15. Cassie
Cassie
I hear the pipes before I see the bikes, and I'm out the door before anybody can tell me to wait my turn. Ethan barely has his kickstand down before I'm running at him, and he catches me full speed, laughing into my hair.
"I missed you so much."
"Missed you too, babe." He carries me inside without putting me down once, settling into a chair at the long kitchen table with me still wrapped around him.
The whole crew's trailing in behind him, dusty and saddle-sore, and within a few minutes the kitchen's louder than I've heard it in days, brothers dropping into chairs, old ladies fussing over plates, somebody already frying up enough bacon to feed a small army.
"Rough ride?" Rosie asks, setting a plate down in front of Prez before he's even fully sat.
"Long one. Good outcome, though." He kisses her temple. "Harte of Steele's solid. We've got Spring Vale handled between us."
"More than good. The old ladies spoiled me rotten while you were gone." I kiss Ethan again, slower this time, making up for the days apart. "Shopping, facemasks, way too many margaritas."
"Sounds like a fair trade for whatever Shotgun smells like right now." Cash wrinkles his nose from across the table, and the whole kitchen breaks up laughing, Ethan included, flipping him off without any real heat behind it.
"I could get used to a life like this," I say, once the noise settles into something more comfortable, everybody’s eating, somebody's kid is running laps around the table while Lily-Rose chases half-heartedly after him with a napkin.
"So." Ethan brushes my hair back off my face. "Your brothers are square with the club now, what happens next for us?"
Heat creeps up my neck. "Dante called, right before you rode in. Said business is handled, and he wants to meet you properly. I know it's the last thing you probably want to do, but I need them to actually get to know you, Ethan. Not just what they've heard."
"I'll do whatever you need, Cassie."
"Good. Because we're meeting them tonight, before they head home. Just don't push any buttons and it'll go fine."
"Push buttons?" He pulls me in closer, mouth at my temple. "Long as nobody's under the impression you're leaving with them, we won't have a problem." His voice drops, serious under the teasing. "I love you. I'm not losing you. Not to them, not to anybody."
A shiver runs straight down my spine. "I love you too. You're not losing me. I promise you that."
Six hours later we walk into the hotel where my brothers are staying. Ethan's hand is wrapped tight around mine the whole way. I won't pretend I'm not nervous.
They're already seated in the restaurant, and all three stand when we reach the table. "Cassandra." Then, to Ethan, a short, measured nod. "Ethan."
We sit, and the server's barely make it to the table before Dante's phone goes off. He steps away to take it, but he's never been a man who knows how to keep his voice down, and two years of survival instinct has me tuned into every word whether I want to be or not.
"What do you mean the delivery got hijacked?" His face goes dark red fast. "Who the hell had the balls to touch our shipment? I want every man we've got in a room within the hour. Somebody handed our information to whoever did this, and when I find out who, they're not walking away from it."
He ends the call, drags in a couple of hard breaths before he comes back to the table. Marco watches him settle. "Everything alright?"
"No. It is not." Dante's jaw is tight enough to crack. "Whoever set us up is going to learn exactly what that costs. We're going to make an example nobody forgets."
He looks over at Ethan and me like he's just remembered we're sitting there.
"Cassandra. I'm sorry, we've got something that needs handling tonight.
" He softens, just barely. "Door's always open, you know that.
You and your husband, any time you want to come home.
" His eyes cut to Ethan. "You make my sister happy. I can see that much."
He's already moving before Ethan can answer, my other brother falling in behind him. I catch the last of it as they clear the door. "I will personally end whoever did this. Every single one of them."
Ethan blinks after them. "They're more fucked up than we are, and that's saying something."
I laugh, though it doesn't sit easy in my chest. Something about the timing of it, right after Ethan gets home, right after everything's supposedly settled, nags at me the whole ride back to the compound.
I can't sleep that night. Dante's fury is replaying in my head on a loop, and somewhere close to midnight I give up trying and slip out of bed to find Abby, who I already know keeps hours as strange as mine.
