Chapter 49 #2
“I’m good,” I say.
No one believes me.
Good. They shouldn’t.
Matteo says, “Cobra.”
I go still. The room shifts around my name. “What?”
“She will be frightened.”
My teeth grind. “She already is.”
“Yes,” he says. “But tomorrow will be different. Bought and transferred is psychologically distinct from captured. They will make her believe ownership has changed hands.”
The office goes quiet again.
He continues, “If she is as strong as Carter says Brooke was, she will hold. If she is as strong as you believe, she will hold longer.”
My hand flexes once. “She’ll hold.”
“I hope so.”
I lean closer to the phone. “Hope isn’t why you’re breathing tomorrow.”
Silence.
Then Matteo laughs softly. Not mockery. Something darker. “Good. Keep that. Aim it at the right targets later.”
The call ends shortly after. No farewell. No comfort. No promise beyond the plan. The phone screen goes dark on Logan’s desk.
For a few seconds, nobody talks. The room processes. The bikers in us want movement, noise, engines, guns, doors kicked open, men dragged into daylight by their throats. The situation demands stillness first.
Discipline.
It feels like swallowing glass.
Logan breaks the silence. “We prep.”
The room snaps back. Orders start moving fast. Controlled. Efficient.
“Dom, get ready for Alessandro. Build a parallel trace. I don’t want a single stream we can’t verify.”
“Already setting up a clean machine,” Dom says. “No shared access to our internal system. He gets a sandbox, I get his feed, and if he tries anything cute, I cut him off.”
“Good. Landon, keep tracking Matteo’s transfer. Quietly.” Landon nods. “I want to know where the money lands after the auction house takes its cut.”
“Done.”
“Cain, medical and protection. Doc is here and waiting, any other hands are guarding the clubhouse.”
Cain’s jaw is hard. “Done.”
“Shadow, Hammer, vehicles. Quiet only. Vans, cages, no bikes near the route.”
Shadow nods once.
Hammer says, “Suppressed loadout?”
“Controlled,” Logan answers. “We need men alive.”
Joker sighs.
Logan points at him without looking. “Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it loudly.”
Blaze says, “He always does.”
Joker tilts his head. “I’m wounded.”
“Not yet,” Hammer mutters.
For one second, the rhythm almost feels normal. Then the word on the screen pulls all of it back.
Sold.
The room keeps moving.
I don’t. Not at first.
Logan notices. “Cobra.” I turn my head. “You’re with me.”
“No.”
His stare hardens. “Not asking.”
“I’m not sitting in your office all night.”
“You’re not tearing the town apart either.”
“I know.” That makes him pause. I meet his eyes. “I need to be in our room.”
Understanding flickers. Olivia. Her scent. Her things. The last place she felt like mine before they put her under lights and sold her.
Logan nods once. “Shadow goes with you.”
I don’t argue. That alone tells him something.
Shadow falls in beside me as I leave the office.
The clubhouse outside the room is quieter than it should be.
The women know enough to be afraid, not enough to be destroyed by details.
Mac stands near the hall, arms folded around herself, eyes red but dry.
Kya is beside her. Brooke sits on the couch with Emma, one hand over her mouth.
They look at me. I don’t stop. Can’t. If one of them asks if she’s okay, I don’t know what my face will do.
I reach our room and open the door.
Shadow stays in the hall. Doesn’t follow. Smart.
The room smells like her. That almost takes me to my knees. Her hoodie is on the chair. The one she borrowed from me and somehow made hers. A brush sits near the dresser. Her phone charger is plugged into the wall. Small things. Nothing to anyone else.
Everything to me.
I step inside and shut the door halfway, not closed.
Not hiding. Just enough. The room is still.
I look at the bed. At the place she slept.
At the place she laughed and pinned me down and told me a part of her had always loved me.
My hand curls around the edge of the dresser.
Control. Timing. Targeting. Breathe. I pull in air that tastes like her and smoke and the old wood of the room.
Tomorrow. Ten p.m.
She will be delivered to Matteo’s residence.
Alive.
She has to be alive.
The collar means alive matters to them for now. The buyer means alive matters. The transfer means alive matters.
I hold onto that because it’s useful. Not because it comforts. Comfort is too soft. Usefulness keeps me upright. I open the drawer where she found my passport. The one that told her my birthday. The reason she left. The reason they had the opening.
No.
I shut that thought down hard.
They are the reason. Not her. Never her.
I pull the small torn bag Blaze saved from the parking lot out of my cut. He gave it back before we came into the office, silent, face tight. The paper is crushed. Inside is a small box. Damaged.
I open it.
A keychain. Simple. Black metal. A small engraved cobra curved around the letter O.
My chest locks. For a second, the whole war room, the plan, Matteo, the collar, the word sold, all of it disappears under the weight of this tiny fucking thing she went out to get me. A birthday gift. My first one in years My fist closes around it carefully. So carefully.
The violence inside me shifts again. Sharper. Cleaner. They took her while she was trying to give me something. They put her on a site. They put a collar on her. They think tomorrow is a delivery. They don’t understand. Returning her tomorrow is the last useful thing they’ll ever do.
Shadow’s voice comes from the hall, quiet. “Brother.” I look toward the door. “Logan’s asking for you.”
I slide the keychain into my pocket. Close the drawer. Step back into the hall. Whatever almost broke in that room is gone now. Not healed. Forged into something worse.
Shadow studies my face. Then nods once. No question.
We head back toward Logan’s office.
The clubhouse is moving now. Weapons checked in controlled silence. Vehicles assigned. Medical bags packed. Dom’s screens multiplying. Landon on the phone in a low voice. Logan at the center of it all, directing men like pieces on a board that has only one acceptable outcome.
I step into the office again. The countdown to tomorrow lives in every breath now. She’s alive. She’s close.
And now we do it right.