"Could've been better." He unlocks the truck. "You just committed Xavier to a public appearance in front of a hostile crowd. He's going to love that."
"He doesn't have a choice," I reply, climbing in and slamming the door harder than necessary. "They're right. The club needs to see him. Needs to know he's still in charge. Needs transparency."
"And if he can't convince them? If they vote no confidence anyway?"
"Then we deal with it." I buckle my seatbelt. "But at least we'll have tried."
The drive back is even quieter than the drive there. I spend it staring out the window, mind racing through scenarios and possibilities and all the ways this can go catastrophically wrong.
One week. We have one week to get Xavier ready to face the club. To prove he's still capable of leading despite the wheelchair, despite the injuries, despite everything.
One week to hold everything together.
One week before it all potentially falls apart.
I close my eyes and try to remember what Xavier felt like last night. Try to hold onto that feeling of being present, of being alive, of forgetting everything except his hands on my body and his voice in my ear telling me to stay with him.
But the memory is already fading, slipping through my fingers like smoke.
And the fear is creeping back in. Always the fear. Always the guilt. Always Marcus's face in my dreams.
Always the knowledge that I'm one revelation away from losing everything.
10
XAVIER
The ridefrom the safe house to the compound is a slow-motion descent into a furnace.
Every vibration of the SUV, every pebble the tires kick up, every microscopic shift in the road surface translates into a white-hot needle stitching through my lower spine. The pain is so exquisite, so all-consuming, that I can taste copper in my mouth from biting my tongue to keep from screaming. I'm in the back seat, positioned so I can recline slightly against pillows Valentina insisted on packing, because sitting completely upright for the whole drive is still beyond what my healing spine can handle comfortably for extended periods.
The leather seat is cool beneath my palms. I focus on that. The cold. The solid. The real. Anything to distract from the fact that my body is a civil war and I'm losing.
Zay is driving, Asher in the passenger seat beside him, both silent as graves. They've been silent since we left the house, since I announced this suicide mission, since Valentina tried to talk me out of it and I shut her down with words I immediately regretted. Valentina is in the back seat with me. She's wearingmy hoodie—the oversized Raiders one with the faded logo—the sleeves pushed up past her elbows. Her fingers twist the fabric of her jeans until her knuckles are as white as bone, as white as the clouds outside the window. She won't look at me. Hasn't looked at me since I told her that secrets destroy us, that if she can't trust me with the truth then maybe we don't have anything at all.
The words hang between us like smoke. Toxic. Choking.
"Five minutes out," Zay calls back, his voice cutting through the tension in the vehicle.
"Asher," I rasp, my voice sounding like it's been dragged over broken glass, over years of cigarettes and screaming and swallowing pain. "The brace."
When we pull into the alley behind the clubhouse, Asher climbs into the back seat of the SUV. Gravel crunches under the tires. The engine dies. Silence except for my labored breathing.
He doesn't offer pity. Doesn't ask if I'm sure about this. Doesn't suggest one more time that this is insane. He just pulls the rigid medical brace from its black duffel bag—the kind of bag that could hold weapons or medical supplies, the kind of bag that's seen too much of both.
The brace is a cage of hard plastic and industrial Velcro, designed by sadists to keep my torso upright, to force a stability my muscles can no longer provide on their own. It's supposed to help. Right now it looks like a torture device.
"This is going to hurt, X," Asher murmurs, his eyes meeting mine. There's no clinical distance there now, notactical assessment—just the grim acknowledgment of a soldier preparing a comrade for the rack. For the breaking wheel. For whatever medieval torture this is about to become.
"Just do it."
He wrenches the straps tight in one swift, practiced motion.
My vision goes gray at the edges, pixelating like a bad TV signal. The world tilts violently on its axis as the brace bites into my ribs with vicious teeth, forcing my spine into an unnaturally straight line that feels like it's being snapped in half by invisible hands. Pain explodes through my chest, my back, radiating outward in waves that make my hands shake.
I swallow the scream. Bite it back until I taste blood, the copper flooding my mouth. I won't go in there sounding like a wounded animal, like prey, like something to be culled from the herd. I go in as the President. As Xavier King. As the man who built this club from nothing and won't watch it die.
"Get the chair," I manage through gritted teeth, my breath coming in short, jagged hitches that make the brace dig in deeper with each inhale.
