As she followed the brothers past the gate and into the factory grounds, she distracted herself from her thoughts by forcing her attention to her surroundings.
Off to the west sat a squat little cottage. She wondered if it’d been home to the factory foreman back when the place had been…well, whatever it had originally been. Off to the east was that imposing brick wall that surrounded the entirety of the grounds. It rose ten feet and was topped by military-grade razor wire. And directly in front of them was the massive metal door that acted as the factory building’s front entry.
When Britt turned the handle, it made a strange clank and a hiss, and she wondered what activated the locking mechanism.
Then, all thoughts were pushed into the back of her mind because Britt led them inside, and she was instantly hit with sensory overload.
The space was cavernous, with soaring three-story ceilings and massive windows letting in the morning's light. The motorcycle shop spread out before her. Bikes in various stages of assembly sat atop narrow metal tables. There was a glass-walled cubby at the back where a woman in pink coveralls spray-painted a gas tank hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And a giant machine near the outer wall cut into a length of sheet metal.
In front of the workshop sat a double row of custom-made motorcycles that didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen riding down the road. They were too fantastical. Too colorful. Too chromed out and complicated to be labeled anything but art.
When Knox told her his brother built custom motorcycles in Chicago, she’d expected to arrive in the City of Broad Shoulders to see a typical mechanic’s shop. You know, the prefab building that’d been weathered by time. The rusty sign proclaiming the place’s purpose. The no-frills parking lot filled with the vehicles of customers and mechanics alike.
She’d been more than a little surprised to see instead the grand, brick building protected by the guardhouse and surrounded by a brick wall that would’ve made the Qin Dynasty proud.
But she got it now.
Boy-howdy, did she.
The tools, machines, and motorcycles housed within the walls of Black Knights Inc. had to be worth more than most folks would see in ten lifetimes.
Twisting her head, she noted the metal staircase as it rose to an open area on the second floor. She could see a long conference table beyond the iron railing as well as some rather impressive-looking electronics. To her left was a narrow hallway. Motorcycle license plates covered its brick walls. All were rusty and aged and looked like they belonged in an antique shop.
The smell of grinding metal and high-gloss auto paint wafted from the direction of the workshop. But she would swear that beneath those scents she could detect something sweeter, like sugar and cream and hot, melting butter. It emanated from the direction of the hall, and she wondered if the passageway led to a kitchen.
Croissants,she realized. The smell reminded her of the croissants they baked at her favorite coffeehouse back home.
A sudden pang tore through her stomach. It wasn’t hunger, though. It was homesickness.
Would she ever return to Charleston? To those flood-prone cobblestone streets and the quiet marshes packed with water primrose and alligator weed?
Would she ever return to her clients? To the people who depended on her to keep them trending on TikTok and Instagram so their products continued to fly off the shelves?
And yes, it was insane to be thinking about her job when she’d had a pistol jammed into her mouth, when her brother was dead, when she was running for her life from a group of men who’d made her their enemy simply because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was a part of her that hoped this whole thing could be cleared up and she could go back.
Was that wishful thinking?
As the hours wore on, she began to suspect so.
She began to suspect that night at Cooper’s house was what Gen Z-ers called a “canon event.” There was her life before, and there would be her life after.
If I evenhavean after.
“Love iiisss all around you!” Someone sang from the second floor, pulling her from her ever-spiraling thoughts.
The sights and smells inside the old brick building were overwhelming. But they were nothing compared to the noise.
If Sabrina had been asked to describe the sound of chaos, she would have detailed Black Knights Inc.'s auditory overwhelm.
“Love Song” by Tesla blared from speakers on the second floor. The music was accompanied by the rather lovely—but earsplittingly loud—voice of the faceless, nameless singer. A guy with a handheld grinder worked on a tailpipe, sending out sparks and shrieks of sound. An intermittent hiss came from the sprayer in the hands of the woman in the paint corner, a feral growl of what sounded like a blender came from somewhere down the hallway, and that blasted machine cutting sheet metal whined ceaselessly.
She was tempted to cover her ears but was interrupted when a giant man with a buzzcut and what seemed to be a bad attitude—if his expression was anything to go by—materialized in front of her. She blinked into his merciless face and decided he’d look right at home guarding the gates of hell.
“Yo, Ozzie!” The big man shouted in a voice that boomed like thunder. She flinched at its force while simultaneously marveling at its ability to be heard above the racket. “Cut the music! We have guests!”
In an instant, the wall of sound that was Tesla fell silent. A second later, the guy using the grinder switched off the tool and laid it atop the metal table. And a second after that, what Sabrina assumed was a blender stopped its ear-splitting buzz.
The woman in pink coveralls still used the paint sprayer. And the sheet metal machine still complained about its work. But those two noises were nothing compared to the deafening anarchy from before.
