***
I always hated the smell of blood, but the stink of it in Augustine’s room was something else: a cocktail of copper, sweat, and the sharp bite of cheap antiseptic. I stood at the sink, soaking a rag in the hottest water I could stand, and watched the swirl of red leak out from the gauze. It lookedlike paint in the little yellowed basin, but when I wrung it out, the towel came away pink and sticky, the color of a tongue after too many cherry suckers.
Augustine sat on the edge of the mattress, hands braced on his knees, his breathing uneven. He’d showered, but blood still haloed his knuckles, stubborn in the cracks where skin met nail. I wanted to say something, ask if he was okay, but the words felt useless. Instead, I went to work.
I pulled up a chair, dragged his left hand into my lap, and started dabbing at the mess. The room was so silent I could hear the flex and pop of his joints as I moved his fingers. For a second, I remembered what those hands had felt like on my skin last night—gentle, reverent, a whole different person from the one who’d just tried to murder a prospect in the parking lot. The contrast made me dizzy.
I pressed a cotton ball soaked in peroxide to his knuckles. He didn’t even flinch. The fizz sounded like soda poured into a glass.
“You shouldn’t have gone after him alone,” Augustine said, voice low and not looking at me. “What if we hadn’t been watching him, too?”
I set my jaw, picking out flecks of blood from his cuticles. “Then I would’ve handled it. I’m not made of glass, Williams.”
He pulled his hand away, flexed it, watched the tendons stand out like wires. “Doesn’t matter. It’s my job to keep you safe.”
I snorted, balling up the gauze and tossing it into the trash. “Your job is whatever Damron says it is. Right now, that’s breaking the faces of anyone who rats to my dad. Lucky for Joey, he still has one left.”
He looked at me then, really looked, and for a moment I saw the exhaustion in his face, the way the lines were deeper, older than before. “He threatened you. He threatened the kid.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. Instead, I grabbed a fresh roll of tape and started wrapping his hand, neat and tight. I made sure to double up over the knuckle where the split ran deepest. He watched, but said nothing, letting me finish.
When I was done, I sat back in the chair and let the silence fill the space between us. We were both still wearing our cuts, and the patches on the backs of our vests felt like targets.
“Do you think we’re monsters?” I asked, surprising myself.
He shook his head, slow. “No. I think we’re survivors.”
I traced the edge of his palm, feeling the roughness, the callouses that would never go away. “Our baby’s gonnahave blood in its veins before it even takes a breath,” I said. “What kind of world is that?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. We both knew.
I leaned forward, resting my head on his shoulder. He let out a breath, the tension easing, just a fraction. His unbandaged hand found my knee and stayed there, heavy and warm.
18
Augustine
We didn't get five minutes of peace before trouble found us. That's how it worked in the Scythes—you bought yourself a breath, and the universe found new ways to choke it out of you.
The knock at the clubhouse door wasn't angry or polite; it was the staccato rap of someone who knew we had guns and didn't give a fuck. Melissa was curled up on my bed, face streaked with dried tears, but she sat up fast, every muscle pulled tight.
I stepped out into the hallway, motioned for her to stay put. Like that ever worked.
Church was already full of bodies—Damron at the head of the table, Seneca on his left, Carl proppedup with his arm in a sling, even a couple of prospects standing by the windows with sawed-offs cradled like puppies. Every eye tracked me as I walked in, and every set of shoulders rolled back half an inch. Not quite a threat, not quite a welcome.
The courier stood in the middle of the room, out of reach of every chair and wall. He wore no colors, just a battered green flight jacket and boots caked with what looked like half the desert. The man radiated neutrality: wrong accent for a local, wrong haircut for a biker, wrong everything for a world where being wrong got you killed. He held an envelope in his gloved hand. The paper was off-white, expensive, the kind you only used if you wanted to show you had money and, more importantly, the balls to send it.
Damron didn’t stand—he didn't have to. He flicked two fingers, and the courier crossed the room, dropping the envelope on the table like it might explode.
"From Cutler," the courier said. His voice was pure Denver, flat and nasal. "He says it’s urgent."
Nobody moved. I watched the way Seneca’s hand drifted toward his boot knife, the way Carl’s jaw bunched as he clenched his teeth against the pain of just being alive.
Damron picked up the envelope, turned it over, then sliced it open with the edge of his club ring. He pulled out a single sheet of paper—thick, cream, the kindthat screamed 'lawyer' from fifty yards—and read in silence. The veins in his forehead stood out, white and angry. He read it twice, then a third time, as if maybe the words would change if he glared at them hard enough.
Finally, he dropped the letter onto the map table. "He’s challenging us to a trial," he said. "Old school. One-on-one."
Seneca grunted. "You mean like—"
