Blaze leans back. “Mac’s gonna murder you.”
Logan’s expression shifts for the first time all morning. Not fear. Close enough to amuse the room. “She doesn’t need details.”
Carter actually huffs a laugh. “You’re limping. That is a detail.”
“She’ll notice,” Dom says without looking up.
“She notices everything,” Cain adds.
Logan mutters, “Fuck all of you.”
There it is. Life. Not normal. Not healed. But returning in small, ugly, familiar pieces. It matters more than I expect.
Logan ends church twenty minutes later.
Chairs scrape back. Men stand carefully, most of us slower than usual. Landon protects his arm. Logan protects his knee while pretending he isn’t. Joker heads for the basement with a look on his face that says someone should supervise. Shadow follows, because of course he does.
The room empties piece by piece.
I stay seated. Not because Logan told me to. Because I need one second before I go upstairs and become something other than a weapon again.
Logan pauses at the door. “You good?”
I look at the table. Coffee. Blood on a rag near where Landon sat. Evidence of survival. “No.”
He nods. “Me either.” Then he leaves.
The door closes behind him.
I sit in church alone for a moment, staring at nothing.
Matteo’s favor hangs over us. The network is wounded, not dead. RICO is quiet, which means nothing good. Eli is gone. Olivia is upstairs.
Alive.
Mine.
For the first time in my life, I have something permanent to lose. That should make me weaker. It doesn’t. It gives every violent thing in me a future to guard. I stand and head for the door.
I’m not surviving for myself anymore.
I’m building the world around her, one body, one boundary, one promise at a time.
The clubhouse sounds alive again. Not normal exactly, because I don’t think normal has ever been the right word for this place, but alive. That matters more than I thought it would.
Coffee brews in the kitchen. Somewhere near the main room, one of the toddlers lets out a shriek that sounds half furious and half delighted, and three different women sigh like they already know whatever just happened is going to involve a mess. The low rumble of men’s voices carries from outside, but for once, I’m not tracking them for danger.
I’m not counting exits. I’m not bracing. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a mug warming my hands, surrounded by women who all look like they’ve survived hell in different ways and still decided to laugh afterward.
Emma sits to my left, calm and steady, with the kind of presence that makes the room feel less jagged around the edges. Mac is across from me, one eyebrow lifted as she watches Knox try to drag a throw pillow twice his size across the floor. Kya leans against the counter with Remy balanced on her hip, muttering about how Dom’s son has apparently inherited his father’s refusal to accept limits. Brooke is curled in a chair near the end of the table, quieter than most of them, but her eyes miss nothing. Shaina sits beside Raven, both of them wearing expressions that suggest they could handle a crisis with a look and a locked door. Bella is half perched on the counter despite Mac telling her twice that food prep surfaces are not chairs, and Brynn sits nearby with Allison and Ana, not quite as loud as the others but not outside the circle either.
And then there’s me. Sitting with them. Included. Not checked on every five seconds.Not treated like I might fall apart if someone says the wrong thing. That might be the greatest kindness they’ve given me so far.
“Mac,” Kya says, watching Knox make serious progress with the pillow, “your kid is about to use that thing as a weapon.”
Mac glances over. “That is Logan’s determination in tiny shoes.”
“Determination?” Brooke asks mildly. “That looks like criminal intent.”
