22
TEX
Colorado always felt too damn open.
Miles of nothing in all directions. The sky so big it made a man feel small and insignificant. And today, with the cold biting through my cut and the engine humming under me, it felt like riding straight into a storm I couldn’t see yet.
Moose, Bear, and Swampy rode tight behind me, four Kings cutting through the backroads like a scythe ready to cut through some necks. We’d gotten intel—solid intel, or so we’d thought—that the cartel had holed themselves up in an old warehouse out here.
Middle of nowhere.
Perfect for hiding.
Perfect for dying.
I should’ve been back at the ranch. Withher.But after what had happened last night I couldn't bear to be around her. The hurt look on her face at my rejection had kept me awake for hours. I’d just nodded off when I’d gotten the phone call with the tip, and I’d known I had to go. Rowan was safer with three men watching her than she’d ever be with me dragging danger rightto her door. Besides, after the way we had left things last night, I figured she was probably done looking at my dumbass face.
Didn’t stop the guilt from chewing at me the whole ride.
We rolled up just after noon, the road leading to the warehouse clearly well traveled with clear tracks, both bikes and trucks, on it.
The place looked like it had been abandoned since the eighties. A short, squat concrete building with rust bleeding down the walls from the metal beams in the roof, windows boarded up or smashed out, and a corrugated metal roof that sagged in the middle like it was tired of holding itself up. Weeds pushed through cracks in the asphalt and a chain-link fence hung open, the padlock cut clean through.
Moose killed his engine first. “Looks quiet.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Too quiet.”
We’d come armed to the teeth, with a handful of men further out to catch anyone we missed and tried to get away. Because sometimes, sending everyone into one spot at the same time was a recipe for disaster. Better to send in the big guns and hang a net at the back to catch the strays.
I swung off my bike, boots crunching over the dusty gravel. The air smelled like dust and old oil. No voices. No movement. No cartel.
But the second I stepped inside, my stomach dropped.
The warehouse was empty, stripped bare. No crates. No gear. No bodies. Just footprints in the dust and the faint smell of cigarette smoke and sweat.
They’d been here—recently. And they’d left in a damned hurry.
Bear whistled low. “They cleared out fast.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Too damned fast. Like they knew the devil was coming to their door.”
Swampy kicked an empty bottle of Blue Moon across the floor. And it smashed against the wall. “They knew we were coming.”
“Sure as shit seems that way,” Moose replied.
We looked around, silently taking everything in, looking for anything that would tell us where they had gone, or what they were planning next.
And then I saw it and my stomach dropped.
I’d hoped that we’d been wrong. That my brothers were the men I had expected them to be, the men I had pinned my own life on. That the bond we shared was life and death and everything in between, because betrayal was a motherfucker. But the taste of their betrayal sat like acid on my tongue because the evidence was right there now, staring me in the face.
A leather vest.
Ourleather vest.
Half-buried under a pile of tarps in the corner.
I yanked it out, heart pounding. The Kings of Anarchy patch stared back at me, dirty and torn, but unmistakable.
