Chapter One
Victor lay prone in the upper branches of the ironwood, body pressed flat along a limb thick enough to carry his weight without complaint.
The tree had been there longer than the compound, its roots deep in undisturbed soil, well back from the cleared perimeter where the forest still held fast. He’d chosen it deliberately—high enough for range, dense enough for cover, alive enough to mask heat signatures.
Three nights.
That was how long it had been since he’d left this place, his whole world rocked by what he had confirmed, knowing that when he thought he had been on the side of justice and purpose, he had really been on the side of chaos and carnage, and was now hunted by men who used to own his leash.
He didn’t know why he’d come back.
Before him, the site crawled with controlled movement.
Not panic. Not chaos. Purpose. He had learned that Black Tide had always been good at that—turning violence into order, aftermath into infrastructure.
Contractors in dark work gear moved in coordinated lines, unloading steel panels, rolling out fencing, welding sections together with sharp bursts of light that flared and died like silent fireworks.
Victor adjusted the scope, fingers steady despite the low, persistent burn in his abdomen.
The knife wound sat just above his hip, ugly and deep, wrapped tight beneath layers of compression and improvised stitching.
It throbbed with every breath, a reminder that he wasn’t as untouchable as the Directorate liked to pretend their assets were.
Former asset, he corrected automatically.
The bruises were worse. Purple and yellow blooms mapped his ribs and shoulders, souvenirs from the fight it had taken to get out of his motel room.
They ached when he shifted, when he breathed too deep, when he remembered hands that hadn’t been kind when they had tried to help him to change his mind about leaving.
He rotated the camera feed, splitting the view into four overlapping angles. The tech he was using was his—custom, modified, untraceable. Directorate-grade optics paired with directional audio pickups that could isolate a whispered conversation from a hundred meters out.
One of the many things he shouldn’t still have.
One of the many reasons he should have kept moving.
He zoomed in on the northern tree line.
Niko—Reef—was working with a crew clearing a wide swath of trees, chainsaws chewing through trunks with mechanical snarls. Victor watched the spacing, the angles. It wasn’t just clearing the land, it was shaping it.
A landing zone perhaps? The man was a pilot after all. Likely with a hangar footprint just beyond, if the ground held.
Smart.
He shifted feeds.
Luca—Breaker—paced near the temporary command structures, tablet in one hand, a secondary display strapped to his forearm. Data streamed across both as he spoke rapidly to someone off-screen, gesturing up, then down, then sweeping wide.
“Camera angles,” Victor muttered. “Drone overlap.”
He could hear Luca’s voice faintly through the audio pickup, frustration threaded with focus. Luca always sounded like that when he was building a web.
Another feed.
Keanu—Torch—was laying perimeter wire with meticulous care in front of their main compound, gloved hands moving fast and precise. Victor recognized the telltale markers immediately.
Explosives.
Not crude. Controlled. The kind that redirected force instead of simply obliterating everything around it.
Victor felt a ghost of a smile tug at his mouth.
They were good.
Too good for the kind of heat that was coming.
He pulled the feed wider, letting the system paint the compound in layered outlines—movement, heat, sound.
Kael—Surge—strode through the center of the compound like he owned the ground beneath his boots, barking orders that snapped people into motion.
Drew—Wraith—was with him, the two of them hauling a heavy wooden crate between them toward the garage that doubled as a command center.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
He knew that box.
He’d sat across from it once, wrists uncuffed, spine straight, answering questions no one else was allowed to ask him.
Interrogation was a loose term. No one had touched him.
But then, they weren’t really trying to get anything out of him.
He and Tane had a nice conversation, and then, well, Victor stood up and left.
He was still smiling at the memory—dark, humorless—when he swung the camera higher.
The balcony outside the command center slid into view.
Victor froze.
Tane “Māno” Ikaika leaned against the railing, both forearms braced on the metal, posture loose and utterly unguarded.
A t-shirt clung to his broad shoulders, darkened with sweat, tactical pants riding low on his hips.
He looked like he belonged exactly where he was—rooted, immovable, part of the land as much as the concrete and steel below him.
And he was staring straight at the lens.
