“They are a bit shaken up, but that’s to be expected.” Buck hesitated, and Gorgon could tell that he wasn’t going to like what he said next. “You let him walk.” It wasn’t a question, and damn if it didn’t feel like criticism.
Gorgon finally looked at him. “You think I should’ve killed him?”
“I think he’s gonna come back even meaner next time,” Buck challenged. He was right. Cole wasn’t about to give up, andmaybe letting him go was a massive mistake—one that his men would pay for with their lives, possibly.
“He was always gonna come back,” Gorgon grumbled.
Buck studied him for a long second, then gave a slow nod. “This is about her, isn’t it? You didn’t want her to see the monster in you—the one who would have killed that fucker in cold blood if she hadn’t been watching.”
Gorgon didn’t answer right away, but he didn’t need to. Buck exhaled, “That’s what I thought.” Silence settled between them again, thick as the snowfall. “You’re getting too close to her,” Buck added, just stating a fact.
Gorgon’s jaw tightened. “I don’t need you sticking your nose into my business. Besides, I’m not getting close to her.” That was a total lie, and from the look on Buck’s face, he knew it.
“Yeah,” Buck said. “You keep telling yourself that.” He walked off before Gorgon could respond, not that there was anything to say. Gorgon stood there a while longer, letting the wind bite through his jacket, grounding himself in the cold. Pain was simple. He understood pain, but it was nothing like this. It was nothing like the ache that he had for Kimi.
She wasn’t supposed to matter. She was a problem—a complication. She was a temporary situation that needed handling. That’s what he’d told himself the night she showed up. That’s what he’d told himself every night since, but it didn’t make it true.
He turned toward the clubhouse, his boots crunching through snow, and forced his mind back into order. He needed to concentrate on damage assessment and what came next. He needed the control that he so desperately craved. Being in control was how men like him survived. He didn’t live by feelings, and he never planned on it—until her.
Inside, the heat hit him first, along with the low hum of voices. The crew was already resetting—cleaning weapons,patching wounds, acting like this was just another normal morning, and maybe for them, it was. But for him, none of this was normal. For him, everything had shifted the second he saw Cole aim his gun at her. Something old and violent had snapped loose in his chest. It wasn’t anger, exactly, but something worse—possession. The realization sat heavy and unwelcome in his chest. He didn’t like it. Hell, he didn’t trust it because he didn’t trust anything that made him hesitate—and he hesitated. For half a second, with Cole in his sights, because of her. That kind of weakness got people killed, and he knew that better than most.
“Kimi still upstairs?” he asked one of the guys passing by.
“Yeah. Trudi’s with her.” Gorgon nodded and headed for his office instead. Distance—he needed distance.
The door shut behind him with a solid click. The room smelled like leather, gun oil, and the faint trace of her—something softer that didn’t belong in a place like this. His eyes dropped to the desk. That’s when he saw it—an envelope. It was plain and unmarked, sitting dead center like it had been waiting for him.
Gorgon went still. No one got into his office without permission—no one. His hand moved slowly, deliberately, reaching for it—but not before he checked the room out of habit. Everything looked to be in place except for that envelope. He didn’t know why he was freaking out. It was just an envelope, but the way that it sat on his desk, as though waiting for him to open it, gave him a bad feeling.
He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. There was no name on it, and it wasn’t sealed. It was already open, and a low curse slipped under his breath.
That meant one of two things—either someone inside his club had gotten curious, or Kimi had. His jaw tightened. He slid a finger inside and pulled out the contents. Photos slipped out and hit the desk one by one. They were of Kimi. She was bruisedand bloody. There were a few of her in a motel room. She seemed unaware of the camera that was catching her from the window.
Gorgon stilled when he got to the last photo of her. It was older and seemed different from the others. Kimi was sitting at a table with a man Gorgon recognized immediately. It wasn’t Cole. He was worse than Cole—he was a Fed. He had met the guy a few times, and knew that he was the kind of man who didn’t get his hands dirty unless something was in it for him.
Gorgon felt his blood run cold as he flipped to the last thing in the envelope—a piece of paper. It was a document and looked official. It had names, dates, and charges against Cole and his men. And right there, in black and white, was Kimi’s name. It looked like an open federal case to him. It talked about witnesses, informants, and assets.
The room went silent around him as Gorgon stared at the page. Something cold and precise settled inside him. The pieces had clicked into place, and too many things suddenly made sense.
The running, the fear, and Cole. This wasn’t just some man chasing what he thought was his. This was bigger and uglier in a way street violence never was. Which meant one thing. They hadn’t just taken in a woman running from a bad man. They’d taken in a woman in the middle of something that could burn all of them to the ground.
A slow breath filled his lungs. Then, it left just as controlled. There was no panic, and no reaction to what he had just read. That’s how he survived this long—nothing surprised him anymore. But underneath that control, there was something darker. Because none of that explained the way she’d looked at him. None of it explained the way she’d whispered his name like it mattered. And it damn sure didn’t explain why she hadn’t told him about any of it.
The door creaked behind him, but Gorgon didn’t turn. He knew exactly who it was. “I see you found the envelope that I left for you.” Kimi said. Her voice was soft and careful—too careful.
His grip tightened slightly on the paper before he set it back down on his desk. He turned and his eyes locked on hers—no heat, no softness. Just something sharp enough to cut through all the bullshit.
“You want to tell me,” he said evenly, “why the hell the feds have a file on you and why it’s sitting on my desk?” Silence stretched between them. Tension coiled, and just like that—the real storm finally hit.
Kimi
Kimi knew the second he found the envelope that she had left on his desk. She didn’t hear him open the envelope, and didn’t see the photos hit the desk. But something in her chest went tight—like a wire pulled too hard, ready to snap. It was instinct, and it had kept her alive this long. She just wondered when her luck might run out, and by the look on Gorgon’s face, it might already have.
She was up in her room with Trudi when she realized that it was too quiet downstairs. Things felt too controlled from the normal chaos that usually filled the place. It was too still, and that made her worry. She had made up some excuse to Trudi about needing some air and went to find Gorgon. Kimi stood outside his office door for a long second, her hand hovering just above the doorknob as she debated whether she should go in or not. If she did, this would be it. There would be no more running, no more half-truths, and no more pretending she could outrun what she’d dragged into his world.
Her fingers curled around the knob and then pushed the door open. It creaked softly as though announcing her presence. Gorgon stood behind the desk, broad and immovable, the storm still clinging to his eyes as the snow melted into his jacket.His boots were still wet, and his presence filled the room like something dangerous contained just enough to pass for control.
The envelope sat open on his desk, and the photos were spread out over the surface. And the file, her file, was in his hands. He knew everything now, and Kimi’s stomach dropped. There would be no easing into this, because there was no soft version of the truth left to give. Maybe she was a coward for just leaving it on his desk to find, but she didn’t care. It was what she had to do because facing him while she told him everything was going to be impossible for her.
