3. Gideon
GIDEON
The sun hasn't even cleared the peaks, but the clubhouse is already a beehive. The air tastes like grease, exhaust, and the bitter tang of over-boiled coffee. I lean against the jukebox, arms crossed over my chest, watching the morning rush. Usually, it’s just the brothers—Malachi talking some prospect’s ear off, Dante brooding over a map in the corner.
Then she walks in. Damn that bitch.
The room doesn't go silent, but the frequency shifts.
Necks crane. Eyes linger. Savannah moves through the sea of leather and denim without a ripple.
She doesn't look like a witness; she looks like a shadow that hasn't found a place to hide yet. She grabs a mug of black sludge and a plate of eggs, her movements precise and economy-driven. She handles the tray like a weapon she’s clearing.
She picks the table in the far corner. Back to the brick, eyes on the main door, side-eyeing the kitchen exit. She’s measuring the distance between her and every throat in the room.
And it's strategic. No fear there.
I push off the jukebox. My boots thud heavy on the linoleum, a deliberate warning.
I don’t pull the chair out. I kick it. The metal legs screech across the floor before I drop my weight into it, slamming my elbows onto the table with enough force to make her coffee jump in the mug. I’m close enough to smell the cedar on her skin from last night.
"Breakfast in paradise," I say, my voice a deep rumble that usually makes people pull back. "You look like you're waiting for a snare to trip, Princess. Relax. The coffee’s the only thing in here trying to kill you."
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't even stop chewing. She just stares at me with those weird, eyes—dead and sharp at the same time.
"Must be embarrassing for the Feds," I lean in, invading the two inches of space she has left. I grin, though there’s no humor in it. "Sent us a five-foot assassin with trust issues and a bird-carving hobby. What? Did they run out of real soldiers? Or are you just the one they consider expendable?"
I’m looking for the blink. The twitch of the lip. Some sign that she’s as scared as a girl in her position ought to be.
She doesn't give me the satisfaction. She just lifts one dark eyebrow, slow and mocking.
The only tell is her right hand. Her fingers crush the ceramic handle of her mug for a split second—a surge of violent pressure so intense I expect the clay to shatter—before she forces the muscle to go limp again.
The control is unnatural. It’s better than any scream. I feel a sudden, jagged heat climb my spine that has little to do with anger.
"You’re a loud man, Gideon," she says, her voice flat as a grave. "In my experience, the loudest things in the room are usually the first to be dismantled."
Magnus lumbers over like a bear scenting trash.
He’s a relic, a patch from the old days who thinks grease on his vest gives him a pass to be a pig.
He plants his boots right in her space, cutting off her line of sight to the door.
I stay seated, my fingers itching. I want to see what she does. I want to see the cracks.
The clubhouse waits. The clink of silverware dies out, replaced by the hum of the refrigerator.
"I heard about you Sombra girls," Magnus says, his voice a wet gravel pit. He leans down, his shadow swallowing her whole. "Heard you survival types have real talent for making the bosses happy. That how you stayed alive while your family got put in the ground? Working those knees?"
Savannah doesn't look up. She keeps her eyes on her plate, but her posture changes. The stillness evolves. It isn't the stillness of a statue anymore; it’s the stillness of a landmine.
"Magnus," I warn, my voice low. I should stop it. Dante would want me to stop it. But the Beast in me wants to see her teeth.
"Oh, come on, Judge," Magnus laughs, reaching out a meaty, stained hand. "She’s a guest. I’m just giving her a warm welcome."
He reaches for her bicep. His fingers haven't even closed around the fabric of her sleeve when the world explodes.
The sound is a sharp, metallic crack. Savannah doesn't stand—she launches. She grips the edge of the heavy steel serving tray and whips it upward in a blur of silver. It catches Magnus flush across the mouth. Blood and white fragments of teeth spray across the table, speckling her eggs.
Before he can even scream, her hand flies to the back of his neck, fingers digging into the spine. She uses his own momentum to drive his face down. His jaw hits the edge of the heavy oak table with a sound like a dry branch snapping.
The room turns into a riot of movement. Chairs screech. Boots thud. Half the brothers are on their feet, hands hovering over holstered steel.
Magnus hits the floor in a heap of leather and gurgling groans. His jaw hangs at a sickening, impossible angle, trailing strings of red onto the linoleum.
Savannah stands over him. She isn't breathing hard. She isn't shaking. She just looks down at the mess she made, her eyes cold and empty as a winter sky. She looks at me, and I see exactly what Dante saw.
