I check with her firm. She’s on an indefinite leave of absence. No forwarding info. They wouldn’t give it to me anyway.
I call Aria’s mother in Detroit.
“She’s here,” her voice says. Flat. Guarded. “She needs space. That’s all I can tell you.” Then she hangs up the phone.
Space? She neededspaceafter standing by me through everything? After giving me her body like a vow, after promising she wouldn’t leave?
She stood in the shadows so I could step into the light. Loved me without needing credit. Whispered everything but the wordforever. Then vanished like it meant nothing. LikeImeant nothing.
No goodbye. No explanation. Just absence, carved into every place she touched.
It doesn’t make sense. But maybe it does. Maybe loving a man like me, like this, was always a gamble she couldn’t afford to lose.
I sit heavily on our bed. The room is dim, the only light coming from the streetlamp outside. My hands rest on my thighs, trembling slightly.
I close my eyes, and suddenly I’m back in the chapel, sitting beside Aria. Her fingers curled around my wrist, trying to steady me. Her eyes were shining, but not quite meeting mine. Her words echo in the silence.
“I’m not leaving you, Isaiah. I’m just… stepping back a little.”
I didn’t hear the warning then. Didn’t hear the goodbye hidden beneath the love.
I reach out into the darkness of this empty room like I’m trying to grab something that slipped through my fingers years ago.
I should have asked her to stay. Should have told her she wasn’t alone. Should have fought harder to keep her.
I was blinded by the weight of this crown, too caught up in the war and the club to see the battle she was fighting inside. And now, the silence in this room is louder than any roar of engines.
I step out onto the entryway, breathing in the stillness of life. The night presses in like a fist. The stars don’t blink. Even though my world has come to a screeching halt, everyone else's still moves.
I light a cigarette I don’t want and let the smoke bite my throat.
She left on her terms. No warning. No second chances. I can’t chase her. Not now.
“I should’ve seen it coming. I should have held on with both hands.” I whisper in the dark.
She’s gone, and the kingdom’s on fire.
They handed me the crown, told me to walk through the flames. Even if it costs me the only person I’d burn the world down to keep.
Her.
EPILOGUE
STEEL
Present day
I sit alone in this room, the hum of the city far beneath these thick walls. The weight of the crown hasn’t lessened. If anything, it’s grown heavier, layered with loss, with choices made and chances missed.
I still see him sometimes. My dad, Tama, The General. The man who built this empire with blood and grit. I see his cut draped over the casket, the white thread of his road name fraying, but still holding on, just like I have to.
And I remember Aria. Her laugh echoing through empty rooms, her eyes were full of things I never got to understand, the space she left that no amount of fire or brotherhood could ever fill.
I carry the club. The brothers. The legacy. But that ache, her absence, never truly fades. It settles beside the patch, a shadow I walk with every day.
There’s one story I haven’t told. One that gnaws at the edges of every decision since Tama’s death.
Dog.
