I would never forget the night that changed everything. When the vengeance I’d sought had been transformed.
Restructured.
Iron Owls had splintered the next month, and I’d taken the few men I trusted and created Crimson Crows.
But we were no longer riding for corruption.
We were riding for liberation.
It’s your heart.
It’s your heart.
“Tomorrow, that reign ends.”
I spun the heel of my tumbler against the wood, the scars carved inside me threatening to bust wide open.
But in a way that promised all of this was right.
That maybe in the end, I was living a life worthy of the belief my mother had in me.
That maybe…maybe this offering was enough.
“You’ve already been briefed,” I said around the rocks in my throat. “You know your missions and your destinations and that our friends from Moonlit Ridge and Redemption Hills will be taking up our backs.”
I’d gotten word that it wasn’t only Cash and his crew who were joining forces, but the guys from Redemption Hills, including Trent who’d been Iron Owls’s vice president.
Old friends coming to our aid to ensure this job was done.
“Everyone has to be their sharpest,” I continued. “Their keenest. Their cruelest. There will be no place for mercy for the merciless.”
It had to be clean or we would be done.
The same as every other job we enacted, but this one was on a scale none of us had ever faced.
Phoenix rocked beside me, violence skimming his flesh as he fisted a giant hand on the table.
“This mission is big, but I believe in this calling, and I believe in you. Be careful. Be wise. And come home.”
A riot of fists banged on the table, and the deep resonation of their chants banged through the room. “Born in chaos. Forged by iron. Sworn to vengeance.”
They all stood after they said it, the lot of them flooding out through the door and into the long hall that led to the bar.
Half of them clapped me on the back as they went, murmuring every variation of “We have this.”
We did.
We had to.
It couldn’t turn out any other way.
My chest tightened as I pushed back from my chair.
Anxious to get back to the house but knowing I needed to keep up appearances. Without a doubt, I’d be out in that bar throwing back old-fashioneds for half the night.
Wanting to be curled up next to Brinley instead.
Tucked into her beauty and held in her faith.
