Page 56

“No.” The word is final. Hard. “This is mine.”

Walker stares at me, and I watch the war rage behind his eyes. Every instinct he has screams to follow, to protect, to put his body between me and the world. But he sees it, recognizes it, the way my father’s ghost has lived inside me for twenty-three years, and the only way to exorcise it is to face it. Alone.

He steps back. His jaw works. His hands fist at his sides. But he steps back, and the space he gives me is the greatest act of love he’s ever offered.

I pick up the knife, Walker’s knife, the one he cleaned and gave to me, the one that’s already tasted Saint blood today. I sheathe it at my hip and turn to Walker. He shrugs off his cut and holds it out to me, his eyes meeting mine, steady, unspoken understanding passing between us. I slip my arms through the leather, settle Walker’s cut across my shoulders, and walk toward the shattered front of the clubhouse.

“Poppy.” I stop, but I don’t turn at the sound of Savage’s voice. “Make it count.”

I nod once and step through the broken window.

The morning sun hits me like a wall. After the darkness of the clubhouse, the light is blinding, golden and warm and obscenely beautiful for a day that’s already seen so much destruction. Gravel crunches beneath my bare feet, and I feel each stone press into my soles, grounding me, tethering me to this moment.

Bodies litter the lot. Saints lie where they fell, cuts soaked red, motorcycles still idling on their stands like faithful dogs waiting for masters who will never ride again. The air reeks of gunpowder, gasoline, and fresh blood. A breeze rolls through, carrying the smell away, but it clings to my skin, my hair, Walker’s shirt.

And there, at the end of the access road, stands Samuel Anderson.

His black SUV idles behind him, door open, exhaust curling white into the morning air. His leather cut is immaculate, Forsaken Saints President patch gleaming as though polished for the occasion. His iron-grey hair is cropped close and military precise. His hands hang loose at his sides, empty of weapons, and his pale blue eyes are fixed on me with an expression I’ve never seen him wear before.

Surprise. Not that I survived. Not that his men are dead. But that I’m standing here, wearing another club’s name on my back, walking toward him with blood on my hands and a blade at my hip.

I stop ten feet from him. Close enough to see the lines carved into his face, the network of violence and victory written in every crease. Close enough to see his chest rise and fall, steady and controlled, the breathing of a man who has never once been afraid.

The Nomad cut sits heavy on my shoulders, Walker’s name against my spine. The weight of it feels like armor, like a promise, like the first thing I’ve ever chosen for myself.

Samuel’s eyes drop to the cut, and his jaw tightens. “Take that off,” he says.

“No.”

His voice sharpens, the command voice, the one that used to make me flinch when I was small. “I said take it off. You’re wearing a dead man’s name on your back.”

“He’s not dead.” I let the words hang between us. “Your men are.”

His gaze sweeps the carnage behind me. Twelve bodies. Twelve men who followed him, believed in him, bled for him. And not a flicker of grief crosses his face. They were tools. Nothing more. Just like me.

“You always were a waste of potential,” he says. Cold. Flat. The same way he said it when I was fifteen and couldn’t pull the trigger on a kneeling man. “I gave you everything. Made you everything. And this is what you choose? A Nomad? A man with no home and no future?”

“He gave me something you never could.”

“And what’s that?”

“A choice.”

Samuel laughs. It’s an ugly sound, hollow and mean, scraped out of the dark place where he keeps whatever’s left of his humanity. “A choice. You think you have choices? You think that cut on your back means freedom? It means you’re someone else’s property now. Different master. Same leash.”

“I’m not property.” My voice doesn’t shake, and I’m surprised by that. Somewhere deep inside, the girl who used to cower when he raised his voice is still there, but she’s buried beneath layers of blood and the memory of Walker’s hands holding me like I was worth something. “I never was. Not his. And not yours.”

“You ungrateful little bitch.” The words come out soft. Worse than shouting. The kind of quiet that precedes violence. “I built you. I made you. Every shot you’ve ever fired, every life you’ve ever taken, every drop of blood on your hands—that’s me. That’s my work. You don’t get to walk away from that.”

“I’m not walking away.” I hold his gaze. “I’m standing right here, Father.”

His eyes narrow. He takes a step forward. Then another. His posture shifts, shoulders squaring, and I recognize the movement—the same one he used before he hit me, before he grabbed my hair, before he zip-tied me to a chair and called me bait.

“You’re still weak,” he says. “Still that little girl who couldn’t pull the trigger.”

He’s close now. Five feet. Four. Close enough that I can smell him, gunpowder and aftershave, the scent of my childhood nightmares. His hand rises, reaching for me, fingers splayed like he’s going to grab my arm the way he’s done a thousand times before.

Three feet.