6. Forge
SIX
FORGE
She didn't flinch at the blood. Didn't look away when a fighter took a knee to the body and doubled over, or when the featherweight bout in the second match ended with a man spitting teeth onto the concrete and grinning about it.
She watched it all with the eyes of a woman who grew up around violence and learned to look at it without blinking, not because she's cold but because turning away never saved her.
The third fight was Wreck, a Wild Savages brother and our champion.
He was six-four of controlled destruction.
He ended it in two rounds with a body shot that made the crowd collective wince.
When Wreck raised his fist, the warehouse shook.
I looked for Inessa across the room but she was already looking at me.
That's four times I caught her gaze. I know the exact number because apparently I've lost the ability to not look at her, and I've started counting the times she's looking back.
It's 2 AM. The Pit is cleaned out. The crowd is gone.
The air still smells like sweat, spilled beer and the iron tang of blood on concrete.
Knox is counting the night's take in the back office.
It was a good night, over $80K in betting revenue, and the kind of number that justifies everything we've built.
I'm sitting on the edge of the ring, boots on the concrete, replaying the moment she grabbed my wrist and trying to tell myself if didn’t affect me.
I should be thinking about Volkov and ticking time bomb. I should be thinking about the church vote tomorrow, where I'll have to convince my brothers that sheltering a bratva princess is worth the war it might bring. I should be running numbers, planning defenses, thinking strategically.
Instead I'm thinking about her and what her father made her do.
My phone buzzes. Text from an unknown number.
I'm back at the house. Ghost is on the porch. Thank you for tonight. I understand better now.
She shouldn't have my personal number. I gave her the club burner. But Inessa Volkov is a woman who spent three years stealing from the bratva, getting a phone number is child's play.
I type back.
Understand what?
Why you fight for this. It's yours. You built it. That matters, I get it.
I stare at the message. Nobody, not my brothers, not the women who've passed through my life, not the men I've fought beside has ever said that to me. It’s like she can see the thing underneath the gavel, the patch and the scars.
The thing that drove a a man who just killed someone in a bare knuckle fight to build something for this club.
I type and delete three responses. Finally I send…
Get some sleep. We have work tomorrow.
You too.
I pocket my phone and sit in the empty Pit and listen to the silence and try to remember the last time I wanted something that wasn't about the club.
I can't sleep.
It’s not because I don’t try. I lie on the cot in the back room of the clubhouse and stare at the ceiling for forty minutes.
The fan clicks on every third rotation, a tiny mechanical hiccup that sounds like a fingernail tapping bone.
I keep reading her last text in my head.
I can’t help feeling that there was something else she wanted to say.
Something in me knows I can’t rest until I know what that was.
I pull on my boots. Grab the keys and don't bother with a jacket.
The ride to the house takes eleven minutes at 2 AM. No traffic, no lights to catch on Decatur. The June air is thick as broth, warm even at this hour, and it plasters my shirt to my chest by the time I kill the engine two houses down. Old habit. Don't announce yourself.
Ghost is on the porch. Camp chair and a thermos. He watches me come up the walk and doesn't say a word until I'm at the steps.
"She's still up I think," he says. Like that explains why I'm here. Maybe it does.
"Go get some rack time. I got it."
He studies me for a beat. Ghost has the eyes of a man who's done two lifetimes of math on other people's intentions. But he stands to leave anyway.
"Kitchen light's been on since midnight," he says, and walks to his truck.
I wait until his taillights disappear. Then I let myself in.
The house is dark except for the glow at the end of the hall. I can hear a spoon against ceramic, faint. The floorboards groan under my weight and the sound from the kitchen stops.
"It's me." My voice comes out lower than I intend.
A pause. "I know. I recognise your footsteps."
That lands somewhere in the center of my chest.
She's at the counter with a mug of tea, a book open facedown beside it. Shorts. A tank top that's too big for her, and slipping off one shoulder. Her hair is down, loose, and longer than I realized. No makeup, no armor. She watches me fill the doorway and doesn't move.
"Couldn't sleep," I say.
"Me either."
I should stay in the doorway. I know this. There's a geometry to the room, a safe distance, and I can feel the exact line where if I cross it, we become something else, not handler and asset, not whatever careful word we've been using to keep this thing in its box.
I cross it anyway.
Three steps and I'm close enough to smell her. Not perfume. Soap, and underneath it something warm and specific that I've been carrying around in my head.
“You sent Ghost home?” she says.
“I did."
"So we're alone."
"Yeah."
Her eyes track across my face. Down to my mouth, and back up. She's not hiding it. That's what undoes me. Not coyness, not a game. Just a woman standing in a kitchen at 2 AM letting me see exactly what she wants and now I know I’m not imagining this.
I reach for her, but slowly. I give her time to step back, to stop me, or to say the smart thing that one of us should be saying. My hand finds the side of her neck, thumb along her jaw, and her eyes close and she leans into it like she's been bracing against a wall for weeks and just let go.
I kiss her.
It's not gentle. I meant it to be. I meant to be controlled about it, measured, the way I am about everything. But her mouth opens under mine. Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt, pull, and whatever careful plan I had burns down in about two seconds flat.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Quiet, almost a breath, but I feel it vibrate through my teeth, through my hands, all the way down my spine.
I back her into the counter. She goes willingly, hips hitting the edge.
I grip them, lift her onto it without breaking the kiss.
She wraps her legs around me, pulls me in.
The heat of her through two thin layers of cotton makes my vision go white at the edges.
Her hands are in my hair. Nails scraping my scalp.
I drag my mouth from hers, down her jaw, find the spot below her ear where her pulse is slamming, and press my lips there.
