I tightened a bolt, testing the resistance. "He earned it."
"He did." Kai pushed off the workbench, moving toward the door. "He's out in the lot right now, practicing. Has been since you left. I don't think he knows how to stop."
I didn't respond to that. Just finished the bolt andstarted reassembling the engine, focusing on the task.
Kai lingered for a moment longer, then nodded and left. The garage felt emptier without him, the silence settling back like dust.
Axel handed me the next tool before I reached for it. "He trusts you."
The words landed in the quiet between us. I kept my hands moving, kept my eyes on the engine.
"Tyler," Axel continued. "He trusts you. That's not a small thing, considering his history."
"I'm teaching him to ride. That's it."
"Sure." Axel's voice was carefully neutral, the tone of a man who was making an observation rather than an accusation. "Just—be careful with that. Trust is easy to break."
I finished the last bolt and straightened, finally meeting his eyes. He wasn't implying anything, as far as I could tell. Wasn't judging. He was just watching me with that perceptive gaze that always seemed to see more than most people.
"I should clean up. Church in an hour."
Axel nodded and let me go.
Church was grim.
The chapel felt smaller than usual, the air thick with tension that pressed against the walls. Hawk stood at the head of the table, a piece of paper in his hand, his expression carved from stone.
"Martinez called this morning." His voice was flat, controlled. "The Wolves made him an offer."
The room shifted, bodies straightening, attention sharpening. Martinez had been with us for seven years—one of our most reliable suppliers, responsible for nearly a third of our parts distribution network. He was loyal, discreet, and smart enough to know which side of the law kept him breathing.
"What kind of offer?" Axel leaned forward.
"Twenty percent below our rates. Guaranteed volume. Federal protection if anything goes sideways." Hawk set the paper down, and I could see it was a printout—numbers, projections, the kind of formal proposal that didn't come from a motorcycle club. "They came to him with lawyers and contracts. Professional."
The implication settled into the room like smoke. This wasn't an outlaw operation making a play. This was something backed by money and infrastructure and institutional power.
"He's flipping?" Irish leaned forward, his usual humor stripped away.
"He's considering." Hawk's jaw tightened. "He's loyal, but he's also a businessman. His kids need to eat. If we can't match the offer, he doesn't have a choice."
"Can we match it?" Ghost's voice was eager, desperate to help.
"Not without bleeding ourselves dry. They're not just undercutting us—they're operating at a loss. Deliberately. They've got deep pockets backingthem, and they're willing to burn money to burn us."
Silence. The kind that comes when people are calculating costs and finding the numbers don't work.
"So we hit back." Irish's jaw was tight. "Find their supply lines, disrupt their operations?—"
"And give them exactly what they want." Blade's voice cut through the rising energy, calm and cold. "They're waiting for us to make a move. The second we give them provocation, they've got federal backing to bring us down. We hit them, we lose. That's the trap."
"So we just let them take our territory?" Ghost was practically vibrating with frustration. "Sit here while they choke us out one supplier at a time?"
"We find another way." Hawk's voice was steady, but I could hear the strain beneath it—the weight of a president watching his options narrow. "We shore up our other relationships, diversify our suppliers, find new revenue streams. We make ourselves harder to kill."
"And Martinez?"
"I'll talk to him. See if there's something else we can offer—something the Wolves can't match with money alone." Hawk looked around the table, meeting each pair of eyes in turn. "This isn't the war we planned for. But it's the war we've got. And we're going to win it the same way we've won every other fight—by being smarter, faster, and more stubborn than the bastards trying to put us in the ground."
