Chapter 28
I don’t sleep much after Raven tells me everything.
Not because she leaves.
She doesn’t.
She falls asleep in my bed with one hand still half-curled into my shirt like some part of her doesn’t trust distance yet, and I lie there on my back staring at the ceiling while the weight of what she handed me settles in piece by piece.
Cal.
The badge. The family ties. The cameras. The bruises. The way she said he touched me like punishment in that quiet, detached voice that told me she’s had to say worse things to herself just to survive them.
Every time I close my eyes, I see a version of him.
I build him in my head from scraps.
The kind of man who weaponizes calm. The kind who smiles in public and closes his fist in private. The kind who thinks a marriage license means ownership. The kind who looks at a woman and a child and sees leverage.
I know that kind of man. Not personally. But I know him anyway. Men like that are all built from the same rotten blueprint. And now I know exactly what he is. That should be enough to make me reckless.
Instead, it does something worse.
It makes me precise. Because rage is easy. Rage gets sloppy. Rage gets loud. Rage leaves openings.
And after everything Raven told me tonight, I don’t get to be sloppy.
Not with her. Not with Lexi.
No.
Now I have to think like the kind of man who survives ugly things. Which means I have to think like the kind of man who hunts.
I don’t move for a long time.
Raven is warm against my side, asleep in the dark with her hair spread across my pillow and one knee pressed against my thigh like she got there by instinct. There’s a little crease between her brows even now, even sleeping, like some part of her still doesn’t know how to fully let go.
That one almost breaks me all over again. Because she told me.
She told me the worst of it. Not everything, maybe.
There are probably still details she hasn’t been able to force into words yet.
But she gave me enough. Enough that I know the shape of the hell she crawled out of.
Enough that I know exactly what kind of man I’ll have to kill if he gets close enough to make me choose.
And the part that hits hardest, the part I can’t quite look at too directly without feeling like it might split me open somewhere inconvenient, is that she trusted me with it.
Not Logan. Not the women. Not the club as a whole.
Me.
She brought the ugliest parts of her life into my room and put them in my hands. That means more than I want to examine too closely. Because if I really let myself look at what that does to me, I’m gonna end up admitting things I’m not sure I’m ready to say out loud yet like…
I’m already all in.
If she asked me to, I’d tear down half the fucking state.
There’s not a version of this where I could watch her leave when it’s over.
That one’s dangerous. So I shove it aside and focus on what matters.
Survival first. The rest later.
Raven shifts in her sleep sometime around four in the morning, her fingers tightening briefly in my shirt before she settles again.
I glance down at her in the dark and brush my knuckles lightly over her hairline before I can stop myself.
She doesn’t wake.
Good.
She needs sleep more than she needs whatever ugly thoughts are currently trying to take up permanent residence in my skull.
I lie there for another ten minutes after that. Then I make a decision.
By sunrise, I’m done lying in bed with my anger and pretending it counts as a plan.
***
The clubhouse is quiet when I slide out from under Raven and pull on jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and my cut.
She makes a small sound when I leave the bed, not fully waking, just reacting to the absence of heat.
I look back at her.
The blanket’s pooled around her waist. My pillow is tucked halfway under her arm. My room still smells faintly like her shampoo and sex and the kind of comfort I’ve never trusted enough to keep.
That thought lands harder than I expect. I kill it before it can grow teeth.
Then I step into the hall and shut the door softly behind me.
The downstairs corridor is still mostly dark, just a stripe of weak early light creeping in through the narrow windows by the back exit.
The clubhouse always has this strange, almost holy kind of quiet before the day really starts.
Like the building itself is breathing slow before everybody inside it remembers who they are again.
I head for the kitchen first. Coffee. Then war.
In that order.
By the time the first pot finishes, Logan’s already walking in, hair still damp from a shower, cut over a gray T-shirt, expression sharp enough to tell me he clocked my mood from halfway down the hall. He doesn’t say good morning.
Smart man.
He grabs a mug, pours himself coffee, and leans one hip against the counter while he studies me over the rim. “What happened?”
No preamble. No bullshit. That’s why he’s president.
I don’t waste time either. “Raven told me everything.”
That gets his full attention. He sets the mug down slow. “All of it?”
“Enough.”
Logan’s face hardens immediately. “Tell me.”
So I do.
