OTTO WALKED INTO THE TRAINING room, passing Simone on her way out. She gave him a head nod in the way of hellos and kept it moving. He was still trying to wrap his head around the shift in the Council members. He wasn’t gone that long, a handful of weeks if that, and he’d come home to a bloodbath. They were down men—Dom and Carter hooked up to machines, one foot in the grave and the other holding on to this realm. Wolf was hurt and Nico and Bebo…. Otto cursed under his breath. He never got along with them. Their beef had started because of some girl, but even after he kicked her to the curb, Otto didn’t care for them. He wasn’t fully on board in the trust department about them either. He only tolerated them because of Sofia and Dom, and they were supposed to keep Natalya safe.

Safe with a man who liked to abuse women.

Otto took a swig of his water bottle, trying the tamp down the urge to put his fist through the wall. No one would confirm it out loud. Nico only mentioned that Boris used Bebo’s weakness to get him to switch sides, and Natalya wouldn’t or couldn’t say what happened when she was with Bebo. He didn’t want to push her. She had already gotten dragged into this because of him and who he had gotten into bed with. He heeded Ivy’s advice to not push her to open up to him. It would probably cause her to shut down, so he let it go for now and prayed she found someone to talk to. He hated that his baby sister was carrying something that heavy, and he didn’t know how to help her hold that weight.

He hadn’t been able to protect either of his sisters.

Natalya was shipped off to somewhere on a warm island with Ethan’s grandmother once she was cleared of any injuries she sustained from Griselda’s. She was surrounded by strangers, and it made him want to scoop her up and lock her away somewhere he felt was safe—like a convent.

“She’s fine, and she’s safer there than she would be here,” Otto whispered, trying to convince himself it was true. The idea of leaving her wellbeing in the hands of someone else again only managed to piss him off instead of settling him. She should have been safe with Nico and Bebo, and she wasn’t because no one knew the truth about Bebo.

“Fucking piece of shit,” Otto growled. He felt out of control. His world was spinning faster than he was accustomed too, and the tighter he tried to hold on, the faster he was slipping away.

“I’m not one to assume,” Simone’s sharp tone cut through the headache he was giving himself, “but I know that piece of shit comment wasn’t geared toward me. Correct?”

Simone had a towel thrown over her shoulder, and from the grip on her water bottle, she looked like she was ready to swing the bottle at his head. He hadn’t heard her come back in; his focus was on Ivy sparring with Hakeem and his own internal bullshit. “It wasn’t.” Otto tapped his head. “Got a lot going on up here,” he mumbled.

Otto looked her over. She had on sweats and a loose shirt. Her hair was tied down her back in a loose braid, and if he didn’t look too closely, he could have sworn he was staring at Jade instead of Simone. She and Jade were twins—looked almost identical—except Jade had a scar under her right eye and Jade had an all-around warmer personality.

Jade was friendly while Simone had walls up the size of mountains. Even now, as close as she stood next to Otto, it felt like there was a roadblock between them. He couldn’t entirely blame her though, not only had she and her sister been used as pawns for Boris but also, according to Jade, Simone and Carter had been or were still a thing. Otto could empathize with the pain she had to be feeling—the inability to control whether someone you cared about lived or died. It was a heavy weight to hold that either crippled you or you turned that feeling outward and lashed out at the world.

Otto’s gaze slid over to Ivy, and the image of her laying up in the hospital bed with wires sticking out of her flashed in his mind. It damn near brought him to his knees, and he had to physically restrain himself from rushing over to her and wrap her in his arms, blocking off some imagined threat. He couldn’t fathom how he would deal with what Simone was going through if the roles had been changed.

“Don’t we all,” Simone murmured, and Otto turned to see that she was now watching Ivy as well. “She’s gotten a lot better with the hand to hand.” As soon as Simone said the words, Ivy hit the mat hard. Otto took a step forward, his knee-jerk reaction to always protect and comfort her almost had him breaking all the rules for the training room. He couldn’t interfere—none of the guys could when the women trained.

“She still has a ways to go, though. You hear back from them?” Simone’s tone was clipped, and Otto felt her agitation. She and Jade had been the reason the Council and Ethan’s crew had been able to raid as many warehouses as they had and stop enough shipments in Boris’ sex traffic ring to cause a massive stop in cash flow. As much of a dent Otto felt they were making, they seemed to be running in circles. They were still no closer to flushing Boris or Bruno out or finding Sofia.

