Chapter Eleven
Jade
My gaze traced the ceiling while I lay in Kane’s bed, watching cracks in the paint transform into constellations.
Three longer lines ran near the corner. A cluster of tiny spiderweb splits spread over the fan.
One jagged mark above the door resembled lightning trapped in drywall.
I counted them, recounted them, trying to transform them into something making sense -- something controllable.
Kane slept on his back beside me, one arm thrown above his head, the other draped across my stomach as though his body refused to let me drift away while his mind shut down.
His fingers spread wide, the heel of his palm warming me through my T-shirt.
His breath rose slow and steady, creating a rhythm which felt almost unfair compared to my own chest tightening and loosening, unable to decide whether air seemed worth the effort.
Clean sheets and his soap scented the room, along with a faint motor-oil edge clinging to his clothes despite endless washing.
My lungs filled with the familiar mixture.
The walls stood real around me, the door remained locked, and beside me lay a man who never folded when pressure came calling.
My body recognized safety here before my mind could catch up.
Safe, my body tried to insist.
Temporary, the old fear answered back, sliding a blade between my ribs.
I shifted on the mattress. The movement yanked Kane from sleep with military precision. His fingers pressed into my hip without conscious thought.
“You okay?” The words came out rough, sleep-heavy, but alert underneath.
A laugh almost escaped me, sharp and humorless. “That question is cursed. Every time someone asks, the answer stays ugly.”
He blinked once, like he was sorting through options. “All right. Different question.” His voice cleared a notch. “You breathing?”
“For now.”
He rolled toward me and propped his head on his hand, the faint moonlight carving his jaw into something hard and familiar. His gaze stayed on my face, not wandering, not pushing. Waiting.
Kane ran through symptoms. “No stomach pain, no pounding head, no dizziness?”
“None of those,” I admitted. “My brain refuses to shut up.”
“Want to tell me what occupies your thoughts?”
The ceiling became my focus because meeting his gaze made containing my panic harder. His eyes held too much steadiness -- a calm I wanted to wrap around myself.
“You plan to go after Roth. You intend to hit him first. Atilla builds a timeline while moving people around as chess pieces.” My throat tightened. “Your President will get you killed.”
Kane’s mouth twitched with one of those almost-smiles never reaching his eyes when serious matters appeared. “We begin with drama, I see.”
“You volunteered,” I pushed back. “You always volunteer. But he could keep you here. He could send someone else. He could decide you’re too… personally invested.”
His gaze sharpened. “Personally invested,” he repeated, the words twisting his mouth as though he’d bitten into something sour.
“Well, you are.” I swallowed hard. “You don’t even pretend you’re not.”
He shifted closer, elbow sinking into the pillow, and his hand came up to frame my face. His thumb brushed my cheekbone, slow. Not possessive. Not demanding. Anchoring.
“Listen to me.” The tone softened without losing the steel. “Men like Diaz and Roth don’t get to own our choices. Not mine. Not yours. Not this club’s. We’re not reacting. We’re deciding.”
The words escaped me before I could catch them. “I feel more like a domino than anything else. The one who tipped everything over.” My throat tightened around a growing lump. “When you die, I’ll haunt you.”
A low sound escaped him -- half laugh, half something else. “Pretty sure haunting works differently.”
“Watch me figure a way. Don’t test me.”
Kane leaned in, pressing his forehead against mine, warm and real, so close the room blurred beyond him. “I won’t leave you alone in this mess.”
“You say the same thing over and over,” I muttered, “and my heart believes you every time.”
His breath warmed my mouth. “Good.”
The silence between us held weight. Two people hearing the same distant threat and deciding, together, not to run.
“The guy in the doorway keeps coming back to me,” I admitted.
The memory had teeth. “Him complaining about lockdown for ‘one girl.’ You tell me he stands wrong, and the club made their choice, and everything runs bigger than me. But when something happens to you out there, I’ll have to live with your face in my head. ”
He didn’t flinch from the guilt, didn’t try to slap it away with a pep talk. “If something happens to me, it won’t be because of you.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.” He didn’t soften it. “But it makes it true.”
I turned my face into his palm. The warmth soaked through my skin, burning away the cold Roth had left behind. “You’re bad for my blood pressure.”
“Right back at you.”
We lay in the half-dark, sharing the same air. Outside, the compound remained quiet with late-night stillness. The peace felt wrong now, carrying questions about what moved beyond the fence in darkness.
