Page 60 of Crusher's Illusion

The front room used to breathe loud, messy, alive. Today it’s a fist. Brothers cluster in tight knots, shoulders close, heads tipped in, backs to walls. Voices drop the second we step over the threshold. Not silence, just quieter. Controlled. Like everyone’ssuddenly careful about what’s said and who’s listening. The easy sprawl from the party nights is gone. It’s all angles now.

City is at the end of the bar with Honor, both of them tracking the room without moving their heads. City lifts two fingers off his glass when he clocks me. Honor’s jaw ticks once, his version of hello. His fingers drum once against the wood, the signal I’ve seen him use right before a breach. Rock is posted up near the back door, arms folded, eyes flat as slate. Prospects hover at the edges, too loud when they joke, too fast when a patch nods. Another taps the neck of his beer twice against the bar. Eyes up. A prospect gets sent to the garage for “supplies,” which is code for get him on camera and make him wait.

Every Saint clocks us as we move through. Some look at me first. Some look past me straight at her.

Nevaeh’s spine stays straight, chin up, but I feel her breath stutter against my back for half a second when Draft doesn’t nod back. When Rampage gives her a long, unreadable stare and then turns away. It’s not open hostility. Not yet. But it’s there beneath the surface like a tremor, rattling bolts no one’s used to checking.

Steel steps out of his office, hand braced on the doorframe. His gaze flicks to Nevaeh, then settles on me. No nod. No greeting. Just a long look that saysthings moved while you were gone.

And they did. I can feel it in the walls.

Something cracked. Not enough to split us in half, but enough that everyone feels it now, and nobody’s pretending otherwise.

I keep walking, one hand at Nevaeh’s back, noting who meets her eyes and who doesn’t.

Rock gives her a short nod. Throttle pretends she isn’t there. Nova watches her like he’s trying to solve a math problem hedoesn’t like the answer to. Yeah. The foundation’s been kicked loose.

And if we don’t figure out where the rot is coming from, it’s gonna bring the whole house down.

“Five minutes,” I tell Nevaeh, touching the small of her back. My voice is quiet, but it leaves no room for argument. “You stay in the open where I can see you.”

“Copy,” she says, like she’s been here ten years, not ten weeks.

I force myself to step away.

Steel’s office door shuts behind me with a click that sounds too much like a lock. The room’s half-dark, blinds are drawn just enough that stripes of sunlight cut across the desk, over the pinned map of Detroit and the pushpins bleeding red across the south side. It smells like cigarette smoke and dust. Like old decisions that still haunt the walls. He doesn’t sit. Neither do I.

He stands with his hands braced on the edge of the desk, shoulders tight beneath his cut. For a long second, he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t need to. The silence is loaded. Thick.

“We’re close,” he says, voice low. “Not tight enough to name it on the floor. Tight enough to act if something shifts.”

“You got a name?” I ask.

He doesn’t blink. “I’ve got three.” His gaze skates past my shoulder. “Two of ’em I can afford to be wrong about. One, I can’t.”

The words land hard. He’s not guessing. He’s narrowed it down.

One…two…three. And suddenly the office feels smaller.

“Niko,” I say, because I’m done pretending I don’t hear the way the room says it without saying it.

Steel doesn’t flinch. “Keep your head. And keep your girl out of any storm that starts here. You can’t protect both at once if it goes wrong.”

I almost tell him she’s not just my girl. She’s a line I drew and dared the world to cross. But I swallow it. Pride’s a blade that cuts the hand that holds it.

“We’re not bleeding her for your caution,” I say instead.

“Wasn’t the plan,” he answers, flat. “Yet.”

Thatyethangs between us like a loaded gun.

He’s still my president. I’m still his VP. We don’t need more words. We just stand there for a heartbeat too long, breathing the same stale air, knowing we might have to aim at someone we once called brother.

We nod. Not a greeting. Not respect. Just survival.

Then we walk out, side by side, as brothers ready to fight for our family.

The noise finds me before I even reach the bar. Not a fight noise. Not metal-on-metal, not chairs scraping across concrete.