Chapter 22
Pitt stood in front of the mirror in his room—their room—and couldn't get the top button of his shirt to cooperate.
His hands had been steady through firefights, through breaches, through the moment he'd pressed a gun to Victor Petrak's chest and pulled the trigger.
But a button the size of a dime was defeating him because in fifteen minutes he was walking downstairs to claim a woman in front of his brothers, and apparently that was where his nerve failed.
"You're going to rip it off."
Maggie's voice from the bathroom doorway. He looked up and the button ceased to matter.
She wore a black dress—simple, fitted, nothing fancy.
Her red hair was down, which she almost never did, falling past her shoulders in waves that caught the overhead light.
No makeup beyond whatever she'd done to her eyes that made the green burn brighter.
The leather jacket from the old ladies hung over her arm, and his dog tags—his spare set, the ones he'd given her that morning without ceremony—sat against her collarbone.
"You look—" he started.
"If you say 'nice,' I'm going back to bed."
"I was going to say 'mine.'"
Her smile hit him in the chest. She crossed the room, pushed his hands away from the button, and fastened it with a quick twist of her fingers.
"There." She smoothed his collar. "You clean up okay for a biker."
He caught her hand against his chest. Held it there, feeling his own heartbeat hammer against her palm. "You ready for this?"
"I've been ready. You're the one who can't button a shirt."
"Maggie."
"I'm ready." She met his eyes, and underneath the teasing he saw it—the steady, unshakable certainty of a woman who'd made her choice and kept making it every day since. "I've been ready since I knocked on your door that first night."
He kissed her forehead. Pressed his lips against her skin and held them there, breathing her in—shampoo and perfume and the warm scent underneath that was just Maggie, just home.
"Let's go," he said.
The clubhouse had been transformed. Not dramatically—the Outlaws weren't the kind of club that did dramatic—but with a care that told Pitt his brothers had put thought into this.
The bar was polished, every bottle lined up, glasses gleaming.
The overhead lights had been dimmed in favor of the string lights someone had strung along the exposed beams—probably Ash, who treated any wiring project like a personal challenge.
The heavy oak table from the chapel had been moved to the center of the main room, surrounded by chairs, the club's banner hanging on the wall behind it.
Every brother was there. Full patches, clean cuts, boots polished—the works.
Hollow in his VP position at the front, Parkway and Gibbet flanking, Ash and Shiv behind them.
Prospects lined the walls. The old ladies sat together near the bar, and the look on the blonde's face when Maggie walked in was something Pitt would remember for a long time—approval, respect, the tight-lipped nod of a woman who'd tested the new girl and been satisfied with the results.
The room went quiet when Pitt and Maggie entered. Not ceremonial silence—earned silence. The silence of men who understood what was happening and gave it the weight it deserved.
Pitt walked Maggie to the table. His hand was on her back—always on her back, the constant claim that had started as instinct and become identity. She walked beside him with her shoulders straight and her chin up, meeting every pair of eyes in the room without flinching.
He turned to face his brothers. His family. The men he'd built this club with, bled with, buried friends beside. Every face in this room was a story—a fight survived, a line held, a brother kept alive through loyalty and violence and the stubborn refusal to let the world win.
"Brothers," Pitt said. His voice carried without effort—the voice that ran Church, that gave orders under fire, that had spoken the words that founded this club eight years ago. "You know why we're here."
Hollow grinned. Gibbet nodded. Ash looked like he might cry, which was alarming.
"This woman walked into our world because a predator tried to take everything she had.
She stayed because she chose to—not because she had nowhere else to go, not because she needed protection, but because she looked at who we are and what we do and decided this was where she belonged.
" He paused. "She's earned that decision.
She handed us magazines under fire. She shot a man to save my life.
She sat at our table and gave us the intel that ended a twenty-year threat to our territory.
She cooks better than any of you, she pours a better beer than any of you, and she tells me I'm wrong more than all of you combined. "
Laughter. Low, warm, the sound of men who recognized truth.
"I'm claiming her." The words landed with the weight he intended—not a request, not a proposal, a declaration.
"Maggie Kowalski is my old lady. Mine to protect, mine to provide for, mine to stand beside.
Any brother who disrespects her disrespects me.
Any threat to her is a threat to this club. She's one of us."
He reached for his spare cut—the one he'd had made for this, clean leather with the club's patch on the back and PROPERTY OF PITT on the front.
The words were tradition, and Maggie had opinions about the word property that she'd shared at volume during the week leading up to this.
But she'd agreed to wear it because she understood what it meant in context: not ownership.
Belonging. A declaration that she was protected by the full weight of the Steel City Outlaws, permanently and without exception.
He held it open for her.
Maggie shrugged off her leather jacket and turned her back to him, and he slid the cut over her shoulders.
It settled on her frame—too big, because it was his spare and she was a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, but the weight of it was right.
The patches were right. She turned to face the room, and the cut hung on her like an oversized declaration of intent, and she looked at his brothers with an expression that dared any of them to comment on the fit.
None of them did. They were too busy banging their fists on the table.
The sound filled the clubhouse—rhythmic, thunderous, the Outlaws' version of applause.
Fists on oak, boots on concrete, the drumbeat of a brotherhood accepting a new member into their family.
