Every set of eyes in the room finds Tate first and then slides sideways to me.
Tate doesn’t acknowledge any of it. He moves through the room the way he always does, as if the space belongs to him, because it does, and I stay close.
A man near the bar with a Sinners’ patch and too much confidence lets his eyes travel over me in a way that is slow, deliberate, and not even slightly subtle.
Tate catches it without turning his head and leans toward the man. “Eyes forward.”
The man looks away immediately.
A large man with a shaved head and forearms like bridge cables detaches himself from the group near the bike and crosses toward us. He is wide, solid, and permanent, with sharp dark eyes that assess everything in the time it takes most people to blink.
“Diesel,” Tate says with a nod.
Diesel looks at me. Then back at Tate. Then back at me.
“This her?” he asks.
“Sophia. Tracker’s woman.”
They knew I was coming. Of course, they did.
Something shifts in Diesel’s expression, not softness exactly, but something close to it. He gives me a single nod that conveys both acknowledgment and respect, requiring no further elaboration.
“Ma’am.”
“Hi.”
From across the room, a familiar face appears. Luke, pushing off the bar where he’d been leaning and making his way over with that slightly careful gait he’d had since the mansion, one arm no longer in the sling but still held differently than the other, as if the memory of the injury lives in the bone.
“Sophia.” He says my name like he is genuinely glad to see it attached to a person who is upright and functioning, which, given the last time we’d technically been in the same world, feels about right.
“Luke,” I say and smile at him properly. “You look better.”
“Wasn’t hard to do,” he says drily, and I laugh.
Tate says nothing, but I catch the look on his face.
A younger man appears at Luke’s shoulder, early twenties, dark hair, and restless energy coming off him in waves like he hasn’t quite figured out what to do with himself yet. He is looking at me with an interest that is just a fraction too direct.
“Who’s this?” he asks, grinning.
“Remy.” Luke’s voice carries a note of warning.
“What?” Remy says, unbothered. “I’m just asking.”
“This is Sophia,” Tate says, and something in his tone makes Remy’s grin recalibrate almost immediately into something more appropriate. “She’s under my protection. You’d do well to remember that.”
Remy nods, quickly and genuinely, and takes a small but deliberate step back. “Yes, Prez. Sorry.”
One word from Tate, and Remy’s entire demeanor shifts. I make a note of that.
Near the back of the room, slightly removed from the main noise and activity, a man sits alone at a small table with a laptop open in front of him, two phones side by side, and what appears to be an empty beer bottle he hasn’t noticed is empty. He is lean, almost wiry, with a shaved head and the focused stillness ofsomeone whose brain is doing several things simultaneously and has no capacity left over for the room around him.
He looks up when Tate approaches, blinking slightly like he is returning from somewhere a long way away.
“Cable,” Tate says.
“Prez.” Cable’s eyes move to me, assessing, quick, and then back to Tate. “She’s here then?”