She looked at me for a long moment. There were a lot of things in that look. Fear. Anger. Guilt. A hard, hot thread of stubborn that had been there since the first time I saw her walk into our clubhouse like she belonged there.
“Okay,” she said.
Just that.
She turned into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the water start up a minute later.
I let myself sit on the edge of the bed while she was out of sight, rolled my shoulders, stared at the far wall.
The Watcher had looked right at her. Right through the camera. Right through me.
I had seen a lot of men like him overseas. Men who thought people were statistics. Collateral. Acceptable losses.
Those men tended to die ugly when I got to them.
I knew she’d be unfinished business to them.
The Watcher had seen her. Really seen her.
He’d dragged a girl into that elevator while Amanda stood there, frozen, watching. And when he realized she was gone, pulled out, erased from the board, he wouldn’t wonderifsomething was wrong.
He’d know.
He would want her scared. Want her running. Want her to break.
That would not happen.
“We are coming for you fucker,” I said under my breath, to the empty room, to the ghosts in my head, to the man in the suit who would never hear it.
Iron Battalion protected its own.
He wanted a war.
He was about to get one.
2
AMANDA
The clubhouse kitchen smelled like coffee strong enough to burn a hole straight through the counter. Someone had left the pot on too long again, and Brutus was muttering about it under his breath as he stirred something questionable on the stove.
Coming down from my room felt like stepping into a storm. Loud voices, heavy boots, the scrape of metal, Smoke pacing in circles like he was late for a meeting no one told him about.
Someone was arguing near the back hallway about a missing wrench. Another voice barked back that it had been returned last night and if it wasn’t where it belonged now, that sounded like a personal problem. A chair scraped loudly against tile. Laughter followed. The kind that came easy when you trusted the people around you to have your back.
The kitchen wasn’t just loud, it was layered. Sounds on top of sounds. Conversations that overlapped and cut each other off. Familiar rhythms I was only just beginning to recognize. Someone slammed a cabinet too hard. Someone else complained about it. Smoke barked once, sharp and impatient, like he thought the whole thing was inefficient.
I took another step inside, letting it wash over me.
For a second, my breathe hitched in my chest. There were too many voices coming from too many directions. My body braced out of habit, waiting for something to go wrong.
But nothing did.
No alarms. No raised weapons. No sudden stillness.
Just noise. Normal, messy, alive noise.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until it was there.
