Chapter 7
SEVEN
REV
Helmets go on and vests get tugged into place, but nobody’s joking or talking trash. Nobody’s doing anything except getting ready, because this isn’t a bar fight and it isn’t club business over territory or money. This is family.
Blade pulls up next to me with his visor already down, his body tight and coiled like he’s ready to explode out of his skin, while Switch takes the other side, his bike rumbling, headlights cutting across the pavement in hard white lines.
Mason raises his hand, and the pack rolls out smooth and fast, spreading into formation as we hit the road, engines screaming under us, night air tearing past my helmet.
The vibration of the bike usually settles me and clears my head, but tonight my thoughts won’t stay where they belong. They keep dragging me back to Brooke.
To the way she felt in my arms, too light and too still, like she’d burned through every ounce of adrenaline just to survive and there was nothing left after that.
To the way her voice shook when she said she was cold, and to the way she kept apologizing, like she did something wrong by trusting the wrong man.
My jaw tightens inside the helmet, but I shove it down because there will be time to feel later. Right now I need to be sharp, and I need to be controlled, because I need to be the man Mason trusts to finish this without burning everything to the ground in the process.
We peel off in smaller groups once we get closer to downtown, because a full pack rolling into a gated neighborhood is how you get cops, cameras, and a whole mess we do not need.
Tank and Piston break off with the van, while Dagger and a couple of the others take perimeter positions around the neighborhood. Blade, Switch, and I stay tight, heading straight for the gate.
Riot’s voice crackles in my ear through the comm. “Cameras are looping now. You’ve got about seven minutes before anyone notices anything weird.”
“Copy,” Mason replies. “Move.”
The gate opens smooth and quiet like it was always meant to let us in, revealing perfect lawns, fancy lights, and big houses sitting smug and peaceful like nothing bad ever happens in places like this.
Men like Whitaker think they’re untouchable behind their money and their security systems and their shiny front doors.
Yeah. Okay.
We cut our engines half a block down and coast the rest of the way, rolling silent until we stop in front of a modern, glass-heavy house that probably costs more than most people will make in their lifetime.
Riot’s voice comes through again. “That’s him. Lights on inside. No movement at the windows. The front door alarm is off. You’re clear to move.”
Blade slips off his bike first and starts checking angles and windows, his posture screaming combat even when he’s quiet, while Switch takes the side path and disappears around the house without a sound.
I head for the front, and my heart is beating slow and steady now, like it knows exactly what it’s here to do. I don’t knock. I test the handle and find it unlocked, which doesn’t surprise me at all.
Of course it is.
We slip inside like ghosts, and the place smells like money and cologne and something citrusy that makes my jaw tighten, because it feels wrong that a place this clean is about to get violent.
Everything is white and steel and expensive glass, with shoes lined up neatly by the door and a jacket tossed over the back of a chair like he came home comfortable and not worried, not thinking about what he did less than an hour ago.
The TV is on in the living room, muted sports highlights flashing across a giant screen, and we hear him before we see him. Footsteps upstairs, his voice talking to someone on the phone, laughing.
That sound hits wrong, too easy and too relaxed, and my hands curl into fists.
Blade gestures, signaling that two of us go up the stairs while one stays low, so Switch takes the bottom without a word and Blade and I move up, slow and quiet, boots barely touching the carpet, breathing controlled and bodies locked into instinct.
We reach the landing just as Grant Whitaker steps out of his bedroom with his phone still in his hand and a smile on his face like he’s living his best life.
He freezes when he sees us, confusion flashing first and then fear.
“What the hell—”
Blade hits him before he can finish the sentence, driving him back into the wall with a forearm to the chest that knocks the air straight out of him, and his phone goes flying, skidding across the floor and cracking when it hits the banister.
I grab him by the collar and slam him forward hard enough that his head cracks against the drywall, and he goes limp for half a second before panic finally punches through and he starts struggling.
“Don’t… don’t touch me,” he chokes. “Do you know who I am?”
I laugh, and it comes out low and ugly. “Yeah. You’re the piece of shit who touched our family.”
He swings wild and desperate, but Blade blocks it and drives a sharp, precise punch into his ribs that knocks him sideways.
Switch is suddenly there too, having come up silent as death, and he wrenches Whitaker’s arm behind his back until he screams.
“Too loud,” Switch mutters, and then he slams him face-first into the floor.
We don’t let him get a breath after that. Zip ties snap tight around his wrists, his ankles are bound, and the hood is over his head before he can get his bearings.
I haul him up by the back of his shirt. “Time to go,” I growl in his ear.
He starts begging on the stairs, actual begging, swearing we have the wrong guy and that he didn’t do anything, but Blade shoves him forward and tells him if he keeps talking he’s going to lose his teeth on the staircase.
We drag him out the front door, down the driveway, and straight into the waiting van, and when Tank slams the doors shut, the fancy house goes back to quiet like nothing ever happened.
The freight building smells like oil and rust. Headlights cut across cracked floors as the van rolls in and the big metal doors grind shut behind us, sealing the night out and trapping him inside with the real monsters of the night.
The silence inside the warehouse is thick and heavy, like the building itself knows exactly what it’s about to witness. The kind of quiet that presses in on your ears and makes every breath sound too loud.
When the hood comes off, he starts crying. Not loud, dramatic sobs. Just broken, panicked gasps, like his body is trying to drag in more air than his lungs can handle, like he already knows he’s in trouble and there’s no talking his way out of it.
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” he chokes, voice shaking. “I swear, I didn’t—”
I hit him. Hard. Right in the stomach, driving the air out of him in a harsh, wet sound that cuts off whatever lie he was about to spit out. His body jerks against the restraints, shoulders curling forward as he gags and coughs, eyes bulging while he fights for breath.
