Chapter 5
WILL
When Cole tells me about the flowers, something cold and certain settles in my gut. The calm before a mission. The stillness right before everything goes loud.
"No card," Cole says, pacing the length of my office like a caged animal. "Just roses. Red ones. Expensive as hell, in some fancy crystal vase. She took one look at them and went white. Carried them inside like nothing was wrong, but I could see her hands shaking."
I stay seated behind my desk, letting him pace. Morning sun cuts through the blinds in harsh stripes, and the bar beyond the closed door is still, hours from opening.
"You ask her who sent them?"
"She just nodded when I asked if they were from Craig." He stops pacing, runs both hands through his hair. "Then she said she was tired and went to bed. Locked her door. I heard her moving around half the night, but she never came out."
Craig. The husband. The reason Gemma flinches when someone moves too fast, checks exits before she sits down, holds herself like she's bracing for impact.
"I want to know everything about him," I say. "Where he lives, what he does, how he found out she's here. Everything."
Cole's eyes sharpen. "I should be the one doing that."
"You should be with your sister." I keep my voice level. "She needs someone she trusts right now, and that's you. Let me handle the digging."
He wants to argue. I can see it in the set of his jaw, the tension across his shoulders. Cole has never been good at standing down when someone he loves is in danger, and Gemma is the only family he has left.
"She won't talk to me," he says finally, and the frustration in his voice cuts deeper than anger would. "Three weeks, and she still won't tell me what happened. I know it's bad. I can see it every time she looks at me, but she shuts down the second I push."
"Then don't push." I stand, move around the desk to lean against the front of it. "Be there. Be patient. She'll talk when she's ready."
"And if she's never ready?"
"Then we protect her anyway."
The words come out before I can weigh them, and Cole's gaze sharpens. He's known me too long. Fought beside me too many times. He can read what I'm not saying almost as well as I can.
"Will." His voice goes measured, deliberate. "What's going on with you and my sister?"
"Nothing." It's the truth. It has to be the truth. "She's your family, which makes her mine. That's all this is."
Cole studies me for a long moment. Whatever he sees makes him nod slowly. "Alright. But I want to know everything you find. The second you find it. Don't try to spare me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
He heads out to open the shop, and I make calls. Tate first, then Shaw. By noon the four of us are gathered in the back room we use for Brotherhood business—not the Forge, just a converted storage area with a heavy table and enough chairs for the core members.
Tate arrives first, the way he always does. Fifty-two, former Navy corpsman, fifteen years patching up wounded Marines before he traded his medical kit for a mechanic's wrench. His hair is more silver than black these days, and his hands bear the scars of both careers, but his eyes miss nothing.
Shaw comes in right behind him, still in uniform from his shift at the fire station. Early thirties, with restless energy that comes from a job where waiting and adrenaline trade places without warning.
"Cole's sister," Shaw says once I've laid out what we know. "The one who just came back to town. She was married to this guy?"
"Four years." Cole's jaw tightens. "She met him in Seattle right after she finished her MBA. I only met him twice, and both times something felt off, but she seemed happy, so I told myself I was being paranoid."
"You weren't." Tate leans forward, elbows on the table. "I saw her the other night at the bar. The way she carries herself, the way she reacts when someone gets too close. That's trauma response. Textbook."
Nobody asks how he knows. We've all seen it. In the women who come to the Forge looking for something they can't name. In the men too, sometimes. In ourselves, when we let ourselves look.
"What's the husband's full name?" Shaw asks.
"Craig Burns." Cole's voice goes flat on the name. "She took his name when they married, but she’s changing it back when she files for divorce."
"He already knows where she is," I say. "Her parents' house is public record. So is Cole's address. All he had to do was wait for her to run home."
"How do you want to handle this?" Shaw glances between me and Cole. "We bringing in the whole Brotherhood, or keeping it tight?"
"Tight for now." I catch Cole's eye, make sure he agrees before I continue. "We don't know what we're dealing with yet. Could be he's just a controlling asshole who doesn't want to let go. Could be something worse. Until we know which, we keep it in this room."
