Chapter Forty-One
Nano
Six weeks.
I sat in my room, three monitors glowing in the dim light, spreadsheets and encrypted files covering every inch of screen real estate.
The ledger. Arizona’s ledger. The thing Alex had stolen from the Prancing Pussycat and carried in her backpack as if it were just another piece of luggage, instead of a roadmap to a war none of us fully understood yet.
Morpheus, Reaper, and King had agreed to split it three ways after it was discovered there was too much encrypted information that needed deciphering.
One third went to the Brotherhood. One third to the Golden Skulls.
One third to the Silver Shadows. But the more I dug into my section.
Transaction records, shell corporations, offshore accounts, encrypted communications.
The more something felt wrong. Off. Like I was trying to solve a puzzle where half the pieces belonged to a completely different picture.
I rubbed my eyes. The blue light from my monitors made my head throb.
I hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the past several days.
I hadn’t eaten much either. Just coffee, cigarettes, and the occasional protein bar Carver shoved at me when he passed my door and heard the keyboard clicking at three in the morning.
She killed him. The thought slipped through my defenses before I could stop it. She took a beating, grabbed a gun, and put a full clip into Arizona without hesitation.
Pride swelled in my chest. Sharp, fierce, undeniable. She had done what needed to be done and saved Eros. Proved she was more than just a thief, or a victim, or the broken thing I turned her into in that basement.
Stop.
I clenched my jaw and forced my attention back to the screens.
Thinking about Alex meant thinking about what I had done to her.
What I said, and didn’t say. The way I turned my back and refused to look at her after she confessed everything Morpheus demanded.
The way I destroyed the one person who ever made me feel like I was more than just a monster wearing a leather cut.
Focus. You have a job to do.
I pulled up another spreadsheet. Financial transactions linked to Arizona’s alias accounts.
Money moving through the Cayman Islands, then Switzerland, then Singapore.
Layers upon layers of obfuscation, each transfer designed to hide the origin and destination.
But I was good at this. Better than good.
I traced the patterns and followed the digital breadcrumbs, and the more I followed, the more convinced I became that something was fundamentally wrong as a picture slowly formed.
This wasn’t Society money. The transactions didn’t match the patterns Sypher and Nav had identified in their sections of the ledger. The timing was off. The amounts were different. The shell corporations weren’t connected to known Society fronts.
Arizona had been operating independently.
Or worse, he had been working for someone else entirely.
I reached for my phone and pulled up the encrypted chat Sypher, Nav, and I used for intelligence sharing.
Nano: You seeing what I’m seeing in your sections?
The response from Sypher came back almost immediately.
Sypher: Depends. You seeing transactions that don’t fit Society patterns?
Nano: Yeah. Timing’s wrong. Amounts don’t match. Shell corps are different.
Nav: Same here. Been trying to reconcile it for days. Thought I was missing something.
Nano: You’re not. Arizona wasn’t working for the Society. Or if he was, he had a side operation they didn’t know about.
Sypher: Fuck. That’s worse.
Nav: Way worse. Means we’ve got another threat on the horizon.
I stared at the screen as my stomach twisted into knots. Another threat. Separate from the Society. Potentially more dangerous because we didn’t know who they were, what they wanted, or how deep their infiltration went.
Fuck.
I saved my analysis, backed up the files to three separate encrypted drives, and stood. My leg still ached where Scythe had stabbed me in the basement. The wound had healed but left a dull, persistent throb that flared up when I sat for too long.
Morpheus’ office was at the end of the hall on the first floor, past the officers’ rooms and the storage closets filled with weapons and ammunition.
His door was half-open, light spilling into the hallway, and I could hear the faint scratch of a pen on paper.
I knocked twice and pushed the door open without waiting for permission to find Morpheus sitting behind his desk, a stack of club paperwork spread out in front of him.
Invoices, supply orders, and maintenance records for the bikes.
The mundane shit that kept the Brotherhood running even when we were in the middle of a war.
What caught my attention, though, was what wasn’t there.
Lollie.
