I pulled him closer, until our foreheads touched. "And figure out what we're building here. Without bullets flying. Without Cross's shadow hanging over everything. Just us."
"Just us." Tyler's breath was warm against my lips. "I like the sound of that."
Then he leaned in and kissed me, soft and slow, and for a few minutes I let myself forget about Hawk in the basement and Vince and Cross and everything else. His hand slid up my chest, fingers curling around the back of my neck. My hand found his hip, pulled him closer until our bodies were pressed together from chest to knee.
Not building toward anything—we were both too exhausted for that. Just... being close. Holding onto each other while the world fell apart around us.
When we finally broke apart, Tyler tucked his head under my chin, and I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. His breathing slowed, evened out. For a while, I thought he might actually sleep.
"Tank?" His voice was barely a murmur.
"Yeah?"
"Don't let me go."
My arm tightened around him. "Never."
Hawk emerged just after three in the morning. The basement door finally opened and he climbed the stairs into the common room, where a handful of us had been keeping vigil. The murmured conversations died instantly, every eye turning toward him.
He looked worn at the edges—not weak, never weak, but like a man who'd spent hours doing something that cost him. His knuckles were wrapped in white gauze spotted with blood, and there was a darkness behind his eyes that hadn't been there before. Even so, he moved with the same coiled power as always, shoulders squared, spine straight. Whatever the interrogation had taken out of him, it hadn't touched his core.
"Church." The single word cut through the silence. "Now. Full attendance. Wake everyone."
The chapel filled in minutes. Every patched member who wasn't on active perimeter duty crowded around the long table, with more standing along the walls—men in various states of dress, some clearly roused from sleep, all of them alert now. I took my usual seat, Tyler beside me—his presence atchurch no longer questioned, his place in this room as certain as any patched brother's.
Hawk stood at the head of the table, both hands planted on the scarred wood surface. He didn't sit. Just stood there, letting the silence build until it was thick enough to choke on.
"Vince talked." His voice was flat, emotionless. "It took a while, but he talked. Here's what we know."
He paused, and the room leaned forward collectively. "Cross has been running Vince for six months. The prospect program, the gate duty—all of it was engineered to get eyes inside our operation. Every church meeting, every planning session, every piece of sensitive information that passed through this compound was reported back to Cross within hours."
Murmurs rippled through the room. Hawk held up a hand, silencing them.
"The pharmaceutical operation is bigger than we thought. Cross isn't just recycling seized drugs—he's coordinating distribution across six states. The contaminated pills that are killing people? That's intentional. They're cutting with fentanyl to create addiction, to build a customer base that keeps coming back even when the product starts killing them."
My stomach turned. Beside me, Tyler's jaw tightened.
"Cross has a shipment coming through in three days," Hawk continued. "Major delivery—enough contaminated product to flood the Southwest for months. According to Vince, the transfer ishappening at a warehouse outside of Reno. Cross will be there personally to oversee the handoff."
The implications hung in the air. A chance to hit Cross directly. A chance to cut the head off the snake.
"There's more." Hawk's voice dropped, something dangerous entering his tone. "Cross knows about Tank and Tyler."
The words hit me like a physical blow. Silence crashed through the room—a different kind of silence than before. Heads turned. Eyes widened. I felt the attention of every man in the room swivel toward us, felt the weight of their stares like a physical pressure. Some faces showed confusion. Others showed dawning understanding. A few—Blade, Axel—showed no surprise at all, just grim acknowledgment.
I didn't look away. Didn't flinch. Beside me, Tyler sat equally still, equally unbowed. Let them look. Let them know.
"Vince reported it. The relationship." Hawk's expression twisted with something like disgust—not at us, I realized, but at the violation. At the fact that something private had been weaponized. "Cross is obsessed, apparently. Vince said he ranted about Tyler for hours after the extraction. Called it a betrayal. Said he was going to 'reclaim what's his' and make Tank watch."
The silence in the room shifted. The surprise faded, replaced by something harder. Something angry. These were men who understood loyalty, understood what it meant to have a brother's back.And they understood, in this moment, that one of their own was being threatened.
Rage flooded through me, hot and immediate. My hands curled into fists under the table, and I had to force myself to breathe through the red haze descending over my vision.
"Cross wants Tyler back." Hawk's eyes found mine, held them. "And he's willing to burn everything to get him."
Tyler's hand found my thigh under the table, gripping hard. Not hiding—grounding. Reminding us both that we were here, together, and no amount of threats was going to change that. I covered his hand with mine, laced our fingers together. Let anyone who was watching see it.
"So what's the play?" Blade's voice cut through the tension. "We hit the warehouse? Take out Cross and the shipment together?"
