Wolf’s Vow (Devil’s Crown MC #6)

Chapter One

The man was still talking when Wolf decided he was done listening. Outwardly though, Silas “Wolf” O’Rourke remained exactly as he had been for the last twelve minutes. He was seated, composed, one ankle rested over his opposite knee, tablet balanced lightly in his hand.

Wolf made sure his expression didn’t change. The debtor’s voice dragged on, a thin, fraying thread of excuses. Numbers, names, half-truths stitched together with panic. Wolf let it run. There was a rhythm to lies, and this one had started tripping over itself three minutes ago.

He tapped the screen once.

“Stop,” Wolf said.

The debtor obeyed instantly. He looked sheet white and was sweating profusely. Wolf lifted his uninterested gaze. He studied the man the way he studied everything else, clinically, without urgency.

The guy was in his late thirties, and there was a visible sweat stain on the collar of his cheap shirt. He also kept bouncing his left knee in a staccato rhythm that didn’t match the story he’d just tried to sell.

“Start again, Smith,” Wolf said. “Slowly.”

“I told you,” Smith said, voice shaky. “It was Tuesday.”

“It wasn’t.” Wolf turned the tablet toward him. “Friday. Three forty-two.”

Smith leaned in, squinting. “That’s not right.”

“It is.” Wolf tapped the screen once and continued. “You used to skim small amounts. A few hundred here and there. Easy to hide.”

Smith’s face went pale.

“But this time,” Wolf continued, “ten thousand went missing in one transfer.”

Smith swallowed hard, eyes darting toward the door, then back.

“I was going to fix it,” he said quickly. “I just needed time.”

“You had time,” Wolf said. “Now you don’t.”

Silence stretched. Wolf didn’t raise his voice ... he didn’t need to. Smith was beginning to unravel.

“Where’s the money?” he asked.

Smith hesitated. “I don’t—”

Wolf tapped again, bringing up the transfer trail.

“You moved it through three accounts,” he said. “Then sent it out.”

He pointed to the final line. “Here.”

Smith stared at it, breathing faster now.

“I just passed it on,” he said.

“Like before?” Wolf asked.

A pause. Then Smith nodded weakly. “Yeah. Same as before. I take a cut, move the rest. That’s it.”

“And this time?” Wolf asked.

Smith dragged a hand over his face. “He told me to send more.”

“Who?” Smith hesitated, then gave in. “Callahan. Derek Callahan.”

Wolf went still. He didn’t know who that was, probably a small fry since he was stupid enough to cross the MC.

“What changed?” Wolf patiently asked.

“He said it was an emergency. Said he needed it now,” Smith admitted.

“And you just sent it?” Wolf asked drily.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Smith snapped, panic breaking through. “He threatened me. Said if I didn’t move it, he’d come after me.”

Wolf watched him for a long second.

“You always have a choice,” he said calmly.

Smith looked away.

“But before this,” Wolf added, “you and Callahan were skimming small amounts.”

Smith nodded again, slower this time. “Yeah. Just small cuts. Nothing big. Nothing like this.”

Wolf absorbed that.

Small, controlled theft before. Then a sudden grab for ten thousand. This Callahan must’ve gotten desperate all of a sudden. Well, he was going to pay for his mistake soon. Wolf straightened slightly, decision already made.

“I can get it back,” Smith said. “I swear, I can fix it. Just give me another chance, Wolf.”

“No,” Wolf answered immediately.

He stood, unfolding to his full height with an ease that came from long practice. The shift in position changed the room again.

“You’re not fixing anything,” Wolf said coldly. “You’ve done enough.”

Smith pushed to his feet too quickly, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.

“Please, Wolf,” Smith said, hands coming up. He held his palms open. “I’ll go to him. I’ll make him pay it back, I swear.”

“You’ll do nothing,” Wolf told him. Smith was probably going to run if Wolf was foolish enough to let him leave. These scum always did.

Wolf brushed away a speck of dust that didn’t exist on his leather jacket. It was a small, almost absent gesture. Besides, he already had his answers. Well, most of them.

“Where is he?” Wolf asked.

“Callahan?” the man said, blinking. “I don’t know. He moves around. Last I heard he was...”

“Don’t guess,” Wolf reminded him, gaze intent. “Think.”

Smith swallowed. Then he closed his eyes for a second like he could dig the answer out of whatever scraps of information he had left.

“He mentioned a place,” Smith finally said slowly. “Apartment. South side.”

“Address,” Wolf prompted.

“I don’t know,” Smith began. Sweat dribbled down his forehead, then he continued, “Wait. I might have it in my phone.”

“Get it,” Wolf ordered.

Smith fumbled for his pocket, hands shaking as he pulled out his phone. It took him three tries to unlock it. Wolf watched him, patient and unmoving. Ten years of doing this job, he understood something most men in this line of work didn’t.

Control wasn’t about volume, or violence, it was about inevitability. Smith eventually found what he was looking for with a small, strangled sound of relief.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the phone forward. “This is it. This is where he said he sometimes hung out.”

Wolf didn’t take it. He stepped closer instead, glancing down long enough to memorize the address. He noted the street, building number and unit.

“Good,” he said.

Smith sagged, as if the word itself had taken weight off his shoulders. Wolf stepped back. This better not be a wild goose chase, Wolf thought.

“Sit,” Wolf ordered.

Smith obeyed automatically, dropping back into the chair like his strings had been cut. Wolf picked up his tablet, already moving on, and already recalculating.

