It won't be. But that's the lie that gets me through the night.
CHAPTER THREE
Coin
The knock comes just before eleven on a Thursday morning.
I know the time because I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, updating the club's books the way I do every Thursday when the girls are at school and the house is quiet enough to think.
Treasurer handles the money. I handle everything else—minutes, records, schedules, the paper trail that keeps a club running when no one's looking.
It's not glamorous work. It's the kind of work that matters precisely because no one notices it until it's not done.
I close the laptop and pull the Glock from the kitchen drawer before I go to the door.
I don't think about it. It's just what I do—the same way I check the rearview three times on the way home, the same way I walk through the house every night after the girls are asleep and check the locks and the windows.
You don't live the life I live without developing habits that would make a civilian therapist very concerned.
Through the peephole, I see two men.
They're not bikers. That's the first thing.
No leather, no patches, no ink crawling up their necks.
They're wearing suits—not expensive ones, but not cheap either.
The kind of suits that saywe work for someone who has money, and we're here to remind you of that.
One is white, mid-forties, thick through the chest, buzzed head.
The other is younger, maybe thirty, Latino, leaner, standing a half-step back.
Both of them have their hands visible.
Professional muscle. The kind that knocks first.
I tuck the Glock into the back of my waistband, pull my shirt over it, and open the door.
"Colton Adkins?" The older one speaks. His voice is flat. East Coast—Jersey, maybe. Not local.
"Depends on who's asking."
He doesn't smile. Didn't expect him to. "We're here on behalf of a financial group out of Las Vegas. Your ex-wife, Angelica Adkins, has an outstanding balance of two hundred thousand dollars. She's named you and your dependents as collateral on that debt."
The words land one at a time, each one heavier than the last.
Angelica.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Your dependents as collateral.
My daughters. She gave themmyfucking daughters.
Something happens inside my chest that I don't have a name for.
It's not rage—not yet.
