Chapter 15
The call came at three in the afternoon.
Trish was in the compound laundry room, folding sheets that didn't need folding, when her phone buzzed with a number she didn't recognize. She almost didn't answer. Almost let it go to voicemail.
But something made her swipe.
"Ms. Callahan?" The voice was shaky—Mrs. Okonkwo, the woman who'd been one of her last loyal customers. "I'm sorry to call. I didn't know who else—"
"What's wrong?"
"Your laundromat." A ragged breath. "They came. Four men. They—I'm so sorry, Trish. They destroyed everything."
The phone slipped from her fingers.
She heard Mrs. Okonkwo still talking, the tinny voice coming from the floor, but the words didn't register. There was only static. Only the sound of her own heartbeat, too fast, too loud, drowning out everything else.
They destroyed everything.
Stockton drove.
She didn't remember asking him, didn't remember the ride across town, didn't remember anything between dropping the phone and standing on the sidewalk in front of the place she'd called home for ten years.
The windows were shattered. The door hung off its hinges. Through the broken glass, she could see the machines—gutted, smashed, torn from the walls like someone had attacked them with sledgehammers.
"Stay here," Stockton said.
She didn't listen.
Her feet carried her through the ruined doorway, glass crunching beneath her shoes. The fluorescent lights were dead—wiring ripped from the ceiling, fixtures hanging loose like broken bones. Water pooled on the floor from pipes torn out of the walls.
And there, in the center of the destruction, was her aunt's folding table.
Overturned. Splintered. The wood Mae had bought in 1987 reduced to kindling.
Trish dropped to her knees in the standing water.
She touched the broken wood, feeling the grain beneath her fingers, remembering all the times she'd stood at this table. Folding clothes. Talking to neighbors. Keeping the lights on because someone had to.
"OUT OF BUSINESS."
The words were sprayed across what remained of the front window. Red paint, still dripping, like a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding.
Stockton appeared beside her. His boots splashed in the water as he crouched down, his hand coming to rest on her back.
"They left something." His voice was tight. Controlled. The voice of a man holding back violence through sheer force of will. "On the counter."
She looked.
A stack of papers sat on the only surface that hadn't been destroyed—Warren's laundering documents, the same ones she'd refused to process weeks ago. And on top of the stack, a note written in neat, accountant's handwriting:
The building will process his money whether you're there or not.
Morris Dent's words. But Morris Dent was dead.
"Jamie Polk." Stockton picked up the note, his jaw tight enough to crack. "This is his style. Sending messages through destruction. Making it personal."
"The youngest one," Trish said numbly. "The one who handles intimidation."
"He's Warren's last enforcer. With Big T and Morris gone, Jamie's all he has left." Stockton crumpled the note in his fist. "This is desperation. Warren's trying to prove he can still hurt us."
"He succeeded."
Trish looked around at the wreckage. Twenty-four washers, sixteen dryers—all of them destroyed. The walls were gouged with spray paint. The floor was flooding from ruptured pipes. The smell of detergent mixed with something chemical, something that burned her eyes.
Ten years. Ten years of her life. Everything Mae had built.
Gone.
"We can rebuild," Stockton said quietly. "When this is over—"
"With what?" Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "Insurance won't cover this. I don't have savings. The only thing I had was this place, and now—"
She stopped. Swallowed the sob rising in her throat.
She would not cry. Not here. Not in front of the ruins of everything she'd loved.
"The club will help," Stockton said. "We take care of our own."
"I'm not your charity case."
"You're not my charity." He gripped her shoulders, turning her to face him. "You're my woman. Everything I have is yours. That includes resources to rebuild whatever those bastards destroyed."
She stared at him. At the fury burning behind his eyes, the tightness in his jaw, the barely leashed violence in every line of his body.
He wanted blood. She could see it. Wanted to hunt down Jamie Polk and make him pay for every smashed machine, every shattered window, every piece of her aunt's legacy reduced to rubble.
And she realized, with a clarity that cut through the grief, that she wanted the same thing.
"The table," she said.
"What?"
"My aunt's folding table. Mae bought it in 1987. She used to say it was the heart of the laundromat—the place where everything came together." Trish's voice steadied. Hardened. "Jamie Polk destroyed it. Smashed it into pieces like it was nothing."
"Trish—"
"I want him to understand." She met Stockton's eyes, and whatever he saw there made his expression shift. "I want him to understand that some buildings aren't just buildings. Some places belong to the people who keep them alive. And when you destroy those places—"
She reached down and picked up a piece of the broken table. The wood was rough in her hand, still bearing traces of the varnish Mae had applied decades ago.
"When you destroy those places," she said, "you don't get to walk away."
Stockton was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded—slow, certain, the acknowledgment of one warrior to another.
"What do you want?"
"I want Jamie Polk to know that this wasn't just property damage. This was an attack on something that mattered. Something worth fighting for." She gripped the piece of wood tighter. "I want him to understand that before you kill him."
"You want to be there."
"I want him to see my face." She dropped the wood and stood, water dripping from her jeans, her eyes burning with something that wasn't tears. "I want to be the last thing he sees before he pays for what he did."
Stockton reached out and cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones, gentle despite the violence coiled in his body.
"This is the life," he said quietly. "Once you cross this line, you don't get to cross back. You understand that?"
"I understood it the night you killed Big T. I understood it when I walked into that dry cleaner and helped Gloria instead of hiding." She covered his hands with hers. "I'm already in this, Stockton. I've been in it since the moment I told Warren Zielinski to go to hell."
He studied her face. Looking for doubt, maybe. For hesitation. For any sign that she didn't mean what she was saying.
He didn't find it.
"Okay," he said finally. "Then we hunt."
They drove back to the compound in silence.
The rage had settled into something cold and certain in Trish's chest. Not the hot fury of the moment, but something deeper. Older. The same feeling she'd had when she'd decided to keep the laundromat open after Mae died.
Determination. Refusal to break. The stubborn certainty that some things were worth fighting for.
The compound was quiet when they arrived. Alpha met them in the lot, his expression grim.
"I heard," he said. "Scout's running surveillance on Warren's remaining crew. We'll find them."
"Jamie Polk," Stockton said. "He's the one who did this."
"Then Jamie Polk is a dead man." Alpha's eyes moved to Trish. "How is she?"
"Ask me yourself," Trish said. "I'm standing right here."
Alpha's mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but something close. "Fair enough. How are you?"
"Angry." She met his gaze without flinching. "And I want to be there when you find him."
Alpha looked at Stockton. Something passed between them—the silent communication of men who'd been reading each other for twenty years.
"She's earned it," Stockton said quietly.
"She has." Alpha nodded once. "When we move on Jamie, you can be there. But you stay behind the line. Watch, don't engage. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Good." Alpha turned back toward the clubhouse. "Church in an hour. We're ending this."
Trish watched him go, then felt Stockton's hand on the small of her back—possessive, grounding, a reminder that she wasn't alone.
"You sure about this?" he asked.
She thought about Mae's table, smashed into pieces. About the fluorescent lights, ripped from the ceiling. About ten years of her life reduced to rubble and a spray-painted message.
"I'm sure," she said. "Some buildings belong to the people who keep the lights on. And I want Jamie Polk to understand that before he dies."