Chapter Seven
They came at three in the morning.
Lakeshore was awake—he was always awake at three, when the darkness pressed heaviest and the faces in his head got loud. He'd been sitting in the safehouse kitchen, back to the wall, watching the street through a gap in the boarded windows when headlights swept across the glass.
Not Ivan's truck this time. Three vehicles. SUVs, dark and heavy, rolling to a stop at both ends of the block.
Fuck.
He was on his feet before the engines cut, phone already in his hand.
"Alpha."
"Talk."
"Safehouse. Three vehicles, at least nine men. They found us."
"On our way. Ten minutes."
"Make it five."
He killed the call and moved for the stairs. Tess was in the front bedroom—he'd put her there because it had roof access and a fire escape, two ways out if everything went sideways. She was asleep when he opened the door, but she came awake fast when he said her name.
"Get dressed. Now."
She didn't argue. Didn't ask questions. Just rolled out of bed and grabbed her jeans while he checked the window facing the street.
They were already moving. Dark shapes flowing between parked cars, spreading out to cover the front door and the alley. Nine men, maybe ten—hard to count in the shadows, but enough to storm a two-bedroom safehouse and leave nothing standing.
Ivan was with them. Lakeshore spotted him in the glow of a distant streetlight, that barrel chest and those anchor tattoos, directing his crew with sharp gestures.
The bastard had tracked his bike. Had to be. Lakeshore had been careful about approaches, varied his routes, but Ivan had been watching that shop for six weeks. He knew what to look for.
"What's happening?" Tess appeared at his shoulder, dressed and alert, fear tight around her eyes but her voice steady.
"Company. Stay behind me."
"How many?"
"Enough."
The first crash came from downstairs—the back door, kicked in hard enough to splinter the frame. Boots on the kitchen floor, voices calling out positions like they'd done this before.
Lakeshore put himself between Tess and the bedroom door. "Fire escape. Go."
"I'm not leaving you—"
"Tess." He grabbed her arm, pulled her close enough that she could see his eyes in the darkness. "I need you alive. I need you to get to the roof and wait for my brothers. Can you do that?"
Her jaw set. That stubborn angle he'd learned to love and hate in equal measure.
"I can do that."
"Go."
She went. Out the window, onto the fire escape, climbing toward the roof while he turned to face whatever was coming through that door.
Two of them hit the stairs at once, boots thundering on old wood. Lakeshore met the first one at the top step and put him through the banister.
Wood exploded. The man screamed—short and sharp, cut off when he hit the floor below. The second one tried to bring up a weapon, some kind of compact automatic, but Lakeshore was already inside his guard.
Elbow to the throat. The gun clattered away. Lakeshore grabbed a fistful of hair and introduced the man's face to the wall, once, twice, until he stopped moving.
More coming. He could hear them in the kitchen, in the living room, spreading through the safehouse like roaches. Too many to fight alone, even for him.
But he didn't have to fight alone.
Glass shattered downstairs—the front window, coming in instead of going out. Alpha's voice cut through the chaos, that battlefield roar that meant the Wolves had arrived.
"HOLD THE LINE!"
Lakeshore grinned. It wasn't a nice expression.
He went down the stairs like gravity was a suggestion, hitting the third man before the bastard could turn around. They crashed into the kitchen together, knocking over chairs, and Lakeshore felt something crack under his knuckles that might have been a jaw.
The kitchen was chaos. Two of Ivan's men were trying to hold the back door while a third wrestled with someone in the living room. Lakeshore caught a glimpse of Fang—unmistakable even in the dark, that stockyard build and those butcher's hands—taking a man apart with mechanical precision.
Good. The teeth are here.
Another body came at him from the left. Lakeshore pivoted, caught an arm, and used the man's momentum to send him headfirst into the refrigerator. The door crumpled. The man didn't get up.
"LAKESHORE!"
Alpha's voice, from the front of the house. Lakeshore looked up in time to see Ivan Sokol bolt for the back door, shoving past his own men in his rush to escape.
No.
Everything else fell away. The fight, the chaos, the brothers holding the line—all of it faded to static as Lakeshore went after the man who'd put holes in Tess's boats and fear in her eyes.
Ivan made it three steps into the alley before Lakeshore caught him.
He hit the bigger man from behind, driving them both into the brick wall of the laundromat next door. Ivan grunted, tried to spin, tried to bring something up—a knife, Lakeshore realized, the same kind of blade that had been gutting fishing boats for six weeks.
Not tonight.
Lakeshore caught Ivan's wrist and twisted until he heard the bones grind. The knife dropped. Ivan howled, swinging wild with his free hand, but Lakeshore was already inside the blow.
Headbutt to the nose. Blood sprayed hot across his face. Ivan staggered, and Lakeshore followed him down, straddling his chest and wrapping both hands around his throat.
"You touched what's mine."
Ivan's eyes went wide. His hands clawed at Lakeshore's wrists, at his face, at anything he could reach. Desperate. Pathetic.
"Should've stayed on your side of the lake."
He squeezed.
Ivan's struggles got weaker. His face purpled in the dim light from the street, veins standing out on his forehead, that barrel chest heaving for air it couldn't find.
Lakeshore thought about Tess wading into freezing water at dawn to save a boat someone had sabotaged.
Thought about her standing in her shop watching the truck that never left, carrying six weeks of fear without ever breaking down.
Thought about her on that fire escape, climbing toward safety because he'd asked her to trust him.
