The words hit the yard in pieces.
My wife.
My son.
Not Amelia. Not August.
Possessions first, names second.
My hands curl.
Oaks glances at me, one brow lifting slightly, like he hears it too.
Of course he does. We all hear it. Men like us may be bastards, but we understand ownership language. We use it. We wear it. We have old ladies with property patches and names inked over hearts and thighs and collarbones. We claim loud enough to make enemies think twice.
But there is claiming, and then there is caging.
The difference lives in whether the woman can breathe.
Legend’s voice stays low. “Amelia is under Kings protection.”
Jeremy’s mouth tightens, then relaxes. The man is good. I’ll give him that. He is standing in front of an outlaw compound in the rain, outnumbered and unwelcome, and he still manages to look like he might ask for a manager.
“With respect,” Jeremy says, and he says respect like he means trash, “you have no legal right to keep my family here.”
“Good thing I ain’t real worried about legal rights at midnight,” Legend says.
Jeremy looks past Legend toward the clubhouse. “Amelia! Honey, come out here.”
The word honey slides across the wet yard and makes my skin crawl.
Upstairs, the curtain shifts.
I move before I think, stepping off the porch and crossing behind Legend to stand nearer the gate.
Jeremy sees me.
Something changes in his eyes.
Recognition maybe. Not of me personally. Of what I am.
A man he can’t charm. A man he can’t report without admitting where he is. A man who might not stop when polite society says enough.
Good.
“Who are you?” he asks.
I smile at him.
It ain’t friendly.
“I’m the man who found your wife stranded on the side of the road with a busted tire, a crying kid, and every sign of a woman running from something ugly.”
His face flickers.
There it is.
A crack.