“I’m not stupid, Jade.” Kane’s voice dropped low, vulnerability cutting through his strength. “I love you.”
The declaration hit my chest -- heavy yet brilliant as a flare. My throat closed up so tight I struggled to answer him.
“I love you too.” I let out a shaky breath. “Which is very inconvenient right now.”
He huffed a faint laugh, then kissed my forehead. “Go to sleep. We need your brain tomorrow. Spade’s going to want you on maps again. Casey’s going to run drills. I want you upright and yelling at me when I do something dumb.”
“So… always.”
“Pretty much.”
His arm settled back around my waist. I tucked myself into his side and focused on the steady rise and fall of his breathing, tried to let it count me down the way I’d learned to do when my mind refused to stop spinning.
One. Two. Three.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged me under.
* * *
Morning arrived disguised as a countdown, bacon grease heavy in the air.
The clubhouse remained active while dawn barely cleared the trees. Plates clinked. Coffee poured. Men strode with undisguised purpose. Children sensed the tension and stayed near their mothers, hovering close to knees instead of racing around the pool table.
Spade materialized in the kitchen doorway -- a ghost running on caffeine and spite. Wild hair. Wrinkled T-shirt. Tablet clutched in one hand, empty mug dangling from his fingers.
“Coffee,” he announced, then thrust the tablet toward Kane and me as though presenting evidence of a crime. “Then office.”
I blinked at him from my stool at the table. “Good morning to you too.”
“Morning starts when the sun hits the horizon,” he shot back. “We’re already behind.”
Kane slid a mug in front of me and held another out to Spade without looking away from him. “Drink first,” Kane warned, voice calm but edged. “Then kidnap my girl.”
“Bossy.” Spade took a long swallow anyway.
I forced down two strips of bacon and a chunk of toast, having learned through miserable experience how an empty stomach amplified fear. Across from me, Spade twitched and fidgeted, eyeing each slow bite as though my chewing rhythm violated some unspoken code of urgency.
“All right,” I relented. “Let’s go before you start vibrating through the floor.”
Kane pressed a kiss to my temple as I stood, the touch brief but steady. “Yell if he forgets you’re not a robot.”
“I upgraded her to cyborg,” Spade muttered as we walked. “At least half human.”
“Only half?” I shot him a look.
“The half who keeps telling me my coffee intake is concerning.” He pushed open the office door with his shoulder.
The space reminded me of a surveillance hub crammed into a closet rather than a room in our clubhouse. “You’re building a spaceship.”
“Tracking net,” he corrected, already tapping the screen. “Roth-level problem requires Roth-level obsession.”
Spade tapped a key, bringing up a grainy traffic camera feed.
I watched a sleek dark car roll through an intersection.
The camera caught the driver through the windshield -- enough to make out the shape of his face.
He hunched forward in his seat, shoulders curved inward as though his spine bore the weight of every lie he’d ever told.
My stomach tightened. “That’s him.”
“Yeah.” Spade’s eyes stayed hard. “He’s made three trips toward the hideaway house in the last two days. Short ones. Drop off, pick up, check something, then back out. Never stays.”
I leaned closer to the screen, not because I wanted to see him, but because part of me needed to prove he was real -- needed the monster to have a face. Roth looked… tired. Smaller than I remembered, like the confidence had been scraped away by fear and pressure.
“He looks exhausted,” I murmured before I could stop myself.
Spade’s mouth curled. “Fear burns you down faster than drugs. Diaz keeps his tools sharp by scaring them into obedience.”
My eyes snagged on Roth’s hand on the steering wheel. White knuckles. A bandage wrapped his wrist.
“What happened?”
“Diaz happened.” Spade clicked to freeze the frame. “A reminder, maybe. A warning. Hard to say for certain. But fear radiates off him.” His gaze flicked to me. “I prefer enemies scared.”
“You’re enjoying this,” I accused, because accusing Spade felt easier than admitting how my own fear transformed into something meaner when I saw weakness in Roth.
“I enjoy staying one step ahead,” Spade fired back. “And watching men squirm when consequences catch up to them.”
He shifted windows, revealing a satellite image of a property set back from a road. A modest house stood beside a detached garage. Trees bordered two sides. A dirt access lane curved toward the structure -- the kind of path made for people who wanted to vanish.
“Roth’s hideaway,” Spade explained. “He hasn’t slept there more than a night at a time. My bet says he returns soon.”
“Why now?” I asked.