Chapter 17
Maggie found him on the compound roof.
She'd checked his room first—empty, bed still made from this morning, which meant he hadn't been there since Church.
Then the bar, the garage, the kitchen. Nothing.
Hollow pointed her toward the roof access without being asked, which told her this was a place Pitt went and the brothers knew not to follow.
She followed anyway.
The roof was flat industrial concrete, original to the steelworks building, ringed by a low parapet wall that gave views of the South Side in every direction.
Pittsburgh spread out below in a tapestry of streetlights and river reflections—the Monongahela curving south, bridges lit up like jewelry laid across dark water, the hills rising in silhouettes against a sky that never got fully dark because the city wouldn't let it.
Pitt sat on the parapet with his back against a ventilation unit, legs stretched out, a beer resting on his thigh.
He'd taken off his cut—it lay folded beside him, the patches facing up, the Steel City Outlaws skull catching ambient light.
Without it, in just a black t-shirt and jeans, he looked stripped down.
Quieter. The man instead of the president.
"Hollow ratted me out," he said without turning.
"Hollow loves me more than he loves you."
"Hollow loves everyone more than he loves me. That's why he's good at his job." He shifted, making room on the parapet beside him. Not an invitation—an expectation. She sat, and his arm went around her shoulders immediately, pulling her against his side.
They looked at the city together. The air was cold—late November, the kind of Pittsburgh night that bit your cheeks and made your breath visible—but Pitt's body was a furnace and Maggie pressed into it without shame.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"Haven't tried."
"It's after midnight."
"I know what time it is."
She waited. Pitt wasn't a man you pushed into talking—he arrived at words on his own schedule, and the fastest way to slow him down was to ask for speed.
"Craig's laptop had files," he said after a while.
"Parkway's been going through them since we got back.
Victor's entire operation—financial records, collection routes, names of every business he's bleeding.
" He paused. "And photographs. Hundreds of them.
Every job Craig ever did. Every building he burned, every person he hurt.
Organized by date, labeled, filed like a goddamn accountant. "
Maggie's stomach turned. "My bar?"
"Thirty-seven photos. Before, during, and after. Time-stamped." His arm tightened around her. "Parkway deleted them. I told him to keep everything else for intel, but those—those are gone."
She closed her eyes. Thirty-seven photographs of her life burning. Craig Burch standing across the street with a phone, capturing the destruction of everything her father had built, filing it away as portfolio work. The thought made her want to scream, or vomit, or both.
Instead, she leaned harder into Pitt's side and breathed until the nausea passed.
"Thank you," she said. "For having them deleted."
"Wasn't going to let you stumble across them."
"I wouldn't have stumbled. I would've looked on purpose, because I'm that kind of stupid."
"You're not stupid. You're brave. There's an overlap people confuse."
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
His profile against the city lights was all hard angles—the broken nose, the scarred brow, the jaw that could've been cut from the same steel this building was made of.
But his eyes, when he looked down at her, were soft in a way she'd only seen in private.
In his room. In the dark. When the president went to sleep and the man woke up.
"What happens now?" she asked. "With Victor."
"We've got his whole operation on that laptop. Every business, every enforcer, every dollar. Parkway and Ash are building the tactical plan. When it's ready, we hit his headquarters and we end this."
"How long?"
"Days. Maybe less."
"And after?"
He looked at her. The question hung between them, heavy with everything it contained—not just the end of Victor Petrak, but the beginning of whatever came next.
The life they'd been building in stolen moments between violence, the future they'd talked about in his bed at dawn, the version of the world where the crisis was over and the only reason to stay was choice.
"After," he said, "I rebuild your bar. And you decide if this compound is still where you want to wake up."
"I've already decided that."
"You decided it during a war. War makes everything feel urgent. I want you to decide it when it's quiet."
She turned on the parapet, pulling her legs up, facing him. His arm slipped from her shoulders to her waist, maintaining contact because Pitt always maintained contact now—some part of him was always touching some part of her, a constant physical claim that had become as natural as breathing.
"You think I'm going to change my mind," she said. "When the danger's gone and the adrenaline stops and I'm standing in a normal Tuesday wondering what I got myself into."
"I think you deserve the chance to."
"And I think you're scared."
His jaw tightened. Direct hit.
"The great Pitt," she continued, her voice soft enough to take the sting out but firm enough to land.
"President of the Steel City Outlaws. Man who leads from the front, fights every battle first, built a brotherhood from nothing.
Scared that a bartender from the South Side might wake up one morning and realize she'd rather be somewhere else. "
"Maggie—"
"I'm not going anywhere." She took his face in both hands, turning him toward her, making him look.
"Not because of the war. Not because of the protection.
Not because I don't have somewhere else to go.
Because I love you, you impossible man, and that's not adrenaline talking. That's just the truth."
He stared at her. The city hummed below them, traffic and river wind and the distant wail of a train along the Mon Valley tracks. His hands found her hips, and she felt the tension in his fingers—the restraint, the wanting, the constant war between holding back and holding on.
"Come downstairs," she said.
"Maggie—"
"Come downstairs. Come to bed. Stop sitting on the roof trying to think your way out of something that doesn't need thinking."
She stood and held out her hand. He looked at it—her callused, bar-worn, ordinary hand—and took it.
They went downstairs.
His room was dark. She didn't turn on the light—didn't need to. She knew this room now, knew the three steps from door to bed, knew the sound the mattress made when weight settled onto it, knew the smell of leather and soap and him that lived in every surface.
