Chapter One
Landon
The air in church always feels different than the rest of the clubhouse.
It isn’t because the room changes. The same scarred table still cuts through the center.
The same worn chairs still crowd around it.
The same low lights still throw shadows across old wood and the black-framed pictures on the walls, reminders of the men who built this place and the ones who bled to keep it standing.
The difference is what settles over the room when the door closes and only patched men remain inside.
Everything sharpens. Voices drop. Eyes harden.
The weight of the cut on my back feels a little heavier, the oath stitched into it pressing between my shoulders like a hand.
Church isn’t for bullshit. It isn’t for feelings. It damn sure isn’t for comfort.
It’s for club business, and lately that business has been trying to crawl up our asses from every direction.
I lean back in my chair and watch Logan at the head of the table while the last of the brothers file in.
He doesn’t say a word to hurry them, doesn’t have to.
Logan Pearce has grown into this position in a way that still sneaks up on me sometimes.
I remember when he was younger, meaner in a way that came from needing to prove something.
He doesn’t have that edge anymore. What he has now is worse for anyone stupid enough to stand against him.
He’s settled into authority, and there’s nothing louder than a man who doesn’t have to raise his voice to own a room.
Cain stands off to the side near the door instead of taking his seat right away.
He always does that when shit feels heavier than normal.
The Sergeant at Arms never stops being the Sergeant at Arms just because church started.
His gaze sweeps the room, cold and methodical, checking every man, every corner, every sound outside the door.
There’s a kind of stillness in him that most people mistake for calm.
It isn’t calm. It’s control. Cain’s got a wife, two kids, and more to lose than ever, but somehow that’s only made him harder.
Dom sits three seats down from Logan with his laptop open in front of him, the glow from the screen throwing pale light over his face.
Most men around this table look more at home with a weapon in their hand than a keyboard, but Dom wears both kinds of violence just fine.
He’s been glued to tech shit for days, building timelines, digging through records, tracing patterns none of the rest of us would ever see without him.
His jaw is tight tonight, and that’s enough to tell me whatever he’s found isn’t good.
Jimmy drops into the chair beside me with the kind of restless force that tells me he’s wound too tight already.
Drew and all the shit that came with him didn’t just disappear because Allison’s safe now.
That kind of threat leaves a stain. It changes how all of us move.
How all of us think. Jimmy has always been protective, but lately there’s a razor edge under his skin that wasn’t there before.
He glances my way once, then looks toward the front.
“You got that look,” he mutters.
I don’t bother asking what look. “You do too.”
He gives a humorless huff through his nose and leans back, boots planted wide. “I’ve earned mine. You’ve met your sister right?”
I laugh, he has definitely earned it.
Around the room, the rest of the brothers settle in.
Carter takes his seat across from me, arms folded, expression unreadable in that way Pearce men seem to perfect before they hit thirty.
Shadow sits to his left, big and silent, with the same watchful patience he always carries.
Hammer and Cobra take spots near the far end.
Blaze comes in last out of the patch-overs, muttering something under his breath to Joker, and Joker answers with a crooked grin that dies the second the church door shuts behind them.
Ryan’s here too, quieter than usual, probably because Casey is getting older and seeing more than any kid should.
Becoming a father doesn’t soften men in this life. It just gives the fear sharper teeth.
Two prospects stand outside the room, visible through the small glass panel in the door every time Cain shifts.
Ridge and Brick tonight. Good choices. Ridge doesn’t miss much, and Brick looks like he could put his head through concrete if somebody told him to.
Tate and Eli are probably on perimeter or floating wherever Cain told them they were needed.
Prospects don’t get church, but they feel the mood anyway. Everyone in this building does.
Logan finally lifts his chin. The room quiets all the way. “Let’s get into it.”
Nobody interrupts. Nobody needs a reminder.
Logan plants both forearms on the table and looks at each of us in turn before he speaks again. “You all know we’ve had more attention on us than I like these last few months. Drew was a problem. We handled the problem. That should’ve been the end of it. It wasn’t.”
Jimmy’s jaw ticks beside me.
Logan doesn’t look at him when he says it, but the tension in the room shifts anyway.
Drew touched a nerve that ran through all of us.
He didn’t just threaten Allison. He forced us to tighten up.
Forced us to think about how exposed we are when outside men get too close to our women, our businesses, our homes.
When one thing cracks, everybody feels it.
“Since then,” Logan continues, voice even, “we’ve had movement I don’t like.
Questions in places there shouldn’t be questions.
Eyes on businesses that usually don’t get more than a passing glance.
Financial pokes. Traffic stops that don’t feel random.
Men asking around town under the guise of one thing when we know damn well they’re after another. ”
Carter shifts in his chair. “Local or federal?”
“Both,” Logan says.
That lands with the kind of silence that doesn’t need help.
Federals are different. Local cops can be bought, buried, threatened, redirected, or dealt with in whatever way the situation calls for.
Federal interest is slower and uglier. It builds.
It sits quiet while it collects. A local problem might kick your door in.
A federal one waits until it can sink the whole house.
Cain finally takes his seat, but he stays angled toward the door, one arm slung over the back of the chair.
“We’ve already tightened access to the clubhouse.
Rotated routes. Limited which businesses the prospects are handling and where.
The women have all been told not to go anywhere alone unless one of us knows about it.
Cameras are getting upgraded. We’re locking down the things we can lock down. ”
Jimmy glances at him. “That’s reactive.”
“It’s control,” Cain says, unbothered. “Which we should’ve had more of before Drew got brave.”
The hit is deliberate, but Jimmy doesn’t rise to it the way he might have a few months ago. He drags a through over his hair instead and says, “I’m not arguing control. I’m saying if this is federal, locked gates and tighter schedules aren’t enough.”
Dom closes his laptop halfway, like he’s done gathering pieces and is ready to lay them out for the rest of us. “They’re not.”
Logan looks at him. “Tell them.”
Dom leans back, fingers drumming once against the edge of the computer before he stills them. “The name that keeps surfacing is Special Agent Nolan Mercer.”
The name means nothing to me at first, but the fact that Dom’s saying it like that means it should.
“He’s FBI,” Dom goes on. “Organized crime task force. Not local. Not some pencil-pushing desk guy either. He’s spent the last few years circling clubs, small crews, anyone he thinks might give him the kind of case that gets his name on something bigger.
He’s patient. Methodical. Doesn’t move until he thinks he has enough to make it count. ”
“RICO?” Shadow asks, his deep voice flat.
Dom nods once. “That’s what it looks like.”
Nobody speaks for a second. Even when you know it’s coming, hearing it out loud has a way of changing the temperature in the room.
RICO isn’t one charge. It’s a net. A way to turn one thing into twenty, then tie them together until every man connected to the club starts looking like part of the same machine.
Businesses, money, old history, present movement, who talks to who, who rides with who, who benefits, who looks the other way.
The feds don’t need perfect truth. They need a story that holds long enough to bury you under it.
“Based on what?” Carter asks.
“Movement patterns. Subpoenas that haven’t hit us directly but touch places around us.
Quiet interviews. One of the bank managers tied to a business account was contacted two weeks ago.
One of the mechanics who used to do side work for us got asked questions on a fishing trip that wasn’t about fishing.
There’s also been extra attention on property records and shell ownership structures. ”
Blaze lets out a low whistle. “He’s digging.”
“He’s building,” Dom corrects.
That feels worse because it is.
Logan nods toward the laptop. “He’s not after one bust. He’s after the whole table.”