"I can run backgrounds," Tate offers. "Still have contacts who can dig without raising flags.
I want to know where he works, where he lives, whether he's still in Seattle or already headed this way.
" He pauses. "And I want to know if there's a history.
Restraining orders, assault charges, anything that got swept under the rug. "
Cole's fist hits the table. "You think there's a record?"
"I think men like him don't usually stop at one victim. And I think your sister has been carrying something heavy for a long time. Whatever we find, it won't be pretty."
The meeting breaks up an hour later. Tate heads back to the shop. Shaw returns to the station with a promise to check in tonight. Cole lingers by the door, hand on the frame.
"She's not going to like this," he says. "Finding out we're digging into her business without asking."
"She doesn't have to know. Not yet."
"That feels wrong."
"So does letting some bastard stalk her with no information to work with." I meet his gaze, hold it. "We're not doing this to control her, Cole. We're doing it so we know what we're protecting her from."
He nods, but the tension in his shoulders doesn't ease. "I keep thinking about all the times I could have asked. All the times I noticed something was off and didn't push. Four years, Will. She was in that marriage for four years, and I never made her tell me what was really going on."
"You couldn't have known."
"I should have." His voice cracks. "She's my sister. She didn't even come to our parents' funeral, and I let myself believe the excuses. Work obligations. Travel problems. I should have known something was wrong."
There's nothing I can say to make that better. So I just stand there while he pulls himself together, and when he finally leaves, I let the silence settle around me.
The afternoon passes in routine tasks. I help Nash prep the bar for opening, check the delivery that arrives at three, handle a complaint from a supplier about a late payment that turns out to be our error.
Normal things. Necessary things. The kind of work that keeps my hands busy while my mind runs calculations I can't shut off.
Craig Burns. Seattle. Red roses, no card. A message without words, designed to terrify without leaving evidence.
I've known men like him. Served with a few before I learned to spot the signs. The really dangerous ones never hit where it shows. They don't have to.
Gemma ran anyway. Knowing her, she didn't do it recklessly—she would have planned, prepared, covered her tracks. She still ended up here, hundreds of miles away, with roses on her doorstep.
The evening rush comes and goes. I stay behind the bar longer than usual, watching the crowd, watching the door, watching Gemma when she drifts through on her way to the back office.
She looks tired tonight, dark circles under her eyes that makeup can't quite hide.
When she catches me looking, she gives me a smile that doesn't reach past her mouth.
Around nine, the crowd thins enough that I can slip away. I head out the back door without thinking about where I'm going, down the narrow path to the dock behind the building.
The Ironside sits on a stretch of waterfront that used to be a fishing operation before the cannery closed.
The dock is old, weathered boards that creak under my weight.
Most nights we keep the lights off back here to discourage customers from wandering where they shouldn't.
Tonight the only illumination comes from the moon and the distant glow of the bar's windows.
Gemma is sitting at the edge, her legs dangling over the water.
She doesn't startle when she hears me approach. Just turns her head enough to see who it is, then goes back to watching the current.
"Cole know you're out here?"
"Cole thinks I'm doing payroll." She pulls her sweater tighter around her shoulders. "I needed air."
I sit down beside her, leaving space between us. The boards are cold through my jeans, and the smell of the ocean mingles with something sharper underneath—salt and tide and the decay that comes with low water.
"How are you holding up?"
She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Is that a real question or a polite one?"
"Real."
"Then not great." She draws her knees up, wraps her arms around them.
"I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For him to show up at the bar or be standing in the parking lot when I leave.
" She pauses. "He sent flowers. Red roses, no card.
They were on the porch when Cole and I got home last night. "
"I know. Cole told me."
"Of course he did." She doesn't sound angry, just tired. "That's how Craig operates. The flowers are just the beginning. He wants me to know he's watching. That he can reach me whenever he wants."
"Tell me about him."
She's weighing whether to answer, and when she finally speaks, her voice comes out quiet and far away.