He squeezed harder.
Ivan stopped moving.
Lakeshore held on for another thirty seconds, making sure, before he let go and stood. His hands were shaking—not from effort, not from fear, just the adrenaline dump of a fight finished and an enemy ended.
The alley was quiet. Inside the safehouse, he could hear the sounds of cleanup—brothers securing the building, checking bodies, making sure none of Ivan's crew would be getting back up.
He walked back through the kitchen door and found Alpha standing in the middle of the living room, surveying the damage.
"Ivan?"
"Done."
Alpha nodded once. Didn't ask for details, didn't need them. That was the thing about the president—he trusted his brothers to handle what needed handling.
"The woman?"
"Roof. I told her to wait."
"Better go get her, then. Fang's checking the perimeter—she might shoot him if he comes up unexpected."
Lakeshore almost smiled at that. He could picture it—Tess on the roof with a piece of broken pipe or a loose brick, ready to brain anyone who came through that access door.
His woman didn't run.
He took the stairs two at a time, past the bodies he'd dropped on the way down, and climbed through the window onto the fire escape. The roof access was ten feet up—he scaled it in seconds, pulling himself over the edge to find Tess exactly where he'd told her to be.
She was crouched behind an HVAC unit, a length of metal pipe clutched in both hands, eyes wild in the darkness. When she saw him, her whole body sagged with relief.
"You're alive."
"Yeah."
"There was so much noise. I heard—" She stopped. Looked at him. Took in the blood on his face, his hands, the spatter across his cut. "That's not your blood."
"No."
"Ivan?"
"Not anymore."
She stood slowly, the pipe dropping from her fingers to clang against the roof. Lakeshore watched her process it—the violence, the death, the reality of what he was and what he'd done.
"You killed him."
"He was never going to stop, Tess. Men like him, they don't understand anything except force. He would've kept coming until you had nothing left, and then he would've come for you."
"I know." Her voice was steady. Steadier than he'd expected. "I know what he was. I know what he would've done."
She crossed the roof to where he stood, and Lakeshore braced himself. For disgust, maybe. For fear. For the moment when she looked at him and finally saw the monster he'd always known lived under his skin.
Instead, she put her hands on his face—gentle, careful, avoiding the blood that wasn't his—and made him look at her.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"You're sure? Because you're covered in—"
"I'm sure."
She searched his eyes for a long moment. Whatever she found there made something shift in her expression—not fear, not revulsion, but something he couldn't name.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay."
Voices from below. Alpha calling up, asking if they were clear. Lakeshore answered without looking away from Tess.
"Clear. Coming down."
"Compound. Now. We need to regroup."
Lakeshore looked at the woman in front of him. The woman who'd just watched him climb up to this roof covered in another man's blood and hadn't taken a single step back.
"You ready?"
She let out a breath that might have been a laugh, if laughs could sound exhausted and terrified and somehow still unbroken.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Always. But I'm asking you to come with me."
Her hands were still on his face. She dropped them slowly, but didn't move away.
"Then let's go."
They climbed down together—fire escape to window, stairs to the ground floor, past brothers who nodded at Lakeshore and looked at Tess with something like respect. She'd stayed where he'd put her. She hadn't panicked, hadn't run, hadn't done anything except exactly what he'd asked.
The brotherhood noticed that kind of thing.
Outside, the street was quiet. Ivan's crew had been loaded into the SUVs they'd arrived in—the ones still breathing, anyway. The bodies would be handled separately, through channels that didn't involve police reports or questions.
Fang appeared at Lakeshore's shoulder. "Clean sweep. Two dead inside, three down in the alley counting your boy. Rest are secured for transport."
"Good."
"She okay?" Fang jerked his chin toward Tess, who was watching the brothers work with an expression Lakeshore couldn't read.
"She's standing."
"That's something." Fang's scarred face shifted into something that might have been approval. "Girl's got spine. You could do worse."
"Thanks for the relationship advice."
"Any time, brother."
Alpha appeared with his bike, engine already running. "Compound. Now. We need to figure out our next move before Gregor realizes he's down a lieutenant."
Lakeshore walked to where Tess stood at the edge of the sidewalk, watching the cleanup with those lake-water eyes.
"Hey."
She looked up at him. The blood was drying on his face, pulling at his skin, and he knew he must look like something out of a nightmare. But she didn't flinch. Didn't look away.
"Hey."
"We're going to the compound. All of us. It's the safest place in the city right now, and after tonight, Gregor's going to know the Wolves are involved."
"I figured."
"I know you didn't want to stay there. I know you wanted to be close to your shop. But—"
"Lakeshore." She said his road name deliberately, like she was reminding both of them who he was in front of his brothers. "I just watched your club take apart ten men in about four minutes. I think I understand the situation."
"So you'll come?"
She looked at the safehouse, at the shattered windows and the splintered door frame and the chaos of a battle that had torn through it like a storm.
Then she looked back at him—this man with blood on his hands and violence in his history and eyes that watched her like she was the only thing that mattered.
"Yeah," she said. "I'll come."
Lakeshore handed her a helmet and swung onto his bike. She climbed on behind him without hesitation, her arms wrapping around his waist like they belonged there.
They rode for the compound through empty streets, and Tess held on tight, and Lakeshore felt the lake-cold calm settle over him the way it always did after the violence was done.
This was who he was. This was what he did.
And somehow, impossibly, she understood.