Chapter One #3
I hold his gaze. “It’s contact and assessment. Nothing reckless. I get near her, figure out what the relationship with Mercer really looks like, see if she knows anything useful, and find out if she can be used as leverage if it comes to that.”
The words don’t feel heavy in my mouth. They feel honest.
Brynn Mercer is a path. Maybe to information. Maybe to pressure. Maybe to nothing. But until we know which, she’s a variable sitting too close to a federal problem for us to ignore.
Jimmy mutters, “Jesus Christ,” and drags a hand over his face.
Logan’s attention never leaves mine. “And if she’s clean?”
“Then I don’t contaminate the situation more than I have to.”
Cain speaks before Logan can. “That means no fucking with her unless it serves the assignment. No getting lazy. No leaving a trail. No bringing club business near her home, her work, or any place Mercer might already have eyes.”
I nod once. “Understood.”
Jimmy lets out a sharp breath and leans back in his chair like he’s trying not to punch something. “You’re talking about a woman, not a route or a warehouse. ‘Contaminate the situation’ isn’t a small thing.”
“No,” I say, still looking at Logan, “it isn’t.”
That gets Jimmy quiet for a second, probably because he hears that I’m not making light of it even if he wishes I were.
Dom turns the screen fully toward Logan now and clicks something.
“I’ve got photos. Work schedule. Known routines.
Places she frequents. Nothing invasive enough to trip alarms yet, but enough to start.
She likes an outdoor coffee spot three blocks from her office.
Same one most weekdays. Lives alone. Keeps a predictable schedule.
No current relationship that I can find. ”
Blaze arches a brow. “Is she hot?”
Shadow looks at him like he’s an idiot. Blaze smirks. Even Carter almost cracks.
Dom doesn’t. “Does it matter?”
“For the assignment?” Blaze says. “Maybe.”
“For your curiosity?” Cain cuts in. “Definitely not.”
Blaze lifts both hands in mock surrender, but the momentary crack in the tension closes right back up.
Logan studies whatever’s on the screen, then looks around the room. “Any better options?”
No one answers.
Because there aren’t any. Not really. Not ones that make more sense than me.
I know what they see when they look at me.
I know the role I’ve carved out in this club.
Treasurer sounds cleaner than it is. People hear money and think numbers.
Books. Paperwork. They don’t think about the fact that money touches everything.
Legit fronts, dirty channels, ownership structures, tax records, supply trails, the paper version of every mistake a man can make.
I’ve spent years learning how to make numbers behave, how to keep things looking ordinary from the outside while the real machinery runs underneath.
It takes patience, discipline, and an ability to keep emotion separate from function.
That’s why I’m useful here.
That’s also why they think I can do this.
Maybe they’re right.
Carter shifts his gaze to me. “You’d need a believable in.”
“I’ll find one.”
Jimmy laughs once, harsh and disbelieving. “You make it sound easy.”
“No,” I say. “I make it sound possible.”
Cain rubs a hand over his beard, watching me with that steady, cutting stare. “I’ll want regular check-ins. Not after the fact. Not when you decide something matters. Every step.”
“You’ll get them.”
“Through me and Logan,” Dom adds. “Anything tech-related comes through me before anybody acts on it.”
“Fine.”
Jimmy looks at Logan. “You’re really greenlighting this?”
Logan doesn’t answer right away. He glances toward the door like he can see through it, through the hall, through the walls, all the way to where the rest of our lives are happening outside this room.
Women with babies. Kids sprawled on couches.
Families that didn’t exist a few years ago and now feel like the center of everything.
When he looks back, there’s steel in his expression. “I’m greenlighting finding out what the fuck we’re dealing with before it gets a chance to bury us.”
That settles the room more than any raised voice could have.
Jimmy holds his stare another second, then gives one curt nod. He doesn’t like it, but he’ll stand with the decision once it’s made. That’s one of the reasons he’s vice president. He can argue hard and still fall in line when the club needs one direction.
Logan looks at me again. “This isn’t seduction for sport. It isn’t ego. It isn’t a chance to see if you can charm information out of a woman because you’re bored.”
“I know.”
“You get near her because we need eyes. You keep your head because one wrong move gives Mercer a scent. You do not bring her here. You do not discuss club business with her. You do not let this turn into some half-assed game where everybody else has to clean up after whatever the fuck you thought you were doing.” His tone never rises, but every word lands clean.
I nod once. “Understood.”
Dom pushes back from the table and slides a thin file folder my way. “Basic starting point. Don’t leave it lying around.”
I pick it up, feel the weight of paper that probably holds a whole person reduced to useful facts.
Name. Address. Routine. Work hours. Public-facing details meant to help me find the cracks between her days.
For a second, that old familiar detachment settles over me.
Assignment. Information. Entry point. Clean.
Then Jimmy says, quieter this time, “After Drew, you need to be serious about this, Landon.”
I look at him.
He’s not posturing now. Not trying to win an argument. He looks like a man who’s stood too close to what it means when danger finds the women we care about, and he doesn’t want to watch another version of that happen because we chose to drag someone into our orbit.
