And I couldn’t chase her.
I’d have to let her go.
The thought cuts me deeper than any blade ever has.
“Christ,” I mutter into the dark, setting the glass down too hard. It rings against the table, sharp as a gunshot.
I want to be angry. I want to slam the walls, call Rafe, tear him apart piece by piece for daring to circle her like she’s already his. But underneath all that rage is the truth I don’t say out loud: I’m terrified.
Terrified because she looks at me like she sees more than I want her to.
Terrified because I can’t stop pulling her closer, even knowing the history I carry will swallow her whole.
Terrified because the last time I loved a woman, I put her in the ground.
And still—I want Brooklyn.
More than the club. More than the empire I built. More than my own skin.
If I have to bleed again, I’ll bleed for her.
If I have to burn, I’ll burn with her.
But I’ll never—never—let the ghosts take her too.
The ghosts never come softly.
They don’t creep in, don’t whisper.
They break the door down.
In the first crash, the impact’s sound is always from metal, and steel folds in on itself like paper. I can hear it even now, ten years later, rattling through my skull.
Then the silence.
That brutal second where the world holds its breath before it remembers how to scream.
I’d give anything to cut that silence out of my brain.
But it always comes back.
I see her face in fragments.
Blood on her lips. Hair tangled across her cheek. Her eyes—still open. Too open. Staring at me like she couldn’t believe it ended here.
The fire hadn’t even reached her yet. The wreck was still groaning, dripping smoke. And I remember—Christ, I remember—my hands trying to pull the door open, metal tearing at my palms until skin ripped. My voice went raw as I begged her not to close her eyes.
But she did.
Slow.
Final.
Her fingers slipped from mine, and the world went black with her.
I buried them all for it.
Every man who had a hand in it. Every coward who thought they could touch what was mine. Their blood ran into the dirt until the streets stank of iron.
