“I am.” “No,” he says. “You’re not.”
I come awake fighting. Not slow. Not groggy.
Violent.
My eyes snap open, and for half a second the room tilts in pieces around me. Ceiling. Wall. Couch. Light too sharp. Air too thick. My body knows something is wrong before my mind catches up, and I’m already moving before the rest of it comes back.
Olivia.
Gone.
The word slams into me harder than any fist. I sit up too fast. Pain splits through my head, black spots cutting across my vision as whatever Doc put in me tries to drag me back down.
My muscles don’t respond cleanly. There’s a delay between command and movement that makes rage crawl under my skin.
Not enough. Nothing is enough to keep me down.
I swing my legs off the couch and shove to my feet.
The room lurches. Doesn’t matter.
I take one step toward the door.
“Take one more step like that, and I’ll have Doc put you down again.” Logan. His voice cuts through the haze, flat and sharp enough to stop the room from spinning for a second.
I look up.
He’s standing between me and the door. Not beside it.
Not near it. In front of it. Deliberate.
His arms are crossed over his chest, but there’s nothing relaxed about him.
His eyes are hard, jaw locked, body set in a way that tells me he’s already made the call before I woke up.
President first. Brother second. Obstacle if he has to be.
I take another breath. It burns. “Move.” My voice comes out rough. Dry. Wrong.
Logan doesn’t. “You’re not walking out of this room like that.”
“I am.”
“No,” he says. “You’re not.”
The office comes into focus in small, ugly pieces.
Logan’s desk is cracked where I flipped it.
One shelf is half torn from the wall. Papers are scattered across the floor, footprints ground into some of them.
There’s a dark smear on the edge of the doorway that might be my blood from where I put my fist through the wall before they hit me, before Doc got close enough with a needle.
The memory comes back.
The link. The feed. Olivia restrained. Eli refusing. The gunshot. Her scream.
My hands curl. The office shrinks around me. “They sent something?” I ask.
Logan’s expression tightens. “Not yet.”
“Then I’m going.”
“Where?”
I don’t answer. Because I don’t have one. Not yet. That doesn’t matter to the part of me that wants to move. That part doesn’t need a location. It wants roads, bodies, doors kicked in, men with throats I can close my hands around until one of them points me in the right direction.
Logan reads it. “You’re not helping her like this.”
Something in my chest snaps tight. “Don’t.”
His eyes sharpen. “Don’t what?”
“Use her to leash me.”
“I’m using her to keep you useful.” The words hit. Harder than I want them to.
Useful.
Blaze said it before, Olivia needs you useful. Not feral. Not fucking stupid.
My jaw tightens until pain cuts down the side of my face.
Logan steps closer. Not much. Enough. “You either calm down and listen,” he says, voice low now, controlled anger running under every word, “or I’ll have Doc put you into a fucking coma until we deal with this shit without you.”
The room goes silent. Not empty. Heavy.
I stare at him. He means it. If I move wrong, if I make him choose between me tearing out of here blind and the club finding Olivia without me, he’ll choose her. He’ll choose the mission. He’ll choose control. That’s why he’s president.
I hate him for it. I respect him for it. Both sit in my chest like blades. My hands flex once. The violence is still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s waiting under my skin, pushing hard enough to split bone, demanding direction. But direction matters.
She matters.
Olivia, tied to that bed. Olivia covered in Eli’s blood. Olivia holding herself together because she knew I’d come.
She needs me sharp. Functional. Not tearing apart walls. Not swinging at brothers. Not blind. My breath drags in slow. It shakes once on the way out. I lock it down. Then I take one step back.
Logan watches every inch of it.
“Fine,” I say.
His expression doesn’t soften. “Say it better.”
I tilt my head. The look he gives me says he doesn’t have time for my bullshit, and for once, I don’t have time for it either. “I’ll listen.”
A beat.
Then he nods once. “Good.”
The door opens behind him, and the rest of the room comes back alive.
