27. Cassie
Cassie
Brick wakes up on the fifth day, and the whole compound seems to exhale at once when the call comes through.
Ethan's out the door before I've even got my shoes on, and I follow at a slower pace, he moves so that Cam has the first few minutes alone with him. I catch up just outside the door, and something makes me stop there instead of walking straight in.
Through the gap I can see Cam already at his bedside, both hands wrapped around his, her forehead pressed to his knuckles, and Brick's other hand comes up slowly, weak, and settles into her hair like it's the only thing left in the world he has the strength to do.
"Don't you ever do that to me again." Cam's voice comes out wrecked, barely holding it together. "You hear me, old man? I don't care whose wife needed saving. You check with me first next time before you go throwing yourself in front of bullets."
"Can't promise you that." Brick's voice is rough, but there's a smile buried somewhere in it. "But I can promise you I'll always come back to you after. Every single time."
"That's not good enough."
"That's what I've got." He tugs her closer, close enough that her forehead drops to his chest instead, and he just holds her there, quiet, the two of them breathing each other in like proof neither one of them fully trusted until this exact moment.
"I love you, Camille. More than I've ever been any good at saying out loud.
Don't you dare doubt that just because I'm bad with words. "
"I don't doubt it." She laughs, wet and broken and relieved all at once. "I just need you alive to keep not saying it properly for another forty years, at least."
"Deal."
I step back from the door, giving them the rest of that moment without me in it, something in my own chest aching with a kind of happiness I don't have a clean name for.
Ethan finds me in the hallway a minute later, and I shake my head at his question before he asks it, just tugging him a few steps further down the corridor.
"Give them another minute," I say. "Some things aren't ours to interrupt."
When we finally do step inside, Brick's propped up against a mountain of pillows, pale and thinner than I remember, but awake, and the second his eyes find mine something in his weathered face softens.
"There she is." His voice comes out rough, scraped down to gravel. "The woman I bled for. Better be worth it, girl."
"Brick." My throat closes up fast. "You didn't have to do that. You didn't even know me, not really, not then."
"Didn't need to know you well. Knew you were my son's wife.
Knew you needed somebody standing between you and whatever was coming through that fence.
" He reaches for my hand, his grip weaker than it should be but steady underneath it.
"That's what family does, Cassie. You'll learn that, if you stick around here long enough.
We don't wait to earn the right to protect each other. We just do it."
I press his hand to my cheek, tears finally spilling over. "Thank you. I don't have the words for what that actually means, watching you throw yourself in front of me like that."
"Don't need words. I just need you to be happy.
My boy loves you something fierce, I've seen it plain as day since the Christmas party.
A man doesn't stand where I stood for a woman who's just passing through his life.
" His eyes cut to Ethan, who is standing quietly by the window, and something wordless and warm passes between father and son. It’s the look I've come to understand means more from Brick than a whole speech would from anybody else.
"Love you, Dad." Ethan's voice cracks on it.
"Love you too, son. Proud of the man you've become. You’ve earned every bit of it.
" Brick's eyes drift shut again, exhaustion pulling at him even through the smile.
"Now get out of here, both of you. Go live your lives.
I've got Cam to yell at me for scaring her half to death, that'll keep me plenty occupied. "
We leave him laughing weakly at something Cam's already scolding him about, and the sound of it follows us all the way down the hallway, better than any medicine the doctors could offer him.
They discharge him a week later, and the whole clubhouse turns it into an event, string lights back up like it's Christmas again, Cam fussing over pillows on the porch swing until Brick swats her hands away with a grumble that doesn't fool anybody.
"Man survives two bullets and you'd think he'd let a woman make him comfortable." Cash shakes his head, grinning, handing Brick a beer he's absolutely not supposed to be drinking on his current medication.
"I've survived worse than a little fussing." Brick takes the beer anyway, and Cam pretends not to notice, though I catch the small, relieved smile she can't quite hide.
Knuckles grills enough meat to feed twice our number, and somewhere in the middle of the afternoon Ramsay gets talked into telling the story of his own first Church verdict, badly, with Cash interrupting every third sentence to correct some detail Ramsay clearly exaggerated on purpose the first time around.
The whole yard's loud with it, laughter and old stories and somebody's kid chasing the dog in circles around Brick's chair, and watching it all unfold I understand something I don't think I fully understood until this exact moment.
This club doesn't just survive its worst days.
It throws a party the second it's allowed to, loud and unashamed, because grief and joy have always lived close together in a family like this one.
Dante comes by the compound two days later, alone this time, no brothers flanking him, no weapons on display.
He finds me in the kitchen and sits across from me at the table like it's the most natural thing in the world, like we didn't grow up in a house where sitting across from your own sister meant something transactional was about to happen.
"Rafael's been dealt with," he says without preamble.
"Stripped of everything, exiled from Estrada business permanently.
His own family wanted him gone the second word got out what he tried to pull.
Kidnapping another family's married woman isn't just an insult to you, it's an insult to every alliance built on respecting what's claimed. Nobody wanted a war over his ego."
"Good." I mean it more than the single word carries. "I hope he rots wherever they've sent him."
"He might." Something almost like a smile ghosts across Dante's face. "The Famiglia's not always merciful to its own failures."
We sit in a silence that isn't uncomfortable for once, and I study my brother. He's older, more tired than I remember him being even a few weeks ago.
"You look exhausted," I say finally.
"Running that whole operation alone since Dad died'll do that to a man.
" He turns his coffee cup slowly between his hands, an old habit I recognize because I do the exact same thing when I'm working through something I don't want to say out loud yet.
"Sometimes I look around at what you've got here.
All this." He gestures vaguely at the kitchen, the clubhouse, the whole loud, warm chaos of a family that chose each other.
"I don't know if that kind of thing is in the cards for men like me, Cassandra.
But I won't pretend some part of me doesn't want to find out. "
"You deserve to find out." I reach across and squeeze his hand. "Everybody does, Dante. Even us."
He doesn't answer that, just nods once, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, and changes the subject before either of us has to sit any longer with how much that admission cost him.
He leaves before dinner, promising to visit again, and I watch his car disappear down the drive wondering, not for the first time, what it would take for a man like my brother to actually let himself have something real.
That night, curled up with Ethan in bed, I trace the lines of his knuckles, still faintly bruised from Ashford.
"I want a real wedding," I say quietly. "Not fake papers signed under a gun pointed at us. Not rushed because an officiant got hurt and we ran out of time. I want to stand up in front of everyone who matters and choose you on purpose, with nothing forcing my hand."
Ethan goes very still beside me. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I choose you, Ethan. Not because it protects me from my family. Not because it was smart, or fast, or convenient. Because I love you, completely, and I want the whole world to watch me say it properly."
He kisses me slowly and when he finally pulls back, there are tears standing in his eyes that he doesn't bother hiding from me.
"Let's get married, Cass. For real this time. With the whole club watching, Pops doing it right, no gunfire, no rush." He laughs. "I've been your husband on paper for weeks now. Let's finally make it feel like the truth."
"Let's do it."