The club whore who practically glued herself to Morpheus’ side every time he was in the clubhouse. The girl who would kneel under his desk and suck his cock while he read reports, who would follow him around like a loyal dog waiting for scraps of attention.
She wasn’t here. Odd.
Morpheus glanced up, his expression unreadable. “You look like shit.”
“Haven’t been sleeping much.”
“I can tell.” He set down his pen and leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. “What do you need?”
I closed the door behind me and crossed to the chair in front of his desk.
Sitting down, I pulled out my phone and opened the analysis I’d compiled.
“I’ve been going through my section of the ledger,” I said, keeping my voice steady.
Professional. “Cross-referencing transactions, tracing shell corporations, mapping the money flow.”
“And?”
“And it doesn’t match.”
Morpheus’ eyes narrowed slightly. “Doesn’t match what?”
“The Society patterns Sypher and Nav identified in their sections.” I pulled up the comparison charts and turned my phone toward him. “The timing’s wrong. The amounts don’t correlate. The shell corporations Arizona used aren’t connected to known Society fronts.”
Morpheus took the phone, his gaze scanning the data with the kind of focus that made him dangerous. He didn’t speak for a long moment, just scrolled through the charts, the spreadsheets, the transaction records.
Finally, he looked up. “You’re saying Arizona wasn’t working for the Society.”
“I’m saying the shit in my portion of the ledge is separate,” I clarified. “Whether he was working for them or just operating in parallel, I don’t know. But that”—I gestured at the phone—“isn’t Society money. That is something else.”
“Something worse.”
“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my hair, exhaustion pulling at the edges of my thoughts.
“Sypher and Nav confirmed it. Their sections only show a few discrepancies. Whatever Arizona was doing, it wasn’t part of the Society war.
It was independent. Coordinated. And I have no idea who he was working for or what his endgame was. ”
Morpheus set the phone down on the desk, his expression darkening. “So we’ve got a second threat. One we didn’t see coming.”
“Looks that way.”
“Fuck.” He leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming against the armrest. “What else did you find?”
This was the part I had been dreading. I took a breath, forcing myself to meet his gaze. “The storage facility computer was wiped clean.”
Morpheus went very still as he closed his eyes and shook his head. “Tell me she didn’t.”
“She did. It was the same program she used at the Pussycat to steal our money. I tried every recovery method I know and nothing. My gut’s telling me Arizona chose the storage facility because no one would think to look for him there. Whatever he had on that computer, she has it.”
The silence that followed was heavy, oppressive, like the air before a storm then out of the blue, Morpheus laughed. Threw his head back and laughed loudly. “Fuck me, Nano. You sure picked a fucking winner.”
I chose not to comment on that as he continued, “So let me get this straight. The thief who walked into the Prancing Pussycat and stole seventy-five-million dollars from us, walked out of our club, stole her brother’s bike, then waltzed right into that storage building, the same building where Arizona was going to kill Eros, and stole more money, and all the information on his computer, then killed Arizona and vanished into thin air, again? ”
“Yeah,” I grumbled.
“And the only person who might know what Arizona was really doing, who he was working for, is your old lady, our thief, Alexandra.”
My chest tightened as a knot of dread twisted in my gut. I nodded. “Yeah.”
Morpheus leaned back in his chair, his expression shifting from amusement to something colder.
More calculating. The kind of look that meant someone’s fate was being decided, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.
“She killed Arizona,” he said quietly. “Saved Eros. Didn’t hesitate, didn’t blink.
That makes her one of us, Nano. You understand that? ”
I did. I understood exactly what he was saying. Alex had proven herself in the most brutal way possible. She’d killed to protect a brother. She’d chosen violence over escape, action over survival. She’d earned her place in this world through blood and fire.
But I also understood what came next.
“We need to know what Arizona was planning,” Morpheus continued, his voice flat and final. “We need to know who he was working for, what this separate operation is, and how deep it goes. King, Reaper, Montana—they are all asking the same questions. And the only person with answers is Alex.”
No. The word screamed through my head, but I didn’t say it out loud. Couldn’t. Because Morpheus wasn’t asking.