Dom is at the desk with his laptop, though the desk itself is shoved crooked from where I tried to destroy it.
Landon stands beside him with papers spread across one arm.
Cain is near the wall, watching me like he’s ready to put me down himself if I slip.
Shadow stands close enough to help. Hammer is by the window.
Joker is leaning in the corner, face blank, eyes sharp.
Blaze is at the far side of the room, split lip still healing from me and expression stripped clean of humor.
No jokes. No posturing. No wasted breath.
Logan moves back behind the desk. “We work.”
Dom doesn’t look up. “Tracking attempts are still bouncing. Whoever built their system knows what they’re doing. The link was routed through multiple relays before the feed cut, and every relay was masked behind disposable infrastructure.”
“English,” Hammer says.
“They’re ghosts unless they choose not to be,” Dom answers.
“That’s shit English.”
“It’s accurate.”
Landon slides a paper onto the desk. “Money’s the same. Payments are tied to high level liquidity channels. Not cash drops. Not street level transfers. They’re moving through accounts built for immediate access and rapid dispersal.”
Cain’s mouth tightens. “How high level?”
Landon looks at him. “Enough that we’re not chasing men in vans anymore.”
Logan says, “Say it.”
Landon exhales through his nose. “This isn’t street money. This is organized capital.”
The phrase sits heavy in the room.
Dom nods, fingers moving again. “They’re not just kidnappers. They’re attached to a market system. Buyers, handlers, transport, enforcement, financial layers. They’re structured because they have to be. Too many moving pieces otherwise.”
Inventory.
The word from before flashes through me. They made women inventory. They made Olivia inventory. I don’t move. Stillness matters now. Every piece of information becomes a blade. I take each one and set it where it belongs. System. Market. Buyer. Auction. Transfer. Weak points.
Landon continues. “We don’t have time to unwind the whole thing before tonight if they move her.”
“They will,” I say. Everyone looks at me. I hold the desk edge, not because I need support, but because my hands need somewhere to stay. “They killed Eli on camera,” I continue. “They escalated because we interfered. They won’t keep her in one place long after showing us her.”
Dom’s jaw tightens. “Agreed.”
Blaze looks toward the broken wall, then back at me. “Then we find the next place.”
A notification pings. One clean sound. Small. Sharp. Every man in the office freezes.
Dom’s eyes snap to the laptop.
Logan says, “What is it?”
Dom doesn’t answer immediately. He reads. His face goes flat. Then he turns the laptop slightly so Logan can see. I don’t wait for permission. I step close enough to read it. The message is clean. No rage. No taunt. No sloppy threat.
Business.
If you want her back, you can try to buy her.
Below it, a link.
My pulse slows. Not from calm. From focus so complete everything else drops away.
Logan’s voice is quiet. “Open it.”
Dom clicks. The screen goes black for one second.
Then a website loads. Not ugly. Not crude.
Not the dark, dirty nightmare people imagine when they pretend evil looks obvious.
It’s clean. Professional. High-end. Black background.
Gold lettering. Minimal design. Private access portal.
Encrypted buyer credentials already accepted. Refined evil. That’s worse.
Dom scrolls.
Listings. Lot numbers. Times. Codes. Locations obscured. Some pages locked. Some already completed.
My stomach doesn’t turn. It freezes. These are people. Women. Reduced to numbers, condition notes, buyer preferences, timing windows.
Dom stops scrolling.
The screen updates. A new lot appears. Scheduled tonight. One hour from now.
No name. No full photo at first. Just a cropped image. Hair. Jawline. Mouth. Enough. My hand closes on the edge of the desk hard enough the wood groans.
Olivia.
Landon leans in.
“Starting bid,” Dom says, voice dead. He clicks. The number appears. Five hundred thousand. The room goes silent.
Then Blaze breathes, “Jesus fuck.”
Cain mutters something darker.
Hammer’s hand curls on the back of a chair.
Joker’s smile appears again, thin and dead.
