Ride Or Bleed

When The Enemy calls

Cairo dropped the letter on the table like it was something that might bite. Half the room agreed with him.

"He wants what?" That was Reyes, already half out of his chair, color climbing up his neck. "A joint patrol? With the Veil? Calloway's got nerve sending this the same week his colors hit our checkpoint."

"They didn't hit the checkpoint," Cairo said, flat. "We already confirmed that. Unknown colors, same night, same playbook. Both clubs got hit."

"Convenient timing for him to suddenly want to be friends."

"Burn it," somebody else said from the back, and a couple of low voices agreed, the kind of agreement that came from men who'd spent six years building their whole identity on hating the Iron Veil and didn't know how to stop on command. "We ride on the docks ourselves, find this Ghost crew before Calloway does, and we don't owe him a damn thing."

Dex let them run. Two full minutes of his own club arguing in circles, voices climbing over each other, Reyes practically vibrating out of his chair, while Dex sat at the head of the table with the letter in front of him and said nothing at all.

He was good at this part. Letting a room burn off its first heat before he stood up and asked it to actually think.

He stood. The room quieted the way it always did, fast, the kind of quiet his men gave him because they'd learned a long time ago that Dex standing meant Dex had already decided something and was about to make the decision feel like a discussion.

"Here's what we know," he said. "Somebody planned a hit on both clubs in the same hour, same night, professional as anything we've seen come through this corridor in years. That's not the Ghost being aggressive. That's the Ghost being patient. Patient means they've been watching us both long enough to know exactly where we're weak."

"So we hit back," Reyes said.

"At who? We don't have a name. We don't have a face. We've got a burned message and two trucks worth of stolen cargo, same as the Veil's probably got." Dex put both hands flat on the table. "You want to ride out tonight looking for a ghost, be my guest. You'll be looking blind, same as Calloway would be looking blind if he tried it alone."

The room had gone quiet enough now that he could hear the old roadhouse settling, wood creaking somewhere in the walls.

"A joint patrol means twice the eyes on the corridor and twice the intelligence on who's actually doing this," Dex went on. "It's temporary. It's tactical. The second this Ghost crew's got a name and a location, the truce goes back to exactly what it was. Cold. Distant. The way everybody in this room actually wants it."

Nobody argued after that, not really, just the low grumbling settle of men who didn't like a decision but understood the math behind it. Reyes sat back down. Cairo's eyes stayed on Dex the whole time, careful, the way they got when he was thinking about something other than the thing being discussed out loud.

The council started filing out once Dex gave the nod, voices dropping back to ordinary volume, the meeting over in everything but name. Cairo stayed behind. Dex had known he would.

"The boys are talking, Dex," Cairo said, once the room had cleared enough. "About the Meridian. About you being there the same night as Calloway."

Dex kept his face even. "I was getting a drink."

"And him?"

"Apparently the same."

"That's convenient."

"That's a coincidence." Dex folded the letter back along its crease, slower than the task required, giving his hands something to do that wasn't reaching for a tone he didn't fully trust himself to land right. "Whole city full of bars, Cairo. We both picked the wrong one on the wrong night. It happens."

"You believe that?"

"I believe we have bigger problems than where Calloway drinks."

It wasn't an answer, not really, and Dex heard the gap in it the second it left his mouth. So did Cairo. Cairo had known him eight years, had stood beside him through Marcus, through the war, through every version of Dex that had existed since he was twenty two years old and angrier than he knew what to do with, and there was a particular kind of silence Cairo gave him when he knew there was more sitting underneath an answer than the answer was admitting to.

This was that silence.

Dex thought, underneath everything he was saying out loud, about Zane at the Meridian. The stillness of him. The four flat words that had somehow done more to Dex's pulse than six years of shouted threats across negotiating tables ever had. The way Zane had looked up at the end of the night like he'd already decided something Dex hadn't caught up to yet.

He didn't mention any of that to his council. He wasn't about to mention it to Cairo either.

If he was honest with himself, which he was trying very hard not to be tonight, the Ghost MC hadn't been the deciding factor in whether he'd take this meeting with Zane Calloway. He would have found a reason. Some version of him, somewhere underneath the president and the six years of hatred, had already wanted this before any of it became a strategic necessity.

Cairo's eyes stayed on him a beat too long. The problem with having a sergeant at arms who'd known him eight years was that silence meant something different to Cairo than it did to everyone else in this club. Dex held his gaze, steady, giving nothing away that he could help.

Cairo looked away first.

But Dex saw what was in his eyes before he did. He wasn't angry.

He was worried.

That was worse.