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Two feet.
One foot.
I see it, the flash of recognition in his eyes when he realizes the mistake he made. The split-second where the mask slips and he sees not his daughter, not his weapon, but a woman with a blade and the will to use it.
I don’t hesitate. The knife drives upward and the blade slides between my father’s ribs with a sound like fabric tearing—wet, final, and irreversible. My hand meets his chest, and I feel the heat of him, the shock of his body absorbing the strike, the way his muscles lock around the steel as though trying to hold himself together.
Samuel’s eyes go wide. Not pain, not yet. Incredulity. The absolute, cosmic disbelief of a man who built a weapon and never imagined it would be turned on him.
“Poppy,” he breathes, and I twist the blade.
His hand finds my shoulder. Not grabbing. Holding. His fingers dig in, and for one terrible, infinite moment, we are locked together—father and daughter, creator and destroyer, the knife between us the only truth that matters.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” I whisper.
His mouth opens. Closes. A thin line of blood traces from the corner of his lip, down his chin, and drops onto the gravel between us. His knees buckle.
Samuel Anderson, Tyrant, President of the Forsaken Saints, architect of my suffering and my strength, crumbles to the dirt at my feet and he doesn’t get up.
I stand over him. The knife is still in his chest, my hand steady, slick and red, and my chest heaves with breaths that sound like sobs but aren’t. I’m not crying. I refuse to cry. Not for him. Not for the man who turned his daughter into a weapon and is surprised when she finally points it at him.
Behind me, I hear them. Boots on gravel. Not running. Walking. Steady and deliberate, the sound of men who have seen what they needed to see and are bearing witness. I don’t turn around, but I feel them, the entire Sons of Sin chapter, filing out of the shattered clubhouse, lining up behind me.
Savage. Saint. Walker. Brothers whose names I know and names I haven’t learned yet. Prospects and patched members. Standing shoulder to shoulder in the morning light, their cuts dusted with plaster and blood, their faces hard.
No one speaks.
No one needs to.
The silence says everything. I killed my father. I chose my family. I’m not his anymore.
I pull the knife from Samuel’s body and wipe the blade on my thigh. The blood smears, dark against the denim of my shorts, and I sheathe it at my hip. My hand still doesn’t shake.
Walker’s hand settles on my shoulder. His thumb traces the seam of the cut where it sits on my body, and the touch is so gentle it threatens to undo me.
“It’s done,” he says. Low. Just for me.
“It’s done,” I repeat.
The sun climbs higher. The dead stay dead. And behind me, every Son of Sin stands watch as the girl who was raised to be a weapon becomes something else entirely.
A daughter of the club.
A Nomad’s old lady.
A killer who chose love over blood.
And for the first time in my life, I’m free.
Chapter Seventeen
Ash in the Dust
Walker
Leather wraps me head to toe as we prepare for the longest night. The vigil for the fallen brothers has drawn a crowd from Sons chapters everywhere. The president of the Denver club, Nero, waits at the bar downstairs. Savage spent time with him earlier, the two talking quietly. He’s done a lot of that, Savage. Talking. It’s not my favorite chore, so I hauled my ass out to help move bodies and clean the mess that’s been made of the club.
Red and blue lights decorated my room while Poppy slept that night, the pair of chromed guns resting on my sparse bedside table. We never did get to play with them, and I’ll never touch them for good reason. Those are laid out on my bed now, waiting for her.
