The clubhouse is quieter than usual, the late afternoon sun bleeding gold across the concrete floor through half-drawn blinds. The air smells of oil and old whiskey, a hum of anticipation pulsing low beneath the silence. A slow murmur of conversation drifts from the bar, where Kyle’s restocking the liquor shelves and Ruby’s pretending not to flirt with him, chewing on her straw in a way that dares him, tossing her hair a little too carelessly. Nash leans in the doorway, wiping his handswith a rag, his eyes flicking toward the bar just as Ruby leans in close to Kyle. She laughs at something he says, swats his arm, and chews on her straw with the same challenge in her eyes.
Nash doesn’t say anything. But his jaw tightens.
A second later, he pushes off the frame and heads outside toward the garage. The screen door slams behind him with the weight of punctuation, and the sound echoes longer than it should. Sloane and Knox are out back checking inventory, their voices drifting in and out with the opening and closing of the supply room door.
And I’m here. Waiting. Feeling it in my bones, the calm before something breaks. The stillness carries an edge, the kind that grates at nerves sharpened by too many nights without sleep. Dust drifts lazily through the light. My fingers twitch against the armrest, unconsciously counting seconds. Some part of me always knew we’d come back to this.
The sound of a bike slices through the stillness. Deep. Clean. Familiar. That throttle’s been echoing in my memory for years. One of ours. Always has been.
Victor. But this time, he’s not alone. Olivia rides behind him, arms looped around his waist, her helmet catching the last flare of sun like a crown. There was a time she wouldn’t step near a bike, wouldn’t leave the house without layers of fear stitched into her skin. But today? She’s here. She’s out. Surviving. Stronger than the hands that tried to break her.
Something lodges in my throat. I swallow it down. A different kind of pride, one tangled with rage and guilt and a quiet, desperate hope I barely let myself name.
Victor’s been around more since the dust settled. Since Olivia’s safe, the weight of surviving turned into a need to burn everything that hurt her. He’s not just a patch now, he’s a brother. Has been for longer than most knew. He just had to step away for a while, to protect what mattered most.
The door opens, and Victor steps inside with Olivia at his side. She moves with the grace of someone who knows exactly who she belongs to, silent, poised, her hand resting lightly on his arm. He pauses just past the threshold and leans in, his voice low enough that only she hears it.
Olivia nods once, her posture softening slightly. She doesn't speak, just brushes her fingers over his wrist in a subtle gesture of acknowledgment, then turns toward the bar. From a distance, it appears to be nothing. A casual exchange between two people with history. But I see the way she listens. The way she obeys. She doesn’t glance back as he walks toward me, and he doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have to.
“We need to talk,” he says, voice low but carrying.
I tilt my head, arching a brow. “You bring me trouble, or answers?”
He gives a dry smile, one that doesn’t touch his eyes. “Both. Depends how you look at it.”
Victor meets my eyes, expression unreadable. Whatever he has to say, it’s not just business. And we both know it. We move to the war room. It’s cleaner now, Candace’s touch, but it still carries the scent of grit and gasoline. The walls are lined with maps and coded intel; the table littered with dossiers and red-string theories straight out of a conspiracy thriller.
Victor drops a folder on the table with a heavy thud. The edges are frayed from use. He flips it open, and the stench of corruption practically rises off the pages. Surveillance photos. Financial records. Blurred documents with names blacked out in thick ink.
“This isn’t just Alice Brighton’s network,” Victor says, voice clipped. “It’s a society. Old. Powerful. They trade favors the way we trade ammo. Judges. Politicians. Executives. She’s in the center of it. Not hiding. Operating.”
He points to a photo, one that makes my jaw tick. A man in a custom-tailored suit shaking hands with Donovan.
“Photo’s old. Weeks before you took him out. But it proves Donovan wasn’t working alone. Savannah’s not just a refuge for Alice. It’s her kingdom. This proves she had his support and probably still has others in his wake.”
I don’t flinch. Because I’ve seen enough by now to know what we’re dealing with. Victor knows it too.
“But I’ve got someone close,” he adds, leaning in. “Someone who’s already inside. They’ve been building a case, piece by piece. They want Alice gone as badly as we do. If we move now, if we plan this right, we don’t just rattle the cage. We burn it to the ground.”
That damn city. It always circles back to Savannah. The past refuses to stay buried there.
“What do you need?” I ask, though the answer’s already alive in my chest.
Victor meets my eyes, that fire sparking hot behind his. “To finish this. For Olivia. For the girls who didn’t make it out. Because if we don’t end it now, they’ll rise again. Stronger. Smarter.”
I think of Candace. Of the way her voice shakes when she talks about the mother who left her. The rage she hides behind sarcasm and steel. Of the quiet ache in her when she thinks no one’s watching. Something twists under my ribs. Something sharp and permanent.
“We’ll go to Savannah,” I say. Victor nods once. And the world tilts forward.
Thehousewerentedis tucked into one of Savannah’s oldest neighborhoods, cobblestone streets and moss-drapedoaks, the ghosts of the city watching from wrought-iron balconies. It’s too quiet. Too clean. The house feels as if it’s holding its breath.
Candace and I have our own Airbnb. Just the two of us. The stillness between us lately has felt no different than loaded gunfire. Tense, quiet, waiting to explode.
She’s been humming under her breath again. Not loud enough for anyone else to hear, but I catch it, soft, steady, a thread of something only meant for me. She doesn’t do it in front of the others. Just me. It’s no longer something she hides from me. This morning, I found a napkin on the counter with what appeared to be lyrics scrawled in the margin, then gone the next second, burned in the kitchen sink. She may not be ready to share it with the world, but with me? She’s cracking the door open.
Knox, Nash, and East came too. Sloane refused to stay behind so she and Knox came too. The rest of the women stayed in Willowridge. This isn’t their fight. Not yet.
We’re going to an auction, but not just any auction. One of theirs. The kind that trades in flesh and ends in ownership. We’ve heard whispers that Alice might show, and if she does, this could be our only shot to corner her. The entire event is wrapped in pageantry, a twisted masquerade of masks and power plays.
