He taps the table again, harder this time. “And the boy’s alive?”
“No,” I say quietly.
Nathan’s brows lift. “And you didn’t kill him yourself.”
“No,” I repeat, voice low. “But I would have. And I want the option to deal with Jimmy the moment I’m ready.”
Finally,finally, Nathan shows something like interest.Understanding.
“You want protection for retaliation,” he says bluntly.
“I want permission,” I correct. “And I want to remove middlemen who cost you money. We’re disciplined. We’re loyal. We deliver on time. We don’t skim.”
Nathan’s mouth curves. Not into a smile, but into a calculation.
“And what do I gain?”
“Less risk,” Diesel says. “Less police interest, we have an inside man. More reliability. More control.”
“And no more rape-happy idiots with my product in their veins,” Nathan adds quietly.
I nod once.
Nathan breathes out, long and slow.
“If someone touched my daughter––” His voice drops to a whisper. “I’d tear this whole city apart.” Something settles in his expression. A decision made in the place where men like him keep their humanity locked behind steel doors.
He stands. “You have a week,” he says. “Bring me a route, a timetable, a proposal. Numbers. If they make sense—we’ll talk again.”
“And Jimmy?” I ask.
Nathan glances toward the door his daughter exited through. “Handle him,” he says simply. “Just don’t let it touch London.” He walks out without another word.
Diesel exhales like he’s been holding his breath the entire time. “Holy shit.”
I clench my jaw, standing. “Let’s go home,” I mutter. “We’ve got work to do.”
The clubhouse is alive when I pull into the yard. Music thumps through the brickwork, the kind that rattles the walls. I’m exhausted from the ride back from London and wired from the meeting with Cole, but the second I walk through the doors, I see her.
Eden.
She’s curled into the corner of the battered sofa while the girls scream karaoke into a dented mic. She’s smiling. That soft, shycurve of her mouth that used to undo me in about three seconds flat.
Christ, I’ve missed that smile. But then her eyes land on me, and it dies. Just drops off her face like it was never there at all.
My chest clenches, and instead of going to her, instead of doing the right fucking thing, I turn away. Straight into my office. I shut the door and press my hand to it like I’m holding back a flood.
I hate that I can’t even look her in the eye without feeling like I’m the bastard who broke her.
The blinds rattle softly when I pull them down. Back to work. Back to business. Back to anything that isn’t that look on her face when her smile disappeared.
Five minutes pass. Maybe ten. Then her voice brings me from my thoughts.
“Kade?”
She’s leaning against the doorway, her fingers twisted in her sleeves, eyes searching me like she’s trying to find something familiar on a face she used to know by heart.
I pull on a smile. It feels foreign. Tight. “Hey. You look beautiful.” Her cheeks warm at that, and for a moment, I feel something tug in my ribs, something old and familiar, but I push it down before it can breathe. “I didn’t think you’d still be up,” I add, turning back to the papers on my desk because eye contact feels like too much.
