I reached for the phone. The screen glowed with a half-dozen texts, all from Damron.
SULTANS MOVING ON 285. THREE CARS. LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE ARMED.
NEED YOU AT THE SHOP, ASAP.
Emily watched my face, reading the lines. She didn’t flinch, just propped herself on an elbow, sheets still tangled at her waist.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
I thumbed out a reply—OMW, give me ten—and set the phone down. “It’s never good,” I said, turning to face her. “You want me to go, or stay until it blows over?”
She snorted. “You wouldn’t be here if I wanted you to run from your life.” She touched my jaw, turning my face to hers. “Just promise you’ll come back.”
The words hit harder than the last punch I’d taken to the ribs. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
She sat up, naked and unselfconscious, and started collecting her clothes from the floor. She handed me my jeans, then tossed my t-shirt at my head, grinning when it landed over my face.
“Don’t get shot,” she said, voice bright and brittle. “I’ll be pissed if you die before breakfast.”
I got dressed, my body still carrying the echo of her on my skin. The cut was on the back of the chair, leather cooled to room temp. I shrugged it on, felt the familiarweight settle over my shoulders. The helmet waited by the door.
At the threshold, I paused, looking back at her. She watched me, arms folded, hair a wild snarl, mouth set in a stubborn line.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes, but her smile was soft. “Go,” she said. “Handle your shit.”
I wanted to say something big, something to match the surge in my chest, but all I managed was, “I’ll see you soon.”
She stepped forward, pressed a kiss to the side of my neck, then pushed me out the door.
The ride back to the club was different. The wind was cold, but I barely felt it. The engine’s roar was a lullaby compared to the noise in my head. I replayed the night in her bed, the small kindnesses, the way she let me in without demanding anything in return.
At a red light, I glanced at my reflection in a shop window. For the first time in years, I didn’t look like a man running from his own shadow. I looked like a man who had something to lose.
The light changed. I gunned the throttle, tearing down the empty street, feeling every mile of the road, every ghost, every hope for a future that didn’t end in blood or regret.
I thought about Emily, and for once, the thought didn’t make me afraid.
It made me want to live.
12
Dean
The wood-paneled clubhouse was never quiet, but there were gradations to the noise—sometimes a background hum, sometimes the hollow boom of laughter, sometimes the silverware-on-metal scrape of threats made polite for company. Tonight, it was a silence pressed so tight by smoke and fear that it made your teeth itch. You could hear the wet in the insulation, the minute cracks in the lacquer of the table, the way the space between every word hung heavy, ready to catch fire if someone so much as breathed too loud.
I sat at the head of the long table, Secretary patch clear on my cut, Ma’s dog tags cold against the old black of my T-shirt. The minute book lay open before me, cheapspiral-bound, club logo stamped on the cover so you knew exactly which brand of bastard you were. My pen was the kind you stole from a bank: lightweight, oily, tip chewed flat. It made a dent in the paper deep enough that you could read it with your eyes closed.
Damron started the meeting the way he always did, but his voice was different tonight—less grandstanding, more eulogy. He leaned back in the captain’s chair, broad arms stretched along the edge, letting the tattoos flex and settle. His beard had grown in thicker since last month, shot through with silver that made him look both ancient and bulletproof. When he talked, the words landed heavy and low, vibrating through the ribcage of anyone stupid enough to pretend they weren’t scared.
“Brothers,” he said, and the thirty men around the table answered with a single guttural rumble. “Tonight’s business is family. We’ll keep it short, because what’s coming won’t be.”
He let that hang for a moment, eyes sweeping the room. Every set of eyes watched him back—some angry, some hollowed out, some just waiting for a target. Even the prospects in the back corner, hunched over their PBRs and ancient Playboys, snapped to attention. The smell of cigarettes was so thick you couldn’t taste your own spit.
“We all know what went down at the bank,” Damron continued. “We all know what they took from us.” He didn’t say Ma’s name, but the scrape of a boot under the table told me someone did.
He laid it out—how the Sultans were a cancer, metastasizing from the Albuquerque sprawl into every small-town racket up the highway. How every stolen shipment, every bent cop, every shakedown that bled over into our turf was an affront. How this last act—this robbery, this shooting, this murder—was the end of all patience, the last thin slice of mercy cut and swallowed.