Landon shakes his head once. “We don’t have that kind of liquid capital.”
Logan looks at him. “How fast can we move assets?”
“Not fast enough,” Landon answers. “Not clean. Not in an hour. Even if we stripped emergency reserves and moved through every channel we have, we’d trip flags before we reached half that. That’s also just the starting bid, no telling what it will take to win.”
“Workaround?” Shadow asks.
“No.”
The word lands like a door slamming. I stare at the number. Then at her lot code. Then at the countdown.
One hour.
They think money is control. They think they found the one battlefield where we can’t win by force. Maybe they’re right. For the auction. Not for what comes after.
My mind shifts. Not just to saving her. Not only that. Enter the system. Find the buyer route. Find transfer. Find handlers. Destroy the structure from inside the one door they opened. They sent us a link because they wanted us powerless. They gave us access.
Stupid.
Carter steps forward from near the back of the room. He’s been quiet, arms crossed, face hard in that way he gets when something from his past crawls too close to the present. “I might know someone who has that kind of access,” he says.
Logan turns. “Who?”
Carter hesitates. That tells me enough before he says the name. “Matteo Vittorio.”
The room changes.
Immediate. Recognition. Weight.
Carter worked with Matteo to take down his father after he bought and kept Brooke prisoner for years before Carter stole her from him.
In the end Matteo turned on Carter and was going to kill him but Twisted was there and everyone walked away breathing.
He is now the head of the most powerful mafia family.
Blaze swears softly. “Fuck me.”
Joker’s brows lift. “That’s an interesting door to knock on.”
Cain looks at Carter. “You sure?”
“No,” Carter says. “But he has the kind of money we need, and he’d have access to this kind of world.”
Logan’s eyes narrow. “Because of his father.”
“Yeah,” Carter says. “His father was deep in trafficking. Matteo hated that part of the empire, or claimed he did, but he knows the players. Knows the channels. If anyone can step into that auction with liquid capital and not look out of place, it’s him.”
Landon looks grim. “He’ll want something.”
Carter nods. “We’d owe him.”
No one speaks. A favor to a man like Matteo Vittorio isn’t a favor. It’s a loaded gun handed over grip-first and trusted not to be pointed back at you until later. Dangerous ally. Mob-level money. Old blood in dirty systems.
I don’t care.
Logan looks at me. Maybe he expects objection. Maybe he expects me to say I won’t let some mob prince buy what’s mine, even temporarily. I don’t. Because pride doesn’t get Olivia back. Strategy does. Blood does. Whatever opens the next door does.
“She comes home,” I say.
Carter nods once. “That’s the idea.”
“No,” I reply. “That’s the outcome.”
His gaze holds mine. Then he nods again. “Yeah.”
Logan processes fast. Too fast for anyone to accuse him of hesitation. He looks at Carter. “Make the call.”
I watch the auction clock.
Fifty-nine minutes.
Then fifty-eight.
They think this is business. A listing. A bid. A transfer. They think I’m watching helpless. They think putting a price on her changes what she is. It doesn’t.
Olivia isn’t a lot number. She isn’t property for sale.
She isn’t a product in their clean, expensive nightmare.
She’s mine. Not because I bought her. Not because I own her the way they think men own things.
Because she chose me. Because I chose her back.
Because she is the only future I ever let myself touch, and they put her under lights for men to bid on like they won’t pay for every second of it.
My breathing evens. The last of the drug haze burns away. No panic now. No blind rage. No fear loud enough to drown out thought. Something worse takes its place. Purpose.
Logan glances at me. “Cobra.”
I don’t look away from the clock. “What?”
“You with us?”
My eyes stay on the screen. “Until we find her.”
“And after?”
I finally look at him.
The room holds still.
“After, I’m what they should’ve feared before they touched her.”
Logan doesn’t argue. Not this time. He looks back at the screen.
Fifty-seven minutes.
They think this is business.
I’m about to make it a massacre.