Frustrated, I switch contacts and call Em instead. It rings a few times before he picks up.
“Where the fuck is Ronan?” I say in greeting, skipping any pretense. I don’t have the patience for small talk. Not tonight. Not with everything burning down around us.
There’s a beat of silence, then a low sigh crackles through the line. “If you’re calling me for that, I guess you haven’t found him either.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, jaw clenching. “He’s not answering you either?”
“Not since he left us earlier,” Emerson says, voice tight. “He was supposed to be done by now. His match should’ve ended an hour ago. Unless he picked up a last-minute one, which… you know him.”
Yeah. I do. Ronan lives for chaos. Hell, heischaos. He’s always been the first to throw his fists into something bloody without asking for the reason. But lately, that reckless edge of his has been sharpening into something worse, something feral. And after the stunt he pulled last week, I wouldn’t put it past him to fight just to blow off steam.
“Think he’s still at The Underground?” I ask, already turning back toward my car, tension tightening across my shoulders.
“Either there or on his way to torch another problem,” Em mutters. “But The Underground’s our best bet. If he’s not still in the ring, someone there’s bound to know where he went.”
“Remind me again why we split up earlier?” I ask rhetorically. “Alright. Meet me there. Let’s track his ass down before Dean’s all over us.”
“You driving angry or tactical?” Em asks, and I can hear the smirk in his voice, one of the few signs he’s still holding onto any calm at all.
“I’m driving fast,” I mutter as I slide into the car and slam the door. “We can worry about tactical once we find him.”
“Copy that. On my way.”
The call ends, and I grip the steering wheel hard enough for the leather to creak.
Whatever trouble Ronan’s waded into tonight, I feel it in my bones—steady and relentless, like a warning drumbeat I can’t shake.
It’s bad.
And if it’s tied to the undercurrent in the air, that restless, electric hum that whispers her name—Berk—then God help us all.
When I pull into the lot, Emerson’s already there leaning against his car, arms crossed, his expression tight with thought. He pushes off the door the second I step out of mine, the low rumble of my engine barely cutting through the buzz of tension hanging between us.
We greet each other with a brief nod and a quick clasp of hands—nothing flashy, nothing soft. Just the familiar, wordless exchange we’ve always shared. We were raised in a world whereaffection isn’t shown, only understood. But the way Em’s eyes narrow as he scans the lot tells me everything I need to know. He’s just as tightly wound as I am.
We don’t waste time.
No small talk.
Just straight to the shit that matters.
“That hit earlier,” Em mutters, gaze flicking toward the skyline. “That wasn’t random.”
I grunt in agreement. “No chance. Whoever’s behind it? They’re not just setting fires. They’re aiming to cripple the business—piece by piece.”
We toss theories back and forth as we walk toward the entrance of The Underground. There’re a million reasons someone might want to burn our empire to the ground. Decades of enemies. Generations of sins. Hell, take a number and get in line.
Pinpointing who’s actually behind it? That’s the problem.
But the funny part—the twisted, poetic irony of it all—is that our hands are clean. For once. Whoever this is, they’re doing our dirty work for us. Executing a version of our plan without even knowing it.
“They even got Stanley,” Em says, arching a brow. “Dealership king. You know much about him?”
I shake my head. “Next to nothing. The name didn’t mean shit until Dean started bitching.”
Emerson’s jaw ticks, the same thought running through both of us. We suspect the dealerships were being used for more than just moving cars. Probably drugs. Weapons. Maybe even people. And Stanley? He wasn’t some harmless vendor. He was a cog—one that Dean and Bryce clearly valued more than they admitted.
“I’ll have to press Dean,” I mutter, dragging a hand down my face. “If he plans to hand us the keys to this empire of rot, then he needs to stop hiding the skeletons. We don’t need surprises. We need leverage.”