Page 73 of Malice

Greyson’s hand shoots out, pressing flat against Butcher’s chest before the man can lunge again. It’s not a gentle gesture, more like a wall of restraint, the kind of force that says stand down in every language that matters. Butcher’s breathing comes in dramatic bursts, his face the color of raw meat, veins standing out along his temples like cables.

“Enough.” Greyson’s voice fills the room the way thunder fills a canyon, all-encompassing, inescapable, vibrating in the chest cavity of every man standing. He doesn’t raise it. He doesn’t need to. The word lands and the room goes still.

He turns to Viktor, and something shifts in his expression, not softening, but sharpening, the way a blade narrows before it cuts. “Mr. Garcia. You’ve made your introduction. You’ve stated your… interest.” The word carries the weight of something distasteful, something he’d rather not touch. “But you’ve walked into the middle of something that doesn’t concern you, and my club doesn’t have the bandwidth for your love life tonight.”

Viktor opens his mouth, that sharklike smile starting to reform, but Greyson raises one finger. Just one. The gesture is so simple, so dismissive, that even a man who walks into a room full of armed bikers without flinching pauses.

“If Tiana is interested in you,” Greyson continues, each word measured and cold, “she’ll call you. She’s a grown woman. She doesn’t need her father or her brother or five armed men in suits to negotiate her love life. And she certainly doesn’t need you showing up at her family’s door with a security detail, making claims about ownership like she’s property on a shelf.”

Viktor’s smile flickers. Just barely, a hairline fracture in that polished veneer, but I catch it. He doesn’t like being dismissed. Doesn’t like being told to wait.

“With respect,” Viktor says, and the word respect sounds like it’s being forced through a meat grinder, “I’ve spent two weeks searching.”

“And you can spend two more if that’s what it takes.” Greyson’s voice hasn’t changed. Not a single decibel of shift in his tone or volume, but a hard chill settles through the room. “Tiana will contact you if she wants to. Until then, you and your men will leave this property. Tonight. Without incident.”

The silence that follows is the kind that has weight. Viktor’s guards haven’t moved, they’re still braced, still armed, still watching Greyson with the flat, professional assessment of men calculating odds. My brothers haven’t moved either. We’re a wall of leather and iron and bad intentions, and the math in this room doesn’t favor the man in the charcoal suit, no matter how expensive his watch may be.

Viktor studies Greyson for a long moment. I can see him calculating, reassessing the room, the threat, the man standing between him and whatever he thinks he’s owed. His gaze moves to Butcher, still vibrating with barely contained violence, then to Zach, who looks like he’s two seconds from drawing blood, then back to Greyson.

“Very well,” Viktor says, rising from the chair with the unhurried grace of a man who’s never been rushed in his life. He adjusts his cuffs, smooths his lapels, and offers that smile again, smaller now, tighter, the expression of a man filing away a debt. “I’ll take my leave. But tell Tiana something for me?”

Greyson waits. Doesn’t nod. Doesn’t agree. Just waits.

“Tell her the game doesn’t end because she’s hiding.” Viktor’s eyes move around the room, cataloging each of us with the casual precision of a man memorizing faces for later reference. “I’m a patient man. And what’s mine always comes back to me.”

The words hit Butcher like a physical blow. I see the older man’s hands clench, his shoulders rolling forward, and I brace for the explosion. But Greyson’s hand is still on his chest, and whatever silent communication passes between president and member keeps Butcher rooted to the spot, trembling but contained.

Viktor turns toward the door, and his guards shift with him in a synchronized movement, five men forming a perimeter around their boss with the seamless efficiency of a well-oiled machine. They back toward the exit, weapons still drawn but angled downward, the universal posture of men retreating without conceding defeat.

Nobody in our clubhouse moves. We stand like statues, guns drawn, jaws clenched, the collective energy of a brotherhood that has been pushed to the edge and held there by the iron will of one man.

The door opens. Cold night air pours in, carrying the smell of exhaust and distant rain. Viktor pauses on the threshold, his silhouette framed by the security lights outside, and turns back one last time.

“One more thing,” he says, and his gaze finds me. Not Butcher, not Greyson—me. Those dark, calculating eyes lock onto mine with the focused intensity of a predator that’s just identified the biggest threat in the room.

“Get out.” My voice comes out flat. Dead. The voice I use in the cage when I’ve stopped playing and started ending things. “Now.”

Something flickers across his face, amusement or the particular satisfaction of a man who’s confirmed something he suspected. He nods once, almost imperceptibly, and steps through the door.

His guards follow. The last one out pulls the door shut behind them, and the click of the latch sounds like a period at the end of a sentence that shouldn’t have been spoken.

The room holds its breath.

Then Butcher explodes.

“The fucking nerve, walking in here like my daughter is his woman?” The words come out garbled, half formed, torn apart by the rage that’s been building since Viktor first said Tiana’s name. He slams his fist into the nearest wall, and the drywall cracks, dust sifting down in a fine white cloud. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to find that bastard, and I’m going to kill him…”

“Butcher.” Greyson’s voice cuts through the tirade. He hasn’t moved from his position, still standing between the door and the rest of the room, still radiating that particular calm that means he’s already three steps ahead of everyone else. “Pull it together.”

Butcher rounds on him, face purple, veins standing out like ropes. “Pull it together? That man just walked into our clubhouse and claimed my daughter like she’s⁠—”

“I heard what he said.” Greyson’s voice doesn’t rise. Doesn’t need to. The room has gone quiet again, every man watching the exchange with the stillness of predators who’ve scented blood. “And we’re going to address it. But not tonight. Not while we’ve got a contract out on Trixie and Caldwell’s network bleeding in three different locations.”

The reminder lands like ice water. I feel it snap through me, the sudden, sharp reorientation of a man who’d almost forgotten the war he was fighting because a new enemy walked through the door.

Caldwell. The contract. Trixie, two hours north, waiting for me to call.

Greyson’s eyes find mine across the room, and I read the message there without words: focus. This is a distraction. A complication we don’t need right now.