Chapter 7
Grave heard the engines before he saw the vehicles—three SUVs rolling into the parking lot with the kind of coordinated precision that screamed professional. He was on his feet before the first door opened, hand already reaching for the piece at his back.
"Nina. Kitchen. Now."
She didn't argue. Just grabbed the shotgun from under the counter and moved.
Good girl.
The door burst open and men poured through—eight of them, armed, spreading out with the discipline of a crew that had done this before. At the front was a face Grave recognized from Pike's intel photos.
Sal Petrone. Carbone's dock coordinator. The brains behind the cargo operation.
"Where's the owner?" Petrone scanned the diner, eyes cold. "We need to have a conversation about—"
He stopped when he saw Grave.
"The fuck are you doing here?"
"Eating." Grave smiled. It wasn't friendly. "Coffee's good."
Petrone's face twisted. "You're that Bastard piece of shit who broke Dex's wrist."
"Broke his nose too. He should've mentioned that."
"Funny man." Petrone jerked his chin, and his crew fanned out. "Let's see how funny you are with eight guns pointed at your head."
The kitchen door swung open behind Grave.
Stitches stepped out, knife in one hand, something that looked medical and sharp in the other. "Only count seven standing. Math's not your strong suit, huh?"
From the back hallway, Bruiser emerged—six-four of Dorchester concrete, cracking his knuckles with a sound like breaking stones.
"Make that six," Bruiser said. "Found one trying to sneak in through the delivery entrance. He's taking a nap."
Petrone's confidence flickered. Just for a second. Just enough.
Grave moved.
He hit the nearest gunman before the man could squeeze the trigger—elbow to the throat, grab the weapon, use the body as a shield. Two shots rang out, both hitting meat instead of him, and then he was throwing the dying man into his friends and pulling his own piece.
The diner exploded into chaos.
Booths overturned as men scrambled for cover. Bullets punched through vinyl and wood, sending stuffing flying like dirty snow. The front window shattered—not from a body, not yet—and cold air rushed in with the smell of cordite and blood.
Stitches was a blur of precise violence, his knife finding gaps in armor, his medical knowledge turned to destruction. He put one man down with a slash to the femoral, stepped over the screaming body, and engaged the next without breaking stride.
Bruiser didn't bother with weapons. He grabbed a man by the face and introduced his skull to the counter—Nina's counter, the one her father built—and the crack of bone on wood was loud enough to hear over the gunfire.
Grave fought his way toward Petrone.
The dock coordinator was backpedaling, firing wild, his crew falling around him like dominoes. Two men tried to flank Grave from the right—he shot one in the knee, pistol-whipped the other with enough force to cave in his cheekbone.
"GRAVE!"
Nina's voice. He spun.
She stood behind what was left of the counter, her father's shotgun leveled at a man who'd somehow gotten past the melee. The guy had his gun up, finger on the trigger—
Nina fired first.
The blast caught him center mass, lifted him off his feet, dropped him in a heap of ruined flesh. She racked another shell without flinching, her face carved from the same stone as the neighborhood that raised her.
Jesus Christ.
No time to admire it. Petrone was making for the door.
Grave tackled him three feet from the exit.
They crashed through what was left of a booth, wood splintering around them, and Grave felt something crack in Petrone's ribs. The dock coordinator screamed, tried to bring his gun around—Grave broke his wrist the same way he'd broken Moran's, then grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright.
"You made a mistake," Grave said.
"Fuck you—"
He slammed Petrone against the plate glass window. The already-cracked surface spiderwebbed around the impact.
"Carbone thinks he can take what he wants. Thinks this neighborhood is his for the bleeding."
Another slam. The cracks spread wider.
"He's wrong."
Petrone's eyes went wild. "Wait—"
Grave threw him through the window.
Glass exploded outward in a glittering cascade, and Petrone flew through it like a man diving into the ocean. He hit the parking lot hard, rolled twice, came up bloody and gasping with glass embedded in his face and arms.
Grave stepped through the shattered frame.
The parking lot was quiet. The prospects had handled the driver who'd stayed with the SUVs—the man lay unconscious by the front tire, zip-tied and breathing. Inside the diner, the sounds of fighting had stopped.
Petrone tried to crawl away.
Grave caught up to him in three strides.
"Please—" Blood bubbled on the dock coordinator's lips. "Please, I was just following orders—"
"So am I."