“She might hate her brother,” he says. “She might know shit. She might be useful. But if she’s not dirty, don’t make her dirt just because it’s convenient.”
The room goes still in a different way.
There are things men say in church because strategy demands it. There are things they say because anger gets the better of them. Then there are the things that come from somewhere real enough to quiet everybody else.
Jimmy’s words do that.
I hold his stare for a beat and answer him with the same honesty I gave Logan. “I hear you.”
It isn’t a promise. He knows that. I know that. But it’s not dismissal either.
Cain stands, signaling church is close to done even before Logan officially ends it. “I’ll get with Ridge and Brick after this. Tighten outer watch. Tate and Eli can rotate to business-side errands where they’re visible but not useful to anybody trying to follow real movement.”
Logan nods. “Do it.”
Carter glances toward Dom. “You want another set of eyes on financial exposure?”
“I’ve already got a list,” Dom says. “You and Landon can go through it tomorrow.”
“Done.”
Shadow asks, “What about the women?”
At that, something hardens in all of us.
Logan answers. “No panic. No details they don’t need. But they keep doing what Cain says. No solo movement without one of us aware. Tight circles. We don’t scare them, but we don’t leave them blind either.”
That means Mac will know enough to hate it.
Brooke too. Kya might pretend calm, but with Remy that little and Gio old enough to notice more than he should, she’ll feel the walls tighten just like the rest of us.
Emma always reads Cain’s face before he even speaks.
Raven will see it in Joker the second he walks out of church.
None of our women are stupid. You don’t survive with men like us if you are.
I wonder, not for the first time, what kind of woman Brynn Mercer is when pressure starts pressing on her from all sides.
Whether she’s soft-spoken or sharp-tongued.
Whether she notices small things. Whether she startles easy.
Whether she’s the kind to trust a stranger if he steps in at the right moment, or the kind to keep every door half-closed no matter how careful his smile is.
It doesn’t matter yet.
It will.
Logan finally stands, and the room follows. “We move careful. We stay clean where we can. We don’t give Mercer more than he’s already trying to take.”
Chairs scrape back. Men shift. Church ends, but nobody relaxes.
As I rise, the folder still in my hand, Jimmy catches my arm for half a second. Not enough to stop me. Just enough to make me look at him.
“You sure about this?”
“Does it matter?”
His mouth tightens. “To me? Yeah.”
I glance toward the door, toward the hallway beyond it, toward the muted life of the clubhouse outside this room.
Somewhere out there, a baby’s probably crying.
Somebody’s old lady is probably bouncing a kid on her hip while pretending not to listen for the church door to open.
One of the prospects is probably standing straighter than necessary because Cain walked by him ten minutes ago and looked unimpressed.
Everything we are is outside this room as much as it’s inside it.
“That’s why I’m sure,” I tell him.
Jimmy studies my face like he’s trying to find the crack in the answer. Whatever he sees there, he lets go of my arm and gives one grim nod.
The door opens. Sound from the rest of the clubhouse seeps in all at once, low conversation, footsteps, the faint clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the soft thread of real life continuing while we sit in dark rooms and talk about men who want to tear it apart.
Cain steps out first. Ridge straightens immediately. Brick’s chin lifts. The prospects don’t ask questions.
Good. They shouldn’t.
I hang back just long enough for Dom to close his laptop and slide it under his arm. “You’ll want to go to the coffee place first,” he says quietly.
I look at him.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Routine matters. She stops there most weekdays, usually midmorning if she’s on schedule. Outdoor setup. Open visibility. Easiest place to observe without forcing anything.”
“You already thinking three moves ahead?”
“I’m thinking six.” His expression stays flat. “You should too.”
“I always do.”
Dom studies me for a second, then lowers his voice even more. “Don’t underestimate Mercer because he keeps his personal life thin. Men like that don’t stop caring just because they pretend they can.”
I tuck the folder under my arm. “You saying he cares about her?”
“I’m saying estranged doesn’t mean irrelevant.”
Fair enough.
Dom heads for the door. I follow, but Logan’s voice stops me before I step through. “Landon.”
I turn.
He’s still standing at the head of the table, the overhead light catching the edges of his cut, his expression unreadable in that controlled way men like him learn young.
For a second it’s just the two of us in the room, the noise from outside dulled by distance and wood and whatever church leaves behind after everybody else has gone.
He takes a step closer, not far, just enough to make the point personal. “This could be the difference between getting ahead of this or getting buried under it.”
“I know.”
“You’re good at keeping your head. That’s why I’m putting this in your hands.” His gaze drops once to the folder, then comes back to my face. “But the second I think this is drifting, I pull you. I don’t care how close you are or what you think you can still get out of it.”
That doesn’t piss me off because it’s reasonable. “Understood.”
His eyes hold mine another second, weighing, measuring, making sure the answer is the truth and not just the right sound. Then he says, low and final, “Don’t get sloppy.”
I give him one nod and walk out of church with Brynn Mercer’s name burning quietly through the folder in my hand and the kind of assignment that looks simple only to men too stupid to survive it.
Landon (June 2026)