Clearing his throat, the attendant spoke again.“We, uh, have some of his belongings.The police have the rest.”
“Police.”The word slipped out, strained.
“Standard procedure with narcotics, ma’am.Just paperwork, I’m afraid.”
The drawer slid back with a clank.The door banged shut, the sound echoing down the hall as Cassie fled, the attendant’s footsteps fading into the distance.
The rhythm followed her—through the twilight, across the empty lot—until it cut off with the slam of the car door.
Silence rushed in.In her lap, she clutched a brown paper sack—the remnants of a life stuffed into something meant for leftovers.
Her fingers trembled as she tore it open, the heavy leather coming free.The Kings of Anarchy patch was dulled with grime, edges fraying.His name patch—Con-Man—scarcely clung to the front, threads hanging loose.
Barely breathing, Cassie’s grip tightened.
“We’re gonna be Kings, Cassie,” he’d told her once, green eyes bright, voice full of that same stubborn certainty.“We’ll never go hungry again.”
That vest had been everything back then.Survival.Protection.Promise.Family.
Now it sagged in her hands—heavy with everything she hadn’t been there to see…
Opioids.Fentanyl.Track marks.The fucking rail yard.
She couldn’t make sense of it.Connor had always been reckless, sure—but never like this.
Not…fentanyl.
Heart racing, breath sharp and uneven, she ripped the dangling name patch free.Stuffing both the patch and vest into her crossbody, she tore out of the lot—headed toward…
fucking answers.
The drive from the hospital in Wierswood to Clifton Ridge was short—just a stretch of highway, then winding country roads—but it felt endless.The same route she once tore down at top speed, music blaring from her old Chevy, had turned into a funeral march—just the hum of tires as the road unspooled beneath her, the town rising ahead, tucked between hills and forest, its skyline scarred by the rusting skeletons of dead factories.
Welcome to Clifton Ridge, West Virginia, the fading sign declared.Home of the Champion Clifton Crusaders!For one fleeting heartbeat, she could still see them—teenagers perched high on the sign, sun-tanned legs swinging, a case of beer wedged between them, laughing as they chucked empties at passing cars.
The past blinked out as the road carried her forward.She eased onto the main drag, the town hitting her all at once.
Clifton had never been rich, but it used to have soul.Now it looked gutted—storefronts boarded, walls cracking and crumbling, the coal miner statue outside the courthouse missing half its limbs.Across the square, an old church sagged, white paint peeling, its steeple bell hanging cockeyed and silent.
She could still feel Connor’s hand gripping hers as they walked the path behind their mother’s casket.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he whispered, squeezing her hand.“You’re stuck with me, kid.Forever.”
Her chest constricted.Black lung had taken their daddy.Grief had taken their mama.And now…Connor…
A horn blared behind her.
“Move it, damn it!”
Cassie blinked, jerking her focus back to the road as a pickup swerved around her, the driver leaning out the window to throw her a look before gunning it past her.
Nostrils flaring, she slammed her foot on the gas, tires squealing as she tore onto Black Bear Trace.Sagging houses blurred into forest and dirt turnoffs.Over a decade gone, but she remembered every turn, every marker, her eyes scanning the trees until she found it—a crude crown spray-painted on a signpost, marking a narrow road.
She turned in.The forest swallowed her car, branches weaving a tunnel of shadow until one sharp bend opened into a clearing.
The Kings of Anarchy clubhouse loomed.A massive barn, weather-worn, their emblem glowering down from the peak—a masked skull wearing a crooked crown.
The lot was packed.Bikes lined in formation.Trucks scattered like afterthoughts.From inside, bass-heavy music pounded through the walls, broken by bursts of laughter.
