Page 6 of Crusher's Illusion

Jordan’s face flashes behind my eyes. Mouth full of blood. Fingers slipping from mine. His lifeless eyes stared up at me. He trusted me, too, and look where that got him. This isn’t about headlines, it’s about body bags.

Nevaeh didn’t just write a story. She opened a door I can’t close. Now I’ve got to find a way to shut it before someone else bleeds.

Every rule I made for myself shatters.

It took nine years to build a wall between the man I was and the man I am now. Nevaeh Humphreys just kicked a hole in it, and I can already feel the bullets coming through.

THREE

FIRST STRIKE

CRUSHER

The thing about instincts is that they never whisper. They scream, and right now, mine are howling like wolves in a forest fire.

There’s a twitch in the air this morning, crawling under my skin like static. I feel it before I even hear the damn name.

City’s voice cuts through the thrum of the garage speaker like a knife through Kevlar. “Crusher.” No greeting. No pleasantries. Just that tone. The one he uses when shit’s about to hit the fan.

I finish tightening the brake line on Rampage’s bike, then straighten slowly, wiping my hands on a rag. “What?”

“Nevaeh Dawn Humphreys.”

The name lands like a hammer to the chest. Every hair on my neck stands on end. “What about her?”

“Nevaeh Humphreys dropped that feel-good feature at The Narrative this morning, highlighting anonymous donors to the Mt. Pleasant Youth Restoration Fund.” He pauses. “Guess who made the cut.”

My heart slams once, twice. Cold sweat beads across the back of my neck even though the air in the garage is heavy with oil and heat. “She named us?”

“She namedyou,brother.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“She didn’t spell it out,” City says quickly. “Just a line. Something about an ‘Erik M. from Northside’ being a consistent donor. No club mention. No ‘Crusher’. But she’s sniffing around. That’s all I needed to hear.”

I toss the rag aside, heart pounding like a war drum in my chest. That fund was supposed to be clean. Quiet. Completely untraceable. Just good being done in the shadows, the way we operate.

“It was supposed to be off-grid,” I mutter, the words scraping out of my throat.

“I know,” City says. “But it ain’t anymore. You want me to dig deeper? Send a warning?”

“No,” I snap. “I’ll handle it.”

And I will.

The second I step into that glass-and-metal fortress she calls an office building, I want to turn around and walk out. It’s too bright. Too polished. Too… hollow. Like a place where people pretend truth lives in sound bites and headlines.

The receptionist stands when she sees me. “Sir, do you have an appoint…”

I blow past her with a growl. I’m not here for decorum. I’m not in the mood for pleasantries. I’m not in the mood for much of anything except shutting this down before it burns through everything we’ve built.

I spot her before she spots me. She’s sitting at a desk near the far windows, perched cross-legged in her chair, a spiral notebook balanced against her thigh. She’s scribbling furiouslywhile her laptop blinks beside her. The streaming service is paused mid-scene. A vintage black-and-white movie.

That detail throws me.

She’s not what I expected. Not even close.

Dark curls piled high, tendrils escaping like they’ve got their own opinions. She’s not dressed like a buttoned-up reporter. She looks like the type who writes barefoot at two in the morning, with music too loud and a mug of something dangerous in her hand.