Chapter 7
Wrecker
Icalled the meeting after dark, right after the last customer wheeled his oil-soaked Harley off the lot and the garage settled into its usual after-hours hush.
Bronc was already in the war room, the blue light from his phone making his face look younger than it was, or maybe just more haunted.
Papa was seated in his usual spot. Arsenal and Doc came in together, Doc with a stack of folders, Arsenal with a handful of sunflower seeds he cracked with his molars and spat into the trash.
Gunner drifted in last, still green enough to hover near the door, back to the wall.
No one said a word until I shut the door and hit the blackout switch, killing the lights.
Bronc broke the quiet. “Whatever it is, Eli, you got fifteen minutes before Juliet gets here for dinner.” His voice was casual, but the way he stacked his hands on the table said he was expecting a war.
I took the end chair. “Don’t need that long.” My hands were too big for the little thumb drive, but I managed to slot it into the war room laptop and patch it to the wall monitor.
The main screen filled with a low-res video feed.
At first, nothing but audio: Parker’s voice, brittle and fast, pacing on some problem.
Then Silas, the cockroach, his words oiled and smug.
There wasn’t much video—just a shot of the inside of Parker’s jacket and some glimpses from her watch as she sat in front of Silas’s desk.
But the mics were good. You heard every word.
“You want more time, you better make it count.” That was Silas, already three drinks in, putting on his big bad wolf routine. “Because if this thing tanks, Axel’s not the only one who’s going to pay for it.”
On the video, Parker said: “It won’t tank. I just need a few more days.” You could see her hands shaking. The camera showed every tremor, like a little earthquake.
Bronc leaned forward, not blinking. Arsenal spit a shell at the trash and missed. “That Silas?” he said, as if he already knew the answer.
I nodded.
Doc made a note. “So it’s what you thought.” He thumbed through the first folder, his lips moving in silent calculation.
The video kept going. Silas, all threats and pressure, Parker crumbling then holding, then a sound: skin on skin. Not a slap, not exactly—just a grab, a grip. The sort of thing that leaves bruises if you let it. The table tensed. Even Gunner made a fist.
I killed the video. The room sucked up the silence like a punch to the gut.
“He’s got her by the fucking throat,” I said. “She’s the one moving the money for him.”
Arsenal was first to react. “She was fucking pack. Born here. Raised here. Her twin too.”
“Their entire life.” I said.
Doc frowned, eyes going cold. “She was never a joiner, but I didn’t take her for a traitor.”
“She’s not,” I said, and realized too late how it sounded. “It wasn’t her choice. She’s doing it because Silas is holding Axel over a fire.”
Bronc raised a brow. “You sure of that?”
“Dead sure. Listened to every minute.” I flexed my hands, remembered the sound Silas made when he touched her, the way Parker seemed to hold her breath. “He told her if she didn’t get it right, Axel wasn’t the only one who’d pay.”
Arsenal was grinning, not with happiness, but with anticipation. “So we burn Greenbriar. Make an example.”
Gunner piped up, “She’s still former pack, though.”
Doc shook his head. “Not if she’s running ops against us. That’s not just pack business. That’s war.”
I stood, too restless to stay seated. “She’s being forced. We’re not talking about some glory-hound. She’s desperate. And smart. Smart enough to have given us a way in. To show us the way.”
Bronc laced his fingers and stared me down. “You got a plan?”
I exhaled, slow. “We flip her. Get her to plant something in Silas’s office. Let her run the siphon for another week while we get our ducks in a row. Then we hit him when he’s looking the other way.”
Doc scratched his chin. “She doesn’t know she’s made?”
“Think she suspects. She’s about to find out for sure.”
Arsenal looked skeptical. “You sure you’re not too close to this, Wrecker?”
That got under my skin. I was going to protect her if I had to fight every man in this room. “You questioning me, Arsenal?”
He put his hands in the air, then glanced at Bronc. “Nah man. Just a question. I got it, not too close.”
That was a lie. I’d watched her for hours now, counting her breaths, watching her with that damn dog, memorizing the way she moved. I’d watched her sleep, watched her cry, watched her make herself come and then cry again. I felt like a ghost in her house. Like I’d always been there.
