The ride back to the warehouse was a funeral procession.
No one spoke.
The silence was a thick, suffocating blanket, heavy with the weight of what they had all just witnessed.
Jax, for the first time since Michael had met him, was completely quiet, his usual manic energy replaced by a deep, unsettled stillness.
Jinx drove, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, her eyes darting between the road and Michael's reflection in the rearview mirror as if she was expecting him to start breathing fire.
Chloe sat in the back beside Michael, her usual datapad forgotten. She was just… watching him. Her face was a pale, grim mask of calculation and a new, unwelcome emotion he couldn't quite identify.
Fear.
He was the asset. The weapon.
And his weapon had just gone off in the middle of a peace talk, without his permission.
When they arrived back at their new, terrible home, the unspoken tension finally broke.
