Chapter Five
The smell of coffee pulled Diana from the deepest sleep she'd had in weeks.
She blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling, momentarily disoriented, before the previous night came rushing back. Phelps. The broken bones. The car chase through dark streets. Vice's hand on her neck, his voice promising things that shouldn't have made her feel safe but did.
Diana sat up in the safehouse bed and listened. The clink of dishes. The sizzle of something cooking. Movement in the kitchen, unhurried and competent.
She found her shoes and padded down the hallway.
Vice stood at the stove with his back to her, spatula in hand, managing three pans simultaneously like it was nothing.
Eggs in one, bacon in another, something that smelled like hash browns in the third.
He'd shed the leather cut, wearing just a black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, and Diana caught herself staring at the way his muscles moved under the fabric.
"Morning." He didn't turn around. "Coffee's on the counter. Eggs'll be ready in two."
"How did you know I was awake?"
"Floorboard in the hallway creaks." He glanced over his shoulder, and something warm flickered in his gray eyes. "Sleep okay?"
"Better than I have in weeks, actually." Diana poured herself a cup of coffee, wrapping her hands around the mug. "I didn't expect... this."
"Breakfast?"
"Any of it. The safehouse. You cooking. Being taken care of instead of..." She trailed off, not sure how to finish.
Vice plated the food—two portions, generous—and set one in front of her at the small kitchen table. "You've been taking care of other people for a long time. Someone should return the favor."
Diana sat, looking down at the perfectly cooked eggs, the crispy bacon, the hash browns that were somehow golden without being burnt. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"Army. When you're stuck on a base for months, the guy who can make decent food from shit supplies becomes very popular." He dropped into the chair across from her, his knee brushing hers under the small table. He didn't move it. "Eat. You need the fuel."
She ate. And discovered she was starving—the adrenaline crash from last night had apparently burned through whatever she'd had for lunch yesterday. Vice watched her with quiet satisfaction, like feeding her was its own reward.
"What's the plan?" Diana asked between bites. "For today, I mean."
"Today, you rest. The club's working on tracing Barron—Titan's got eyes on property records, trying to figure out what he owns and why your building matters." Vice's jaw tightened. "By tomorrow, we should know what we're dealing with."
"And I just... stay here?"
"You stay here. Stay safe. Stay off the grid." His hand found hers on the table, warm and sure. "Let me handle this part."
Diana should have argued. She hated feeling useless, hated being sidelined while other people fought her battles. But Vice was right—she had no idea how to trace property records or investigate criminals. She'd only get in the way.
Besides, the weight of his hand on hers was doing something to her ability to think clearly.
"Okay," she said. "But if there's anything I can do—"
"You can tell me about the daycare."
She blinked. "The daycare?"
"I know the facts. Former teacher, four years running the place, twelve kids." He leaned back in his chair, but his hand stayed on hers. "Tell me the rest. Tell me why you built it."
Diana wasn't sure anyone had ever asked her that before.
"I was teaching second grade," she said slowly.
"Good school, good kids, decent paycheck.
Everything I was supposed to want." She stared at their joined hands, remembering.
"But I kept thinking about the little ones.
The kindergartners, the preschoolers, the babies who showed up on the first day of school already expecting to fail because nobody had ever told them they could succeed. "
Vice was quiet, listening.
"I wanted to catch them earlier. Before they learned that they weren't smart enough or good enough or loved enough.
Before all the damage got done." Diana's throat tightened.
"So I quit my job, burned through my savings getting certified, and opened Little Sprouts.
Just me at first, in a converted house that smelled like mildew and hope. "
"And now?"
"Now I have twelve kids, two assistants, and a building someone's willing to kill for." She laughed without humor. "Living the dream."
"You built something that matters." Vice's thumb traced circles on the back of her hand. "That's more than most people ever do."
"What about you?" Diana asked before she could stop herself. "What did you build?"
Something shuttered in his expression. "Nothing. Not yet."
"But you want to?"
He was quiet for a long moment, his gray eyes distant, looking at something she couldn't see.
"I spent ten years learning how to keep people alive under fire," he said finally. "Four tours. Saw things that would break most people, did things that probably broke me. Came home and couldn't figure out how to make any of it mean something."
Diana waited.
"The Army taught me how to fight. How to save people who were dying right in front of me.
" His voice went rough. "It didn't teach me what to do when I couldn't save them.
When the kid was already dead before I got there, or the village was already burning, or the family was already gone because I was two minutes too late. "
"Vice..."
"The Sentinels gave me a place to use what I know. Brothers who trust me to keep them breathing." He met her eyes, and Diana saw something raw beneath the control. "But I'm still looking for something that makes the rest of it worth carrying. All the faces that didn't make it."
She understood, suddenly, why he'd volunteered for this. Why he'd spent a week watching her daycare, why he'd broken bones for a woman he barely knew, why he looked at her sometimes like she was something precious and breakable.
Because she protected children.
Because she'd built a place where small people were safe.
Because everything he'd lost, everything he couldn't save, she represented the opposite—innocence preserved instead of destroyed.