Not the parts that belong only to her, not the details she gave me in trust just to have them repeated around the clubhouse like a fucking debrief, but enough for him to understand the scale.
Badge. Political ties. Surveillance. Physical abuse. Sex used like violence. Threats. The fact that if Cal gets her back, he won’t just drag her home and pretend to play house.
He’ll bury her.
By the time I finish, Logan’s gone so still he looks carved out of concrete. He doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he asks, “How much of that did Grinder know?”
“Some. Not all.”
Logan’s jaw flexes. “Figures.”
“Yeah.”
He reaches for his mug again but doesn’t drink. Just stands there with it in his hand while the kitchen settles into a silence heavy enough to bend steel. Then he nods once. “Alright.”
That’s it.
No dramatic reaction. No shock. No speech.
Just a president taking in new information and immediately moving to solve the problem. “What do you need?” he asks.
That question should probably hit me more than it does. But right now all I feel is relief. Because I know exactly what I need.
“Everything tightened,” I say. “Every weak point. Every route in and out. Eyes up in town. Anyone asking questions gets flagged. Any local law sniffing around gets reported straight up, no delay.”
Logan nods again. “Done.”
“I want Dom looped in fully.”
That gets me a raised brow. Not because he disagrees. Because Dom is a fucking menace when he gets involved in something like this. Exactly why I want him. “Digital?” Logan asks.
“Yeah. If Cal’s got access, I want to know what kind. Records, patterns, vehicle hits, plate scans, social circles, old cases, family names, whatever the hell Dom can pull without setting off alarms.”
Logan’s mouth twitches once. “You say that like he has a limit.”
Fair.
“Then I want Shadow and Blaze on field shit.”
That one makes him snort. “Because you trust their instincts or because you know they’ll be annoying enough to make a stalker reveal himself early?”
“Both.”
That actually gets a low laugh out of him. Then he sobers again. “You thinking this is close?”
“Yes.” The word leaves my mouth without hesitation. Because I am.
I don’t know if Cal knows where she is yet. But men like him don’t lose things well. And Raven isn’t just something he lost. She’s something that escaped. That changes the whole game.
Logan studies my face for a beat, then nods once more. “Alright,” he says. “Then we move like he’s already in town.”
That settles something in me immediately.
Good.
Because that’s exactly how I’ve been thinking since she finished talking last night. Worst case first.
Always.
It keeps people breathing.
***
By eight-thirty, we’re in Logan’s office with the door shut. Not church. This isn’t chapter business in the formal sense.
Not yet.
This is protection detail and internal strategy, which means Logan gets final say, but the room is small and tight and limited to the men who need to know.
Me. Logan. Dom. Shadow. Blaze. Cain.
That’s it.
Cain because he’s Sergeant at Arms and if this turns violent, which it will if Cal’s stupid enough to come here breathing, he’ll be in the center of it.
Dom because if there’s a digital trail, he’ll find it.
Shadow and Blaze because they grew up surviving the same kind of unpredictability I did, and there are some things men like us notice before they fully become visible to everybody else.
Logan stands near his desk while Dom sits in one of the chairs with a laptop open and already half his attention somewhere inside a dozen systems he definitely should not have access to.
Shadow and Blaze are leaning against the wall.
Cain’s got his arms crossed and a face that says he’d already like permission to break something.
Same.
Logan looks around the room once and says, “Joker.”
That’s my cue.
I lay it out clean. Not emotional. Not dramatic. Just facts.
Cal’s still her husband on paper. Detective.
Connected family. Documented behavior pattern of coercive control.
Likely high-functioning narcissistic piece of shit with a badge and a public reputation that doesn’t match private reality.
Uses surveillance. Uses social power. Likely comfortable weaponizing legal systems. Likely to frame his pursuit as concern, welfare, or recovery.
By the time I’m done, Dom is typing faster.
Shadow’s face has gone flat in the way it does when he starts mentally preparing for violence.
Blaze looks less amused than usual, which is saying something.
Cain just looks murderous.
Good.
Logan nods toward Dom first. “What can you get?”
Dom doesn’t look up. “Public records, department affiliations, known associates, probable burner patterns, social network mapping, vehicle ownership, campaign donation overlap, courthouse and election-adjacent family ties. Maybe internal chatter if he’s dumb enough to keep any habits online.”
Blaze raises a brow. “You just made stalking sound like a scholarship.”