Callahan had taken from the club. That wasn’t a mistake—Callahan made that decision. Wrong decisions had consequences. Anyone stupid enough to steal from the MC got their just desserts. Wolf turned toward the door. One of the men stationed there straightened immediately.

“Lock him in,” Wolf said. “I’ll deal with him later.”

Smith made a small sound. It sounded like a protest, but Wolf didn’t look back. Smith was already a solved problem. A variable accounted for. There was only one piece left that mattered. Callahan.

Wolf stepped out into the hallway, the door closing behind him with a solid, definitive click. The noise cut off whatever Smith might have said next, sealing it away where it belonged. Smith had become irrelevant in his eyes.

He walked without hurry, his mind already several steps ahead. He thought of routes, timing, and possibility. If Callahan ran, where he’d go, who he’d contact. How long he’d think he had before anyone noticed.

Wolf pulled his phone from his pocket as he reached the end of the hall, dialing without breaking stride. His boots hit the concrete in a steady rhythm, measured, unhurried, even as his mind was already moving three steps ahead.

It rang once.

“Yeah,” came King’s, the MC president and his boss, voice. His voice was rough and direct, as if he was already expecting trouble.

Wolf didn’t slow. “Smith talked.”

“And?” King asked. “What did you find out?”

Wolf pushed through the EXIT door, the cool evening air hitting his face as he stepped outside. The lot stretched ahead, bikes lined up, a couple of men lingering near the far end. Normal. Routine.

“Smith says he was being threatened,” Wolf said. “By Derek Callahan.”

“Who the hell is that?” King demanded, irritation threading through his tone.

“Small fry,” Wolf replied. “A middleman who got comfortable.”

He crossed the lot, gaze flicking once, automatically, taking in everything. Nothing out of place.

“Callahan’s been skimming,” he continued. “Not large withdrawals. Nothing obvious. He and Smith were shaving off the top of routed payments. Small amounts. Easy to hide if no one’s looking too closely.”

King didn’t interrupt.

“Recently,” Wolf added, “he changed the pattern. Took ten grand in one go.”

A beat. “Ten?” King’s voice sharpened.

“Ten,” Wolf confirmed. “Smith said Callahan called it an emergency. Needed it immediately. Pushed hard enough that Smith folded.”

Wolf paused briefly near a parked bike, resting a hand against the seat without really thinking about it.

“Sloppy,” he went on. “Doesn’t fit his usual pattern. Either he got desperate ... or he thought he wouldn’t get caught.”

A low, humorless sound came through the line.

“Yeah,” King said. “Well, he was wrong.”

Wolf’s gaze drifted toward the street beyond the lot, already calculating distance, timing, where Callahan might run next.

“We don’t tolerate thieves,” King finally said, his voice going flat in that way that meant the decision had already been made.

Wolf flicked his gaze toward the exit again, the path already clear in his head.

“No,” he agreed. “We don’t.”

“Find him,” King said. “I don’t care where he thinks he’s hiding. He took from the club, he answers to the club.”

There was no need to spell out what that meant. Wolf had been doing this long enough to understand exactly how that conversation would end.

“Make it clear,” King added, quieter now but sharper for it. “Nobody skims from Devil’s Crown and walks away breathing easy.”

Wolf’s grip tightened slightly against the bike seat before he let it go.

“I’ll handle it,” he said.

A beat passed. Wolf could hear it in the silence, in the controlled edge under King’s breathing. King was mad, and when he got pissed, he wasn’t the loud or explosive sort. King’s anger burned cold, not hot. It lingered until the problem was erased. Never a good sign.

“I know you will,” King said.

Then the line went dead. Wolf lowered the phone slowly, slipping it back into his pocket as his gaze lifted toward the darkening street.

Ten thousand, truly a foolish move. Maybe Callahan had run out of options, or he had balls enough to think he could get away with this.

Either way, Wolf had a feeling Callahan would make a mistake and surface soon, and Wolf would find him.

Wolf walked unhurriedly to his Harley. A decade. Ten years of cleaning out traitors, cutting rot from the bone, taking chaos and forcing it into something that made sense. Order wasn’t natural, it had to be imposed. That was where he came in.

Truthfully, Wolf didn’t mind it. Hell, he was good at it. Better than anyone else in Devil’s Crown. King trusted him with the things that couldn’t afford mistakes, the problems that needed to disappear cleanly, efficiently, without noise. That was why it always came back to him.

Wolf always finished what he started—he didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t let anything become personal. Lately, though, there’d been a shift in the club.

More of his brothers were pairing off, finding their women, and settling down in their own way. The clubhouse had changed because of it. It was the subtle things, easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Laughter lingered longer in the clubhouse, and fights cooled faster. Wolf noticed, because he noticed everything.

A part of him, perhaps buried deep enough that it rarely made itself known, wondered what that would feel like. Having someone who wasn’t a variable to manage or a risk to mitigate. Someone who stayed.

The thought didn’t sit comfortably. He dismissed it as quickly as it surfaced. That wasn’t him.

Wolf understood systems, control, and outcomes. People, in that context, were liabilities more often than they were worth. Attachments complicated things. They slowed you down and made you hesitate when hesitation got you killed.

No, he was fine exactly where he was. More than fine. He had his place in Devil’s Crown. Wolf had purpose. Work that needed doing, and the skill to do it better than anyone else. Nothing had to change and nothing would.