Diana turned her hand over under his, lacing their fingers together.
"The kids at Little Sprouts," she said quietly. "They don't know anything about war or violence or people who want to hurt them. They think the world is finger paintings and story time and naps when you're tired. I fight every day to let them keep believing that as long as possible."
Vice's grip tightened.
"That's worth protecting," he said. "You're worth protecting."
The words hung between them, heavy with meaning neither of them was ready to name.
Saturday blurred into Sunday.
Diana called Martha from the burner phone, keeping the conversation vague—family emergency, she'd said, and her assistant's worried questions made her feel guilty for lying.
But Martha agreed to cover Monday with Beth, promised to reassure the parents, swore she'd call if anything seemed wrong at the daycare.
Vice stayed close the whole time. Not crowding, exactly, but always present. Always within arm's reach. When she moved to the couch, he sat beside her. When she wandered to the window to stare at the unfamiliar street, he appeared at her shoulder, his body warm against her back.
She should have found it suffocating. Instead, she found herself leaning into it.
Information trickled in from the club throughout the day.
Text messages that made Vice's expression go hard, phone calls conducted in low voices while Diana pretended not to listen.
By Sunday afternoon, the picture was coming together—Nick Barron, she learned, was a dealer.
Pills, mostly. Oxy, hydro, whatever moved fastest and ruined the most lives.
"He's been buying properties across the east side for three years," Vice told her over dinner—takeout from a place that knew to deliver without asking questions. "Distribution points, stash houses. Everything looks legitimate on paper."
"And my building?"
"Prime location. Quiet neighborhood, easy access, good sight lines. Perfect for what he needs it for." Vice's jaw clenched. "He bought it six months ago. New owner, new management company. That's when your landlord changed."
Diana's stomach dropped. "The owner who's never contacted me. Who I've never even met."
"Nick Barron owns your building. He wants you out because your lease is in the way, and legal eviction takes too long for his timeline." Vice reached across the table, his hand finding hers like gravity. "This was never personal. You were just in the way of his expansion."
Somehow, that made it worse. Twelve children terrorized, weeks of sabotage and harassment, her entire life dismantled—all because she was inconvenient.
"So what happens now?" she asked.
"Now we wait for Phelps to make his next move." Vice's thumb traced her knuckles. "He'll come. After what happened Friday night, he can't let it stand. His boss will want answers."
"And when he comes?"
Something dangerous flickered in Vice's eyes. "Then he finds out what happens when you threaten what's mine."
What's mine.
Diana's heart stuttered.
He'd said it casually, like claiming her was as natural as breathing. Like she already belonged to him, and he was just stating fact.
She should correct him. Should remind him that she was a grown woman who didn't belong to anyone, that she'd survived perfectly well on her own for thirty-three years, that she didn't need some biker declaring ownership over her life.
But the words wouldn't come.
Because when Vice looked at her like that—like she was precious and fierce and worth every drop of violence he was prepared to deliver—she didn't want to correct him.
She wanted to lean into the claim. Wanted to feel that intensity focused entirely on her. Wanted to know what it was like to be protected by someone who saw her not as weak, but as something valuable enough to fight for.
"You keep saying that," she heard herself say. "That I'm yours."
"Does it bother you?"
Diana held his gaze. "I don't know yet."
Vice's eyes went dark with something that made her breath catch.
"Let me know when you figure it out."
Sunday night, Diana couldn't sleep.
She found Vice on the couch, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and settled beside him without asking permission. He shifted to make room, his arm coming around her shoulders like it belonged there.
"Can't sleep either?" she asked.
"Rarely do." His voice was rough in the darkness. "Nights are when the faces visit."
"The ones you couldn't save."
"Yeah." His arm tightened around her. "Tonight it's kids, mostly. Village in Afghanistan. We got there too late. Sometimes I still see them when I close my eyes."
Diana pressed closer to his side, offering the only comfort she had.
"The children at Little Sprouts," she said quietly. "They won't become those faces. I won't let them."
"I know." Vice turned his head, his lips brushing her hair. "That's why I'm here."
She tilted her head up to look at him, and even in the darkness she could see the intensity in his expression. The weight of everything he'd lost. The desperate need to protect something—someone—who hadn't been taken from him yet.
That's why he watched her like she was fragile and valuable.
Not because he thought she was weak.
Because he'd lost too many people he couldn't protect, and he was terrified of losing another.
"Hey." Diana's hand found his jaw, rough with stubble. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Vice closed his eyes at her touch, and she felt something in him release. Just a fraction. Just enough.
"Don't make promises you can't keep," he said.
"I don't."
She meant it. Whatever was happening between them—this strange, intense, inexplicable connection—she wasn't going to run from it.
Even if it scared her.
Even if it meant stepping into a world she didn't understand.
Diana stayed pressed against Vice's side until his breathing evened out, until the tension finally left his shoulders, until he slept for the first time since she'd arrived.
And in the darkness of the safehouse, surrounded by danger she couldn't see and protected by a man she was only beginning to know, Diana understood.
He'd lost too many people.
She wasn't going to be one of them.