Hollow was pounding hardest, grinning like a maniac.
Gibbet hit the table once—one single, percussive boom that somehow carried more weight than everyone else combined.
Maggie's hand found Pitt's. Her fingers laced through his, and she squeezed hard enough to make his knuckles ache.
"One more thing," Pitt said, and the pounding subsided. He turned to Maggie. Took both her hands. Faced her in front of every person in the room who mattered to him.
"You're mine," he said. "From tonight forward.
My old lady, my partner, my family. I'll protect you with everything I have and everything this club has.
I'll rebuild what was taken from you and stand beside you while you build what comes next.
And I'll spend every day earning the trust you gave me when you climbed on the back of my bike and held on. "
Maggie looked up at him. Her eyes were bright—not tears, never tears in front of the brothers—but the shine of emotion running right at the surface, held back by the same stubborn will that had kept her standing in broken glass and facing down men twice her size.
"You're mine too," she said. "And I don't share. So every woman in Pittsburgh can stop looking."
The room erupted. Laughter, cheers, Hollow's wolf whistle cutting through everything like a siren.
Pitt pulled Maggie against him and kissed her in front of his entire club—deep, thorough, the kind of kiss that left absolutely no ambiguity about where things stood.
Her hands fisted in his shirt. His arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her onto her toes.
The cut he'd just given her bunched under his hands, leather and patches and the physical weight of belonging.
When they broke apart, the party started like someone had fired a gun.
Music hit—Ash's system cranked to a volume that vibrated the bar glasses.
Drinks appeared from everywhere. Brothers lined up to shake Pitt's hand and hug Maggie with the careful, deliberate embraces of men who didn't hug often and meant it when they did.
The old ladies descended on Maggie like a welcoming committee that had been holding back for weeks and finally had permission to stop.
The blonde hugged her last. Held her for a beat longer than the others. Said something in her ear that Pitt couldn't hear, but Maggie's face when she pulled back said it was exactly the right thing.
The party raged for hours. Pitt let it—his brothers had earned this, and Maggie moved through the celebration with the ease of a woman who'd been working crowds her entire life.
She danced with Hollow, who spun her with surprising grace.
She took a shot with Ash, who produced a bottle of whiskey from somewhere and poured with the generosity of a man who believed moderation was for civilians.
She sat with Gibbet at the bar for ten minutes, and whatever passed between them in that near-silent conversation left Gibbet nodding with an expression that was as close to warmth as his face could manage.
Pitt watched her. Watched his old lady move through his world like she'd always been in it, wearing his cut and his dog tags and the confidence of a woman who'd survived everything Pittsburgh could throw at her and come out the other side laughing.
He was done watching by midnight.
He crossed the room, put his hand on her hip—the universal signal his brothers had learned to recognize—and leaned into her ear. "Upstairs."
"The party's still—"
"Upstairs. Now."
Her breath caught against his neck. She didn't argue.
They made it to the stairs without commentary. They did not make it to the stairs without Hollow noticing, but Hollow's shout of encouragement was lost behind the closing of their bedroom door.
Pitt pressed her against it.
The ceremony's weight hit them both at the same time—the significance of what they'd just done, the permanence of it, the public declaration that couldn't be walked back and wasn't meant to be.
He felt it in the way she kissed him—fierce and full, her hands pulling at his shirt, the cut he'd given her still on her shoulders because neither of them wanted to take it off yet.
"Mine," he said against her mouth.
"Yours." She pulled his shirt over his head. "Now prove it."
He proved it.
Not with the desperate urgency of their post-combat collision, not with the tender exploration of their first night.
This was celebration—joyful, consuming, the physical expression of a commitment they'd just made in front of fifty people.
He kissed her like she was air. Touched her like she was sacred and untouchable and entirely, completely his.
The cut came off when her dress came off, and he laid her on their bed and took his time because tonight time was something they had in abundance.
She matched him—her mouth on his scars, her hands in his hair, her body arching against his with the confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and had zero interest in patience.
They moved together with the rhythm they'd built over weeks of learning each other—where to press, where to pause, the sounds that meant more and the silence that meant right there, don't stop.
When it crested, she said his name—Dominic, the real one, the one she only used here—and the sound of it broke him open the way it did every time, reducing the president and the fighter and the outlaw to a man who loved one woman and was loved back.
Afterward, she lay across his chest wearing nothing but his dog tags, and he traced the line of her spine with his fingertips, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing slow and deepen.
"Your brothers are going to be insufferable tomorrow," she murmured.
"My brothers are already insufferable."
"Hollow's going to make speeches."
"Hollow makes speeches about breakfast. This won't be different."
She lifted her head. Looked at him with those green eyes, soft and sleepy and absolutely certain. "Hi, husband."
"That's not what old lady means."
"It's what it means to me."
He pulled her up and kissed her—slow, deliberate, tasting the future on her lips. Then he tucked her against his chest, pulled the sheet over them, and listened to the party still thumping below—his brothers, his club, celebrating the best decision he'd ever made.
Her breathing evened out. Her hand curled around his dog tags. She fell asleep with the bass line vibrating through the floor and Pitt's heartbeat under her ear, and he held her in the dark, wide awake, memorizing the weight of her.
His old lady. His woman. His home.
He closed his eyes and let the compound hold them both.