Ghost taps a key, and the screen changes.
A name appears.
A face.
“This is who’s been pulling the strings,” Mason says. “From the start.”
The room leans in without anyone realizing they moved.
“Sergei Volkov,” Mason continues. “Russian. Old money. Old power. He doesn’t run product himself. He runs people who run product. Alexei Morozov answered directly to him.”
My hands curl into fists.
“For two years,” Mason says, “Volkov has been dismantling us quietly. Funding pressure. Weaponizing rivals. Backing the hits on Perdition. Ordering the clubhouse bombing. And greenlighting Bri’s abduction.”
Silence slams down hard, heavier than before.
“There will be fallout,” Mason goes on calmly. “Volkov isn’t some street-level problem. When he falls, it’s going to shake a lot of structures.”
He looks around the table. “That’s on him.”
Dagger’s voice is low. “Because he started it.”
“Exactly,” Mason says. “He thought he could bleed us slow and we’d never know who was holding the knife.”
Mason turns to Ghost and Riot. “You two are full priority intel. I want everything. Properties. Shell companies. Financial routes.Safe houses. Lieutenants. Security rotations. If Volkov ever signed a check or shook a hand, I want it on my table.”
Ghost nods once. Riot’s already typing, eyes sharp and focused.
“We don’t rush this,” Mason says. “We don’t retaliate blind. And we don’t make noise just to make ourselves feel better.”
He pauses, letting the weight of it settle into the room, into every man sitting there.
“They started this believing they could dismantle the Iron Reapers piece by piece,” Mason finishes. “They were wrong.”
His voice drops, cold and final.
“We finish wars.”
No one speaks. No one has to. Because every man in the room already knows what comes next, and not a single one of us intends to back away from it.
Mason endschurch with a sharp rap of his knuckles on the table.
“That’s it,” he says. “You all know your lanes. Get to work.”
Chairs scrape back. Boots hit concrete. The room breaks apart into low voices and movement, the kind that means things are already in motion. Plans forming. Calls being made. Pieces sliding into place.
“Blade,” Mason adds.
I pause.
“Office.”
I nod once and follow him down the hall, the noise of the clubhouse fading behind us. His office door closes with a solid click, sealing us into something quieter and heavier.
He doesn’t sit right away. Neither do I.
Mason leans back against his desk, arms crossed, eyes studying me in that way he has when he’s not talking as president but as someone who actually gives a damn.
