I snatch the blunt back, drag hard—burning it straight to the filter like it might burn this feeling out of me. My lungs rebel, cough ripping up my throat, but I ride it out. “I can’t follow Marcus after this,” I say, voice ragged. “This is his fault.”
Zay’s eyes narrow. “You knew what kind of man Marcus was when you swore in.”
“I joined for my sister.”
“And Kelly knew who Marcus was.” His voice doesn’t even waver. Just flat and brutal, like a blade pressed against my ribs. “We all knew. You don’t get to play the victim now.”
I want to hit him. Just once. Just enough to crack that fucking jaw he keeps clenching like the truth doesn’t even taste bitter to him.
“You chose to be a brother,” he says. “You think I can just let you walk?”
“I’m not asking.” I say, my voice more even than I expected it to be, because the minute I found out my sister was missing, and then dead, I have been spiraling. I feel like I can’t fucking breathe and the thought of pledging loyalty to the man who had my sister hooked on fucking meth for the past four years and then excommunicated from the only place she knew in this entire country is fucking mad and I won’t do it.
Zay’s quiet. Then he lets out a low laugh and pulls a pack of gum from his pocket, sliding a piece between his teeth. “They didn’t teach you loyalty across the pond?” he mocks. “Figures. You Brits fold like wet paper the second it gets personal.”
I stare him down, blood thudding behind my eyes. He doesn’t get it. None of them do. I didn’t just lose my sister. I lost the one person who made this life feel bearable. The one who kept me tethered when everything else was chaos. Without her, it’s like the world lost its sound, its color, its shape. Like I’m walking through smoke and glass, and every breath cuts going down.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit at Marcus’s table, call him brother, pretend I don’t see her blood on his hands. If I stay a Raider, I’m going to kill him—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. And I won’t regret it.
But if I try and fail? He’ll make me wish I was dead. Marcus King doesn’t just bury traitors—he makes them suffer, that'swhat the Kings do, perpetuate suffering. And with every club in Texas under his thumb, there’d be nowhere to run.
And while I am from the United Kingdom. I can’t go back to Bristol. My father would string me up by the throat the minute he heard I was back on British land.
So yeah—maybe the only future I’ve got is far from here. A shitty little farm in the middle of Montana. A place with silence and sky and no fucking ghosts. Somewhere Kelly would’ve wanted to grow old. Somewhere I can try to remember what peace feels like.
I swallow roughly. “Is this why Marcus made you come out here with me?”
Isaiah isn’t an enemy but he sure as hell isn’t my friend, and he nods turning to look at me with his black eyes. “I always said you were too smart to be a grunt, Lan.”
I snort, a nod looking over his body, knowing that Isaiah’s favorite pistol is somewhere on him. “So what’s the plan Zay?”
He takes a step forward, his eyes glittering with his signature feral need. “Well,” he says, voice smooth, almost playful, “I take you back to the house, and we tell Marcus you want to leave.”
I blink. “That easy?”
He chuckles—low, humorless. “Of course not. You gotta make it past the beating.”
“The what?—”
His fist slams into the side of my jaw before I even register him moving. White-hot pain explodes through my head. The world tilts sideways.
I stagger back, tasting blood. “Are you serious?—”
Another hit. This one drops me. My knees slam the dirt, the field spinning around me.
“You don’t justquitthe Raiders,” Isaiah mutters, standing over me now. His voice sounds far away, distorted. “You get beat out. Or buried out.”
I try to push up, spit thick with iron. “You’re out of your goddamn?—”
Blackness cracks through my vision as his boot connects with my ribs.
“Welcome to the exit interview, brother.”
Then nothing.
Jasmine
Six Months Later
