7. Avery
AVERY
By the fourth day, protection had begun to feel like a nicer word for prison.
I couldn’t work properly without the tablet and backup drives at my house. I had three clients waiting, one deadline already missed, and a brother who believed “alive” was the only condition worth discussing.
“No,” Rook said.
We stood in the main room after breakfast. Saint was at my side, as usual. Mace cleaned a pistol at the far end of the table. Riot pretended not to listen from the bar.
“It’s not like I’m asking to go shopping,” I said. “I need stuff for my work.”
“Buy another computer.”
“Wonderful. Should I send you the invoice?”
“Send me ten of them.”
“Rook, that isn’t the point. I need my stuff.”
“The point is Pike knows where you live.”
“He also knows where the compound is.”
Rook’s face closed. I had landed the blow he didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Enough,” he said.
“No, it isn’t enough. You don’t get to erase my life because keeping me in one room makes you feel better.”
“I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
“And I’m trying to remain a person with a job while I do it.”
Rook looked at Saint. “Tell her.”
That was his mistake.
Saint didn’t tell me anything.
He looked at Rook and said, “I’ll take her.” The room changed.
My brother’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not safe.”
“I’ll clear the house before she enters. She stays within reach. We take the SUV and two bikes shadow us far enough back not to draw attention.”
“I said no.”
“And I’m telling you I can protect her outside these walls.”
Saint’s tone stayed calm. His authority didn’t.
For the first time, I saw the difference between Rook’s oldest friend and his vice president. A friend might have backed down. Saint met his president’s stare and offered a better plan.
Rook glanced at me, then back at him. “One hour.”
“Ninety minutes,” I said.
“Don’t push me.”
“Then don’t waste ten minutes arguing.”
Mace coughed into his fist.
Rook pointed at Saint. “Anything moves wrong, you bring her straight back.”
“Obviously.”
“I mean it, Saint.”
“So do I.”
We left before they renegotiated my personhood. Saint drove with one hand on the wheel and the other near the pistol at his hip. Two motorcycles followed at a distance. He checked the mirrors often enough that I stopped trying to count.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you shouldn’t have to thank me for treating you like an adult.”
I watched his profile. The clipped hair. The rough stubble. A pale scar near his jaw I’d wanted to trace with my mouth.
“You stood up to him.”
“He’s wrong sometimes.”
“Does the club know that?”
“Never tell them.”
I smiled.
At my street, he drove past the house once, circled the block, then parked two doors down. The broken back door had been boarded. Yellow police tape hung from the porch rail, left over from the report Rook had allowed only because my neighbors had seen too much.
Saint went in first.
I waited in the locked SUV with the engine running and the phone connected to him. Through the speaker, I heard doors open, cupboards shift, and his boots climb the stairs.
“Clear,” he said at last. “Come to the front. Don’t touch the boarded door.”
He met me on the porch and kept one hand at my back as we entered.
The house smelled wrong. Damp wood, dust and the metallic residue of fear.
My living room had been searched. Cushions slashed.
Drawers emptied. The attack hadn’t been simple abduction; somebody had wanted the place violated enough to leave a message.
“They did this after?” I asked.
“One of them came back before the cops arrived. We saw it on a neighbor’s camera.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Because I’m here?”
“Because we confirmed it this morning.”
The answer was honest, which stopped the argument before it started. Saint cleared each room again with me behind him. In my bedroom, the dresser still lay on its side. The broken lamp had been bagged as evidence. A dark smear remained on the wallpaper.
Pike’s blood.
My lungs forgot their rhythm.
Saint was beside me before I made a sound.
“Look at me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
“I need to pack.”
I reached for the dresser. My hand shook so badly I couldn’t grip the edge. Saint took it instead. He righted the furniture, then sat on the floor with his back against the bed and waited.
He didn’t tell me to calm down.
He didn’t say I was safe now.
The house proved safety could be temporary.
I sank beside him.
“I thought they were going to get me into the van.”
His hand covered mine.
“When Pike bent my fingers back, I knew I’d have to let go of the banister. I thought I’d disappear and Rook would spend the rest of his life trying to find me.” Saint’s jaw flexed.
“And you?” His eyes met mine.
“You would’ve blamed yourself.”
“I would’ve found you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” His thumb moved across my knuckles. “But I’d have burned every mile between here and hell looking.”
Tears stung my eyes. I hated them and let them come anyway. Saint pulled me onto his lap. I pressed my face into his neck while the delayed terror shook loose. He held me without trying to turn the moment into something else or solve it.