Bronc didn’t buy the lie. “You’re obsessed. Is this a liability?”
Now that, sure as shit, pissed me off. He’d let Juliet in when he didn’t even know who she truly was, and he’s gonna question me?
“I think we all need to take a step back and fucking trust each other. I remember a couple of other women who we put our trust in before we had a good handle on whether or not they could be fully depended on. We put our faith in the members of this team to know what they were doing.” I was staring straight at Bronc.
Bronc put his head down.
“Fuck. He’s not wrong. Either we trust each other, or we ain’t shit as a team. We start questioning each other’s judgement then our ability to operate as a team is gone.”
I stared at the wall behind him, the place where we used to hang the heads of coyotes that raided the compound.
“I’m telling you, she’s more afraid of Silas than she is of us.
She’s got no one. Except the ugliest fucking dog you ever saw she just rescued from some dumpster or some shit.
” That got a laugh. “But I heard her yelling at Axel, telling him he dragged her into this mess and ruined her life. That he took her away from the only family she had left. Us.”
Papa shook his head. “Poor kid. Sounds like she needs saving as much as anything.”
Arsenal’s tone had changed. “So, what do we do?”
I took a breath. “Look, I’m not gonna lie.
The reason I know all of this is that since I tracked that IP address, I’ve had her under surveillance.
She’s alone 100 percent of the time. Just her, that dog, and her computer doing computer nerd things and reading books.
Honestly, I think she wrote the code, so I’d find it.
It’s her asshole brother that’s dragged her down in this.
When he barged into her house yesterday, he told her what she’s gotta do. Like he bore no responsibility.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “What I really need y’all doing is to help me find out what all Greenbriar is involved in. They apparently are running casinos, fight houses, and who knows what all, and who all are backing them.”
Bronc waited, let the silence hang. “Shit. Sounds like an entire enterprise.”
I rubbed my hand down my face. “I’m afraid it is.
We thought they were crippled. We haven’t been paying close enough attention to what they could be up to.
Sounds like they’ve been up to a lot more than we bargained for.
I’m thinking they could be banking thousands, hell, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. ”
Bronc looked at me, shaking his head. “Well, ain’t that just a real shit sundae with a fucking cherry on top?”
“We need to know what’s happening with them, and she’s our best chance to find out.” As bad as I hated the idea.
“What if she refuses?” That was Gunner’s question.
I smiled, mean and humorless. “She’ll want this over. I don’t see her backing down. Greenbriar wants a war. We’ll give them one.”
Doc tapped his pen on the table. “You’re going to have to get close.”
I nodded again. “I plan on it.”
Bronc sighed with resolution. “You got my blessing, Wrecker. But if it gets out of hand, you’re pulling the plug yourself.”
“Roger that.”
The meeting broke up. Doc left first, then Arsenal. Gunner hung back, looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t. I stayed, packing up the laptop and pocketing the drive. Bronc waited until the room cleared, then fixed me with that blue-eyed stare he’d inherited from his old man.
“You sure about this?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t see another way.”
He exhaled, rubbed his face. “If she’s in over her head, you get her out. If she’s playing us, I want her dead.”
“I’m telling you now, that’s a hard goddamn no. She’s my fucking mate, Bronc.”
“Of course she is. Eli, why can’t any fucking thing ever be easy?”
I grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He stood, stretched his back until it popped, then clapped me on the shoulder. “You need to talk to Juliet?”
“I’ll let you know. Parker might need to.”
“Ahh hell. Juliet loves a stray.”
I grinned as I left the war room and stepped out into the cold. The sky over the compound was the color of old ash, the lights of the city barely making a dent in the dark. I felt the wolf within me pacing, restless, ready to run.
I mounted my bike and gunned the engine, the sound splitting the night in two.
I was going to see Parker.
And this time, I wasn’t just going to watch.
I took the long way to Parker’s house, looped the block twice before cutting the engine.
The street slept hard, no porch lights, not even a possum made rounds in the ditch.
I left the bike hidden behind a utility shed and went the last stretch on foot.
The night felt colder here—maybe because I wasn’t on pack land.
I was a ghost with bad intentions. Or good, depended on your perspective.