Victor inhaled sharply and pulled back instinctively, heart thudding harder than the wound in his side ever had. Leaves brushed his cheek as he shifted, peering out through the branches.
The distance was absurd. Too far to make out any details and surely it was too far to see him or the scope.
“No way,” Victor muttered with a shake of his head.
He stayed still, counting breaths, waiting for the tension to break.
It didn’t.
When he leaned back into the scope, Tane was still there.
Still looking right at him.
Then—slowly, deliberately—Tane smiled.
Not wide. Not cocky.
But totally fucking hot.
And he nodded once.
Victor swore softly in Russian and yanked his face away from the optic.
“What the hell are you?”
The man couldn’t possibly see him.
Could he?
Victor shut the system down in one smooth sequence, packing the gear with practiced efficiency. He slid from the tree without a sound, boots touching earth like he’d never been there at all, then moved back through the forest for a click and a half.
The motorcycle waited where he’d left it, hidden beneath brush and shadow. He mounted up, helmet snapping into place, engine rumbling low and restrained.
He had leads to chase. Moves to counter. Debts to repay.
And yet—
As he pulled away from the site, one thought refused to let go.
Tane Ikaika.
The man unsettled him.
Not like fear.
Something worse.
Something that made Victor wonder why he’d come back at all.
****
Tane had clocked him the second Victor entered the forest.
Not because Victor was careless—far from it—but because Tane had been watching for him.
The command center still smelled like fresh timber and scorched metal.
The structure had been repaired with brutal efficiency in the aftermath of the last fight.
Cables snaked across the floor, and large screens glowed with live feeds.
Tane barely registered any of it. His attention had been locked on one feed in particular from the moment Luca had brought the drones online.
“There,” Luca had said casually, fingers flicking across a translucent display. “Got movement back in the woods. Heat signature looks ... deliberate.”
Tane hadn’t answered. He’d leaned in instead, eyes narrowing as the feed sharpened. As Luca left to check his drone mapping.
He’d watched him move through the trees with the kind of quiet that came from long practice and hard lessons.
No wasted motion. No rush. Victor had chosen his tree carefully—far enough back to stay unseen, close enough to see everything that mattered.
Tane had felt something low and tight settle in his chest as he watched the man climb, disappear into the canopy, and set up his gear with methodical precision.
Victor was watching them.
But he wasn’t coming in.
Tane stood now on the balcony outside the command center, forearms braced on the railing, gaze fixed outward.
From here, the site looked almost peaceful.
Contractors moved with purpose across the grounds, fortifying fences, reinforcing structures, turning a battlefield into something that might survive another night.
He could go to him.
The thought came unbidden, sharp with instinct. Tane imagined striding into the trees, closing the distance, putting a hand on Victor’s shoulder and saying, ‘you don’t have to do this alone.’
He didn’t move.
Victor wasn’t ready for that. Tane knew it as surely as he knew how to read a fight before it turned ugly.
Because if Victor were anyone else—if he were an unknown threat, an unvetted hostile moving in the tree line—Tane would already be moving.
He would be calculating distance, wind, cover.
He would be marking the man’s posture, the way his weight settled, the way he used stillness instead of motion.
Victor would register as dangerous within seconds.
Not because of size—though he had that—but because of restraint.
The kind that came from discipline learned early and paid for in blood.
Tane had seen men like that before. Operators who could kill quietly and walk away without needing the noise. The fact that Victor had chosen a vantage point instead of an approach said more than any weapon ever could.
Which meant one thing, clear as daylight.
Black Tide was safer with Victor inside the wire than watching from the trees.
And that was a problem.
Because Victor was stubborn and had no intention of seeking help.
And he was planning to go to war by himself. Too much, too soon, and Victor would bolt. He’d already proven that.
Still, it was hard not to.
The man needed help.
Tane exhaled slowly, lifting his right hand to his eye. The contact lens slid into place with a practiced motion, the world shifting subtly as Luca’s feed overlaid his vision. Data flickered at the edges—range, wind, heat signatures. And there, tucked back among the branches, was Victor.
Watching. Listening.
Tane frowned.