26. No Saints Here
TWENTY-SIX
NO SAINTS HERE
CRUSHER
Pale light slices across the bed in thin, dusty lines.
The kind of dawn that doesn’t warm, just reveals secrets buried deep.
Nevaeh’s still asleep beside me, one arm curled under her head, her dark, curly hair spilled across my chest like she laid claim to the space during the night and never gave it back.
For a second, I let myself stay there. Just feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, the tiny crease between her brows that says even in sleep she doesn’t fully trust the world to leave her alone.
The night still clings to her skin, my hands on her hips, her lips humming my name, but none of it is heavy enough to crush the weight already sitting on my ribs.
I ease out of the bed, slowly, so I don’t wake her.
My boots are on the floor. I pull my jeans on one leg at a time, like it might buy me an extra breath before reality catches up.
The bedroom smells like her, warm, a little floral, tangled up with cigarette smoke and sweat. It’s grounding. It’s dangerous.
My phone’s face down on the dresser. I flip it over, and the screen explodes with notifications.
Group Chat – 41 Unread
Honor: 4 messages.
City: 3 messages.
Others… more.
No missed calls. That’s worse. Calls are problems. Messages are problems people don’t want to say out loud, yet.
I scroll quickly. No names. Just double underscores and times. Coordinates. Question marks. Too much movement for a morning that isn’t supposed to be moving at all.
Behind me, the bed sheets shift softly over smooth skin I’ve tasted time and time again. I don’t look. I can’t, not yet. I’m still trying to unknot my gut from the thought I woke up with.
Niko was standing too close to the jukebox last night.
Niko knew the meet location.
Niko was doing runs for me last week.
I scrub a hand over my face, digging my thumbs into my temples. Nevaeh sleeps two feet away, peaceful in a bed that didn’t used to feel like a warning. And all I can think is what if I let her get too close? What if the leak is sitting under my own patch?
I slide the phone into my back pocket and brace both hands on the edge of the dresser, eyes closed for half a breath. Outside, somewhere in the distance, a bike revs. The day’s already started. And lying next to her didn’t make the weight go away.
By the time we roll through the gates, it’s late morning, the lot’s already baking, heat shimmering over chrome. Nevaeh sits behind me, arms wound tight around my waist like she can feel the shift already waiting for us on the other side of the door. The sound in my head changes.
The front room used to breathe loud, messy, alive.
Today it’s a fist. Brothers cluster in tight knots, shoulders close, heads tipped in, backs to walls.
Voices drop the second we step over the threshold.
Not silence, just quieter. Controlled. Like everyone’s suddenly careful about what’s said and who’s listening.
The easy sprawl from the party nights is gone. It’s all angles now.
City is at the end of the bar with Honor, both of them tracking the room without moving their heads.
City lifts two fingers off his glass when he clocks me.
Honor’s jaw ticks once, his version of hello.
His fingers drum once against the wood, the signal I’ve seen him use right before a breach.
Rock is posted up near the back door, arms folded, eyes flat as slate.
Prospects hover at the edges, too loud when they joke, too fast when a patch nods.
Another taps the neck of his beer twice against the bar.
Eyes up. A prospect gets sent to the garage for “supplies,” which is code for get him on camera and make him wait.
Every Saint clocks us as we move through. Some look at me first. Some look past me straight at her.
Nevaeh’s spine stays straight, chin up, but I feel her breath stutter against my back for half a second when Draft doesn’t nod back.
When Rampage gives her a long, unreadable stare and then turns away.
It’s not open hostility. Not yet. But it’s there beneath the surface like a tremor, rattling bolts no one’s used to checking.
Steel steps out of his office, hand braced on the doorframe. His gaze flicks to Nevaeh, then settles on me. No nod. No greeting. Just a long look that says things moved while you were gone.
And they did. I can feel it in the walls.
Something cracked. Not enough to split us in half, but enough that everyone feels it now, and nobody’s pretending otherwise.
I keep walking, one hand at Nevaeh’s back, noting who meets her eyes and who doesn’t.
Rock gives her a short nod. Throttle pretends she isn’t there. Nova watches her like he’s trying to solve a math problem he doesn’t like the answer to. Yeah. The foundation’s been kicked loose.
And if we don’t figure out where the rot is coming from, it’s gonna bring the whole house down.
“Five minutes,” I tell Nevaeh, touching the small of her back. My voice is quiet, but it leaves no room for argument. “You stay in the open where I can see you.”
“Copy,” she says, like she’s been here ten years, not ten weeks.
I force myself to step away.
Steel’s office door shuts behind me with a click that sounds too much like a lock.
The room’s half-dark, blinds are drawn just enough that stripes of sunlight cut across the desk, over the pinned map of Detroit and the pushpins bleeding red across the south side.
