"Best promise I ever made."
He drifts off with a smile on his face, and I stay awake a little longer, memorizing this moment. The feel of him beside me, the safety of his arms, the knowledge that whatever comes next, we'll face it together.
Forever, I think. I can do forever with this man.
And for the first time in my life, forever doesn't scare me.
It feels like coming home.
Chapter 11
Ice Pick
Two weeks after getting out of the hospital, I'm finally cleared for light duty. The stitches are out, the wound's healing clean, and the only reminder of how close I came to dying is the angry red scar on my side. Ava traces it sometimes when we're in bed, her fingers gentle like she's afraid I'll break.
I won't break. It takes more than shrapnel to put me down permanently.
The compound's buzzing with activity when I make my way downstairs. Ava's article dropped yesterday in three major publications simultaneously, and the fallout's been immediate and brutal. Castellano's empire is crumbling, his political connections scrambling to distance themselves, and the FBI's fielding tips from all over the country about similar operations.
She did it. She exposed the whole rotten system and made sure the world knows exactly what happened to those twenty girls.
I find her in the common room with Condor, going through interview requests from news outlets that want her on camera. She's wearing one of my shirts again, her hair piled on top of her head, and her reading glasses perched on her nose. The sight makes something warm settle in my chest.
"Morning," I say, dropping a kiss on top of her head.
She looks up with a smile that's all for me. "You're supposed to be resting."
"I've been resting for two weeks. I'm going stir-crazy." I grab coffee from the pot Rook keeps perpetually full. "What're we looking at?"
"Marriage proposals, mostly." Condor grins. "Apparently half the country thinks Ava's a hero and wants to marry her."
"They'll have to get through me first." I settle beside her, scanning the emails on her screen. "These all legit?"
"Most of them. A few are clearly fishing for information or trying to discredit the story, but Robert is vetting everything before I respond." She leans into me, and I wrap my arm around her shoulders. "CNN wants me for a prime-time interview. So does60 Minutes."
"You going to do them?"
"I don't know. Part of me wants to make sure this story gets maximum exposure, make sure people understand the scope of what Castellano did. But another part just wants to be done, to move on with my life." She looks up at me. "What do you think?"
"I think you've earned the right to decide what comes next. You want to do interviews, do them. You want to walk away and let the story speak for itself, that's fine too." I press a kiss to her temple. "Either way, I've got your back."
"That's not helpful. I need someone to tell me what to do."
"Since when have you ever done what anyone tells you?"
She laughs, the sound bright and genuine. "Fair point."
Vulture appears in the doorway, Falcon and Sterling beside him, both wearing expressions that say they've got club business. "Ice Pick, we need to talk. Ava, you should probably hear this too."
We follow them to Falcon's office where he closes the door and pulls up something on his computer. It's a news article, and my stomach drops when I see the headline.
Federal Investigation Expands: Outlaw Motorcycle Club's Role in Trafficking Takedown Raises Questions
"Shit," I mutter, reading the piece. It's speculation mostly, connecting dots between the Saints Outlaws and the FBI operation, questioning why an MC was involved in federal law enforcement activities. "This is what we were trying to avoid."
"It's not bad," Ava says, reading over my shoulder. "They're asking questions, but they're not accusing the club of anything illegal. If anything, it makes you look like unlikely heroes."
"We're not heroes. We're an outlaw MC who happened to be on the right side of one fight." Vulture’s jaw is tight. "This kind of attention is dangerous. It makes other clubs think we're working with the feds, and it makes law enforcement think we're assets they can call on."
