I look at Millie. Her eyes are bright, her throat is working, and she is not going to cry, but it’s close.
“He came,” she says, very softly.
“He came,” I confirm.
She reaches out and squeezes my arm once, brief and certain, and then composes herself completely—the McClane composure. I have come to love it, the way it doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel things, only that she chooses when and where.
Deek materializes at my shoulder as if he’s been waiting for the exact moment I’m too distracted to defend myself. “You can’t stand there,” he mutters, already steering me half a step to the left with the heel of his hand between my shoulder blades. “That’s where Ghost’s aunt’s friend’s cousin is supposed to sit.”
I stare at him. “That’s not a real person.”
“She is emotionally real to Ghost’s aunt,” he says gravely. “Move.”
I let him reposition me like furniture, mostly because fighting him would require more energy than I currently possess.
Across the room, my dad catches my eye. He doesn’t smile. He has never been a man for public displays of anything. He inclines his head once, the kind of nod that carries approval, reassurance, and a lifetime of unspoken understanding in one economical movement.
Something tight in my chest loosens a fraction.
Nitro barrels in from my blind side a second later, his hand landing hard between my shoulders. “Jesus, you look like you’re walking to your own funeral,” he says, eyeing me with cheerful concern. “You want me to start a collection?”
“Shut up.”
He grins wider, entirely unbothered. “That’s the spirit.”
His laughter rolls off him, and into the room, loud enough to dissolve a pocket of tension I hadn’t even realized I was radiating.
Near the cake table, Marley has one hip propped against the edge of the long trestle, her hands animated as she talks, already halfway through building an argument she intends to win. Millie stands at an angle toward her, head tipped slightly, listening with that attentiveness that makes people feel the most important thing in the room. She laughs at something Marley says, the sound warm and easy, and Marley’s expression softens in response, like she’s pleased with herself for earning it.
They shift closer without thinking about it, shoulders almost brushing, already moving in that shared orbit they’ve developed over the last few weeks, the kind of unspoken alignment that only forms when people decide, consciously or not, that they’re safe with each other.
Watching her there, inside this space, surrounded by leather cuts, low voices, and the constant hum of a life she didn’t grow up in but has somehow stepped into without losing herself, something inside me finally settles.
The weight I woke up with this morning lifts off my ribs as if it had never been properly anchored in the first place.
I draw in a breath that feels cleaner than the last several have.
All right…
It’s time.
I turn, scanning the room for Sin, but suddenly, the proximity alarm sounds.
We all spin to Ghost, who is madly staring at the security feeds. His eyes shoot up, and he turns pale. “Shit, Pres, it’s the Five-O, and they’re not asking about coming in.”
Sin grunts, shaking his head. “Fuck, raid protocol, everyone get ready!”
We move as one to the center of the clubroom, guns stowed, hands raised as the front door opens. Two men step through it, dressed in suits, bringing with them an unshakable authority that doesn’t belong to this room but doesn’t need permission to be here.
One lifts a badge… LVPD.
The other has a folded document in his hand.
Behind them, SWAT pour in, weapons raised, poised and waiting.
The shift moves through the room fast and silent, men who read threat for a living going still, laughter dying mid-sentence, conversations cutting off, everybody angling toward the door.
“William Beckett.” The detective says my name with certainty, like it’s already been confirmed three different ways, and the sound of it carries farther than it should, cutting through conversation, laughter, and the low hum of music until everything seems to tilt toward me at once.
