Page 67 of Property of the Bikers

Cade looks at the desk. “No,” he says. “We’re not creating deliberate vulnerability. Not after the last time. He came within forty-eight hours of having her in an ambulance already. I’m not manufacturing the ambulance myself.”

“Cade,” I say.

He looks up.

“I’m not asking you to put me in danger,” I say. “I’m asking you to plan around me being in a controlled position. There’s a difference between vulnerability and a trap.” I hold his eyes. “I know Viktor’s methodology better than anyone in this room. I know how his teams operate, how they respond to deviation, what makes them abort, and what makes them commit. I’m not bait. I’m the trap. The bait is the situation. I’m the person who springs it.”

His jaw is set.

I look at him, and I think about a life I don’t know the details of, that I’ve been building from fragments across a month of watching this man operate. The certainty that’s too heavy to be just doctrine. Ghost’s offhand reference in church. The empty chair at the end of the table that no one sits in and no one asks about.

Cade has been on the wrong side of a vulnerable woman before.

I’m not asking him to put me there again.

“Our baby,” I say.

The room goes still.

Not my baby. Not the baby. Ours.

I watch it land on all three of them, the specific weight of that one word said that way in this room, and I watch Cade’s jaw change, the set of it shifting into something that isn’t refusal anymore.

“Our baby grows up in a siege if we don’t end this,” I say. “She comes into the world with Viktor’s deadline still running. Every doctor’s appointment, every school visit, every time she leaves this compound, he’s still out there with his paperwork and his shell companies and his patience.” I pause. “End it. Let me help you end it. Trust me to do my part.”

The silence runs for a long time.

Jax looks at the floor.

Reeve looks at Cade.

Cade looks at the desk, then at me, then at the map on the monitor with its converging red lines.

“We plan it,” he says. “Every detail. Nothing improvised. Abort criteria clear before we start. You follow orders when the operation is running. No deviations, no heroics, no deciding in the moment that you know better than the plan.” He holds my eyes. “If I say abort, you abort. No argument.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Reeve.” Cade looks at him. “Full planning. Rehearsals. Comms protocol. She drills every scenario until it’s automatic.”

“Already starting,” Reeve says.

Jax pushes off the wall. “I don’t like it.” He looks at me. “But she’s right. We end this or the baby grows up in it.” He looks at Cade. “What do you need from me?”

“Perimeter coordination and hospital social engineering,” Cade says. “You’re running the external cover.”

Jax nods once.

We’re in the security office for three hours.

Reeve runs it sequentially and without wasting time. Roles assigned. Cade on overall command. Jax on perimeter coordination and comms. Reeve on tactical oversight. Ghost on the security team. Doc on medical control and hospital coordination.

Me on controlled positioning and comms discipline.

Code phrases established. I need ice chips means all clear. Where’s my phone means threat confirmed. I want to go home means abort immediately.

Jax drills me on the phrases four times until I’m saying them in the right register, scared but not panicked.

Abort criteria: if my safety is compromised, the operation ends. Viktor is secondary to my safety. Cade states that once, clearly, and looks at me when he says it.