Will doesn’t make threats. He doesn’t posture. He waits, patient as gravity, until certainty sharpens into intent—then moves.
I nod once, slow. “We do it my way.”
“Always.”
Behind him, JT shifts against the doorframe, arms still crossed, but his eyes are softer now. There’s frustration in them, yeah. But he’s not trying to argue anymore.
“We are getting out of this,” I say, looking between them.
Will nods once and slings his jacket on.
I should be thinking about our plan. I should be visualizing exits, angles, contingencies.
Instead, my mind is on Sable. Her voice. The angel wing I drew on her skin. Her son’s name on her lips.
I’ve got plans this week. Meet her kid. Sit at her table.
But there’s no guarantee I walk out of this in one piece.
Stauder never deals straight.
And whatever’s waiting at that warehouse…
It’s not just a conversation.
The warehouse hasn’t changed.
Same rusted panel doors. Half the overhead fluorescents dead or flickering. Paint peeling from the beams the way old skin flakes from a sunburn. There’s still blood on one of the support columns near the far wall. Mine, maybe… or someone else’s.
Back in the day, this place hosted underground fights. Not the flashy kind with cameras and pay-per-view. It wasn’t fuckingentertainment. It was a meat grinder with a crowd. Bare fists. Broken ribs. Bets passed hand to hand in blood-soaked bills. Beaten bodies dragged out the back before they got cold andbecame a problem. If you won, you got paid. If you lost, you got stitches… that is if anyone gave a shit to patch you up.
Stauder owns half the warehouses off Jackson. Paper says storage. Reality says drug pipelines, weapons drops, unlicensed contraband in crates labeledorganic produce. He kept the law at arm’s length with hush money and made sure bodies were too mutilated to identify.
Cops didn’t ask questions. Not when their kids’ college funds came from envelopes dropped in mailboxes with no return address.
Will walks in beside me, eyes sharp and scanning the scene in front of us. No need for chit chat.
Five men stand and sit near a folding table in the center of the space. Makeshift chairs. A single fan humming in the corner. All of it too familiar.
Then I see him.
Tanner.
Five-foot-nothing, greasy hair slicked back with spit and cockiness, scraggly goatee that looks glued on in the dark. He’s laughing with one of the others, some smug-ass look on his face, until his eyes meet mine.
The little fuck who touched my brother goes still.
I walk.
Each step a countdown.
Will doesn’t move to stop me.
“Morning,” Tanner says, lips curled like he knows something I don’t.
I don’t answer.
I bury a right hook so deep into his jaw I feel his teeth crunch like gravel underfoot.
