Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Could mean: I've got faith in you. Fight tomorrow. Survive tomorrow. This is just the first move in a longer game.
Could mean: I've got nothing to lose. If you go down, I go down. So here's a lifeline. Use it or don't—but know that someone's willing to burn their own resources to keep you breathing.
I turn the note over.
Nothing on the back.
No signature. No clue.
Just those three words that could be salvation or damnation depending on who left them.
Diesel?
He said he had my back. But twenty-five grand is serious money. More than most brothers keep liquid. More than you hand over without expecting something in return.
Savannah?
She's got access to that kind of cash. But she doesn't know about the fine. I didn't tell her. Didn't want to drag her into club business.
Brick?
Fuck, what if this is a test? What if he wants to see if I'll take the money or refuse it on principle? What if paying the fine with mystery cash just digs me deeper into whatever hole he's already planning?
Someone else entirely?
A brother I don't know as well. Someone who sees the same rot I see and wants an ally when the reckoning comes.
Or a Fed wearing a cut, buying my cooperation with cash that disappeared from an evidence locker without anyone noticing.
I pick up one of the stacks. Flip through the bills.
All real. All used enough to have been in circulation. Nothing sequential. Nothing that screams trap.
Just money.
Twenty-five thousand reasons to shut up, and show up tomorrow, and hand Brick exactly what he asked for.
I set it down. Light another cigarette.
The note stares at me from the mattress.
Got you tomorrow.
Promise or threat.
Salvation or sentence.
I won't know until tomorrow which one it is.
I lie back down. Money scattered around me like some fucked-up parody of wealth.
Smoke rises toward the ceiling. It curls in the air currents, a draft from the broken window I never fixed.
Outside, the compound's still silent.
No brothers drinking. No music. No voices raised in argument or laughter.
Just wind. Just distance. Just the space between breaths where everything waits.
I don't sleep.
Can't sleep.
Just lie there watching the ceiling while the hours drain away.
Thinking about Savannah's poem. About her certainty. About the way she looked at me in the silo like I was still worth saving despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Thinking about Mercy at Rimrock. Safe. Happy. Finally getting the childhood she deserves.
Thinking about Diesel's warning. About Brick's betrayal. About forty-seven men who sold their souls in different increments to different devils.
Thinking about the money scattered on my bed and the note that won't tell me who to trust.
The only thing I know is that when the sun clears the horizon, I'll walk into church with twenty-five thousand dollars I didn't earn.
And then... I'll find out exactly what it costs me.
CHAPTER 8
I ride home slow.
Cassia knows something's wrong. She keeps turning her head like she's checking on me, ears flicking backward to catch my mood.
I'm not crying.
Should be, maybe. But I'm too busy replaying every second of what just happened at the silo.
The way Legion touched me. Rough, yes. Desperate, absolutely.
But underneath all of it—underneath the commands and the dirty talk and the way he used my body like he was trying to prove something—there was goodbye threaded through every thrust.
I liked it.
That's not the problem.
I liked how rough he was. Liked being degraded, and claimed, and fucked like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth.
The problem is I don't know why.
Why tonight felt different.
Why he needed me that way right now.
Why he apologized after—called himself filthy and me clean when we both know better.
Something happened.
Something he decided not to tell me about.
And I let him fuck me instead of demanding answers.
Cassia's hooves hit the dirt in steady rhythm. Four-beat walk. Slow and unhurried because I'm in no rush to get back.
I lean forward slightly, stroking her neck.
"I'm a coward," I tell her.
She snorts. Doesn't disagree.
Because I am.
Legion was spiraling right in front of me and I chose to let him deflect with nostalgia and sex instead of pushing him to tell me the truth.
Why should he tell me anything?
What have I actually done to earn that kind of trust?
The thought settles heavy in my chest. Makes it hard to breathe.
I saved his life—but that was selfish. Pure fucking selfishness.
He was dying and I threw money at doctors because I couldn't bear to lose him. Couldn't imagine waking up in a world where Legion Kane wasn't breathing.
That wasn't generosity.
That was survival instinct.
I needed him alive the same way I need air.
And Mercy…
God, I can't even take credit there.
Cash did everything.
Cash got her away from the clubhouse when social services came knocking.
Cash brought her to the ranch and gave her a bedroom bigger than the entire trailer she grew up in.
Cash bought her the puppy.