Page 198 of Joker

Cain swears under his breath. Shadow’s jaw tightens. Blaze goes still in that quiet, dangerous way he gets when something crosses from annoying into personal.

Logan looks at me again. And there’s a question there. Not spoken. Not needed.

What are you doing about it?

I hold his gaze. And I give him the answer. “I’m ending this.”

The words come out flat. Certain. No room for argument. No space for alternatives.

Logan studies me for a second. Then he nods once. “Alright,” he says. “Then we stop playing defense.”

That’s it.

No speech. No hesitation. No pushback.

Just a decision.

And just like that, the entire direction of this shifts.

The ride back to the clubhouse feels different.

Not tense. Not reactive. Focused.

Every brother moving with purpose now instead of anticipation.

This isn’t about waiting for the next move anymore. This is about making the last one.

By the time we hit the gates, Dom is already in position, laptop open, feeds pulled up, lines of data scrolling fast enough to make most people dizzy.

I step into church, my brothers surrounding the table. Hungry for vengeance, for blood.

“Talk to me,” Logan says.

Dom doesn’t waste time. “I’ve got partial plate recognition on the SUV from earlier,” he says, fingers flying overthe keys. “It’s tied to a rental under a shell name, but I traced the payment chain.”

He pulls up another screen. “There’s a connection to a holding property about forty miles out. Not official. Not registered to him directly. But it’s close enough to smell like one of his.”

“Safe house,” Blaze mutters.

“Or staging ground,” Shadow adds.

I step closer to the screen. “Can you confirm he’s there?”

“Not yet,” Dom says. “But I’ve got movement patterns. Phones pinging in and out. One number flagged earlier just hit the same tower twice in the last hour.”

He glances at me. “Could be him.”

Could be is enough. For now.

Logan leans back slightly, arms crossed, thinking. “We move quiet,” he says. “No noise. No unnecessary attention. We find him, we confirm, then we finish it.”

No argument. No debate.

Just agreement.

Because we all know what “finish it” means.

Later, after the initial movement is set, after the orders are given and the pieces start sliding into place, I find her. She’s in my room. Not hers. Mine. That hits harder than anything else that’s happened today. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, Lexi curled up beside her, finally asleep again with Bunny tucked under her chin like nothing in the world could possibly hurt her.