Chapter Thirty-Two
Nano
I locked my door behind me.
The click of the deadbolt slid into place and echoed through the hallway, final and absolute.
Alex was on the other side, trapped in my room, and I could still feel the phantom heat of her wrist in my grip, still see the way she had looked at me when she’d said, “I’m not as broken as you thought I was. ”
Fuck.
She was wrong. She was so goddamn wrong it hurt. She was exactly as broken as I thought, maybe more. But she was also stronger than I had given her credit for. Strong enough to refuse Morpheus. Strong enough to bet her life on being more valuable alive than dead.
Strong enough to make me question everything I thought I knew about control.
I turned away from the door and walked back down the hallway, my boots heavy against the wood floor.
The gathering room was still alive with noise, brothers drinking, fucking, celebrating like the world wasn’t about to explode around us.
They didn’t know what had just happened in church.
Didn’t know that Alex had just drawn a line that could get us all killed.
The church doors loomed ahead of me, heavy wood reinforced with iron brackets, the Brotherhood insignia carved deep into the surface. I could hear voices on the other side. Raised. Angry.
Here we go.
I pushed the doors open and stepped inside.
The effect was immediate. Every officer in the room turned to look at me, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees.
Cerberus was on his feet, his scarred face twisted with fury.
Scythe’s hands were flat on the table, his knuckles white.
Wanderer was pacing near the wall, his movements sharp and agitated.
Heretic sat with his arms crossed, his expression dark.
And Morpheus... Morpheus was leaning back in his chair at the head of the table, watching me with those cold, calculating eyes that missed nothing. “She locked up?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm.
“Yeah.” I nodded, moving to my seat. “She’s in my room. Door’s locked.”
“Good,” Morpheus said. Then he gestured to the empty chair. “Sit down, Nano. We need to talk.”
I sat. My hands rested on the table, fingers spread wide against the scarred wood. I could feel the tension radiating off every man in this room, the barely contained rage that was threatening to boil over.
“What the fuck was that?” Cerberus exploded before I was even fully seated. “She just refused a direct order from you, Prez. In front of all of us. And you let her walk out of here?”
“She didn’t walk,” Morpheus stated mildly. “Nano dragged her out. There’s a difference.”
“Bullshit difference,” Scythe snapped. “She disrespected you. Disrespected this club. And now she’s sitting upstairs like she’s got leverage?”
“She does have leverage,” I said quietly.
The room went silent as every eye turned to me, and I felt the weight of their stares like a physical pressure against my skin.
I took a breath, forcing myself to stay calm.
To think like the tech specialist I was supposed to be instead of the man who had just spent three days fucking the woman who held all the cards.
“She knows who this Michael is,” I said.
“She knows his real name. Where he operates. What he looks like. She’s the only connection we have to the man who orchestrated the hit on FIRE. ”
“So we make her talk,” Wanderer said from his position near the wall. “We’ve got a basement full of tools that’ll loosen her tongue real quick.”
“And if she dies before she talks?” I countered. “If we push too hard and she breaks? Then what? We’re back to square one with nothing but a name and no way to track him.”
“She won’t die,” Cerberus said coldly. “Carver knows how to keep someone alive while they’re screaming.”
“She’s not some random cunt off the street,” I snapped, my voice harder than I intended. “She’s smart. She’s calculating. And she just proved she’s willing to die before she gives us what we want.”
“Then we let her die,” Scythe said flatly. “We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way!” My words came out louder than I meant them to, echoing off the walls.
“This Michael, whoever the fuck he is... he’s a ghost. No digital footprint.
No credit cards. No social media. No fucking nothing.
Alex is the only person who can identify him.
The only person who knows where he operates. Without her, we’ve got jack shit.”
Morpheus raised a hand, and the room fell silent again. “Nano’s right,” he said quietly. “She just bet her life on being more valuable alive than dead. And she’s not wrong.”
Heretic leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “So what’s the play, Prez? We just let her sit up there and refuse to cooperate? Because I don’t see Reaper, King or Montana doing that.”
“No,” Morpheus said. “We give her time to think about what refusing means. Let her sit in that room and realize that her leverage only lasts so long. She’ll talk eventually.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Wanderer asked.
Morpheus’ expression didn’t change. “Then we make her.” His words hung in the air, heavy with implication, as I forced myself to stay still.
To keep my hands flat on the table. To not react to the image of Alex strapped to a chair in the basement, Scythe’s tools laid out in front of her; her screams echoing off the concrete walls.
