“Your truth, boy!” Marshall sneered. “Word’s gone out. Every faction in the underworld knows who you are. The Golden Skulls hung you out to dry. They put a bullseye on your back and walked away from you. Did you honestly think that shit in the city was an accident? Boy, that was a trap.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t believe me?” Marshall asked, throwing me his phone. As I caught it, he added, “Call Reaper and ask him yourself.”
Looking at the phone in my hand, then at Marshall, I didn’t know what to think, let alone believe.
The funny thing about doubt... once planted, it grows.
Dialing Reaper’s number, I held the phone to my ear as I stared at Marshall, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me. When the call connected, I looked at my watch and started counting as Reaper laid into me. “Where the fuck are you? Do you know the shitstorm you’ve created? Get your ass back home now!”
“Why?”
Twenty seconds left...
“What the fuck do you mean, why?” Reaper roared. “Everyone is looking for you. They all know who you are!”
“How?”
“Who the fuck knows! Sypher is doing what he can, but it’s out there. There is a price on your head. You need to come home so we can protect you.”
“Safer out here.”
Ten seconds...
Reaper growled. “It wasn’t a fucking suggestion. It was an order.”
“I’ll pass.” With that, I ended the call with three seconds to spare.
“Jesus Christ, boy...” Marshall said as he stoked the fire with a stick, sending a shower of sparks into the night sky. “You sure know how to poke the bear, don’t ya?”
The conversation stilted in the air, thick with unspoken accusations and the scent of wood-smoke. Marshall’s words, sharp and precise, cut through my disbelief, each syllable chipping away at the fragile wall of denial I’d erected. The city, the chase, the agonizing pain—it had all been a carefully orchestrated trap, a prelude to this brutal unveiling. The Golden Skulls, my own brothers—had they really betrayed me? Did they sell me out for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom? And Karlyn. The thought of her name, spoken with such certainty by Marshall, sent a jolt that went deeper than any bullet wound.
He knew.
He knew about her, and that knowledge put her directly in the crosshairs of the storm I’d so desperately tried to outrun. And that meant if he knew, then so did the others.
Marshall’s weathered face, illuminated by the flickering fire, held a knowing glint. He saw the turmoil warring within me, the confusion and the burgeoning rage. “You’re a fool, boy,” he stated, his voice devoid of judgment, merely a statement of fact. “A proud fool who thinks he can outsmart the world. But the world, Jackson, it always finds a way to remind you of yourplace. And your place right now is exposed. They know who you are. They know what you are. And they know about her.” He gestured with his chin towards the dark, silent trees that surrounded us, a vast, indifferent canvas against which my life, and Karlyn’s safety, were now laid bare.
I sank back against the rough bark of a pine; the coolness seeping through my torn shirt did little to quell the internal inferno. My motorcycle was gone, my pursuers momentarily vanished, but the real danger, the one that gnawed at my gut, was far from over.
The trap had been sprung, and I had walked right into it, dragging Karlyn’s name into the darkness with me.
Marshall was right. I had bitten off more than I could chew, and the consequences were about to come crashing down, not just on me, but on the one person I had sworn to protect.
Chapter Six
Karlyn
“Absolutely not!” my brother shouted at everyone as he paced the living room. “Over my dead fucking body!”
“Keep yelling at me like that and I will arrange that,” Reaper snapped. “You think I’m happy about this either? I’m not! But it’s happening, so get with the fucking program.”
“We can protect her!” my brother shouted, pounding his chest. “I can protect her. She’s my sister. My blood.”
“How, Ink?” Reaper roared. “The Biker Federation is at war. Or have you forgotten that already? The longer she stays here, the more danger she puts everyone else in. The safest thing for everyone is to move Karlyn where no one will look for her.”
Ink glared at Reaper, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles blanched. The tension between them crackled like static, echoing through the cramped space.
