17. Ethan
Ethan
We move on the lieutenant's house first, quiet, practiced, Tank's crew clearly having done this more times than I want to know about.
The door gives easy. Two men inside, armed, and it's over faster than I expect, faster than I'm ready for, a scuffle and then silence and Prez's voice low and even telling the second man exactly what happens if he doesn't start talking about his supplier's routes.
He talks. They always talk, once they understand what not talking costs them.
I stand guard at the window while Prez and Tank work the room, and my stomach doesn't settle the whole time.
Not because of what I'm watching, exactly, more because of how easy it seems to everyone around me, like this is just normal day.
I think about Brick's face the night he handed me my patch, proud, and certain I'd earned it.
I wonder if this is some of what he meant by earning it.
I wonder if he ever stopped feeling sick the first hundred times he did something like this, or if the sick feeling is the whole point, the thing that keeps a man from turning into exactly what we just walked in here to clean out.
Word crackles over Tank's radio a while later.
The house is secured, product and cash both.
The corner crew scattered the second Bear's group hit the block, two down, the rest running for territory that isn't theirs to run to anymore.
Nobody on our side took so much as a scratch, and I don't know whether to feel relief about that or something closer to disbelief that it went this clean.
"Clean sweep." Tank sounds satisfied, lighting a cigarette right there in the doorway like we didn't just turn somebody's whole operation upside down. "Town's ours to hand off whenever Razor's ready to send people down permanent."
We regroup at a diner outside town limits before sunup, all of us running on adrenaline and bad coffee, and it's the quietest I've seen this many bikers in one place.
Even Cash doesn't have a joke in him this morning, just sits turning his mug in slow circles same as the rest of us, staring at nothing in particular.
Knuckles slides a plate of eggs across the table toward me without being asked. "Eat something. You'll feel more human once your stomach's not empty."
"Not sure I'm hungry."
"Wasn't a suggestion." He says it flat, but there's something almost gentle underneath the bluntness, the kind of care that doesn't know how to dress itself up as anything softer. "First run's the hardest one to swallow. Eat anyway. Body needs it even when your head's arguing otherwise."
I eat, and he's right, something in my chest does loosen a little with food in my stomach and Knuckles sits across from me not saying anything else, just being there the way brothers are supposed to be there, without needing words to make it count.
I check my phone once we're settled, and there's a text from Cassie, sent a few hours back while I was still elbow deep in tonight's mess.
She and Abby are still picking at whatever they found in those accounts, still nothing solid enough to name out loud, but she says she loves me and to be careful.
I write back something easy, something that doesn't carry any of what I just watched happen in a stranger's living room two towns over, because she doesn't need that weight added onto whatever she's carrying tonight too.
Brax slides into the booth across from me a few minutes later, watching me over his own coffee.
"First run like this messes with everybody's head a little.
Means you're not broken, means you're paying attention.
" He shrugs. "Wears different after a while.
Doesn't go away completely. Shouldn't, honestly.
A man who stops feeling something doing this work is a man who's lost the thread of why we do it clean instead of ugly. "
"Feels ugly enough as it is." I turn my mug in a slow circle, not drinking it.
"Feels a hell of a lot cleaner than what the Del Torros or the Estradas would've done in our place.
" Brax's voice goes flatter, harder. "We didn't touch anybody who wasn't already up to their neck in it.
That's the whole difference, Ethan. Every time.
That line's the only thing that separates us from the people we just took this town back from. "
I want to believe that as easily as he says it. Mostly, tonight, I do.
Hawk drops into the booth beside Brax on his way past, nods once at me, and is quiet the way I'm starting to understand most of Tank's crew runs quiet. "You did good tonight. Didn't hesitate when it counted. That's the part that matters."
"Thanks." I don't know what else to say to that, so I don't try.
We ride out at first light, the whole crew of us, Black Saints peeling off toward home while Tank's men stay behind to finish securing what we started.
My whole body aches in a way that's got nothing to do with the ride, and all I want in this world is my wife's arms around me and this night washed clean off my skin.
I don't know yet that the thing Cassie found buried in those numbers is going to matter a hell of a lot more than either of us understood, sending that text.