Chapter Six #2
I close my eyes, just for a second. That’s the thing no one tells you about violence. People condemn it until they need a wall, until the dark comes knocking on the door, until the phone rings and a man laughs about making healers bleed.
Then violence becomes a language they can understand. Protection they can feel. A monster at the door that no one can get past.
“I won’t let him touch you,” I say, and the words come out rougher than I intend.
“I know,” she whispers.
It should comfort me. It doesn’t. Because knowing is dangerous, trust is worse. Trust makes men careless. It makes women stay when they should run. And Harper should still run.
She doesn’t. Her breathing slows after a while. Not sleep. Not yet. Just exhaustion dragging her under one inch at a time.
My phone buzzes with a call from Saint.
I answer quietly. “Talk.”
“The burner bounced off three towers. Bought cash at a liquor store near Vulture territory.”
“Is there a camera?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work faster,” I order even though he outranks me.
“Good to hear your people skills are improving.”
I say nothing, and Saint sighs. “How’s Harper?”
“Asleep.”
“Are you sure?”
From inside the room, Harper mutters, “No, he is not.”
Saint goes silent, and I look at the cracked door.
Harper says, “And tell Saint his whispering is terrible.”
I bring the phone back to my ear. “She says your whispering is terrible.”
Saint is quiet for a beat. Then he laughs under his breath. “I like her.”
I hang up, and Harper makes a tired sound that might be amusement. “Rude.”
“He deserved it.”
“Probably.”
Silence envelops us again.
“Steel?”
“Harper.” I’m starting to sound as tired as she does.
“Thank you for not killing the man on my fire escape.”
My jaw locks. “He didn’t deserve mercy.”
“I know.” The words surprise me, but she continues before I can answer. “That’s what scares me.” I don’t move or speak as I wait to hear what she says next. “I knew he deserved it,” she says. “And part of me wanted you to.”
There it is. The crack. Not in her but in the clean line she’s drawn between us. Healer and killer. Good and bad. Saving and taking. My world is already bleeding into hers, and now she’s seeing something she can’t unsee.
“Harper.”
“No. Don’t comfort me.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She laughs softly. “Right. Of course not.”
I stare down the hall, at the shadows beyond the weak yellow light. “Wanting a threat gone doesn’t make you like me.”
“No,” she says. “But calling you instead of the police might.”
That shuts me up quickly. She doesn’t say anything else after that, and eventually, her breathing changes.
****
Hours pass.
Men move outside, the compound is tightening down for war. I should be in the war room. I should be out hunting leads. I should be doing the thing I’m built for. Instead, I sit outside Harper Quinn’s door like a dog waiting for its owner.
Near dawn, Savage finds me. He stops at the end of the hall, eyes taking in the gun beside my hand, the cracked door, the fact that I haven’t moved in hours.
“Saint found footage,” he says quietly.
I stand without a sound, and every muscle protests, but I ignore it. Harper shifts inside the room, and I freeze, but she doesn’t wake up.
Savage notices that too, and something unreadable passes over his face. “Reaper’s not just pushing at you.”
“I know.”
“He’s baiting the club.”
“I know.”
“You go after him wrong, and men, good men, will die.”
I look at the door, and then back at Savage. “He said healers bleed.”
Savage’s gaze hardens. “And he’ll pay for that. But not with Harper caught in the blast.”
Her name from his mouth doesn’t hit me wrong. Because Savage says it like a president. Like a man measuring the cost of war. Like a man who knows what a woman can do to your insides.
Not like prey. Not like leverage.
I nod once. “Show me the footage.”
We step away from her door, and I make it three steps before her voice stops me.
“Steel.”
I turn around and find her standing in the doorway, hair loose, face pale with sleep, wearing an oversized shirt and an expression too soft for this place. Too soft for me.
“What?”
Her eyes flick to Savage, then back to me. “Don’t disappear without telling me.”
I feel Savage’s attention sharpen, but I don’t look away from her. “I’m going to the war room.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I deflect.
“Are you coming back?” The question is too honest, too dangerous.
I answer before I can think better of it. “Yes.”
Her shoulders lower a fraction. Barely... Enough.
“Okay,” she says.
Okay. Like she trusts one word from me to be a promise. Like that doesn’t put a knife in my chest.
I walk away before I do something stupid, like touch her face in front of my President and the whole sleeping clubhouse.
Savage says nothing until we’re around the corner.
Then, low and dry, “You’re in trouble.”
I look straight ahead. “No shit.”
We enter the war room, and Saint has grainy footage frozen on the screen. A man in a hood buying the burner. Another angle outside the liquor store. A patch visible for half a second beneath his jacket.
Broken Vultures.
There will be no more guessing. No more maybe.
Saint taps the screen. “Reaper wants a response.”
“He’ll get one,” I say.
Savage stands at the head of the table. “Not from you alone.”
I stare at the screen. At the man who carried Harper’s threat. At the war already forming around her name. My fists curl, and the bandage pulls again.
Her hands. Her voice. Her door cracked open because she chose to trust the monster outside it.
“I’m not alone,” I say.
The room goes quiet, and Savage studies me. Saint does too. I don’t soften my words or dress them up as strategy.
“Harper’s under my protection,” I say. “Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it to me.”
Savage’s eyes narrow slightly. “And if the club has a problem with it?”
I meet his stare. Loyalty is a blade, but so is devotion, and I am about to find out if I can carry both without cutting my own throat.
“Then the club better decide fast,” I say, “because Reaper already made his choice.”