Chapter 3 #2
"How professional?" Ounce asks.
"Very. They knocked. They were polite. They knew my full name, my address, where my girls go to school. They left a card with just a number on it. No threats—but the older one looked at my house like he was taking notes."
"That is the threat," Ounce says.
"I know."
Silence. The kind that fills a room like water.
Maddox is the first to break it, and he does it with a voice that sounds like gravel pouring out of a cement truck. "They came to a brother's home. They mentioned his kids."
"They did."
"Then I don't understand what we're discussing."
Ruger holds up a hand. Not shutting Maddox down—just slowing the room. "This is Coin's play. His family, his call on how we handle it." He turns back to me. "What do you need?"
"Right now? Eyes. I need to know who these people are, how big the operation is, and whether Angelica is in the wind or whether she's going to show up next. I need someone watching my house when I'm not there and someone knowing where my girls are at all times."
"Done," Ruger says. No hesitation.
"Prospects can rotate on the house," Bracken offers. "Shots, Beats, and Lock. Maybe Rookie if he doesn’t have class. Eight-hour shifts. I'll run the schedule."
"I'll dig into the Las Vegas side," Ounce says. "I still know people who know people. Loan sharks that size—if they're sending muscle cross-country, this isn't some backroom bookie. This is organized. I'll have names by the weekend."
Porter pulls off his reading glasses and rubs his eyes. "Two hundred thousand. That's not a number they negotiated down to. That's a number that's been growing. Interest, penalties, fees. The original debt was probably half that."
"Does it matter?" Bloodhound speaks for the first time. His voice is low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you pay attention. "The number doesn't matter. They came to his house. They know where his girls go to school. The rest is details."
He looks at me across the table, and what I see in his eyes isn't anger—it's worse than that.
This is a man who almost lost the woman he loved to a threat he didn't see coming fast enough.
He knows what it feels like to have someone you love in someone else's crosshairs.
"Whatever you need, brother," Bloodhound says. "I'm there."
I nod. I don't trust my voice for a second, so I just nod.
Ruger looks around the table. "All in favor of backing Coin's play—protection detail, intel, full club support until this is resolved."
Every hand goes up. Every single one. No discussion. No dissent.
"Unanimous," Ruger says. "Anything else?"
"Pipeline update," Ounce says, shifting gears the way he does—smooth, no friction.
"Bloodhound and Maddox ran the rural corridors two days ago.
Found tire tracks on three of the old mining access roads.
Someone's using them regularly—heavy vehicles, probably box trucks.
I've got a line on a property outside of town that might be a stash house. I'll confirm by next week."
Ruger nods. "Stay on it. Anything moving through our territory, I want to know about it before it gets where it's going." He slams the gavel down and stands. Church is over. "Coin—you need anything tonight, you call. Any hour."
"I will."
The brothers file out.
Hands on my shoulder as they pass—Maddox, whose hand feels like a catcher's mitt. Bracken, a quick squeeze. Decorum, a nod that carries the weight of a prayer.
Porter, who stops and says quietly, "We'll sort the money side. Don't carry that number in your head. It doesn't mean what they want it to mean."
Then it's just me and Bloodhound.
He's still sitting across the table, arms crossed again, watching me with those eyes that don't miss a single thing I'm trying to hide.
"You good?" he asks.
"No."
He nods. Appreciates the honesty. Most men in this club would have said yeah, brother, I'm fine and meant none of it. Bloodhound and I have never been most men.
"Leah know?"
The question catches me sideways. "Why would Leah know?"
His expression doesn't change. "Because she's my sister. Because she's been coming around more. Because if this thing escalates and she's anywhere near your family, she's in the radius."
He's right. He's absolutely right, and I hate that he's right because it means the box in the back of my mind—the one with the scar that matches mine and the soft voice and the steady hands—just became relevant for reasons that have nothing to do with what I've been trying not to feel.
"I'll keep her clear of it," I say.
"You better." It's not a threat. It's a brother talking to a brother about the person they'd both die for, and we both know it.
He stands, taps the table twice with his knuckles—his version of goodbye—and walks out.
I sit in the empty Church room for a few minutes. Just me, the table, and the white card sitting in the middle of it like a grenade with the pin half-pulled.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
My ex-wife's debt. My daughters' names. Men in suits who know where Wrenleigh eats lunch and where Sadie Jo catches the bus.
I pick up the card and put it back in my wallet. Then I pull the coin out and hold it. Don't flip it this time. Just hold it and feel the weight of it.
Three generations of Adkins men, all of them carrying things they didn't ask for, all of them too stubborn to set it down.
I call Aunt Ellie. "I'm on my way. How are they?"
"Wrenleigh's complaining about the cast and eating her weight in my banana pudding. Sadie Jo is doing homework at the kitchen table and keeps asking if you're okay." A pause. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Ellie."
"Mmhmm."
She doesn't believe me. She shouldn't. But she lets me have the lie because Ellie's been letting Mercer men and their stubbornness slide for thirty years, and she's not about to stop now.
I drive to her place and pick up my girls.
Wrenleigh talks the entire way home about a boy in her chemistry class who she either wants to kill or marry—the line is thin at sixteen—and Sadie Jo is quiet in the backseat, watching me in the rearview with those blue-gray eyes that see too much.
I make dinner. I help Sadie Jo with her homework. I watch Wrenleigh hobble around the living room on her crutches, picking a fight with the cat about who gets the good spot on the couch.
I do all the things I've done every night for ten years, and I do them the same way I always do—present, steady, holding it all together with hands that don't shake because I won't let them.
After they're in bed, I walk through the house. Check the locks. Check the windows. Check the cameras I installed two days ago that the girls haven't noticed yet.
I stand in the hallway between their bedrooms—Wrenleigh's door cracked open because she still won't admit she sleeps with the light on, Sadie Jo's closed because she's thirteen and privacy is everything—and I listen to them breathe.
My girls. My whole world. The only two things Angelica ever gave me that were worth a damn, and now she's put a price tag on them.
I lean against the wall, close my eyes and I make a promise to the dark, quiet hallway of my house that no one hears but me.
Nobody touches them. Nobody. Not the men in suits, not the people they work for, not the woman who gave birth to them and walked away.
I will burn every single thing in my path before I let anyone hurt my daughters.
And I won't even raise my voice when I do it.
I open my eyes. Check the locks one more time. Then I go to bed and I don't sleep, and I don't pretend to, and I spend the whole night listening for a knock that doesn't come.
Not tonight, but it will.