It smells like cigarette smoke and dust. Like old decisions that still haunt the walls. He doesn’t sit. Neither do I.
He stands with his hands braced on the edge of the desk, shoulders tight beneath his cut. For a long second, he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t need to. The silence is loaded. Thick.
“We’re close,” he says, voice low. “Not tight enough to name it on the floor. Tight enough to act if something shifts.”
“You got a name?” I ask.
He doesn’t blink. “I’ve got three.” His gaze skates past my shoulder. “Two of ’em I can afford to be wrong about. One, I can’t.”
The words land hard. He’s not guessing. He’s narrowed it down.
One…two…three. And suddenly the office feels smaller.
“Niko,” I say, because I’m done pretending I don’t hear the way the room says it without saying it.
Steel doesn’t flinch. “Keep your head. And keep your girl out of any storm that starts here. You can’t protect both at once if it goes wrong.”
I almost tell him she’s not just my girl. She’s a line I drew and dared the world to cross. But I swallow it. Pride’s a blade that cuts the hand that holds it.
“We’re not bleeding her for your caution,” I say instead.
“Wasn’t the plan,” he answers, flat. “Yet.”
That yet hangs between us like a loaded gun.
He’s still my president. I’m still his VP. We don’t need more words. We just stand there for a heartbeat too long, breathing the same stale air, knowing we might have to aim at someone we once called brother.
We nod. Not a greeting. Not respect. Just survival.
Then we walk out, side by side, as brothers ready to fight for our family.
The noise finds me before I even reach the bar. Not a fight noise. Not metal-on-metal, not chairs scraping across concrete.
It’s sharper than that. That thin, mean pitch people get when they want a fight, and think they can make one with nothing but words.
Peach is right in the middle of it, all red lipstick, heels too high for anyone who’s actually done a day’s work. Trouble wrapped in perfume and pretty smiles that turn men stupid.
She’s got Nevaeh pinned near the end of the bar, one hand planted on the wood, the other tracing lazy circles in a dried ring of whiskey like she’s winding up a trigger.
“I’m just saying, ” Peach’s voice carries, sugar-sweet but cut with something venomous. “This place used to run smoother before strays started pretending they were Ol’ Ladies.”
The Honeys behind her laugh like they’ve rehearsed it. Sharp, hungry, the kind of sound that feeds on blood. A couple of hang-arounds drift closer, grinning like they’ve been handed front-row seats.
Someone cuts the jukebox. Just a soft click, but it slices the air clean in half. Silence settles in, and it’s not friendly.
Nevaeh doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away. Her jaw flexes once. “You’re saying a lot for someone who doesn’t wear a patch.”
Oh. Good girl.
Peach’s smile goes thinner. “Oh, honey,” she coos, leaning in close enough I can see the glitter on her cheek from three strides away, “I don’t need a patch to know when something’s bad luck.
” She tilts her head, eyes flicking to the crowd and back like she already knows some of them agree.
“Funny how the Iron Cross keep showing up where my men meet. Funny how you keep being around every time something goes sideways.” A soft hum of attention from the crowd. “Makes a girl wonder.”
A few heads turn, not toward her. Toward me.
I cross the last few feet slowly. Controlled. The kind of quiet that makes smarter people move out of the way without thinking about it.
Peach doesn’t move. She stays planted, like she thinks that smile of hers is body armor. It isn’t.
“Walk away.” I don’t raise my voice. No need. Low and flat and cold enough to be remembered.
Peach blinks. Just once. “I’m just looking out for the club.”
“That’s my job,” I cut in. The room shifts, the reminder settling over the brothers like a weight. “And if you want to keep yours, with your legs spread wide, you'd better learn the difference between talking and starting shit.”
Peach hesitates, then opens her mouth.
I take one step closer. “Nevaeh is off-limits. You got a problem with her, you bring it to me.”
Every patch in the room is watching now, but not jumping in. Not stopping it. Just watching. Recording. Choosing sides.
Peach’s eyes flick over my shoulder, searching for backup she’s not gonna get. The smile pulls back into place like a mask.
“Ain’t no saints here, Crusher,” she says, sweet as rot. Then she turns and saunters off, hips swinging, like she didn’t just pour gasoline across the floor.
The tension doesn’t break right away. It just…hangs there. Waiting.
Nevaeh lets out a slow breath. Barely audible, but I hear it anyway.
“You good?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
“I will be,” she says, but her eyes aren’t on Peach. They’re on the room. At Honor, watching Caine too closely. At City, who hasn’t moved from the bar and hasn’t stopped counting people and angles since the moment the jukebox died.
“Stay close,” I murmur. She doesn’t argue. Just steps in beside me like she’s known those words her whole life.
And that’s when I know, we’re past the point of no return.