She isn't a girl. She’s a killing machine.
"Sit back down!" I roar, the sound booming off the rafters like a shotgun blast.
The brothers jerk to a halt. Half a dozen boots grind into the linoleum, hesitation flickering through the room.
I don’t look at them. I don't look at Magnus, though he’s making a sound like a drowning hog as he chokes on his own molars.
My eyes are locked on the woman standing in the middle of the storm.
Savannah picks up a paper napkin. She wipes a smear of Magnus’s blood from the back of her hand with the same casual indifference she’d use for a grease stain.
No tremors. No dilated pupils. Her pulse doesn't even seem to be pushing at the thin skin of her throat.
She picks up her mug, the black coffee still steaming, and takes a slow, steady sip while staring at the man she just dismantled.
The room is a powder keg, but she's the one holding the match, and she isn't even looking for the fuse.
"Get him to the infirmary," I growl, never breaking eye contact with her. "And someone mop this shit up."
I can't get the image out of my head for the rest of the day. It’s a splinter under the skin.
I find her toward sunset. She’s leaning against the rough cedar planks of the back cabin, shadowed by the towering pines that rim the property. The air smells like pine needles and the hot, metallic scent of Malachi’s bike cooling in the nearby garage.
I don't approach slow. I charge her, slamming a hand against the cabin wall beside her head. I lean in until our chests are inches apart, my shadow swallowing her.
"What the hell are you?" I snarl, the vibration of my voice rattling in my own teeth. "Ordinary witnesses cry. They shake. They don't break a man's jaw and go back to eating their blood-soaked breakfast."
I grab her chin, forcing her to look at the scars on my knuckles, the 'FEAR' and 'GOD' I've carried for a decade.
"You're a predator," I say. "The cartel didn't just break you—they tuned you. You like it. The blood. The way they go quiet."
Savannah doesn't pull away. She leans forward, closing the gap until I can feel the heat of her breath. Her eyes aren't amber now. They're molten.
"You boys play house in the mountains," she says, voice a razor-thin whisper. "You wear the leather and wait for a fight to feel alive. I survived monsters that made cartels look civilized. I’ve lived in the dark so long I forgot what the sun feels like."
She reaches up, her calloused trigger finger tracing the edge of my jaw.
"Don't confuse survival with enjoyment, Gideon. You wouldn't last a day in the world I walked out of."
I reach for her. My fingers coil around her upper arm like a vice, the muscle beneath her skin feeling deceptively fragile. It’s a reflex, the urge to anchor her, to drag more of that icy truth out of her throat. I don’t think so. I just act.
The mistake registers in the gap between heartbeats.
A flash of cold steel bites into the underside of my jaw.
It’s there before I can even blink, a thin, wicked silver edge blooming from the air itself.
One second my hand is on her; the next, I’m staring at the horizon while a blade holds my life in a state of suspended animation.
She didn’t reach for a pocket. She didn’t telegraph.
The movement was a blur of lethal geometry.
I freeze. My pulse thuds against the metal, a frantic rhythm that Savannah must feel through the hilt.
She doesn't pull back. She steps into my space, narrowing the distance until the air between us is a shared, suffocating heat. Her eyes are wide, unblinking, and entirely devoid of the frantic energy that usually precedes a kill. There is only a terrifying, clinical focus.
The tip of the knife exerts a fraction more pressure. It’s a warning, a physical punctuation mark to the silence. I can smell the cedar on her skin again, mixed with a faint, sharp tang of gun oil and old smoke. It’s the scent of a workshop and a battlefield.
“Next time,” she murmurs, her voice a low, vibrating hum that resonates against my collarbone, “ask nicely. You boys need to learn some freaking manners.”
She draws the blade back with a flick of her wrist, the metal vanishing as quickly and silently as it appeared.
I don’t even see where she hides it. She doesn't wait for a retort.
She doesn't look back to see if I’m going to lunge.
She just turns and walks into the thickening shadows of the tree line, her silhouette swallowed by the dark pines before I can draw a full breath.
I stand there in the dirt, my hand still half-raised in the empty air.
My throat stings where the steel rested.
My heart is a frantic beast, hammering against my ribs with a violence I haven't felt since my first cage fight. It isn't just adrenaline; it’s the realization that for the very first time in my life, I’ve found something that doesn't just push back.
It matches me.
I touch my jaw, my fingers coming away dry, but the sharp whisper of that blade remains. I watch the spot where she vanished, the Beast in my chest finally going quiet, replaced by a dark, hungry curiosity.
Game on, kitty cat.