Gnarly Roughcut (North Star Savages MC #20)

Chapter 1

The amp weighed sixty pounds and Roughcut carried it like it was made of glass.

He'd been hauling equipment for Maren's bar since she'd claimed him for prospect work three months ago, and he'd learned that sound gear was temperamental.

Drop a speaker wrong and you'd hear the rattle in every bass note for the rest of its life.

So he moved through the back hallway of the Timber Wolf with the amp balanced against his chest, diesel-stained fingers spread wide to distribute the weight, his shoulders filling the narrow corridor.

Then he heard her voice through the wall.

He stopped. The amp suddenly felt like nothing—sixty pounds of dead weight forgotten against his ribs.

The sound coming from the stage was raw and clear, a woman's voice cutting through cheap wall insulation like it had been aimed directly at him.

She was running a soundcheck, just testing levels, and somehow it was the most honest thing he'd heard in months.

Roughcut stood in that hallway like an idiot, holding professional audio equipment while a stranger's voice reached through plaster and found something he'd been trying to bury since a hillside in northern Minnesota gave way and took a man with it.

He made himself move. Set the amp down in the storage room with the care he gave everything now—the overcorrection of a man who knew what happened when heavy things moved without thought.

Then he walked back toward the bar proper, telling himself he was checking on Maren, that prospects were supposed to be useful.

The Timber Wolf was a club-friendly establishment twenty minutes outside Ely, the kind of place where Savage cuts got respectful nods and the beer was cold and nobody asked questions about the scars.

Friday night crowd was building—loggers and construction workers and a few faces Roughcut recognized from runs.

Maren was behind the bar with her red hair pulled back and Permafrost's claim visible on the chain around her neck, and she caught Roughcut's eye with a knowing smile.

"She's good, right?" Maren said.

Roughcut just nodded. Didn't trust his voice.

The woman on the small stage was finishing her second song, something original about empty main streets and mills that went quiet.

She had dark blonde hair in a practical braid and hands that moved on the guitar strings like they'd been doing this for decades.

Road-lean, Maren had called her earlier.

Living out of a van lean. The kind of thin that came from choosing gas money over groceries when the gigs were sparse.

Elise Torvik. Regional act grinding the Iron Range circuit. Roughcut had carried her equipment and learned her name and watched her tape down cables with the efficiency of a woman who'd done it a thousand times alone.

He leaned against the bar and let himself listen.

The song ended. Scattered applause from the early crowd. Elise set her guitar in the stand and stepped off the low stage toward the bar, probably headed for water—

The front door opened and the temperature in the room shifted.

Three men walked in. The one in front was tall, six-four with a doorman's flat stare and fists that looked like they'd been formed around cinder blocks. He wore the particular expression of a man who expected rooms to rearrange themselves around his presence.

Roughcut straightened off the bar. Maren's hand drifted toward the phone mounted on the wall.

The big man—Dean Kovich, some part of Roughcut's brain supplied, Wennberg's head of enforcement—crossed the room like he owned the floorboards. His two companions flanked wide, taking positions that blocked the side exit and the hallway to the back. Professional spacing. They'd done this before.

Kovich intercepted Elise before she reached the bar.

"Elise." His voice carried the false warmth of a man who thought friendliness was a weapon. "Mr. Wennberg's disappointed. Really disappointed."

Elise stopped. Her shoulders went tight, but her voice stayed level. "I played a gig in Babbitt. It was an open booking."

"There's no such thing as an open booking on the Range." Kovich smiled with too many teeth. "You know how this works. You play where Wennberg says. You don't play where Wennberg doesn't say."

"The booking was already made when—"

"The booking is canceled." Kovich stepped closer, using his height like a tool. "Your schedule with Wennberg's venues is suspended. Effective immediately."

The bar had gone quiet. Friday night crowd finding sudden interest in their drinks, in the walls, anywhere but the confrontation happening center stage. Roughcut understood. Civilians knew when violence was in the room. Smart ones knew when to look away.

