Chapter 5
The temperature dropped fifteen degrees after sunset.
Blizzard stood in a doorway three buildings down from Callahan's Books, wrapped in shadow, perfectly still. The November wind cut through the street like a blade, sending trash skittering across the sidewalk and driving pedestrians indoors.
He barely noticed.
Alone. Vulnerable. Surrounded by men who wanted to break her.
Not for long.
At 9:36, a black sedan rolled down the block and parked in the same spot Mrazek's crew had used for days. Two men inside. Engine off, windows cracked.
Blizzard pulled out his phone and started documenting.
Glen Mrazek emerged from the driver's side at 10:02—thick-necked, heavy-shouldered, moving with the swagger of a man who'd spent his whole life being the biggest threat in the room.
His partner was younger, leaner, watching the street with the twitchy attention of someone who hadn't learned patience yet.
They crossed to the bookstore and checked the locks. Front door. Side entrance. Back alley access.
Mrazek pulled out his phone and made a call, speaking too quietly for Blizzard to hear from his position. Status report. The kind of check-in that said still here, still scared, still alone.
The call lasted two minutes. Then Mrazek and his partner returned to the sedan and settled in to watch.
Blizzard photographed both faces, the license plate, the positioning of the car relative to the store's entrance. He noted the timing, the routine, the patterns that would matter when the Wolves moved.
At 11:15, a second car appeared.
Different vehicle. Different men. These two didn't park—they cruised the block slowly, checking storefronts, marking which businesses had closed for the night. A patrol sweep, systematic and thorough.
Blizzard pressed deeper into the doorway's shadow as their headlights swept past.
They didn't see him. Nobody ever did when he didn't want to be seen.
The sweep car circled twice more before disappearing toward Archer Avenue. Mrazek's sedan stayed put, a permanent fixture on the block. The night shift. Someone else probably handled the daylight hours while these two watched Wendy sleep.
Watched her sleep.
Something hot and sharp twisted in Blizzard's chest—unfamiliar, uncomfortable, impossible to ignore. He'd spent years learning to feel nothing, to let the cold seep through him until emotion froze solid. It was safer that way. Easier.
But watching men circle a woman's sanctuary like wolves—wrong kind of wolves—waiting for her to break...
That thawed something he'd thought was dead.
He stayed until 2 a.m., long past the point where normal surveillance would have yielded everything useful.
Mrazek's partner swapped out at midnight, replaced by a third man who looked bored and cold and resentful about the assignment.
The sweep car made two more passes. Nothing else moved on the block.
Wendy's lights stayed off. She was probably asleep by now, curled up on that cot with Hemingway pressed against her side, dreaming about a life that didn't include dead rats and threatening phone calls.
Blizzard wanted to give her that life back.
Wanted it badly enough that the feeling cut through years of carefully maintained numbness.
That's new.
He walked back to his bike through streets that had emptied of everyone except the desperate and the predatory. The cold wrapped around him like an old friend, familiar and welcome, but it didn't quiet the heat building in his chest.
Mine to protect.
The thought surfaced without permission. He examined it, turned it over, tried to find the logic in claiming a woman he'd known for four days.
There wasn't any logic. Just the bone-deep certainty that Wendy Callahan and her hostile cat belonged under Wolf protection.
Under his protection.
The compound was still awake when he rolled through the gates.
Friday night energy filled the lot—brothers around the fire pit, music thumping from the clubhouse, the particular chaos that came with a week's worth of tension looking for release. Blizzard parked his bike and walked past the celebration without stopping.
He found Alpha in the chapel, going over territory maps with Razor. Both men looked up when Blizzard pushed through the door.
"You look like a man with something to say." Alpha leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Talk."
Blizzard laid it out. Wendy Callahan. Arthur Dante. The fencing operation that had been running on the South Side for two decades without Wolf interference. The pressure campaign against a bookstore owner who'd refused to become a front for stolen merchandise.
"Bridgeport's not our territory," Razor observed.
"It's close enough." Blizzard pulled out his phone and showed them the surveillance photos. "Glen Mrazek runs Dante's muscle. He's been watching her store for at least two weeks. Break-ins, dead animals, threats to her cat. Escalation pattern suggests he'll move to physical intimidation soon."
"Her cat?" Alpha's eyebrow rose.
"She's got a cat. They threatened it."
Something passed between Alpha and Razor—a look Blizzard couldn't quite read.
"You've been watching this situation for four days," Alpha said. "Buying books."
"Gathering intel."
"That what we're calling it?" Razor's mouth twitched. "Because it sounds like you found something you want to keep."
Blizzard didn't deny it. "She's sleeping in her store with a baseball bat. Dante's men are circling. If we don't move her soon, Mrazek's going to escalate from dead rats to something that doesn't wash off."
The chapel went quiet. Alpha studied Blizzard with the focused attention of a man who'd led the Wolves through a decade of territorial wars.
"This woman," he said finally. "She know what she's getting into? Wolf protection isn't a favor. It's a commitment."
"She knows enough."
"Does she know about you?"
Blizzard met his president's stare without flinching. "She knows I'm a Wolf. She knows I'm offering to help. The rest..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "The rest is between me and her."
Alpha was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Arthur Dante's been operating in our shadow for twenty years. Never caused problems, so we let him run. But threatening a woman in Wolf-adjacent territory?" His expression hardened. "That's a line."
"What do you need?" Razor asked Blizzard.
"Safehouse in Back of the Yards. Someone to watch the door while I deal with Dante's crew." Blizzard's voice stayed flat, but something in his chest loosened. "And a litter box."
Razor blinked. "A what?"
"She's got a cat. Cat needs a litter box."
Alpha laughed—a short, sharp sound that echoed off the chapel's reinforced walls. "Never thought I'd see the day. Blizzard, the coldest bastard in this club, asking for a litter box."
"The cat's important to her."
"Yeah." Alpha's laughter faded, replaced by something warmer. "I bet it is."
He stood, clapping Blizzard on the shoulder with a force that would have staggered a smaller man.
"Take Lakeshore for the safehouse. I'll put Scout on mapping Dante's operation—we'll need to know what we're hitting before we hit it." His grip tightened. "And brother? Whatever this is, whatever she is to you? Don't let it freeze."
Blizzard nodded once.
He left the chapel with authorization to protect Wendy Callahan, a safehouse lined up in Back of the Yards, and the uncomfortable awareness that his brothers had seen through him in about thirty seconds.
Mine to protect.
The thought didn't feel so strange anymore.