Logan’s eyes flick to him. “Explain.”
“Expand intel,” Dom says. “Track the money, track the routes, build a clearer picture. At the same time, we tighten security here. Lock down patterns. Make sure no one else is easy to grab.”
“Everyone stay in pairs,” Cain adds. “No one moves alone.”
“Prospects rotate coverage,” Shadow says. “Inside and out.”
Blaze nods. “We make this place a fucking fortress without making it feel like one.”
Logan considers it. Then looks back at me. “And her?”
“She stays.” I don’t say her name. I don’t say Olivia. I don’t say anything else. Just that.
The words sit in the room.
Blaze exhales slowly through his nose.
Joker’s mouth curves faintly.
Shadow watches.
Logan nods once. “Fine,” he says. “She stays.” It’s not approval. It’s acceptance.
Dom turns his laptop back toward himself. “I’ll keep digging. There’s a pattern here. We just need to find the thread that ties it all together.”
“We’ll find it,” Landon adds.
I lean back slightly in my chair. For the first time since this started, everything feels clear.Not easier. Not lighter. Clear. They have a system. They picked her.
Wrong move.
Dom says, “We’ll find the source.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. Inside, the thought settles like something permanent. Not hope. Not a plan. Certainty.
I’ll end it.
Because she isn’t part of the problem anymore.
She’s the reason it ends.
The room is quiet in a way that feels almost unnatural after everything that’s happened. No shouting. No footsteps pounding through the hall. No doors slamming or men barking orders or the low hum of tension that seems to sit under the skin of this place even on calmer days. Just stillness.
Cobra’s room holds that stillness differently than the rest of the clubhouse. It isn’t soft. It isn’t comforting in any traditional sense. But it’s contained. Ordered. Controlled.
That word again.
Everything about him comes back to that.
Control.
I sit on the edge of his bed, fingers curled into the fabric of the blanket beneath me, grounding myself in something solid while my head throbs in slow, steady pulses. The dull ache is better than it was earlier, but it hasn’t faded completely. It’s there, a reminder of the pavement, the fall, the moment everything went wrong. I haven’t laid down.
Doc said I shouldn’t sleep too deeply. Someone will come check on me, wake me, make sure I’m still responsive, still aware, still here. The thought echoes once and then settles.
I glance toward the door. Closed.Locked earlier when Cobra shut Blaze out and turned back to me like the world outside didn’t matter in that moment. He left after that. Not long after. Long enough to make sure I was steady. Long enough to say what he needed to say. Then gone again. Back to Logan. Back to church. Back to whatever is unfolding downstairs that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with me at the same time.
I don’t like that I notice the difference. I don’t like that I feel it. But I do. The quiet presses in again, and I let my gaze move slowly around the room.