Focus. Think. What do they need to know?
I took another breath, organizing my thoughts.
“From the beginning,” I said slowly, looking at Morpheus, “you ordered me to work with Sypher and Nav because we suspected the Diamond Creek attack was a hit. Not a random Death Dogs’ retaliation.
A coordinated assassination attempt not just on the founding descendants but on FIRE as well.
Possibly FIRE being the primary target, as they were taken out first.”
“That’s right.” Morpheus nodded as the room went still.
“We didn’t have proof,” I continued. “Just... instinct. The way it went down. The targets. Firestride, Ravage, Indigo, Eros, all of them connected to FIRE, the Table and the Federation in some way. It was too precise. Too calculated. The problem was, we didn’t have proof,” I admitted as Morpheus watched me with that unreadable expression, and I knew he was already three steps ahead of where I was going with this.
“But now you think you have proof,” he asked quietly.
“I have a name,” I corrected. “Michael. Alex heard him order the hit on FIRE. That’s not a hunch. That’s confirmation.”
“Confirmation that means fuck-all without more details,” Scythe said. “We can’t go to Reaper with just a name.”
“Exactly,” I admitted, as frustration bled into my voice despite my best efforts. “We need more. We need to know who Michael works for. Who paid him? Whether he’s connected to the Society or working independently. We need proof that this was coordinated, not just some rogue asshole with a grudge.”
Wanderer crossed his arms. “And you think Alex has that proof?”
“Maybe,” I groaned, rubbing the back of my neck. “She said she lived with him. Worked at the Prancing Pussycat. She might know more than she realizes. But I won’t know unless she talks.”
“Then make her talk,” Cerberus growled, his voice hard.
“It’s not that simple,” I snapped.
“Why the fuck not?”
Because I cared about her. Because the thought of her screaming in that basement made me want to put a bullet in my own head. Because I had spent three days breaking her down and building her back up, and I didn’t know if I could watch someone else destroy what I had created.
But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I said, “Because if I push too hard, she’ll shut down completely. She’s already proven she would rather die than cooperate. You think torture is going to change that?”
“It’s changed plenty of people,” Scythe said coldly.
“She’s not plenty of people,” I said, as my words came out sharper than I intended. “She’s—”
“Yours?” Morpheus interrupted, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade.
I met his eyes, and I saw the challenge there.
The question he was really asking. Are you choosing her over the club?
“She’s everything,” I admitted carefully. “And if I break her the wrong way, I will lose her forever.”
Morpheus studied me for a long moment before he leaned forward, his hands folded on the table.
“Let me tell you what I know,” he said, his voice deceptively quiet.
“Reaper, King, Montana, and I formed this fucked-up truce because we saw what was coming. The Society has been moving pieces into place for years. Infiltrating clubs. Turning brothers. Bleeding us dry financially. We knew a war was inevitable.”
He paused, his gaze sweeping the room. “The Brotherhood was the perfect cover. No one would ever believe we would pick a side. We are too independent. Too unpredictable. Too fucking dangerous to trust. So we used that. We let the other clubs think we were neutral while we coordinated strategy. Tracked money. Identified threats.”
He looked at me, and there was no anger in his expression.
Just cold, brutal assessment. “And suddenly the whole goddamned world knows my son is a brother in the Golden Skulls, and he gets shot to shit. Then Firestride claimed Kyllian, and my cousin got shot. Fuck sides. Fuck the Society, and fuck you if you think I will let that bitch live when she has the opportunity to end this shit. Got love for you, Nano, but you can dip your dick into any pussy. I won’t let that cunt’s stubbornness harm another member of my family. ”
The weight of his words settled over the room like a shroud. Morpheus’ accusation hung in the air, as I felt every officer’s eyes on me.
“I was following your orders,” I said, my voice tight. “You told me to do what I had to, to make her understand. To use her in any way I saw fit, to get our money back. I did both.”
“You did,” Morpheus agreed. “But in the process, you lost sight of the bigger picture.”
“What bigger picture?” I demanded.
“Bastards by blood,” Morpheus said flatly as my brothers responded, “Brothers by choice.”
A knock at the door had everyone turning as Xzibit popped his head inside to say only one word. “Visitors.”
“Time’s up, brother.” My head whipped to Morpheus as he stood to his full height, while Garrote and Scythe moved fast to stand behind me. “Now we do it my way. The Brotherhood way.”