Chapter 1 - Phoenix
The nightmare drags me under at 3 a.m., same as it always does.
I'm back in the warehouse. Blood on concrete. The smell of copper and gunpowder thick enough to choke on. My hands are slick with it as I turn over another body. Marcus, I think, or maybe it's someone else, and the dead man's eyes stare through me like I'm not even there.
The Vipers stand in the shadows, laughing. Demon stands at the center of them, the president who turned a brotherhood into something rotten. He's watching me with those cold eyes, that slight smile playing at his lips like this is all some kind of game. Like the bodies at my feet are just pieces he's moved across a board.
In the dream, he speaks, though his mouth doesn't move. *You could have stopped me.*
I know. God help me, I know.
I jerk awake, heart pounding against my ribs like it's trying to break free.
The bedroom is dark. Silent. Empty except for me and the ghosts I can't shake.
Three-fourteen a.m. Close enough.
I drag a hand down my face, feeling the rough line of the scar along my jaw. A knife I didn't see coming, wielded by a man I'd called brother. That was before I understood what the Vipers had become. Before I learned that some rot spreads from the head down, poisoning everything it touches.
Demon did that. Slowly, he turned good men into monsters or corpses.
We tried to stop him anyway. My brother Carter and the good men who still believed in something beyond money and power and control. We tried to pull the club back from the edge, tried to cut out the cancer before it killed us all.
Demon killed us for it. One by one, the men who stood with us disappeared or turned up dead in ways that sent a message to anyone else thinking about growing a conscience.
Only Carter and I walked away from that massacre.
Only us.
I swing my legs out of bed, knowing sleep won't come again tonight. It never does after the dreams. The floor is cold under my bare feet as I cross to the window, looking out over the compound. The Iron Phoenix clubhouse sits quiet in the predawn darkness, bikes lined up like sleeping beasts in the lot. Everything I've built. Everything I've tried to make right.
I built it clean. Built it right. Every member vetted, every recruit tested, every decision filtered through one question: would my parents be proud?
The phoenix on my chest, the club crest inked over my heart, burns sometimes like a brand. *From Ash, We Rise.* The words curve beneath the bird, permanent as the promise I made to the dead.
This club would be everything the Vipers wasn't. No trafficking. No hard drugs. No preying on the vulnerable. We'd protect our own, serve our community, and maintain relationships with law enforcement where possible. We'd be the club my parents died believing in.
Most days, I think we've succeeded.
Tonight, at three-seventeen in the morning with the taste of nightmares still coating my tongue, I'm not so sure.
I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, not bothering with boots. The clubhouse is mine, and I can walk it barefoot if I want. Heavily tattooed arms, the Iron Phoenix colors blazing down both sleeves. Ink on my neck, my chest, covering the scars underneath. Some battles leave marks you can't hide, so you might as well make them mean something.
The hallway is quiet. Most of the brothers are asleep in their rooms or gone home to their own places. We're not a live-in club unless someone needs it. Another way we're different from the Vipers, who kept members trapped in the clubhouse like prisoners who didn't know they were locked up.
The common room is dark except for the light over the bar. I'm halfway across the floor when I realize I'm not alone.
Judge sits at the bar, a glass of whiskey in front of him, looking like he's been there awhile.
"Can't sleep either?" My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by the dream.
He glances up, and even in the low light I can see the understanding in his eyes. Judge has his own nightmares. Ex-military, the kind that saw things overseas that no one should have to see. He's forty-three, the oldest member of the Iron Phoenix, and the steadiest man I've ever known. When my rage takes over, Judge is the voice of reason that brings me back.
"Thought you might be down," he says, pushing the bottle toward me. "You were shouting."
Shit. "Sorry."
"Don't be." He watches me pour two fingers of whiskey into a glass. "Same one?"
