11. Gideon
GIDEON
Islam my fist into the heavy bag, the chain overhead shrieking against the beam. Every time my eyes close, I see her. Not the sniper. Not the witness. I see her arched back, the way her throat worked as she swallowed Malachi’s name, and the slick sheen on his fingers when he pulled away.
"Again," I growl.
Savannah doesn’t blink. She stands in the dirt yard, sweat darkening her grey tank top, tracking my movements with those smoldering eyes. A purple bruise is already blooming along her ribs where I caught her with a lead hook five minutes ago. She hasn't made a sound.
"Guard’s too low," I bark, crowding into her space. I’m close enough to smell the salt on her skin and the faint, lingering scent of the sandalwood soap Malachi keeps in his bathroom. It makes my vision go red at the edges. "You’re begging for a broken jaw."
She doesn't retreat. She steps into the pressure, her chest nearly brushing my vest. "Then break it, Gideon. Stop talking and fucking do it, already."
I snap a jab toward her face. She slips it by a fraction of an inch, the wind of my glove ruffling her hair. I don't reset. I drive into her, using my weight to pin her toward the equipment rack. It’s sloppy. It’s personal.
"You think Malachi’s going to keep you safe with poetry and a pretty smile?" I shove her shoulder, hard. "The cartel doesn't give a shit how well you can give head. They’ll peel your skin off while you’re still breathing."
Savannah absorbs the blow, her boots skidding in the dust, but her gaze remains a flat, terrifying calm. She doesn't reach for a water bottle. She doesn't ask for a break. She just brings her hands back up, knuckles scarred and steady.
"Is that what this is about?" Her voice is a dangerous rasp. "You're pissed because he touched the property before you did?"
"You aren't property. You're a liability." I lunge again, my movement fueled by a frantic, jagged jealousy I can't name. "And you're getting soft."
She ducks my swing and drives a knee into my thigh, finds the nerve with alarming accuracy. I grunt, leg buckling for a split second.
"I survived eight years in a hole you wouldn't last a week in," she spits, finally showing a flicker of teeth. "You want to test me? Stop playing at sergeant-at-arms and fight me like you mean it."
She stands there, chest heaving, staring me down like I’m just another target to be neutralized. She isn't afraid of me. She’s daring me to shatter the last of the rules.
I strip my gloves off and toss them into the dirt. My knuckles are white. "Fine. No gloves. No rounds."
Savannah just nods, her expression turning into a mask of cold, beautiful stone. "Good."
The rubber training dagger feels like a toy in my hand, an insult to the way she watches me. We’re circling now, the dust of the yard coating my tongue. Every time she shifts, I see the ghost of Malachi’s touch on her. It’s a rot in my gut.
"You're too slow," I snarl, feinting a slash. "Distracted. What, is the Preacher still whispering in your ear? Hard to keep your head on a swivel when you’re busy looking for a bed."
Savannah’s eyes turn into molten glass. She doesn't use the training blade.
She lunges, a blur of motion that catches me off guard.
Her shoulder slams into my sternum with the violent force of a wrecking ball, driving me back.
Wood and wire shriek as I hit the chain-link fence.
The impact rattles the entire enclosure, a metallic roar that echoes off the garage.
I cough, a sharp laugh tearing from my throat despite the ache in my lungs. "There she is. Finally. The little witch has a pulse."
"Fuck you," she hisses, her face inches from mine.
"Promises, promises." I drop the rubber knife and grab the front of her shirt, spinning her. We roll into the dirt, a mess of tangled limbs and grinding bone.
I’m twice her size, but she’s a phantom, all elbows and sharp knees.
She catches me in the temple with a heel, and the world goes white-hot.
I don't pull back. I drive a forearm into her throat, pinning her into the packed earth.
Around us, the sound of ratchets and idling engines dies.
The brothers are watching. This isn't a drill anymore; it’s a slaughter.
"You love this," she screams, the sound raw and jagged, tearing through her usual silence. She thrashes beneath me, her fingers clawing at my vest. "You enjoy the blood, Gideon! You hurt people because it’s the only time you aren't a hollowed-out fucking shell!"
"And you?" I roar back, my face inches from hers, sweat dripping onto the silver scar at her collarbone. "You're a walking corpse! You pretend you don't feel anything because you're terrified that if you want something—if you want us—you'll have something to lose when the Sombra finally find you!"
