Chapter Four
The van was still smoking when Michelle pulled into the lot.
She sat in her car, hands frozen on the wheel, staring at what was left of her father's delivery vehicle. The white paint had bubbled and peeled. The windows had shattered from the heat. The Torres Market logo—the one her father had designed himself thirty years ago—was nothing but ash and memory.
Papá's van.
He'd driven that van for twenty-three years. Had taught her to drive in it when she was fifteen, patient hands guiding her through the gears. Had made deliveries to elderly customers who couldn't leave their homes, never charging extra, because that's what neighbors did.
Now it was a blackened skeleton in her parking lot, and she couldn't make herself get out of the car.
Her phone buzzed.
She ignored it.
It buzzed again. And again.
Michelle finally looked down. Three missed calls from Sandman—the biker who'd walked into her life last night and turned everything upside down. A text message followed: Don't go to the store. Call me.
Too late for that.
She forced herself out of the car, legs unsteady, and walked toward the wreckage. The heat still radiated off the metal frame. Glass crunched under her shoes. The smell of burned rubber and gasoline filled her lungs.
A piece of paper was pinned under a rock near the driver's door. Michelle picked it up with numb fingers.
NEXT TIME IT'S THE STORE. THEN IT'S YOUR FATHER.
The world tilted.
She was still standing there, paper crumpled in her fist, when the rumble of a motorcycle cut through the morning quiet. Sandman pulled into the lot, killed the engine, and was at her side before she could process that he'd arrived.
"Michelle." His hands gripped her shoulders, turning her to face him. "Look at me."
She couldn't. Her eyes kept drifting back to the van, to the ashes of something her father had loved.
"Michelle." His voice sharpened. Commanded.
She looked.
His face was hard, jaw tight, but his eyes—those eyes that saw too much—were burning with something that looked like fury barely contained.
"You shouldn't have come here."
"It's my store." Her voice came out hollow. "Where else would I go?"
"Anywhere but here." He took the note from her hand, scanned it, and his expression went from hard to lethal. "They're escalating. Faster than I expected."
"My father—"
"Being moved to a safe location as we speak." Sandman pocketed the note. "Forge and Static picked him up twenty minutes ago. He's fine. Confused, probably angry, but fine."
Relief crashed through her so hard her knees nearly buckled. Sandman's hands tightened on her shoulders, steadying her.
"You moved my father without asking me?"
"I tried to call you. Three times."
She didn't have a response for that.
"There's more." His voice gentled, just slightly. "The Okonkwos—the restaurant next door. Their windows were smashed last night. And the Nguyens, the dry cleaners on Fifth. Same thing."
Michelle's stomach dropped. "They were at my meeting."
"I know."
"The meeting where I told everyone we should stand together. Where I said we didn't have to be afraid anymore." Her voice cracked. "This is my fault."
"No." Sandman's grip shifted, one hand moving to cup her jaw, forcing her to meet his eyes. "This is Harmon's fault. He's the one targeting innocent people. He's the one who decided your community was worth exploiting. You didn't cause this. You tried to stop it."
"And look what happened."
"What happened is that he showed his hand." Something fierce moved through Sandman's expression. "He's scared, Michelle. You organized resistance, and he didn't expect that. Now he's lashing out because he doesn't know what else to do."
"Scared men with fifteen armed thugs are still dangerous."
"Yes." He released her jaw but didn't step back. "Which is why you're not staying here."
"Excuse me?"
"The store isn't safe. Your apartment above it isn't safe. Harmon knows where you live, where you work, where your father lives. He's already proven he's willing to burn things down." Sandman's voice dropped. "I'm taking you somewhere he can't find you."
Michelle's spine stiffened. "I'm not running."
"It's not running. It's strategy."
"It's hiding." She stepped back, breaking his hold. "It's exactly what he wants—me scared, me silent, me out of the way so he can keep terrorizing my neighbors."
"Your neighbors are being protected." Sandman matched her step, closing the distance she'd created. "Brothers are checking on every business owner who attended your meeting. We're setting up watch schedules, secure communications. But none of that works if Harmon can get to you."
"So I'm the liability."
"You're the target." His voice hardened. "That note wasn't a warning—it was a promise. Next time it's the store. Then it's your father. Then it's you, Michelle. And I'm not going to stand by and watch that happen."
The intensity in his voice stole her breath.
This wasn't a man following orders. This wasn't a soldier executing a mission. This was something rawer, something personal, and it made her heart pound in ways that had nothing to do with fear.
"Why do you care?" The question came out before she could stop it. "You met me yesterday. You don't know me. Why does it matter to you what happens to me?"
Sandman was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't know," he said finally. "But it does. More than it should."
