The weight of it settles across the table.
Dagger doesn’t look away from the screen. His voice stays steady when he finally speaks. “Then we finish it.”
Switch shifts in his chair, jaw tightening as the pieces finally line up in his head. “So when we were beating the shit out of him,” he says slowly, eyes flicking toward Blade and then back to Riot, “telling him to stay the hell away from Brooke, and he pissed himself and ran his mouth like some cornered asshole…”
The room stays quiet, everyone tracking the same memory.
Switch shakes his head once. “He was… what? Playing us?”
Blade’s eyes go hard in a way that drops the temperature in the room. The toothpick stills in the corner of his mouth, his jaw setting like stone as the realization hits. The false fear. The sloppy bravado. The way Whittaker folded just enough to sell the act.
Riot doesn’t soften it. “Yeah. He was reading you. Measuring how far you’d go. How much pressure it takes before you cross certain lines.”
My stomach tightens. “He wasn’t scared,” I say quietly. “He was collecting data.”
Riot nods. “Exactly.”
Blade exhales slow through his nose, shoulders squaring, something dangerous settling behind his eyes. His gaze cuts to me, sharp and assessing, like he’s replaying every second of that night through a different lens now.
“That son of a bitch stood in front of us and treated it like a field test,” Blade says.
Switch lets out a sharp breath. “That’s messed up.”
Ghost’s voice comes from near the door, low and flat. “That’s a man who doesn’t feel pain the same way.”
“And a man who’s not done,” Mason adds.
Blade’s jaw tightens again, eyes still on me. “He doesn’t get another look at any of our women.”
“Not happening,” I say immediately.
The room hums with a darker edge now. Not just a threat. Violation. The kind that sticks. We didn’t just put hands on a dangerous man. We gave him exactly what he came for.
I drag my gaze off Blade and turn toward Mason. “So what do we do now?”
The words settle into the space between us, not rushed, not reactive. Just real. We’ve spent long enough putting out fires. Long enough reacting to moves that weren’t ours.
Mason doesn’t answer right away. He studies the table, the faces around it, the quiet tension in shoulders and clenchedjaws, measuring the room the same way he always does when a decision carries weight beyond tonight.
“We stop letting him set the board,” Mason says finally. His voice stays calm, but there’s steel under it. “No more waiting to see what he does next. No more absorbing hits and patching holes.”
Piston leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You saying we go hunting?”
“I’m saying we take control,” Mason replies. “We find out who he’s connected to here, what infrastructure he’s built, and we start pulling it apart piece by piece. Quiet first. Surgical.”
Switch nods slowly. “Freeze his money streams. Jam his logistics. Force him to surface.”
Tank’s mouth curves into something grim. “And when he does?”
Mason’s eyes harden. “Then we finish what he started.”
Blade’s shoulders roll back slightly, tension tightening through him like a coiled spring. Ghost’s expression doesn’t change, but the air around him shifts, dangerous and intent.
Riot speaks again, already thinking three steps ahead. “I can start mapping his domestic shell companies tonight. There are patterns I haven’t fully cracked yet, but now that we know who we’re looking for, the noise drops fast.”
“Good,” Mason says. “I want eyes on every move he makes.”
I nod once, the weight settling in my gut, solid and steady instead of chaotic. Brooke’s face flashes through my mind again, the way she trusts me to keep the world outside our walls.