“Not yet, but I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.” Otto checked his watch, fighting off that uneasy feeling he had every time the Council and Ethan’s men went out on these raids.

Gia was insistent on being there with them on the raids and ambushes. Otto knew Smoke was going to stick to her like glue, but if watching Ivy get her ass handed to her by Hakeem stressed him out, being so close to the same people who used Ivy and murdered Ivy’s sister and knowing his kid sister was dodging bullets with the boys was going to give him a fucking ulcer.

“You know you can’t stop her any more than you can stop Gia from participating in what will need to happen when this ends.” Simone’s tone was heavy—an omen whispered in the air. “You men may have the grit to do what needs to be done, but Gia and Ivy?” Simone chuckled, and a shiver ran down Otto’s spine. If he was superstitious, he’d say someone just walked over his grave—an invitation to meet the grim reaper.

“They need to see the end of Boris and Bruno.” Simone had a faraway look in her eyes. She was no longer in the training room. She had transported herself to another time that Otto wasn’t privy to. He wasn’t sure what Simone was trying to tell him other than to give the women of the Council respect and allow them into the fight.

“Women rarely ever get the justice they deserve, Otto. Don’t try and take it away from them.” Simone looked at Ivy one last time before she left the training room.

Otto let her words rattle around in his head as he watched Ivy and Hakeem spar. Simone was right about one thing: Ivy had gotten better since they’d been back. Ivy wanted to up her self-defense skills, and Otto had taken her to a gun range to show her the way around a gun while they were in California burying her sister and getting reacquainted with her mother. They did a little hand-to-hand combat training while they were there, but news of the attack had driven Otto back to New York.

Ivy refused to stay with her mother and insisted on coming back to New York with him. Once they were settled in Ethan’s compound, they picked up her training until Hakeem noticed how easy Otto was being on Ivy and promptly kicked him out. Once the Council had voted to let the women fight, Otto knew Hakeem was right to take over. Otto wanted her physically stronger, and that wouldn’t happen if Otto went soft during training. These men wouldn’t take it easy on her, and she needed to learn how to defend herself against a threat that wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her.

“Again,” Hakeem snapped as he lunged for Ivy, causing her to yelp. She was exhausted. He could see the fatigue in her movements. Hakeem knocked her on her ass for the third time since Otto had been in the training center. Otto had to take a step back and bounce on the balls of his feet to keep from rushing over to her and throttling Hakeem for pushing her.

The feel of his phone vibrating in his pocket was the distraction Otto needed when Hakeem pinned Ivy to the mat. He turned, pulling his phone out to see a text from Smoke.

Smoke: We’re whole and she’s good.

Tension Otto hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his body melted off of him with that one simple text. He had a string of the same messages from Smoke. Every time Gia left with Ethan’s crew and Smoke, Otto wanted to hogtie Gia up and keep her locked away.

Everything he did to keep her out of this life, out of the bloodshed, had been for nothing. She had found her way into the thick of it, and while he voted to let her have a choice, he hated that she was out there almost as much as he hated hearing Ivy struggle against Hakeem.

Otto pocketed the phone and closed his eyes.

“I killed him, Otto. I didn’t mean to, but I killed them both.”

Memories of that night had started to resurface the moment he landed back in New York with Ivy. That phone call from Gia had taken him back—back to the moment his sister had gotten blood on her hands. The night his sweet kid sister learned how heavy the weight of death could be.

It changed her and was still changing her. Every time she came back with Smoke and Ethan’s crew she had grown another layer of protective skin over herself, making her appear harder. Her eyes no longer held any light in them—no spark unless she was in some standoff with Smoke—the only tell Otto had that his kid sister was still in there underneath all the grime she was surrounded by.

“Hey.” Ivy’s voice wrapped around him at the same time her arms wrapped around his waist. He felt her head on his shoulder before he turned in her arms and pulled her closer against his body. She was sweaty and out of breath, but he held her tighter, wishing they could disappear from all of this.

“How long have you been here watching?” Ivy pulled back, with a look of concern in her eyes.

“Long enough to know you’ve gotten a lot better but you’re still hesitating.” He pushed back the hair that fell into her eyes. “Hakeem’s a big boy, you’re not going to hurt him—at least not in the way that has you scared.” He smiled down at her, wondering if that was the reason she was holding back. Hakeem wasn’t Bruno nor was he Boris. He was an ally, and Otto didn’t think Ivy had it in her to go off on him in a way that would do any real damage.

