Chapter 6
Wendy jolted awake on the cot, heart hammering, hand already reaching for the baseball bat. Hemingway hissed from his spot on her feet, fur bristling.
"It's me."
Blizzard's voice, flat and unmistakable, filtered through the back door.
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and crossed the room on shaky legs. The deadbolt slid back with a heavy click, and then he was standing in her doorway, filling the frame like he'd been carved to fit it.
"You're early," she said. "Store doesn't open for two hours."
"You're not opening today."
Wendy blinked. "Excuse me?"
Blizzard stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, his eyes scanning the back room—the rumpled cot, the stack of books, the cat carrier she kept by the door for vet visits. Taking inventory. Assessing.
"Glen Mrazek checked your locks at midnight. Two more of Dante's men swept the block twice before 2 a.m." His gaze came back to her face. "They're escalating. You need to leave."
"Leave?" She crossed her arms, suddenly very aware that she was wearing sweatpants and a faded t-shirt with her hair in a disaster. "I can't just leave. I have a business to run. Customers expecting me to open. Bills that need paying."
"Bills don't matter if you're dead."
The words landed like a punch.
"That's dramatic," she managed.
"That's accurate." Blizzard moved through her back room, checking the window locks, the door to the main floor, the shadows in corners where threats might hide.
"Mrazek's been doing this for fifteen years.
I've seen his file. He starts with property damage and dead animals.
Then he moves to broken bones and hospital visits.
You're running out of time before he decides rats aren't working. "
Wendy's stomach dropped. She wanted to argue, wanted to insist he was exaggerating, but she'd spent two weeks living with Arthur Dante's threats. She knew, deep down, that this was heading somewhere worse.
"Where would I even go?" she asked. "My apartment's not safe. You said yourself they know my routine."
"Safehouse. Back of the Yards. Wolf territory." Blizzard turned to face her, and something in his expression had shifted—still flat, still unreadable, but with an intensity underneath that made her breath catch. "You'll be protected. No one touches what's ours."
What's ours.
The possessive weight of those words settled over her like a blanket she hadn't asked for but couldn't bring herself to refuse.
"I can't." Wendy shook her head, grasping for reasons. "Hemingway—I can't put him in a shelter, and I can't leave him here alone. The last threat specifically mentioned—"
"The cat comes."
She stopped. "What?"
"The cat comes with you." Blizzard's voice didn't change, but his jaw tightened slightly. "I'm not negotiating about a cat."
Wendy stared at him. This massive, scarred, terrifying man had just declared that her seventeen-pound orange nightmare was non-negotiable.
"You set up a safehouse for me and my cat?"
"Litter box is already there."
Something cracked open in her chest. Not attraction—though that was there too, simmering beneath the fear and exhaustion.
Something deeper. The feeling of being seen.
Of having someone understand that Hemingway wasn't just a pet, he was family, and leaving him behind would have broken something in her that couldn't be fixed.
"You bought a litter box," she repeated, because the words didn't make sense.
"Borrowed. One of the brothers has cats."
"You borrowed a litter box for my cat."
"Are you going to keep repeating everything I say, or are you going to pack?"
Wendy laughed—that same surprised sound from yesterday, escaping before she could stop it. "You're a strange man, Blizzard."
"Been told that before." He picked up Hemingway's carrier and held it out to her. "Twenty minutes. Pack what you need. Books, clothes, whatever makes you feel at home. I'll load the car."
"You have a car?"
"Borrowed that too."
Twenty-three minutes later, Wendy sat in the passenger seat of a black SUV with Hemingway's carrier on her lap and a duffel bag of hastily packed belongings in the back.
Blizzard drove like he did everything else—calm, controlled, unhurried. The city scrolled past the windows, familiar streets giving way to neighborhoods she'd never explored. South Side blocks, industrial edges, the kind of territory that looked rough but felt lived-in.
"The man watching the safehouse," she said. "Lakeshore. He's one of your... brothers?"
"Yeah."
"Is he..."
"Like me?" Blizzard glanced at her, and she caught the faintest glimmer of amusement in those flat gray eyes. "No one's like me. But he's solid. Won't let anything happen to you."
"What about you?"
"I'll be there too."
