Page 80 of Malice

Greyson studies me, the overhead light throwing shadows across the hard planes of his face. He doesn’t speak for a long moment, and the room holds its breath, every brother present understanding, on some level, that a line is about to be crossed, and whatever we are now will be redefined by what happens next.

“Alone?” Greyson asks.

“Alone.” I hold his gaze. “But I need you to know what happens in there. I need you to hear it.”

The implication lands between us. Not a request for permission—I stopped asking for permission the moment Caldwell’s text hit Trixie’s phone. This is something else. A courtesy. A heads-up. The acknowledgment that what I’m about to do will have consequences, and the president of this club deserves to know exactly what he’s authorizing.

Greyson’s gaze doesn’t waver. He’s calculating, weighing the cost against the necessity, balancing the violence against the message it sends, the protection it guarantees. I can see the math happening behind those azure eyes, the same cold calculation that’s kept this club alive through decades of blood and bad decisions.

“Thirty minutes,” he says. The words are measured, precise, carrying the weight of absolute authority. “Then we move him.”

I nod.

Matthew drags Caldwell toward the back room, a storage closet we’ve used when conversations need to stay private. Small. Windowless. Soundproofed with insulation and concrete block. The kind of room that eats noise and keeps secrets.

Caldwell struggles. Not well as his wrists are tied, his knees wobbling, his body still healing from the damage I’ve inflicted, but he fights with the frantic energy of someone who instinctively senses their grim fate closing in. His shoes scuff against the cold concrete, and he’s making sounds, not words yet, just raw, guttural noises like a trapped animal.

“Please—” The word finally breaks through, ragged and broken. “You don’t have to. I can give you names. Brokers. Contacts. The whole network. You don’t have to⁠—”

“I know,” I say, and I follow him through the door.

Matthew shoves Caldwell into the center of the room. The space is ten feet by ten, lined with metal shelving that holds cleaning supplies and old club records. A single bare bulb hangs from the ceiling, casting everything in harsh, unforgiving light. The walls are concrete. The floor is concrete. The door is steel-reinforced and locks from the inside.

Matthew’s eyes find mine one more time. There’s something there, not fear, not disgust, but the particular gravity of a man watching his brother in arms take a step with no road back.

“Thirty minutes,” Matthew says. His voice is steady. Resigned. He steps back, and the door closes.

The lock engages with a heavy, final click.

Caldwell is on his knees. His suit is ruined, torn at the shoulder, dark with sweat and the blood that’s seeped through from the wound in his side where my knife found its mark earlier. His silver-streaked hair is matted to his forehead, and his eyes are wide, wild, darting between me and the door and the bare walls like he’s looking for an exit that doesn’t exist.

“There are rules,” I say. I pull the knife from its sheath at my hip. The blade catches the light, still wet, still warm. “For how this goes.”

He’s shaking. Full-body tremors, the kind that come from adrenaline and shock and the bone-deep understanding that the man standing over him has already decided what happens next and isn’t interested in negotiation.

“You want names,” Caldwell says, his voice cracking on the third word. “I’ll give you names. All of them. Every broker, every contact, every person involved in the chain. I’ll write it down. I’ll sign it. Just⁠—”

“I want more than names.”

The words land in the small room, and the silence shatters around them. I watch them hit him, watch the hope drain from his face, watch the calculation behind his eyes shift from survival to something darker, something that looks like the acceptance of the inevitable.

“What do you want?” he asks, and his voice has gone flat. Hollow. The voice of a man who’s already started mourning himself.

“I need you to get this,” I tell him, crouching down so we’re eye to eye. My gaze is icy and locked in; his is desperate, a light about to go out. “You put a hit out on a woman who saves lives. You sent thugs to snatch her up. You tried using me to coax her out of her sanctuary.” I angle my head, examining him like I would a rival in the ring. “You did all that and thought there’d be no consequences.”

“I thought…” He hesitates, swallows hard, his Adam’s apple jerking in his bruised throat. “I thought threatening her would keep her from testifying. I thought she’d back down and⁠—”

“You thought wrong.”

I grab his left hand. Those fingers, smooth and manicured, tell the tale of a man who’s always dealt in handshakes and business dinners, never in the rough world where violence brews. I hook his pinkie and bend it back.

The sound he makes is extraordinary, not a scream, not yet, but something between a gasp and a wail, the particular noise of a man experiencing a kind of pain his body has never been trained to process. His finger bends past the point of comfort, past the point of resistance, and I feel the tendon strain beneath the skin.

“Who took the contract after Ashton Cole denied it?” I ask. My voice is calm. Conversational. The voice of a man asking about the weather.

“I don’t—I don’t know the specific ah—” The sound breaks as I increase the pressure. His finger is at a ninety-degree angle now, the joint screaming, the skin going white where the blood can’t reach.

“Wrong answer.”