She arches into me. Her head falls back and I follow the line of her throat down to her collarbone, to the bare skin where her shirt has slipped.
I bite, softly. She gasps. Her thighs tighten around my waist. I brace both hands on the counter to keep from losing my grip on every rational thought I've ever had.
“Forge. I want you.” My name in her mouth. Wrecked. Barely a whisper.
I find her mouth again. Deeper this time. Her hands slide under my shirt, palms flat against my ribs, and the touch of her skin on mine is so sharp it's almost pain. I press into her. She rolls her hips against me. We both groan. We’re close to a line I won't be able to walk back from.
Her father, everything we’re working on. The club vote tomorrow, where my brothers will read my face the way they always do.
I break the kiss. It takes everything. Physically, like pulling my hands out of a fire. My body is a separate animal that doesn't give a damn about consequences. I drop my head to her shoulder and breathe. Ragged. Her fingers are still in my hair and she's trembling, or I am. Both.
"We can't," I say into her skin. "Not tonight."
She's quiet for a long moment. Her breathing is uneven, her chest rising and falling against mine.
"Because of the situation with my father?”
"Because if I don't stop now, I'm not going to stop.
And I need to be able to think. I need to not be compromised.
" I pull back far enough to see her face.
Her lips are swollen, her eyes dark, and she's the most dangerous thing I've ever put my hands on.
"This isn't me being noble. I don't want to stop.
I want to carry you down that hall and not come up for air until the sun comes up. "
She holds my gaze. Then she puts her palm flat on my chest, right over the hammering, and pushes. Gently. Creating the distance I can't make myself take.
"After. When this is done. When I can give you my full attention." I catch her hand on my chest. Press my mouth to her palm. "And trust me, you’re going to want my full attention."
Her breath catches. She pulls her hand back slowly, curls her fingers closed like she's keeping the heat of it.
I make myself step back. One step. Two. The distance feels surgical, an amputation. She's still on the counter, legs bare, lips swollen, watching me retreat with an expression that's going to keep me awake for whatever's left of this night.
"Lock the door behind me," I tell her.
I'm on the porch before she answers.
"Forge."
I stop. Don't turn around. If I turn around, I'm done.
"Don't make me wait long."
I walk to my bike with her voice still burning a hole through my ribs, and I ride home with every nerve on fire.
By the time I get back to the compound, I’m so hard it hurts.
I barely make it to my room. I kick the door shut, lean back against it, and yank my zipper down with one hand.
The first stroke makes my head thunk back against the wood.
I close my eyes and all I can see is her legs spread on that counter, the way she looked at me when she asked me not to make her wait too long.
I stroke myself hard and fast, no finesse, just chasing relief. I can still smell her on my shirt. Still feel the heat of her rubbing against me. It only takes a couple of minutes. I come with a rough groan, spilling over my fist, her name caught between my teeth.
It barely takes the edge off.
I’m still half-hard when I finally drag myself into the shower.
Two days later, we find what we’re looking for.
Inessa finds it, a pattern in the wire transfers that connects Viktor's shell companies to a specific shipping container that cleared the Port of Galveston four months ago.
That container, according to customs records Knox pulled through a contact, was supposed to contain agricultural equipment.
But based on the weight discrepancy and the routing, it contained even more military-grade weapons.
"Knox has a contact at the port authority, we might be able to more.” I say. "But pulling shipping records is risky. If Viktor has eyes there?—"
"He does. A customs agent named Brennan. He's on the drive, $15,000 quarterly payments."
"Then we go around Brennan."
"Or through him." She sets the laptop down. Turns to face me. "Brennan is dirty. If we approach him with evidence of his payments from Viktor, he'll flip. He's a federal employee taking bribes from the Russian mob, he's looking at twenty years plus. He'll cooperate to save himself."
I lean against the counter. Our eyes are level. The kitchen is so small that our bodies are two feet apart.
"That's a smart play," I say.
"I know."
"And dangerous. If Brennan tips Viktor?—"
"He won't. He's more afraid of prison than he is of the bratva."
"You sound sure."
"I've watched my father break people for twenty-eight years. I know which ones break toward fear and which ones break toward self-preservation. Trust me, Brennan is a self-preserver."
I look at her. Her gaze finds me.
"You know what's going to happen when this is over," I say. "When we give the feds what they need and your father goes down."
"I disappear. That was the deal."
"Right. You disappear."
The words sit between us. Heavy and it just sits.
"Is that still what you want?" I ask. I shouldn't ask. It's not relevant. The plan is the plan. She gets out. I get my territory back. We never see each other again.
Her eyes hold mine. "Is it what you want?"
The honest answer is no. The honest answer is that in ten days, this woman has become the most essential part of my operation and the most disruptive force in my personal life and I can't separate the two anymore.
The honest answer is that I feel something I haven't felt since before I killed Tommy Delacruz in that fight, a feeling close to hope.
I don't say any of that.
"I want you safe," I say instead.
"That's not what I asked."
"It's the only answer I've got right now."
She nods slowly. Not satisfied. Not angry, just, waiting. Like she's got time. Like she's been waiting her whole life and another few days won't kill her.
"Okay," she says. "Then let's get the shipping records."
She turns back to the laptop. I stand there for a moment, watching her work, watching the way her fingers move on the keyboard with the precision of someone who's learned that attention to detail is the difference between freedom and death.
Then I do the hardest thing I've done since I took the gavel.
I walk away. I leave the kitchen. I get on my bike and ride for an hour through the dark streets of Baton Rouge, eighty miles an hour down River Road with the river on my left and the chemical plants glowing like orange constellations on my right, and I try to outrun the fact that I'm falling in love with Volkov's daughter.
But I can't.