"You knew her?" I ask, my voice small.
Ruth nods, her eyes misting. "Of course we did, honey. We were all family back then. Before... everything."
"She was the kindest woman," Carol says, patting my hand. "Always bringing food when someone was sick, remembering everyone's birthdays. Even with all the club madness going on, she made time for others."
"And beautiful," Ruth adds. "Lord, was she beautiful. You've got her eyes, you know. That exact shade of blue."
I touch my face instinctively. Dad had always said I looked like her, but hearing it from someone else feels different. More real.
"She wore her hair long like yours," Carol continues. "But hers was a bit darker, more honey than blonde. And she had this laugh—it filled up a room."
"I remember her laugh," I whisper. The sound bubbles up from some buried place in my memory—warm and throaty.
"Savannah was the kind of old lady every club wife wanted to be," Ruth says. "Strong, but gentle too. Never took any crap from anyone, but never had a mean word either."
"Old lady?" I ask, confused.
"Club wife," Carol explains. "Your mama was Viking's old lady. Queen of this clubhouse, really."
My mind spins with this new information. All these years, I'd pictured my mother as just... my mother. Not someone's old lady, not a queen of anything.
"She loved you something fierce," Ruth says, her voice cracking. "Used to carry you around this clubhouse, showing you off to everyone. My little angel, she called you."
I clutch my drink tighter, trying to hold onto these new pieces of my mother—Savannah, the kind, the beautiful, the queen.
The stories about my mother crash down on me like a physical weight. Each new detail—her laugh, her kindness, how she carried me around—they're gifts and daggers all at once. Precious fragments of someone I've lost twice: once when she died, and again as her memory faded.
"Excuse me," I manage, setting down my drink with shaking hands. "I just need a moment."
Ruth squeezes my arm as I stand. "Of course, honey."
I navigate through the crowded room, past leather vests and unfamiliar faces, feeling their eyes on me. Viking's daughter. Savannah's girl. A living reminder of what they've all lost.
The bathroom is mercifully empty. I lock the door behind me and sink to the floor, no longer able to hold back the tide. My shoulders shake as the first sob tears through me, then another, until I'm gasping for breath, tears streaming down my face.
I cry for Dad—for Viking—lying cold in the ground while strangers tell me who he really was. I cry for the mother Ibarely remember, whose face I struggle to recall but whose laugh apparently filled rooms. I cry for the little girl who lost her mom and then spent twelve years watching her father flinch every time I asked about her.
"Why wouldn't you talk about her?" I whisper into my knees, curled tight against the bathroom wall. "Why, Dad?"
For twelve years, every question about Mom was met with the same response. A sad smile, maybe one small story, then a swift change of subject. "Some things are too painful to talk about, Sasha-girl," he'd say, and that was that.
Now I understand it wasn't just pain. It was protection. He was hiding her from me the same way he was hiding everything else—the club, his past, who we really were. If I knew about Savannah, the club queen, I might ask about Viking, the president.
My chest aches with the weight of so many secrets. All this time, I thought I was grieving a woman I barely knew. Turns out I never really knew her at all. Or him.
4
HAVOC
Islam the empty glass onto the bartop, the whiskey not even trying to burn my throat anymore. I can’t tell if the warmth in my stomach is from the booze, the grief, or the thoughts of my fallen brother’s daughter.
“I feel like something’s eating at you, brother,” Diesel says from my side. He taps his knuckles against the worn wood of the bar, his heavy rings making a knocking sound. “Something other than burying Vike today.”
“What makes you say that?” I mutter, keeping my eyes on the bottom of my glass.
He leans in, speaking low enough that only I can hear him. “Maybe the fact that your eyes have been followin’ the kid wherever she fucking goes.”
My fingers curl around the glass.
