2. Stryker
STRYKER
“There’s no practical reason for this,” he said, yanking the fabric loose again. “A man invented this to make other men look stupid.”
Viper stood in front of the mirror between the bathroom and the television, trying for the third time to make his tie look like something other than a noose.
He was younger, all dirty-blond hair and sharp cheekbones, cleaner than the rest of us even when he had nothing worth cleaning up for.
He had rolled his sleeves up after deciding the first attempt was the shirt’s fault, then the tie’s fault, then probably mine because Viper was good at blame when blame let him avoid admitting he couldn’t do something simple.
Blade sat on the edge of the bed closest to the window, already dressed except for his jacket, his deep brown hair still damp from the shower and combed back with his fingers.
He had less gray then, fewer lines around his eyes, fewer old scars showing at the edges of his cuffs, but he already carried himself like a man who had learned early not to waste movement.
He looked up from checking the little emergency kit he’d packed out of habit and said, “Most men manage.”
“Most men lie,” Viper said. “They learn one knot in high school, do it wrong for twenty years, and call it tradition.”
My tux still had a crease across the shoulder from the plastic garment bag, and I hated that I noticed it.
I had worn blood on denim without giving a damn, had ridden through desert heat with dust in my teeth and a split knuckle wrapped in electrical tape, but standing in a cheap hotel room in a rented black tux made every wrong detail feel like a warning.
The jacket pulled tight across my back when I moved, the dress shirt scratched at my neck, and the black mask sitting on the dresser looked like it came from a kid’s costume aisle, because it did.
I crossed the room, took the tie out of his hands, and stepped close enough to fix it before he strangled himself. “Hold still.”
“I was doing fine.”
“You were making it worse.”
“Because you were staring.”
“I was staring because you were making it worse.”
Blade made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh if he’d cared enough to commit to it.
The room was too small for three grown men and all the shit we had dragged in, but it was what we could afford without being stupid.
Two double beds, one pullout couch that dipped in the middle, carpet that smelled like old cigarettes no matter what the front desk claimed, and a bathroom light that flickered every few minutes.
Viper and Blade had taken the beds after arguing for thirty seconds about seniority, injuries, and who needed sleep most. I had taken the couch because the club needed money more than I needed comfort, and because if I let them keep arguing, we would still be standing there in the morning.
We didn’t have the kind of cash men needed to look comfortable in rooms like the one we were headed to tonight.
The Savage Wolves were ours now in a way they hadn’t been before, but ownership didn’t mean ease.
It meant fifteen men looking to me for structure, work, food, protection, and the kind of money that kept everyone from splintering off when the next bigger offer came through.
Mac and Bear had come with loyalty and muscle, Reyes with a mouth that could talk men into handing over keys before they realized the car was gone, but loyalty didn’t pay for ammunition, property, lawyers, bikes, or the dozens of quiet bribes that made Black Rock run smoother.
The Vultures had fallen, but their rot hadn’t disappeared with them.
We had spent five years cutting the old club apart piece by piece, bleeding their routes, turning their suppliers, pulling men away from their table, and making sure the ones too loyal to the old president had nowhere safe left to stand.
My old president had mistaken obedience for weakness, and by the time he realized I had been building my own foundation under his feet, the ground was already gone. We had won Black Rock, but winning territory and holding it were different things.
Holding it required work, and tonight was supposed to be about finding some.
“Too tight,” Viper said.
“It’s not too tight.”
“I like breathing.”
“You talk too much for a man worried about air.”
Blade closed the emergency kit and set it on the nightstand beside his mask. His tux fit him better than mine did, probably because he knew how to stand in discomfort without making it visible. “Leave it tight. Might help the rest of us.”
Viper looked at him through the mirror. “You’re a medical professional. That sounded unethical.”
“I’m off duty.”
I finished the knot, straightened it against his collar, then stepped back. “There. Don’t touch it.”
Viper studied himself, head tilting slightly. The mask wasn’t on yet, so there was nothing hiding the fact that he knew exactly how he looked and exactly how to use it. “That’s not terrible.”