“He said the same thing about five times today.” Ivy rolled her eyes when Hakeem shouted the exact same thing out again. “It’s hard to put myself in that mindset. Hakeem is nothing but nice to me, except when we’re in the training center but I still see Hakeem.”

Otto pressed a kiss to her forehead, wishing the women in his life would be content to sit this war out. Gia insisted on going on these little joy rides, these raids, dropping bodies left and right. Ivy wanted her pound in flesh as well, and while he thought her upping her self-defense skills was a good idea, he knew what the underlying reason was for her to spend all hours in the training center with Hakeem.

Women rarely get the justice they deserve, Otto. Don’t try and take this away from them.

Simone’s earlier words had come back with a sense of clarity as he looked down at Ivy. She’d been hurt by Bruno—abused and assaulted in ways Otto had a hard time hearing when she told him her story, and Ivy’s sister endured the same fate. If he wanted to skin both Boris and Bruno alive, he could only imagine what Ivy felt.

Otto knew his sister felt responsible for Natalya, whether or not she shared the same experiences as Ivy and Eve. He also knew what Gia had gone through long before Sofia had come home and changed the game for them. These women were made victims by the men in their lives who made them feel powerless. Their entire world had been fucked up and spun out of whack, and Otto understood the need to get back on even ground. He just didn’t want revenge to be the way they did it. It already cost Gia part of herself; he didn’t want her to lose more of herself, and he damn sure didn’t want that for Ivy.

“You know, you don’t have to do this. I mean, it’s good to have self-defense skills, but you don’t need to train this hard,” Otto whispered down at her, pleading without words that she wouldn’t find a way into this war.

“Sofia is our boss. She’s a woman, Smoke. If one of us were taken, she’d be on the front line too.” Otto tried to reason with Smoke, even though he knew this was going to bite him in the ass.

“Sofia is different and you know it. You can’t honestly say you want Gia out there, Otto. You know what’s going to happen.”

Otto’s conversation with Smoke made his stomach tighten. He knew when he voted for all Council members to be active it was going to come back and haunt him. As soon as Ivy abruptly pulled out of his hold, he knew that moment was now, and he felt the first strings of regret wrap around his throat.

“You voted to give us a choice, O. You know why I want to train. I can’t sit on my hands. I know you think blaming myself for my sister’s death is unfair, but it’s the truth. She was there because of me. Bruno raped her because of me—to keep me in line. Boris tormented her because of me.” She waved her hand in front of her face, cutting off his rebuttal.

The truth of the matter was Boris and Bruno were animals that needed to be put down. Eve wasn’t the first woman or girl for that matter Boris had hurt, and Otto prayed with the shipments being stopped there wouldn’t be anymore.

There’s still a matter of the ones he already has that need to be saved.

“I know who Boris is, and I know it could have been me instead of Eve or someone else. But it doesn’t change the fact that who I dated set all this in motion and that falls partly on me.” She let out a breath before shaking her head. “I’m going to hit the mat. Are you going to hang out or check on Dom? Did they find anything?”

Otto wanted to pull her back into his arms. He hated the distance between them, and it kept growing every time he tried to shield her from what was going on. Somewhere under his need to protect her, he understood why she needed this.

He let out a breath and emptied his pockets before toeing off his sneakers. He pulled his shirt up over his head as he stalked toward Ivy. He wanted to help her in any way he could, especially since he knew he couldn’t help Gia shift through what she was going through. “We can see Dom when you’re done here and by then, hopefully, they’ll have news on Sofia, but right now I’m going to help Hakeem kick your ass.”

He leaned down so their foreheads were touching. He loved the little hitch in her breath when his hand slid under her shirt to touch her bare skin. He loved watching her find pleasure in his touch, knowing it came because she trusted him.

“Let’s make a little wager, Ivy. If you can win two out of the next three rounds, there might be a little reward in it for you.” He slapped her ass before he pushed past her and toward Hakeem to give him the heads up that he wanted in on the next training session. If he could push Ivy to the point where she felt comfortable in her hand-to-hand skills, maybe it would get rid of some of the tension in her body and give her something else to focus on—a small victory in a field full of losses.