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The scream ripped out of Kelly “Breakneck” Gatlin before his lungs dragged in air, raw, animal, torn straight from some place he didn’t let himself acknowledge. It knifed through the trees, scattering birds into the fading light, leaving the forest trembling with the echo of something that wasn’t supposed to come from him. Breakneck dropped to his knees in the dirt, breath punching out in violent bursts, the photo clenched in his fist like a live round.
He stared at it again. At the face that wasn’t his but might as well have been. Same eyes. Same jaw. Same goddamn bone structure. A seventeen-year-old kid frozen in time in Derrick’s backyard. His mother’s voice still rang in his head, trembling around the truth she’d buried his whole life.
That photo’s from when he was seventeen.
His stomach twisted, vision narrowing as if the world were closing in around him. He’d spent twenty-five years believing he’d inherited the best of his father: discipline, honor, restraint. A good man’s blood in his veins. But the man he’d loved, the man who had been the center of his world, wasn’t in him at all. The realization gutted him in a way grief never had. It felt like losing his father all over again.
Now every time he looked in the mirror, he would see Derrick’s face staring back.
The man who’d terrorized his mother. The man Breakneck had stepped between at thirteen, fists clenched, ready to break laws and bones. The man he’d sworn he’d never become.
Another sound tore from him, hoarse and broken, because suddenly he didn’t know who the hell he was. Every foundation stone he’d built his life on—stoicism, control, purpose—cracked wide open. If Derrick was his blood, then what did that make him? What violence lived in the marrow he’d prided himself on mastering?
For the first time in his life, Breakneck didn’t trust the man behind his own eyes.
A darker thought slid through him, cold as a rifle barrel.
He had never felt remorse for a kill. Not once. He saw a target, confirmed the mission parameters, ended the threat. Efficient. Clean. Within rules of engagement. His conscience had always stayed silent.
He’d called it discipline. Training. Moral clarity.
But now the question rose, unavoidable.
Was that my code… or my blood?
Did the violence live in him the same way it had lived in Derrick, only refined? Controlled. Contained. Weaponized. Was that why killing had never cost him anything?
He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum, trying to force air back into lungs that wouldn’t cooperate. The forest seemed to tilt around him, slow and disorienting. His mind would not stop replaying Derrick’s face, then his own, until the resemblance threaded through him like something sharp and inescapable.
Born of adultery. Conceived in betrayal. Delivered into a lie.
He sucked in a breath. Another. Tried to center himself the way Marcus Aurelius advised: look inward, master the response, control the mind. But the thought would not quiet. Maybe he had never flinched at violence because he was built wrong from the start. The kind of wrong you couldn’t outrun, couldn’t outshoot, couldn’t bury beneath philosophy and precision.
He staggered to his feet, body buzzing like he’d taken a concussive blast. He wiped his face with a shaking hand and told himself to stop. Pull it together. Be the man his team believed he was.
But the photo was still in his fist.
He couldn’t go back to her house. Couldn’t sit at that kitchen table pretending his mother hadn’t detonated the center of his world with a single whispered sentence. He’d rather bleed out on the forest floor than see her face again tonight.
So he walked.
Long strides at first. Then faster. Then running, because stillness hurt too much. The trees blurred past, cold air burning his throat, sweat chilling down his spine. He ran until his legs felt hollow and his chest felt scraped raw, until distance was the only thing that made sense.
By the time he hit the gravel shoulder near the road, night had settled thick and heavy.
He didn’t remember getting in his car or starting the engine. Only the silence, and how loud it was when everything inside him finally cracked.
He went home, stepped into the shower, and stood beneath the spray until the water ran cold. It didn’t touch the fire under his skin. Nothing could. He dried off without shaving, without bothering with his hair.
In his bedroom, he pulled on a black leather vest, no shirt beneath it, nothing to hide the hard lines and muscle he knew intimidated and enticed in equal measure. A warning and an invitation all at once. Tonight he wasn’t interested in restraint.
He pulled on tight jeans, then the hand-tooled black boots, metal at heel and toe, chains that jingled when he moved. He was Uncle Sam’s weapon, but tonight he intended to be lethal in a different way. Heat coiled low in his body, less about release than about obliteration.
In the garage, he yanked the tarp off his sleek black Harley, a vintage rebuild he’d worked on since he was sixteen. He hadn’t ridden in a long time. The smell of oil hit him, sharp and familiar, another reminder of the boy he’d buried to build the operator.
He rode downtown.
