Page 13 of Hawk's Secret
I came through the door with Duke and Razor behind me. The bar went quiet the way bars do when three men in Forsaken Angels cuts walk in and the lead one has murder on his face. Thebartender took one look and found somewhere else to be. The two other drinkers did the same.
Colt saw me. The recognition landed. The cockiness flickered. He tried to calculate whether this was a conversation or something else.
It was something else.
I hit him before he got a word out. My fist connected with his jaw and the impact travelled up my arm and into my shoulder, and I felt his head snap sideways and his body follow. He went down over the pool table, scattering balls, and I grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him up and hit him again. And again. Controlled only in the sense that I wasn't going to kill him. Everything short of that was on the table.
He tried to fight back. Swung wild, caught me on the cheekbone, split the skin. I barely felt it. I put him on the floor and hit him until his face didn't look like a face anymore, until his hands stopped coming up to protect himself, until the sounds he was making were wet, gurgling, barely human. Duke stood by the door. Razor stood by the other door. Nobody moved. Nobody intervened.
When I was done with Colt I stood up and looked at Tyler. The hang-around who'd filmed Bree in the first place, who'd shared her body with other men for laughs, who'd handed the footage to Colt knowing exactly what it would be used for.
Tyler was backed against the wall. He'd pissed himself. The stain was spreading down his jeans and he was shaking so hard the bottles on the shelf behind him were rattling.
I didn't hit him as long. I didn't need to. Tyler wasn't Colt. Tyler was a coward who'd hurt a woman from behind a camera and then from behind another man's ambition. I put him down with three hits and left him curled on the floor next to the man he'd conspired with.
I crouched next to Colt. He was conscious, barely, his eyes swollen shut, blood bubbling from his nose and mouth. I leaned in close.
"The tape," I said. My voice was steady. Flat. The calmest I'd been all night. "Every copy. Every file. Every cloud backup. You're going to give my man access to everything you have, and you're going to pray he finds all of it. Because if that footage surfaces anywhere, ever, I'm coming back. And next time I won't stop, because you are a fucking piece of shit.”
He made a sound that might have been agreement. I stood up. Wiped the blood from my hands on my jeans and walked out as if this were just another day.
Rook's man was already waiting in the car park. A hacker, quiet, professional, someone who didn't ask questions and didn't remember faces. He went in with a laptop and came out forty minutes later with both phones, both cloud accounts, and every trace he could find. Digital is digital. Total certainty doesn't exist. But he was good, and what he found, he killed.
The meetingwith the Jackals happened later that day.
A stretch of empty road between territories, dust and scrub and nothing for miles. Angel and me on one side, our bikes behind us, Ghost and Rook fifty yards back. The Jackals president on the other side, two of his officers flanking him, their bikes idling behind them.
Angel walked forward. I walked with him. The Jackals president met us halfway. He was a big man, older, thick through the chest and shoulders, the kind of face that had been hit enough times to stop caring about it. He looked at Angel first, president to president. Angel looked at me. Gave a single nod.
The Jackals president's eyes shifted. He understood the gesture. This conversation wasn't coming from the president. The president was here to sanction it but the conversation was coming from me.
"Your prospect went rogue," I said. No preamble. No warmth. "Ran an unsanctioned operation against my club. Used a sex tape to blackmail a woman into spying for him. Your boy was freelancing on her body to earn his patch."
The Jackals president didn't flinch. He shifted his weight, folded his arms, looked at me with an expression that said he wasn't going to give an inch in front of his own men.
"That's between you and the prospect," he said. "I don't babysit."
"The prospect's been dealt with. Him and the hang-around who filmed her."
His eyes dropped to my hands. The split knuckles, the dried blood still under my fingernails. He did the maths on whatdealt withmeant from a man who looked like I looked right now.
"So what are we doing here?" he asked.
I stepped closer. Not much. Half a step. Enough that he had to adjust his weight, enough that the two officers behind him shifted on their feet.
"That footage surfaces anywhere," I said. "Any platform, any form, any device. It's not a conversation. It's not a negotiation. It's war. And I won't be starting with the prospect next time. I'll be starting with you."
The air between us changed. His jaw tightened. Something flickered behind his eyes, a calculation, a reassessment. He glanced at Angel. Angel's face gave him nothing. The president of Forsaken was three feet away with his arms folded, and his silence said everything. This's president, and his silence said everything. This was sanctioned. Every word of it.
The Jackals president looked back at me. Held my gaze for a long beat.
"I'll handle my people," he said. "You handle yours."
He turned. Walked back to his officers. Got on his bike.
Angel and I stood there until the sound of their engines faded into the distance and until the dust settled.
"Good enough?" Angel asked.