“I need you to find her,” he said, his eyes locking onto mine. “Bring her back. Whatever it takes.”
Whatever it takes. His words landed like a punch to the gut, knocking the air from my lungs. He was ordering me to hunt her. To track her down like prey. To drag her back here and force her to surrender everything she knew, everything she had stolen, everything she had become.
He was ordering me to become the monster again.
The predator who broke her in the first place.
“She’s your old lady. You claimed her in the Bastard way,” Morpheus added, as if that made it easier. As if claiming her gave me some kind of right to destroy her all over again.
“Morpheus—” I started, but he cut me off with a raised hand.
“This isn’t a request, Nano. This is an order. The Biker Federation is counting on you. If there’s a second threat out there, something separate from the Society, then we need to know. And Alex is the only one who can tell us.”
I stared at him, my mind racing, my chest tight with a fury I couldn’t express.
Because he was right. The Biker Federation needed answers.
The Brotherhood needed answers. And Alex was the only person who had them.
But, fuck, the cost. The cost of hunting her down.
The cost of dragging her back here. The cost of forcing her to relive the nightmare she had barely escaped.
The cost of proving to her that I was exactly what she had always feared.
A monster who would never let her go.
“What if she doesn’t want to come back?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
Morpheus’ expression didn’t change. “Then you make her understand she doesn’t have a choice. She’s one of us now, Nano. She killed for us. She bled for us. That means she belongs to us. To the Brotherhood, and we don’t let our own walk away.”
Fuck. I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was wrong, that Alex had earned her freedom, that she deserved to disappear and never look back. But I couldn’t. Because he was right. She killed Arizona. She saved Eros. She proved herself in the most brutal, unforgiving way possible.
And that meant she was ours. Whether she wanted to be or not.
“How long do I have?” I asked, my voice flat.
“As long as it takes,” Morpheus said. “But don’t take too long. If someone else finds her first, we’re all fucked.”
I nodded, my jaw tight, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. “Understood.”
Morpheus stood, moving around the desk to clap a hand on my shoulder. “I know this isn’t easy, brother. But you’re the only one who can do this. She trusts you. She’ll listen to you.”
No, she won’t. Because I’d destroyed that trust. I shattered it in the basement when I turned my back on her and walked away.
But I didn’t say that. Didn’t argue. Didn’t fight.
Because there was no point. Morpheus had given me an order, and I was going to follow it.
Not because I wanted to. Not because I thought it was right. But because I didn’t have a choice.
I never had.
“I’ll find her,” I hissed, my voice hollow.
Morpheus nodded, satisfied. “Good. Keep me updated.”
I turned and walked out of his office, my boots heavy on the hardwood floor, my mind spinning with everything I had just agreed to.
I was going to hunt Alex. I was going to track her down, drag her back here, and force her to surrender everything she knew.
I was going to become the monster she had run from, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
Because I was alone. Completely, utterly alone.
Travis was dead. His woman was a stranger I had never met. Alex was gone, and the Brotherhood, the only family I had left, was asking me to destroy the one person I’d ever loved.
Fuck. I climbed the stairs to my room, each step heavier than the last, and pushed open the door. The space was exactly as I had left it. Bed unmade, computer monitors dark, Travis’ letter still sitting on my desk. I picked up the letter, my hands shaking slightly as I read the words again.
Watch out for her, brother. She’s family now.
Family. I was supposed to protect family.
Supposed to keep them safe. But how the fuck was I supposed to do that when I was being ordered to hunt down the woman I loved and drag her back into Hell?
I set the letter down and stared at the wall, my mind blank, my chest hollow.
There was no answer. No solution. No way out. There was only the mission.
Find Alex. Bring her back. Make her talk.
And if she refused? Then you make her understand she doesn’t have a choice.
I closed my eyes, my jaw clenched, my hands curling into fists. I was going to find her. I was going to bring her back, and I was going to hate myself for every second of it. Because that was what monsters did. They destroyed the things they loved, and I was the worst kind of monster.
The kind who knew exactly what he was doing.
And I was going to do it anyway.