“That’s gratitude from him,” Blade said.
“It’s not gratitude,” Viper said. “It’s restraint.”
I grabbed my mask off the dresser and turned it over in my hand. Black plastic, slightly too glossy, with a cheap elastic band that would probably snap before midnight. “We should’ve bought better masks.”
“You said not to waste money,” Viper reminded me.
“I said not to waste real money. There’s a difference.”
Blade picked up his own mask and inspected it without expression. “We’re going to look like we robbed a Halloween store on the way to a funeral.”
“That’s because we did,” Viper said. “Spirit Halloween was the only place still open.”
“It was a party supply store,” I said.
“It had a skeleton playing saxophone by the register. That makes it worse.”
I ignored him and checked my phone. One message from Reyes asking if rich people parties had good food, followed by another telling me not to come back married to someone with a yacht, unless she had sisters.
I put my phone away without answering. Reyes could keep the men from getting restless for one night, and Mac would make sure nobody got drunk enough to burn down the garage.
Bear would stand near the door looking half asleep until someone made the mistake of thinking that meant slow.
They could handle Black Rock until morning.
What I didn’t know was whether we could handle the room we were walking into.
We had gotten the invitation through a courier who refused to name whom sent him.
That alone should’ve been enough to toss it.
But the card was heavy, the embossed seal unfamiliar, and the location tied to enough whispered money that Viper spent two days chasing loose threads until he came back with more questions than answers.
Private estate outside Vegas. High-level guests.
Men with offshore accounts, political reach, and appetites expensive enough to require discretion.
The kind of place where a small, hungry club could either find work or get eaten by people who smiled while doing it.
Blade slid his arms into his jacket and watched me eye the invitation sitting on the table. “Still think it’s worth going?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t the question I asked.”
I looked at him then. He knew the difference between my decisions and my confidence in them, which made him useful and irritating. “We need runner work. Fast, high-dollar, short-term. Something clean enough not to drag heat back to Black Rock while we’re still stabilizing.”
“Nothing about tonight feels clean,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “But clean isn’t usually where the money is.”
Viper reached for his jacket, sliding into it with an ease that made the rental look less cheap than it was. “We go in, we listen, we make ourselves useful without looking desperate, and we leave with names. That’s the plan.”
“That was my plan,” I said.
He fastened his cufflinks, which were also rented and looked it. “I improved the delivery.”
Blade stood and tucked a small folding blade into some hidden place beneath his jacket.
I saw the motion, not because he was careless, because I knew him.
He had been a doctor before the Wolves had fully claimed him, still was in the ways that mattered, but violence didn’t sit unnatural in him.
It sat quiet. That made people underestimate him exactly once.
“No obvious weapons,” I reminded him.
Blade looked at me calmly. “It isn’t obvious.”
Viper checked his own jacket. “Mine either.”
I stared at him.
He smiled slightly. “What? You said no obvious weapons.”
“I said we’re trying to network, not start a war in somebody’s ballroom.”
“Those things overlap more often than people admit.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction.
I put my mask on, adjusted the strap around the back of my head, and looked at myself in the mirror above the dresser.
Dirty brown hair combed back, jaw clean-shaven, because Viper insisted rich men trusted a shave more than stubble, black tux stretching across shoulders built for a cut rather than a suit.
The mask hid enough to make me look less like myself, but not enough to make me look like I belonged with men who bought custom clothes and smiled with knives behind their teeth.
Blade came to stand beside me, then Viper on the other side, all three of us caught in the cheap mirror under bad yellow light. We looked wrong. Maybe that was good. Men remembered wrong. They measured it. They decided whether to avoid it or use it.
Viper studied our reflection. “Well, gentlemen. We look poor, violent, and underprepared.”
Blade picked up the room key. “So honest.”
I took the invitation and tucked it inside my jacket. Beneath the irritation, beneath the tight collar and cheap mask, and the weight of everything waiting back in Black Rock, something moved low in my gut.