Michelle stared at him—this stranger who'd appointed himself her protector, who was looking at her like she was something worth fighting for.
She should argue. Should insist on staying, on facing this threat head-on, on proving she wasn't the kind of woman who ran from danger.
But the van was still smoking behind her. Her father was being moved to a location she didn't know. And two families who'd trusted her were cleaning up broken glass because they'd believed her when she said they didn't have to be afraid.
"Where?" she asked quietly.
"Safehouse. One of our properties outside the city." Sandman's shoulders relaxed, just slightly. "It's secure. Clean. Nobody knows about it except the brotherhood."
"And my father?"
"Different location. Safer if you're not together—harder for Harmon to find both of you at once."
Michelle nodded slowly. The logic made sense, even if everything else felt like chaos.
"Can I get some things from the store first? Clothes, my laptop—"
"Already handled." Sandman gestured toward a black SUV parked at the edge of the lot. She hadn't even noticed it arrive. "One of my brothers packed a bag for you. We need to move."
"You packed my things without asking?"
"I tried to call you. Three times."
Despite everything—the burned van, the threat, the terror still clawing at her chest—Michelle felt her mouth twitch.
"You're going to keep throwing that back at me, aren't you?"
"Until you start answering your phone? Yes."
She followed him to the SUV, casting one last look at the ruins of her father's van. The smoke had finally stopped rising. What remained was just metal and ash—another piece of her family's legacy destroyed by a man who thought he owned this neighborhood.
Not for long, she thought. Not if I have anything to say about it.
The safehouse was a second-floor apartment in a nondescript complex twenty minutes from the city center.
Michelle stood in the middle of the living room, watching Sandman move through the space with an efficiency that spoke to years of practice. He checked windows, tested locks, examined sight lines she wouldn't have thought to consider.
"Kitchen's stocked," he said without looking at her. "Bathroom's through there. Bedroom's got clean sheets."
"You do this a lot? Stash women in secret apartments?"
"First time, actually." He finished his circuit and turned to face her. "Usually it's brothers who need to disappear for a while. This is... different."
"Different how?"
He didn't answer immediately. Just stood there, backlit by the afternoon sun streaming through the windows, looking at her like he was trying to solve a puzzle he hadn't expected to encounter.
"The other business owners," Michelle said when the silence stretched too long. "The Okonkwos, the Nguyens. Are they going to be okay?"
"We're watching them. If Harmon's crew makes another move, we'll know."
"And then what?"
"And then we respond."
Michelle sank onto the couch, suddenly exhausted. She'd been running on adrenaline since she'd seen the van, and now that the immediate danger had passed, her body was demanding payment.
"This morning I was planning to restock the produce section." She laughed, the sound brittle. "I had a whole list. Tomatoes, peppers, avocados. Now I'm in a safehouse, my father's in hiding, and there's a man with fifteen armed thugs who wants me dead."
Sandman crossed the room and sat beside her—not touching, but close. Present.
"You didn't ask for this."
"No." She turned to look at him. "But I stepped into it anyway, didn't I? When I said yes to your help. When I agreed to meet your people."
"You stepped into it when you refused to pay." His voice was quiet. "When you organized your neighbors. When you decided that fighting back was worth the risk."
"And now my father's van is a pile of ash."
"And now you have people who will burn Harmon's entire operation to the ground." Sandman held her gaze. "That van can be replaced. You can't."
The words hit her somewhere deep.
"You barely know me."
"I know enough." He reached out, and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her face again. Instead, his hand landed on her shoulder—steady, warm, grounding. "I know you're brave. I know you're stubborn. I know you care about your community more than you care about your own safety."
"That sounds like criticism."
"It's not." His thumb traced a small circle against her shoulder. "It's the reason I'm here instead of letting someone else handle this."
Michelle's breath caught.
She should pull away. Should remind him—remind herself—that this was a professional arrangement. He was protecting her because his club had decided Glen Harmon was a problem. Nothing more.
But his hand was warm through her shirt, and his eyes were steady on hers, and somewhere in the last twenty-four hours, this stranger had become the only solid ground in a world that kept shifting beneath her feet.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now we wait." His hand dropped away, and she felt the loss of contact more than she wanted to admit. "I gather intel. The brotherhood prepares. And when the time is right, we take Harmon apart."
"And I just... stay here? Hide?"
"You stay safe." Sandman stood, moving toward the window. "There's a difference."
Michelle watched his back—broad shoulders, leather cut, the quiet competence of a man who'd done things she couldn't imagine.
She'd stepped into a war she didn't start.
But watching Sandman scan the street below, watching him stand guard over a woman he'd known for less than a day, she realized something else.
She wasn't going to walk away from it.
Not now. Not ever.