“Ready.”
He nodded, his expression shifting into the cold mask of the arms dealer Oliver expected to see. I let my shoulders curve inward, becoming again the cowed woman who belonged to a dangerous man.
We had work to do.
Chapter 15
Mia
Yesterday had been chaos. Pure, controlled chaos as Oliver’s compound transformed from armed fortress into something that resembled a high-end event venue. The florists had arrived first, their white van looking absurdly normal as it passed through the gates under the watchful eyes of Snake and his rifle.
They’d unloaded arrangements of dark red roses and white lilies—funeral flowers, my brain supplied helpfully—setting them up in the main lodge while pretending not to notice the armed men stationed at every corner.
The catering staff had come next, a full crew in pressed black uniforms who moved through the compound with practiced efficiency, eyes carefully averted from anything that wasn’t food-related. They’d taken over the lodge’s kitchen, but the smell of roasting meat and fresh bread couldn’t quite mask the underlying stench of cigarette smoke and gun oil that seemed baked into the walls themselves.
By evening, the waitstaff had arrived—young people who kept their heads down and hands steady, smart enough to know this wasn’t the kind of job where you asked questions or made eye contact. Oliver had them set up a full bar in the main lodge, bottles of whiskey and wine that belonged in a Manhattan penthouse, not a Montana militia compound where men plotted revolution between shots of Maker’s Mark.
This morning, everything had shifted again.
The buyers had started arriving just after dawn, and with them, my fear crystallized into something sharp and immediate.
I stood at Coop’s side in the main lodge, my fingers laced through his in what looked like casual affection but was really his way of keeping me anchored. His thumb traced small circles against my palm—a gesture invisible to everyone else but that kept me from drowning in the panic clawing at my chest.
The room buzzed with conversation in at least three languages I could identify—English, Russian, and something that might have been Arabic. Men in tailored suits that screamed money mixed with others in tactical gear that screamed violence, all of them here for the same purpose.
Oliver’s weapons. And tonight, Oliver’s entertainment.
My stomach churned, acid burning the back of my throat. I’d barely managed to choke down toast this morning, my body rejecting food when every instinct clawed at me to run.
“You’re doing great,” Coop murmured against my ear, his lips barely moving. To anyone watching, it would look like an intimate conversation. His breath was warm, familiar, and for just a second, I let myself lean into that familiarity before reality crashed back. “Just like we talked about—scared but observant.”
I nodded, keeping my head downcast but peeking out, letting my photographer’s instincts take over, cataloging faces and details the way we’d discussed—bone structures, unique proportions, anything that could help identify these men later.
The man by the fireplace: late forties, graying beard, small scar through his left eyebrow, eastern European accent when he laughed at something Oliver said. The younger man near the window: Hispanic, maybe thirty, nervous habit of touching the gold watch on his wrist, kept checking his phone with increasing agitation. Waiting for permission? Confirmation? An escape route?
A heavyset man in a suit that had Hong Kong tailoring written all over it was examining one of the rifles Oliver had out for display, running his hands along the barrel with the reverence of a collector touching a Stradivarius.
“Coop!” Oliver’s voice jerked me out of my observations. He stood near the bar, dressed like he was heading to a country club—pressed khakis, a navy blazer, loafers that gleamed with fresh polish. “Come meet Mr. Volkov. He’s interested in your assessment of our inventory.”
Coop’s hand tightened on mine for just a second—warning, reassurance, promise, threat, all tangled together—before he led me across the room. Each step felt like walking toward an executioner. Volkov looked like he’d stepped out of a Cold War thriller, all sharp cheekbones and eyes the color of winter ice that tracked our approach with predatory focus.
“This is the expert you mentioned?” Volkov’s accent was thick but his English precise, each word carefully pronounced. “The one who verified your products?”
“That’s right.” Coop’s voice carried that easy confidence I’d watched him perfect over the past days, but I could feel the tension in his body where it pressed against mine. “Every piece is military-grade, most of it untraceable. I can help with that issue further if needed.”
Volkov’s attention shifted to me, those cold eyes running over me with an assessment that made my skin crawl like insects were burrowing underneath. He lingered on my face, my chest,my hips, cataloging me the same way I’d been cataloging the buyers. Meat. Product. Entertainment.
But he didn’t ask about me. Like the other women here in this sick good ol’ boys’ network, I wasn’t important beyond my physical attractiveness.
I kept quiet, more determined than ever to memorize as many details as I could to help bring every single one of these bastards down.
For the next couple hours, Coop talked and laughed as I stayed by his side. I used every memorization trick I could think of to categorize one asshole after another. I wished desperately for my camera, but instead, I forced my brain to become its own camera.
There were women here too, but none of them actively tried to talk to me or each other. They drifted in on the arms of various buyers like ghosts tethered to their killers, eyes glazed with pharmaceutical distance or the kind of practiced dissociation that came from surviving too much.
One blonde in a red dress that barely qualified as clothing stared at nothing while her companion—a thin man with nervous hands—talked rapidly to Tommy about ammunition prices. She swayed slightly. Xanax, probably. Or Valium. Something to make the world soft around the edges while men discussed the tools of death.
Another woman, brunette, couldn’t have been older than twenty, moved like she was underwater. The man with her, old enough to be her grandfather, wearing enough gold chains to stock a pawn shop, kept his hand possessively on her lower back while he examined a display of handguns Snake had arranged. His thumb moved in small circles against her spine—possession, control, threat.
