25. Ethan
Ethan
Prez wants this done, but he wants to hold Nerd overnight first. We all need to rest so that we can spend the time with him that it’s going to take to break him.
Nerd sits zip-tied to a chair in our basement. I’ve not been here before, but I’ve heard lots about it. Nerd looks small, all the easy charm burned clean off him.
"Talk." Prez doesn't raise his voice. He never has to. "Every bit of it. Wedding, officiant, Spring Vale, all of it. You tell us now, or we find out anyway and you lose the chance to say your piece."
Nerd's jaw is pulled tight for a long moment before it finally opens.
"A debt, from before I ever walked through that gate looking to prospect.
I owed money to people I shouldn't have borrowed from, the kind who don't forget and don't forgive a missed payment.
It turns out it was Estrada money, though I didn't know that when I took it.
" He drags in a breath. "They found me about two months back.
Said the debt disappears if I feed them information when they ask for it.
Small stuff at first. Patrol schedules. Who's coming and going?
I told myself it wasn't hurting anybody. "
"And the wedding?" My voice comes out lower than I mean it to, dangerous in a way I don't recognize in myself.
"They offered to wipe the whole debt clean if I told them the date and the officiant's address.
I knew what it meant. I did it anyway." He won't look at me.
"Spring Vale, same thing, bigger payout this time.
I told myself Cassie would be fine, that they just wanted to talk to her, negotiate, that it wasn't going to go the way it went. "
"My father took two bullets because you sold them information." My hands are shaking, fists clenched so hard my knuckles ache. "My wife spent three days in a locked room because of what you sold them. You did that for money."
"I know." His voice cracks. "I know what I did."
"Knowing doesn't fix it." Shadow says calmly from his spot against the wall.
Spook shifts in his seat, his jaw tight, and when he speaks, his voice carries a different kind of hurt than the rest of the table, quieter, more personal.
"We prospected together. I stood next to you at Ethan's wedding.
Trusted you with my back more times than I can count.
" He shakes his head slowly. "That's the part I can't get past. Not the money.
The lie underneath every single day you smiled at us like nothing was wrong. "
"I know that too." Nerd's voice barely holds together.
Prez looks around the room, and one by one he asks, the same way he asked the night we debated attacking Cassie's family, except this time there's no real debate in it, just a formality that has to happen anyway because that's how Church works.
"Knuckles."
"Death." No hesitation.
"Brax."
"Death." His voice is hard as stone. "I gave him that security assignment myself. I trusted him with the exact knowledge that got my brother shot and my brother’s wife taken. There's no coming back from that."
"Cash."
"Death." Even the dry humor's gone out of him tonight.
"Ramsay."
"Death."
"Spook."
"Death." He says it looking straight at the man he prospected beside for over a year, no flinching in it at all.
"Pops." The table quiets a little more for him, the same as it always does.
"I've seen men make mistakes in this life and earn their way back from them. This isn't that. This was a man selling out his own family, again and again, watching us bleed for it and doing it again anyway the next time the price was right." Pops shakes his head slowly. "Death."
"Ethan." Prez's eyes land on me last. "Your say counts here too."
I look at Nerd, at the man I stood beside at my wedding, who laughed with me an hour before he sold my father and my wife both to people who nearly took them from me forever.
"Death." The word comes out steady, and I don't feel a single flicker of doubt saying it.
Prez brings the gavel down once, final. "Church has spoken."
They lead him into a smaller room, and I don't follow.
I don't need to see what comes next to know it's the right call, the only call a club like ours could make and still be the kind of family worth dying for.
I stand there for a long while after everyone else clears out, staring at nothing, thinking about the difference between a man who's earned his cut and a man who was only ever going to sell it the second the price got high enough.
Brax lingers behind, instead of heading straight out. "You did the right thing tonight. Doesn't make it feel any less like shit, I know. Took me a long while after my own first Church verdict to sleep right again."
"How long?"
"Longer than I'd like to admit." He claps a hand on my shoulder, heavy and steady. "Talk to your brothers when it gets loud in your head. That's what we're here for. Don't carry it alone just because you think you're supposed to be strong enough not to need us."
"Yeah. Okay." I mean it more than the words probably let on.
Knuckles pauses in the doorway on his way out too, nothing more than a nod, but it lands the same way his nods always s solid, wordless, and enough.
I find Cassie in our room afterward, curled up in bed, and I climb in beside her without a word, pulling her back against my chest.
"Is it done?" she asks quietly.
"It's done."
She doesn't ask for details, and I don't offer any, and we lie there a long while in silence, the weight of the last three days finally starting to lift off both our shoulders at once.
"I love you," she whispers eventually. "I've never been of anything than I am of that."
"I love you too, Cass. All the way down." I press a kiss to the back of her neck. "Nobody's ever taking you from me again. Not while I'm breathing."
"I believe you." And for the first time since the night we met in a bar neither of us can quite remember correctly anymore, I hear her say it like she actually does.