balance disappear, then use his own momentum to drive him face-first onto the concrete.
His forehead bounces, and the fight goes out of him.
Zip ties are already in my hand before he thinks about trying again, and I tie his hands up behind his back while his forehead bleeds all over the concrete.
Across the room, Static finally wins his own fight, wrenching the first guard’s arm behind his back while Slate strolls over, picks up the loose pistol, drops the magazine into one hand and the round from the chamber into the other.
He tosses both onto the table. “Think you dropped somethin’.”
The guard growls.
Slate grins. “You’re havin’ a rough day.”
Silence rolls back into the warehouse one breath at a time.
Nitro dusts off the front of his cut like he hasn’t just rag-dolled a United States senator.
Bear kicks the second pistol across the concrete until it stops beside my boot.
Koa hauls the guard upright by the back of his jacket and marches him into the nearest support beam before I finish locking the zip ties around his wrists.
Calloway stands in the middle of the warehouse, breathing harder than he was thirty seconds ago, his jacket hanging open, one sleeve torn, his security detail zip-tied against opposite support beams.
His gaze sweeps the room, searching for an opening.
There isn’t one.
Brothers have already spread back into position, each exit covered, every weapon in the room sitting in Defiance’s hands.
Silence settles over the warehouse, broken only by the ragged breathing of the two guards still trying to work out where it all went wrong.
Sin brushes a fleck of concrete dust from the front of his cut before lifting his eyes to Calloway. “You done?” The question hangs there for a beat.
Calloway slowly straightens what’s left of his jacket, tugging the torn sleeve back into place as though dignity can be stitched together with a quick pull of the cuff.
He rolls his shoulders once, lifts his chin, and makes his way back to the table under the weight of every set of eyes in the warehouse.
I almost admire the control it takes. Almost.
Sin waits until he’s seated before turning to me. “Ghost.”
I slide the tablet across the table, the screen waking beneath my fingertips.
Calloway’s attention drops to it immediately, his eyes moving over the first page, then the next, following the trail of shell companies, committee records, and financial transfers we’ve been piecing together.
I’d expected to see a crack by now.
Instead, he keeps reading.
Politicians survive by learning exactly when to show fear, and Calloway has spent twenty years learning how not to.
By the time he sets the tablet back on the table, the surprise is gone.
What’s left looks a whole lot like defiance.
“This is fabricated,” he says. “Every piece of it. You think a digital file from a motorcycle club is going to hold up against the word of a sitting senator?” Sin doesn’t answer him.
“You’re threatening a public official in a warehouse with no witnesses,” Calloway presses.
“This ends careers. I don’t know which ones yet, but I promise you, it won’t be mine. ”
I open a second screen and turn it just enough for him to see without needing to hand it over. The traffic camera footage of the SUV that ran us off the road. The photograph delivered to Sage’s office. The LLC filing with his chief of staff’s home address attached to it.
“You can’t prove—” he starts.
“The security firm believes their communications are untraceable because they run through a private encrypted server,” I say, keeping my voice level, keeping it factual.
After all, that’s the only tone this deserves.
“They’re mistaken about that.” I let it sit a beat before I continue, “Your chief of staff sent twenty-three messages to their operations director between January and March. Fourteen of those messages mention Sage Matthews by name. Six of them including her home address. One of them uses the phrase ‘target photograph.’ ”
I turn the tablet and slide it across the table. Calloway looks down at his own name buried in the metadata, his chief of staff’s number sitting in the header, and something in his face finally moves.
He tries one more angle aimed directly at Sin. “Defiance MC. Nevada Chapter. Three federal investigations in the last eight years. You want to open that conversation? Because I can make one phone call and every brother in this room is under active surveillance by the end of the week.”
The threat lands the way he intends it to. I feel the room register it, feel the weight of what he’s suggesting settle over the table, and for a moment, it looks like he might actually believe he’s found his way back into the fight.
Sin leans back and says nothing at all.
Calloway doesn’t touch the tablet again.
His fingertips rest against the edge of the table instead, the only movement the slow tap of his thumb against the timber as he studies everything laid out in front of him.
Years of shell companies, buried financial transfers, committee records, names never meant to sit side by side on the same page.
The tablet wakes beneath my fingertips with a soft click, the screen filling with the distribution list I’d built long before tonight ever arrived—journalists, federal investigators, state regulators, campaign offices that would tear each other apart for the chance to be first with a story like this.
Every attachment is loaded.
Every email is addressed.
Every recipient is waiting.