More of that possessive weight, pressing down on her shoulders. She should have minded. Should have resented being claimed like territory, moved like a chess piece, protected like something fragile that couldn't protect itself.
But she'd been protecting herself for two weeks, and she was so damn tired.
"Okay," she said quietly.
Blizzard nodded once, and kept driving.
The safehouse was a narrow brick building on a block that looked like it couldn't decide between industrial decay and working-class revival. A man stood on the front porch—tall, weathered, with the kind of face that had seen too much water and not enough sleep.
"Lakeshore," Blizzard said as they pulled up. "He's good people."
Wendy climbed out of the SUV with Hemingway's carrier clutched against her chest. Lakeshore watched her approach with an expression she couldn't read.
"This the bookstore lady?" His voice was rougher than Blizzard's, carrying the rasp of old smoke or older grief.
"Wendy," she said. "And this is Hemingway."
Lakeshore peered into the carrier. Hemingway hissed.
"Mean-looking cat."
"He's protective."
"Good quality." Lakeshore stepped aside and held the door open. "Place is set up. Litter box in the bathroom, food in the kitchen. Blizzard said you'd need books, so I cleared a shelf."
Wendy stepped inside and stopped, breath catching.
The safehouse was small but clean—a living room with worn furniture, a kitchen visible through an archway, stairs leading up to what she assumed were bedrooms. Nothing fancy. Nothing threatening.
And on the bookshelf beside the window, a row of paperbacks that definitely hadn't come from a Wolf supply closet. Recent releases. Good titles. The kind of books she'd have recommended to customers.
"Did you..." She turned to Blizzard, who had followed her inside with her duffel bag over his shoulder. "Did you buy these?"
"You said books make a place feel like home."
She had said that. In the back room of her store, exhausted and scared, rambling about why she couldn't give up her bookshop. She'd said something about rooms without books not being habitable.
And he'd remembered.
"You bought me books," she said, her voice coming out strange.
"Borrowed them." But something in his expression suggested that wasn't entirely true.
Wendy set Hemingway's carrier on the couch and unzipped it. The cat emerged with an indignant yowl, surveyed his new territory with feline skepticism, and promptly jumped onto the windowsill like he'd lived there his whole life.
"He approves," she said.
"Good." Blizzard set her bag by the stairs. "Get settled. I need to check sight lines."
He moved through the safehouse with that patient, methodical attention she was starting to recognize—checking windows, testing locks, examining angles from the street. Lakeshore watched from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"He's been like this for days," Lakeshore said quietly, pitching his voice so only Wendy could hear. "Coming back to the compound talking about a bookstore. A cat. A woman who wouldn't fold."
"I didn't know I was famous."
"You're not. But Blizzard talking about anything personal?" Lakeshore shook his head. "That's new. That's unprecedented."
Wendy didn't know what to do with that information, so she unpacked her books instead. Arranged them on the shelf Lakeshore had cleared, spines facing out, organized by nothing but instinct. Then her clothes in the upstairs bedroom. Then Hemingway's food and water bowls in the kitchen.
By the time she came back downstairs, Blizzard had finished his security assessment and settled into an armchair by the window with a paperback from the shelf. He read without acknowledging her presence, completely still, completely absorbed.
She sat on the couch with her own book and tried to focus on the words.
Failed.
Her attention kept drifting to the man in the armchair. The way the afternoon light caught the scars on his ears. The way his hands held the book like it was something precious. The way his stillness felt like a shelter instead of a threat.
The evening crept in slowly, shadows lengthening across unfamiliar walls. Hemingway moved from the windowsill to Wendy's lap to, eventually, the arm of Blizzard's chair, where he curled up and started purring.
Blizzard didn't react. Just kept reading with a cat pressed against his elbow like it belonged there.
Wendy watched him—the quietest man she'd ever met, sitting in a borrowed safehouse with her borrowed books and her hostile cat who'd decided he was acceptable company.
She'd spent two weeks afraid to close her eyes.
Tonight, surrounded by strangers in a neighborhood she didn't know, she felt something she'd almost forgotten was possible.
Safe.
Blizzard turned a page. Hemingway purred. The safehouse settled around them like a held breath.
And Wendy realized that the quietest man she'd ever met made her feel safer than any locked door.