Elise didn't look away. "You can't blacklist me for playing one independent gig."

"Can't I?" Kovich reached out and grabbed her mic stand—the one she'd just set up, the one she'd probably carried across three hundred miles of Range roads in a van with two hundred thousand miles on it.

He squeezed the metal hard enough that his knuckles went white.

"Every stage north of Duluth belongs to Wennberg.

Every single one. You want to play? You play his rooms, his schedule, his cut.

You want to book outside the network?" He twisted the stand, metal groaning. "Then you don't play at all."

Elise's jaw tightened. She didn't step back.

Roughcut was moving before he made the conscious choice.

He crossed the bar floor with the steady, deliberate stride he'd developed in equipment cabs—the walk of a man who'd spent years deciding when heavy things were allowed to move and when they weren't. Kovich's two men saw him coming and shifted their weight, hands drifting toward waistbands, but Roughcut didn't speed up. Didn't slow down.

He stopped between Elise and Kovich. Six-three and equipment-operator broad, diesel-stained hands loose at his sides, brown eyes carrying the particular calm of a man who understood exactly how much force forty tons of earth could apply to a human body.

"Let go of the stand," Roughcut said.

Kovich's eyes dropped to Roughcut's cut. The prospect patch. The North Star Savages rocker. Something flickered across his face—recalculation.

"This isn't club business," Kovich said.

"She's playing in a club bar." Roughcut kept his voice level. "Maren's bar. That makes it club business."

Behind him, he heard Maren's hand settle on the phone. Didn't need to look to know she was ready to make the call.

Kovich held the stare for a long moment.

Roughcut waited. He'd spent years in equipment cabs learning patience—watching terrain, reading slope angles, knowing when ground was stable and when it was about to give.

Dean Kovich was a man who liked to make speeches before he swung.

That half-second of self-importance was a gap a faster man could step through.

But Kovich wasn't stupid. The prospect patch meant backup. Maren's presence meant Permafrost would hear about this within the hour. Two-on-three math changed when one of the two had a chapter behind him.

Kovich released the mic stand.

"This isn't over," he said to Elise, looking past Roughcut like he wasn't there. "You want to play another stage on the Range? You call Wennberg. You apologize. You make this right." His lip curled. "Or you find out what happens to musicians who think they can book outside the network."

He turned and walked toward the door. His men followed, the one by the hallway holding Roughcut's eyes for a beat too long before he moved.

The door closed behind them.

The bar stayed quiet for another three seconds. Then someone fed quarters to the jukebox and conversations resumed with the forced normalcy of people pretending they hadn't just watched a woman get threatened in public.

Roughcut turned.

Elise Torvik was still standing where he'd found her, hands clenched at her sides, fury and exhaustion fighting for space on her face.

Up close, he could see the calluses on her fingertips—steel string calluses, built up over years.

Her eyes were the kind of blue that looked different depending on the light, and right now they were sharp enough to cut.

"Thanks," she said. The word came out clipped. "But I didn't need—"

"Yeah, you did." Roughcut kept his voice gentle. He kept everything gentle these days. "Kovich doesn't make empty promises. He's Wennberg's hammer."

Her jaw worked. "You know him?"

"Know of him. The club knows Wennberg's operation." He gestured toward the bar, toward Maren watching them with concern. "Come on. You should sit down. And probably not walk to your van alone tonight."

Elise's laugh was bitter and exhausted. "I've been walking to my van alone for ten years."

"Tonight's different."

She looked at him—really looked, for the first time. Taking in the prospect patch, the diesel stains, the scarred hands that dwarfed everything they touched. The crushed left ring finger that had healed flat. The sadness in brown eyes that a thirty-year-old shouldn't be carrying.

"Yeah," she said finally. "I guess it is."

Maren was already pouring whiskey when they reached the bar.