Page 132 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

An end.

Roman pulls a knife.

Not a show blade.

A work blade, honed, handled, clean.

He sinks it into the floor beside Nico’s boot and leaves it standing.

Nico looks at the knife as if it might explain itself. “You have nothing,” he says too fast. “She will not press charges. She will want to keep the peace. She thinks she is above revenge.”

“Correct,” Roman says. “She chose peace. That is why you are breathing and talking to me about it.”

Deacon pockets the phone and the speaker.

He lifts a small stack of paper and slides it onto the desk.

Affidavits stamped with case numbers.

A freeze order on a shell LLC account.

An annotated memo on the Health Department complaints.

The good inspector’s signature that says she has eyes and a memory.

“You do not touch her name again,” I say. “You do not touch her money. You do not step within fifty miles of that lodge unlessyou are bringing an apology cake and a notarized letter that says you renounce being a coward.”

Nico laughs even though his mouth is smart enough to feel split. “You cannot keep me from my sister,” he says. “You are not the law.”

Roman looks over his shoulder toward the doorway where the neutral riders wait, patient as crows on a high wire. “We never claimed we were,” he says. “And you are not our problem anymore.”

Nico’s bravado cracks at the edge.

He looks toward the door, then back at us, then at the papers, then at the knife, then at his hands.

He realizes what the next hour looks like and suddenly he is a man floating in a pool who remembers he never learned to swim.

“This is kidnapping,” he says, desperate for a word that will make him feel big again.

“No,” Deacon says, and his voice is so gentle it ought to count as mercy. “This is accounting.”

We step aside.

The two quiet men in dark jackets cross the room without hurry.

They lift Nico out of the chair with hands that do not shake.

They do not look at us and we do not look at them.

That is the rule.

They walk him past us and down the stairs and out into the cold.

He takes three steps on his own then starts to talk, folding himself around pleadings and promises and the kind of excuses men invent when they discover consequences come on schedules.

Outside, the SUV door shuts once.

The other door shuts half a breath behind.