She stops fighting. Her hands clench into my shirt, knuckles white and trembling. Her breath hitches, a broken, wet sound that isn't a sob but hurts worse. The armor doesn't just crack; it disintegrates. We’re just two dying things in the dirt, clawing at the only person who understands the dark.
The silence of the yard is deafening. My forearm is a heavy bar across her windpipe, and her pulse thrums against my skin like a trapped bird. Her eyes are wide, dilated, searching my face for the monster she expects to find.
The rage in my chest collapses into something far more jagged. It’s a hollow ache that makes my hands shake. I don’t pull away. I lean in until my forehead rests against hers, the grit of the yard grinding between us.
"I can’t get you out," I rasp, the words sticking in my throat like glass. "Your voice is in the walls. Every time I close my eyes, I see you standing on that ridge with a rifle, looking like death and a goddamn miracle at the same time."
Savannah’s breath stutters. Her hands, still tangled in my vest, go still.
"It’s not just the cartel, Savannah," I say, my voice lowering to a jagged whisper that only she can hear. "I look at you and I don’t see a witness. I see the only thing in this world that makes sense. I see the way you fight me like you’re trying to kill the part of yourself that’s still alive, and I want to choke the air out of the room just so I'm the only thing you have left to breathe. "
The admission is a suicide note. It strips every layer of the Judge away, leaving nothing but the foster kid who never learned how to ask for anything without a fist. Savannah stares up at me, her expression fracturing.
For the first time, she isn't calculating an escape. She’s seeing me.
She’s seeing the obsession that’s been rotting me from the inside out since the second she nearly broke my wrist in the driveway.
She doesn't speak. She moves.
Her hand shoots up, grabbing the collar of my vest and yanking me down. Her mouth crashes into mine.
It isn't soft. It’s a collision. Her teeth snag my lip, the tang of copper blooming on my tongue as we collide with the blunt force of a head-on wreck. I let out a low, guttural sound—a wounded animal noise—and bury my hands in her hair, pulling her flush against me.
She kisses me like she’s trying to swallow my soul, like she’s trying to drown out the memory of her family and the years of blood with the sheer, violent heat of my mouth.
I roll her over, pinning her to the dirt as I consume her, my fingers bruising her scalp.
She doesn't flinch. She drags me closer, her legs tangling with mine, meeting every desperate, starving press of my lips with a feral hunger that matches my own. She kisses me like she wants to be destroyed, and God help us both, I’m the only man who knows how to do it.
The air in the yard is too thin to breathe.
Savannah wrenches her mouth from mine, the sudden absence of her heat hitting me like a bucket of ice water.
She scrambles back, her boots kicking up dust, her eyes wide and blown out until they’re almost black.
She looks at me once—not with the calculation of a sniper, but with the raw, vibrating terror of someone who just realized they stepped onto a landmine and survived the blast.
She wipes her mouth with the back of a shaking hand, her chest heaving underneath that sweat-stained tank top.
She doesn't say a word. She doesn't have to. The silence she leaves behind is louder than any gunshot. She turns and walks toward the cabins, her pace fast, almost a stumble, before she smooths her gait into that eerie, predator’s glide.
I don’t get up. I stay flat on my back in the dirt, the sharp stones of the yard digging into my shoulder blades.
My pulse hammers against my eardrums, a relentless, rhythmic thud that feels like it’s trying to crack my ribs from the inside out.
Above me, the Montana sky is a blinding, indifferent blue, stretching out forever over this cage we’ve built for ourselves.
The sounds of the compound slowly bleed back in. The scrape of a kickstand. The distant clatter of someone throwing a wrench in the shop. But nobody speaks. I know they’re all watching—Dante, the prospects, the brothers—waiting to see what the Judge does when he’s been gutted in broad daylight.
I track a hawk circling high above, a tiny black speck against the sun. My lip is still stinging where she bit through the skin, the taste of my own blood mixing with the lingering salt of her skin.
I’ve spent my life building a fortress out of scar tissue and silence. I thought I knew what she was—a mission, a liability, a threat to the club’s stability. I’d convinced myself that my anger was about Malachi, about protocol, about the danger she brought to our gates.
It was a lie.
I feel a cold, hollow dread settle in my gut.
Savannah Cruz isn't just a guest anymore. She’s a parasite.
She’s carved her way through the callouses and the Foster-care cynicism, burying herself deep in the soft, rotting parts of me I thought were dead years ago.
Nothing survives in there. Nothing is supposed to.
Yet here I am, staring at the sky, realizing I’d let the world burn just to feel her teeth against my skin one more time.