He put his boot on Petrone's chest, pinned him to the asphalt. Looked down at the man who'd coordinated twenty years of cargo theft, who'd helped Carbone bleed the waterfront dry, who'd thought he could walk into Nina's diner and take what wasn't his.
"Tell your boss something for me."
"Anything—I'll tell him anything—"
"Tell him this neighborhood belongs to the Bastards. Tell him Nina's Diner is under our protection. Tell him the next crew he sends won't crawl away."
He drew his piece.
Petrone's eyes went wide. "You said—you said tell him—"
"Changed my mind."
The shot echoed across the parking lot.
Sal Petrone stopped moving.
The diner was a wreck.
Booths overturned, stuffing scattered like snow. The counter cracked where Bruiser had used it as a weapon. Bullet holes stitched across the walls, and the jukebox—the jukebox that had played Patsy Cline since 1978—sat silent, its glass face shattered by a stray round.
Nina stood in the middle of it all, shotgun still in her hands, surveying the destruction with an expression Grave couldn't read.
"Nina."
She didn't look at him. "My father built this counter with his own hands."
"I know."
"The jukebox was his wedding present to my mother. He said the music would keep customers coming back."
"We'll fix it." Grave crossed to her, stepping over bodies and debris. "The club will pay for everything. New booths, new counter, new jukebox."
"It won't be the same."
"No." He stopped in front of her, close enough to touch. "But it'll still be yours."
She finally met his eyes. Hers were dry—no tears, no trembling—but something underneath was cracking.
"I killed a man."
"You defended yourself."
"I've never—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I've worked this diner my whole life. Handled drunks, thieves, assholes of every stripe. But I've never..."
"He was going to shoot you." Grave reached out, carefully took the shotgun from her hands. "You did what you had to do."
"Is that supposed to make it easier?"
"No. Nothing makes it easier." He set the gun aside. "But you're alive. That's what matters."
Stitches appeared from the back, wiping his hands on a rag that was already soaked through. "Four down inside, not counting the one she dropped. Bruiser's securing the survivors for pickup."
"How many survivors?"
"Three. They'll have interesting stories to tell Carbone."
Grave nodded. Let them run back to their boss with tales of how his crew got slaughtered in a diner. Let Carbone understand exactly what he was dealing with now.
"Nina." He turned back to her. "You can't stay here tonight."
"This is my place."
"This is a crime scene. And when Carbone hears what happened, he's going to want revenge." He stepped closer, let her see the certainty in his eyes. "The diner's a target now. Which means you're a target. I need to get you somewhere safe."
"Where?"
"The compound. Bastard headquarters." He paused. "It's not pretty, but it's defensible. No one gets in who doesn't belong."
She looked around at the wreckage. At the blood pooling under bodies. At the shattered window and the ruined booths and everything her father had built lying in pieces around her.
"My whole life is in this building."
"Your life is standing right here." He touched her chin, tilted her face toward his. "The building can be rebuilt. You can't."
Something flickered in her expression. Resistance crumbling, replaced by exhaustion and something else—something that looked almost like trust.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay."
They left the diner in Stitches' hands.
The club had protocols for this—cleanup crews, story management, the kind of infrastructure that made bodies disappear and questions die. By morning, the official story would be a robbery gone wrong. By tomorrow night, the renovation would be underway.
But that was later.
Now, Grave led Nina to his bike, handed her a helmet, and waited while she climbed on behind him. Her arms wrapped around his waist—tighter than necessary, but he wasn't complaining.
"Hold on."
"I know how to ride."
"This isn't about knowing. This is about trusting."
She was quiet for a moment. Then her grip tightened, and she pressed her cheek against his back.
"I trust you."
Three words. Simple. But they hit him harder than any of Petrone's bullets could have.
He kicked the bike to life and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the shattered diner and the dead behind. The prospects fell into formation behind him—escort, protection, the visible reminder that Nina Cavanaugh was under Bastard protection now.
The compound was thirty minutes away.
She held on the whole ride.
And when they finally pulled through the gates, when the brick walls rose up around them and the clubhouse lights blazed against the predawn sky, Grave felt something settle in his chest.
She's here. She's safe. She's mine.
Not yet. Not officially.
But after tonight—after she'd stood beside him with a shotgun and held on through the ride and looked at him with those eyes that wouldn't break—
It was only a matter of time.