That was when I understood the difference between the crush I’d carried for years and what had grown in the compound.
I had wanted the biker. The leather, authority, and forbidden edge of him.
I loved the man who could sit on a floor and let me be frightened without making my fear about his strength.
When I was ready, we packed. My studio had taken less damage than the bedroom, but the intruders had opened every drawer and dumped my paper samples across the floor.
One boot print cut through a white presentation board I had spent three hours mounting.
Saint crouched to gather the scattered sheets.
“Leave those,” I said.
His head came up. I took my phone out and photographed the room from the doorway, then moved closer for the broken drawer and the ruined board.
“Insurance?”
“Evidence. And proof for my clients that I didn’t miss their deadlines because I developed an exciting new contempt for money.”
He straightened. “You don’t owe them details.”
“I owe them finished work. The details are mine to choose.” Saint nodded and began sorting the papers by size without being asked.
The house no longer felt entirely like mine. Pike’s blood marked one wall. Another man’s boots had crossed the floor where I worked.
“You want to sell it?” Saint asked. The question held no judgment. No assumption that remaining would prove strength or leaving would prove fear.
“Maybe,” I said. “But not because they chased me out.” I found the backup drives in my desk. Saint examined the discarded Gravewater patch on the kitchen counter. “Nobody hiding a connection drops colors at the scene,” I said.
“They wanted Rook to see it.”
“Do you think the missed meeting with Gravewater’s president and my attack were timed?”
Saint nodded. “Somebody wants us angry enough to stop thinking.”
Outside, he loaded my bags into the SUV. I saw a dark vehicle at the end of the street. It rolled forward as we pulled away.
“Is that one of ours?”
“No, it’s not,” he replied without taking his eyes off it.
His entire body sharpened. He turned left without signaling, then left again. The vehicle followed.
Saint called the trailing bikes. “Hold position. Dark SUV, two back. Don’t spook it.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“Seat belt tight,” he told me.
He drove toward the main road, then cut through an old industrial block. The dark SUV disappeared at a rail crossing, but Saint didn’t relax.
“They know my house and the compound,” I said. “What happens when this is over?”
His gaze remained on the mirrors. “I tell Rook.”
“About us?”
“Everything.”
“And if he orders you to end it?”
“He can have my patch.” The answer came too easily.
I turned toward him. “No.”
“Not your decision, Av.” The words struck like an open hand.
“You don’t get to make me the reason you walk away from the club, Saint.”
“I’m not walking away from you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You think I’ll let Rook decide whether I can keep seeing you?”
“No. I think you’ll stand beside me and make a life that contains both of us. But I don’t think you want to be out of the Serpents.”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “You don’t know what this club costs.”
“Then tell me. Don’t decide I’m too good for it. Don’t sacrifice the patch to prove you love me. Rook made one decision about my life without me, and you honored it for five years. I will not be the excuse for another.”
“If he makes me choose?—”
“Then make him face what he’s demanding. Don’t hand him the patch before I get a voice.”
Saint went silent.
The dark SUV appeared in the mirror again and this time it was close. It filled the rear window, black grille and tinted glass swallowing the distance between us. Saint cut across two empty lanes and took the ramp toward the old mills instead of the compound.
“Why aren’t we going home?”
“I’m not leading them to the gate.”
“They already know where it is.”
“Knowing isn’t the same as getting a clean run at it.”
He called Mace and gave our location. His voice remained steady, but a vein pulsed at his temple. The SUV moved left. Saint moved with it, blocking the pass.
“Hold the handle.”
I gripped the one above the door, and he braked hard. The SUV overshot. For one second I saw the driver through the side window. Hood up, pale face turned toward us. The passenger lifted something dark. Saint accelerated before I could identify it.
A shot struck the tailgate.
“Down.”
I folded below the window line. Saint steered one-handed and drew his pistol with the other. He didn’t fire through city traffic. He kept the vehicle moving, taking turns that forced the larger SUV to lose speed.
“Mace?”
“Ninety seconds out.”
“They’ll box us before then.”
An old pickup waited at the far end of the service road. Saint saw it when I did. He shoved the pistol back into its holster and put both hands on the wheel.
“Seat belt.”
“Checked.”
“Check it again.”
I pulled it tight.
His gaze found mine for a fraction of a second. Everything unresolved remained there. The patch, Rook, whether Saint could choose a future without destroying part of himself to earn it.
He accelerated and the vehicle followed.