She kissed him first. Standing beside the bed, her hands on his chest, rising on her toes to reach his mouth because the height difference was absurd and she'd stopped caring about absurd.
The kiss started slow—deliberate, intentional, the kiss of a woman who was done rushing.
They'd had frantic. They'd had desperate. Tonight she wanted something else.
He let her lead. His hands rested on her waist, thumbs tracing her hip bones through the fabric of her shirt, following her pace with a patience that cost him—she could feel it in the fine tremor of his muscles, the controlled breathing, the way his fingers flexed against her skin when she deepened the kiss.
She pulled back and tugged his shirt over his head.
Ran her hands across his chest—the scars she'd memorized, the dog tags she'd held in her sleep, the new bandage on his ribs from the graze that was healing but not healed.
She pressed her mouth to the skin beside the bandage, and his hand came up to cradle the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair.
"Your turn," he murmured, and lifted her shirt off with a gentleness that made her chest ache.
They undressed each other slowly. No urgency, no fumbling—just the patient removal of layers between his skin and hers, each piece of clothing dropped to the floor like something they didn't need anymore.
When they were bare, he pulled her against him, full contact, and the heat of it—every inch of her body against every inch of his—made her breath shudder.
He laid her down on the bed and followed, settling beside her, propped on one elbow.
His free hand started at her collarbone and traveled south—not rushing toward anything, just moving.
Learning her again, or reminding himself of what he'd already learned.
His palm across her ribs, his fingers tracing the curve of her waist, his thumb against the jut of her hip.
Reading her body like a road he intended to travel for a very long time.
"Dominic," she whispered, and watched his eyes darken at the sound of his name in her mouth.
"Right here."
"I know. That's the point."
She pulled him closer. Not demanding—inviting.
And he came to her with a steadiness that was nothing like their first time and nothing like the second.
No nerves, no desperation. Just the absolute certainty of two people who knew what they were doing and why, who'd chosen each other with eyes open and kept choosing, every day, through fire and gunshots and the quiet moments in between.
He moved with her like they'd been doing this for years instead of weeks.
Knew the places that made her gasp, the rhythm she needed, the way she arched into him when he hit something right.
She knew him too—the sound he made when her nails traced his spine, the spot on his neck that made his breath stutter, the way he buried his face in her hair when the intensity got too big for his body to contain.
This time, the urgency built slow. A gradual tightening, a gathering heat, their bodies finding a tempo that felt less like two people and more like one organism with a shared pulse.
She held his face and watched him—his eyes half-closed, his jaw tight with pleasure, the vulnerability of a dangerous man laid completely bare for the only person he trusted enough to see it.
"Yours," she said. Not gasping it, not crying it out. Stating it. A fact as permanent as the scars on his chest.
"Mine," he answered, and the word was a vow.
The release came like a wave breaking—deep, full, rolling through both of them in a shared shudder that left them tangled and breathing hard and holding on to each other like the bed might not be enough to keep them grounded.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his chest—her position now, claimed and familiar—listening to his heartbeat slow. His hand moved in her hair, that absent, rhythmic stroking that she'd come to crave the way she craved coffee and oxygen.
"Tell me about the plan," she said. "For Victor."
"Now?"
"Now. While we're like this. I want to be part of it."
His hand kept moving. He was quiet for a moment—not reluctant, considering.
"Parkway's mapped his headquarters. Check-cashing storefront on Eighteenth—reinforced, but not like a fortress. Victor's got maybe four muscle left, and whatever hired crew he can pull together on short notice. We hit hard, hit fast, and end it."
"When?"
"Two days. Maybe three. Parkway wants everything locked before we move."
"And me?"
"You sit at the table." He said it without hesitation—a decision already made. "Church. Full briefing. You know Victor's patterns better than anyone. His schedule, his habits, the way his people move. We need that."
"You're putting me in Church."
"I'm putting you where you're useful."
She propped herself up on his chest. Looked down at him with an expression she could feel but couldn't see—something between disbelief and fierce, unshakable love.
"You're letting me help plan the takedown of the man who destroyed my bar."
"I'm not letting you do anything. You earned that seat.
" His hand cupped her face. "You earned it at the safehouse when you handed me magazines under fire.
You earned it at the warehouse when you shot a man to save my life.
You earned it every day you've been here, cooking for my brothers and standing your ground and refusing to be anything less than what you are. "
Her throat tightened. She kissed his palm—a quick, fierce press of lips against callused skin.
"Two days," she said.
"Two days. And then Victor Petrak finds out what happens when you hurt what's mine."
She settled back against his chest. His arms closed around her, the dog tags pressing between their bodies, warm from shared heat.
The compound hummed around them—brothers on watch, the building breathing its nightly rhythms, a motorcycle club standing guard while its president held the woman he loved in a dark room and planned the end of a war.
"What does it look like?" she asked quietly. "After. Us. This life. What does it look like when there's no crisis?"
His chest rose and fell beneath her. "Loud. Messy. Brothers in and out at all hours, bikes in the lot, somebody always breaking something. Your bar rebuilt two blocks from the original, regulars finding their way back. You behind the counter. Me across the room, watching you work."
"That's specific."
"I've been thinking about it."
"How long?"
"Since the first night you cooked breakfast and Hollow wouldn't shut up about the eggs."
She laughed against his skin. Felt his arms tighten. Felt the vibration of his quiet laugh meeting hers.
She fell asleep with his heartbeat under her ear and his arms locked around her and the image of a bar she hadn't built yet glowing behind her closed eyes like a promise.