She's exactly where I expect her, three monitors glowing even though it's the middle of the night. "You look like a woman who needs something to do with her hands," she says, not even looking up, pulling out the second chair like she's been expecting me.
"That obvious?"
"You're standing in my doorway at midnight in your husband's t-shirt. It's obvious."
I sit anyway. "I used to be good at something, before all this. Numbers. I kept my family's books for years, every debt, every payment, every place the money moved when it wasn't supposed to be seen moving. I was good at it. Better than any of my brothers ever gave me credit for."
Abby's expression sharpens into something more interested than polite. "How good?"
"Good enough that I noticed patterns before Dad's own accountants did." I shrug like it's nothing, though it's the first time in months I've said it out loud without shame attached. "Why?"
"Because Prez asked me to keep half an eye on Del Torro and Estrada financials while everybody's off playing nice with Harte of Steele, and I've got about six other things pulling my attention." She turns one of her monitors toward me. "You want in?"
"God, yes." The relief of being useful again nearly knocks the wind out of me.
We work through what's left of the night together, Abby walking me through the databases she's built, shell companies and shipping manifests and payment trails that don't quite connect the way they should on paper.
It's slow, careful work, the kind that used to make my father proud of me in the only way he knew how to be proud, silently, from a distance, never once out loud.
By the time the sun's coming up, my eyes are burning and I've found something that doesn't sit right.
A shipment routed through Spring Vale two weeks back, paperwork claiming Del Torro colors, except the account that paid for it traces back one layer further to an account I recognize from the Estrada side of the ledger, the family Pablo belonged to, the one that still wants me married off to someone new.
"Abby. Look at this." I turn the screen toward her, my hands not quite steady.
She leans in, scrolling, quiet for a long minute.
"That's not supposed to cross like that.
Del Torro and Estrada don't share accounts, not officially, not since Pablo died.
" Her jaw tightens. "Somebody's been moving money for both families through the same channel.
That's either a merger nobody bothered announcing, or somebody's playing both sides. "
"The shipment that got hijacked." My stomach drops straight through the floor. "Dante's shipment, the one that had him losing his mind at dinner. What if it wasn't random? What if the Estradas knew exactly what to hit and when?"
"That's a hell of a leap." Abby doesn't say it like she disagrees, more like she's testing the shape of it out loud.
"Is it, though? They wanted me back. They didn't get me.
Now somebody's stealing product from my brother's people right when we've got a truce that leaves me sitting pretty with a rival family instead of coming home for an arranged marriage into theirs.
" I press my palms flat against the desk to stop them shaking.
"It fits too well not to mean something. "
Abby's already typing, pulling up something else. "I want to cross-reference every camera we've got against this shipment window. If somebody local fed information out, there'll be a footprint somewhere, a call, a visitor, something."
Nerd pokes his head into the doorway right about then, easy smile in place, a mug of coffee in each hand like he's making rounds. "You two look like you're planning a heist."
"Just numbers." Abby doesn't look up, tone perfectly light. "Boring stuff."
"Anything I can help with?" He lingers a second longer than the question needs, eyes flicking to the screen before Abby angles it away, casual, like she's just adjusting her own view.
He sets a mug down at my elbow anyway, easy and thoughtful, a small gesture that's been so ordinary from him since the day I got here that I don't think anything of it in the moment.
"We're good," Abby tells him. "Go bother somebody else."
He laughs and wanders off, and I let it go, because there's no reason yet to think twice about a brother who's been nothing but friendly since the day I got here.
It's only later, lying awake beside Ethan, that the memory of it snags on something in the back of my mind and won't let go, the coffee, the timing, the second too long his eyes stayed on that screen.
I text Ethan even though he's asleep beside me, because writing it down makes it feel more real than just thinking it.
CASSIE
Found something weird in the finances. Nothing urgent. Tell you when you're up. Miss you already, and you're right here.
His reply comes an hour later, half asleep, one eye open.
ETHAN
Miss you more, somehow. Whatever you found, we'll figure it out together.
I fall asleep holding onto that word, together, like it's armor enough against whatever's sitting at the edges of what Abby and I found today.
I don't yet know how wrong I am about that.