Page 126 of Cobra
His arms come around me slowly at first, then tighter, pulling me into him like he’s still not used to being allowed to hold something without expecting it to disappear. I press my cheek to his chest. His heart beats hard beneath my ear. Steady. Real. Mine.
The word rises quietly in me. Not possession. Choice. He is mine because I choose him. And I am his because I choose that too. Not because I’m trapped. Not because I’m afraid. Because I see everything. And I stay.
He lowers his mouth to the top of my head, breathing me in like the act itself steadies him. “They don’t take you from me,” he says. Low. Final. “They don’t take this from you.”
My eyes close.
This.
Family. Safety. A future. Him. Me.
All of it.
“No,” I whisper. “They don’t.”
His arms tighten once. And in that quiet room, with the threat still outside and war waiting somewhere beyond the walls, I understand something with perfect clarity.
I don’t love who I hope Cobra could become.
I love exactly who he is.
And I’m still here.
Logan’s office isn’t built for this many men. Doesn’t matter. We make the room fit the problem.
Logan stands behind his desk, both hands braced on the wood, eyes hard enough to cut through every man in front of him. Dom has his laptop open on the desk, another tablet beside it, burner phone records and financial sheets split across three screens. Landon stands to his right with a folder tucked under one arm, face tight in a way that says the numbers are ugly before he ever opens his mouth.
Cain leans near the door. Shadow stands beside him, silent and still. Joker has his back to the wall, arms crossed, expression blank in a way that always means something dark is awake under his skin. Hammer takes up space near the window, keeping one eye on the lot even though we’ve got prospects posted outside.
I stand near the far wall. Still. Watching.
No one jokes. Not even Blaze, who isn’t in the room because Logan kept this meeting tight. No extra voices. No noise. No bullshit. This isn’t church, not exactly. This is smaller. Sharper. A war room built out of Logan’s office because the problem has moved past ordinary club business.
Dom taps a key, and a map fills the screen. “New intel,” he says. His voice is clipped. No humor. No edge for show. Just facts. “Burners gave us dead ends individually, but cross-referenced with the payments Landon flagged, they start forming a route.”
Logan’s jaw tightens. “Show me.”
Dom turns the laptop slightly. “Shell accounts are cycling money through small payouts, never enough to set off a major flag alone. The mistake is consistency. Same payout windows. Same routing patterns. Same receiving clusters.”
“Regional?” Shadow asks.
“Yeah,” Dom answers. “Not local. Not one crew running grabs out of one town. We’re looking at hubs.”
Cain curses under his breath.
Landon opens the folder and pulls out a printed sheet. “Money confirms it. This isn’t street-level cash. It’s structured like a business. Regular payouts, recurring handlers, layered distribution. Whoever is running it knows how to keep the top buried.”
Hammer’s gaze shifts from the window. “How big?”
Dom doesn’t answer immediately. That says enough. Then he says, “Bigger than we wanted.”
Joker’s mouth doesn’t move, but his eyes sharpen. “Always is.”
Dom taps again. More points appear on the map. “Multiple cities flagged. Missing persons reports line up with chatter. Not all of them were filed the same way, not all of them got attention. Some are runaways on paper. Some are domestic cases. Some are just gone.”
My hands stay loose at my sides. Inside, everything narrows.
Dom continues. “Different neighborhoods. Different lifestyles. Different ages within a range. Same structure underneath. Routine tracking. Target profiling. Fast extraction.”
