Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Wolf

A call came in just after nine.

I was still in the office, running on two hours of sleep and the last of the whiskey, when Knox shoved the door open without knocking. His face was set in the particular way that meant someone had already bled.

“Reapers hit the east warehouse,” he said. “Two of ours inside. One’s critical. Product’s gone.”

I was on my feet before he finished the sentence. “How long ago?”

“Forty minutes. Diesel just called it in. Rook’s already rolling.”

I grabbed the cut off the back of the chair and shrugged into it. The weight of the leather settled across my shoulders like it always did. Whatever personal shit had kept me up all night staring at an empty bar got shoved into a locked box.

The club came first. Always.

“Rally at the warehouse,” I told him. “Full presence. No prospects.”

Knox nodded once and was already moving.

I took the bike hard across town. Morning traffic parted for the sound of the engine; people in this city had learned what the president’s bike meant. By the time I rolled up on the east warehouse the lot was half full of our colors. Rook stood near the open bay door with blood on his hands and a look that said the night had gone worse than the call suggested.

Inside, the place was gutted. Crates smashed. Product missing—almost the entire shipment we’d been moving for the Colombians. One of our guys, a patched member named Viper, lay on a makeshift stretcher with a bullet in his side while the club’s medic worked on him. Another brother sat against the wall, face gray, holding a pressure bandage to his thigh.

Diesel met me halfway across the concrete. “Four of them. Masked, but the cuts were clear—Reapers. They knew exactly where to hit and when the night watch rotated. In and out in under ten minutes.”

I looked at the empty space where sixty keys of product should have been. Then at the blood on the floor. Then at Rook.

“Survivors?” I asked.

Rook’s voice was flat. “One of theirs caught a round on the way out. Left him in the alley. Still breathing when I got here. Barely.”

“Bring him.”

They dragged the Reaper in and dropped him at my feet. Young, maybe mid-twenties. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. The patch on his cut was fresh enough that the edges hadn’t frayed yet. I crouched, gripped his jaw, and forced his eyes to meet mine.

“Who gave the order?”

He tried to spit. Mostly blood came out. I tightened my grip until something in his face clicked.

“Talk,” I said quietly, “or I start taking pieces you won’t get back.”

It took less than three minutes. Fear and blood loss made him generous. The hit had come straight from their president—some territorial bullshit about us moving product through what they considered their corridor. They’d been watching the warehouse for two weeks, waiting for the exact window when our numbers were light.

I stood, wiped my hand on my jeans, and looked at Rook. “Finish it. Dump him where they’ll find him. Message needs to be clear.”

Rook nodded and dragged the kid back out. A single shot sounded a minute later. No one flinched.

I turned to the rest of the brothers gathered in the bay. Every face was hard, waiting.

“This doesn’t go unanswered,” I said. “They hit our house, took our product, put two of ours in the ground if Viper doesn’t pull through. We hit back harder. Knox—full inventory of what we lost and what the Colombians are going to expect. Diesel—lock down every other storage site by noon. Nobody moves product without my word until further notice. Rook—get me everything we have on Reaper movements in the last month. I want locations, schedules, soft targets.”

A murmur of agreement moved through the group.

“And the Colombians?” Knox asked, voice low enough that only I heard.

“I’ll make the call.” The words tasted like ash. Those men didn’t accept excuses, and they didn’t accept losses. Someone was going to have to bleed for this—either the Reapers or us. I already knew which option I preferred.

We spent the next two hours locking the scene down, getting Viper loaded into a van for the private clinic we used, and scrubbing anything that could draw the wrong kind of attention. By the time the lot started to clear, the sun was high and the full weight of the morning had settled into my bones.

Knox lingered after the others left. “You good?”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t look convinced. “You were already wound tight before this. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

I shot him a look that shut that line of conversation down. He raised both hands and backed off, but the point had landed. The Harlow problem hadn’t disappeared just because someone had decided to start a war. It sat under my skin like a second pulse, waiting.

I rode back to the clubhouse alone. The place was quiet when I walked in—too early for the usual crowd. The bar stood empty, stools still stacked from the night before. I stared at the stretch of wood where she’d leaned last night with that bottle and that reckless mouth, and the jealousy from the storage building rose up all over again, unwanted and sharp.

I shoved it down.

There was a war starting. Two of my men were bleeding. Sixty keys of product were in enemy hands, and the Colombians would be calling soon looking for answers I didn’t have yet. I didn’t have room for a bartender who fucked prospects in side buildings and looked at me like she wanted me to ruin her.

I poured a measure of whiskey anyway, drank it standing up, and forced my focus back to the only thing that was allowed to matter.

The Reapers had drawn first blood. They were about to learn what that cost.