Before he can even suck in another one, I hit him again. Across the face this time, snapping his head sideways, blood spraying from his nose as his chair rattles against the concrete.
“You don’t get to say that,” I growl, grabbing his shirt and slamming another punch into his ribs. “You don’t get to pretend this didn’t happen.”
He whimpers, a thin, pathetic sound, and that just makes something in me snap wider.
I keep going. My fist to his stomach. To his jaw. To anywhere I can reach. Each hit landing with a dull, meaty thud, each breath he tries to take turning into a broken wheeze instead.
I don’t feel satisfaction or relief. I don’t feel anything at all. Just this cold, steady need to make him understand that whatever he thought he was, whatever power he thought he had, it ended the second he put his hands on her.
We drag him across the cold concrete and slam him into the metal chair welded to the floor, and the zip ties scream as we ratchet them down around his wrists, his ankles, and across his chest, just enough slack to let him feel every useless strain and every futile twitch.
His shoulders wrench backward in panic, ribs caged, lungs fighting for air that comes in wet, ragged bursts, and his eyes dart between our faces like a trapped animal realizing the hunters didn’t come to talk.
Mason steps forward, slow and deliberate.
“Grant Whitaker,” he says. “You know exactly why your worthless heart is still beating right now.” Grant tries to speak, tries to lie, but the back of Mason’s hand cracks across his face so hard his teeth clack together and blood spills from his lip.
One strike is all it takes to turn words into a broken whimper.
“You put your hands on Brooke Calloway tonight,” Mason says, voice flat and lethal.
“You held her down, and you ignored every no, every stop, and every sob.”
Grant shakes his head, trying to deny it, but my fist slams into his stomach before the next word can form, and the air explodes out of him in a choking wheeze. I lean in close. “You don’t say her name again. Ever.”
Mason’s hand closes on my shoulder, steady and grounding, reminding me that this isn’t finished yet.
Grant is crying now, tears and blood streaking down his face, chest heaving in useless bursts. Good.
Mason lifts two fingers, and Blade and Switch move in, flanking the chair so Grant has nowhere to look that doesn’t end in muscle and fury.
Blade grips the back of the chair, metal groaning under his hand, while Switch crouches in front of him, eyes dead calm.
“This is what powerless feels like,” Switch says quietly.
“There isn’t enough money, no lawyers, and no fucking exits that will save you. ”
Blade leans in close enough that his breath brushes Grant’s ear. “And this is the part you remember.”
Mason steps closer again. “You leave Jackson tonight. You sell everything. You disappear.”
Grant nods so hard it’s frantic.
“And if she wakes up tomorrow afraid,” Mason continues, “we come back, and next time there are no warnings. We’ll finish what we started here.”
Riot flips his laptop open, screen glow cutting across Grant’s face. “Every trace of her is gone from your devices, and if you even try to look her up, we’ll know.”
Grant sobs openly now, shoulders jerking.
Mason straightens. “Get this piece of shit out of here.”
Tank and Riot haul him toward the van, still bound and shaking, while Dagger and Piston follow without a word. When the doors slam shut again, the fear stays behind, thick in the air, even after he’s gone.
Once he’s gone, it takes me longer than I want to admit to get my hands to stop shaking.
The warehouse feels too quiet now, like all the violence got sucked out of the air and left this thick, heavy stillness behind.
My chest is still heaving, lungs dragging in breaths that feel too sharp, too fast, like my body hasn’t caught up to the fact that it’s over. That the immediate threat is gone.
Mason’s there. Blade. Riot. Switch.
All of them standing close, not crowding me, but not leaving either, like they know better than to walk away from a man who just crossed a line he can’t uncross.
When I finally lift my head, I see it on their faces. The same tight jaws. The same dark eyes. The same fury that hasn’t burned out yet, just banked down low and waiting.
Brooke isn’t just Bella and Bri’s sister. She’s ours. Family in every way that matters, and the fact that someone got close enough to hurt her tonight hits every single one of us right in the gut.
I drag a hand down my face, trying to steady myself, and that’s when it really hits me how close this came to being so much worse. One bad choice. One more minute alone with him. One moment where she couldn’t get away.
I could have lost her tonight. The thought slams into my chest so hard it almost knocks the breath out of me all over again.
And right there, in the middle of all that rage and relief and leftover adrenaline, something inside me finally snaps into focus.
I’ve been fighting this. Fighting how I feel about her.
Telling myself she’s too good for me, too polished, too put-together for a guy like me.
Telling myself I don’t fit in her world, that I’d only drag her down into mine.
But the man who was supposed to be “right” for her? The one with the money and the suit and the perfect image? He was nothing but a monster who thought he was entitled to her body because he paid for dinner.
I’m done letting that kind of man define what she deserves. I might not be what she thought she wanted. I might not look like the kind of guy who fits in her carefully built life. But I would burn the whole damn world down before I let anyone hurt her again.
I’ve spent too long keeping my distance, pretending I don’t feel this, pretending I can just be her friend, her protector, her brother-in-laws’ best friend who doesn’t cross lines. I’m done pretending.
I won’t push her. I won’t corner her when she’s already been through hell tonight. I won’t turn this into something she didn’t choose. But if she feels even half of what I feel for her, then I’m not backing away anymore. I’m stepping in. And that starts tonight.
As soon as my breathing finally slows and my hands steady enough that I trust myself to speak without losing it again, I look at Mason. “What now?” I ask, my voice rough but clear.
He studies me for a second, eyes sharp, like he’s checking for cracks, for the moment where the adrenaline drops and the weight hits. “You okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod, and for the first time since this whole nightmare started, I actually mean it. “Yeah,” I say. “I am now.” Because the chaos is over and she’s safe. I finally know exactly what I’m not running from anymore.