Chapter 5 Augustine
Augustine
The following day, the Leatherbacks came calling, while the Bloody Scythes were hungover, half-dressed, and not expecting company.
I’d just finished showing Melissa the back room—her eyes lighting up at the wall of antique switchblades, her laugh echoing off the stainless steel like she’d never bled in her life—when the world outside the club exploded into a parade of idling Harleys and the iron stink of war.
If you’ve never seen six Leatherbacks dismount at once, you’re missing out.
They moved as a single, mean organism: chrome skulls, oil-black boots, those ridiculous turtle patches leering from their backs.
In the middle of the pack, like a general at the world’s most violent flea market, was Cutler D’Agossa.
He looked like he’d been carved out of bad intentions and barbed wire, his beard gone all gunmetal gray, his old eyes cold enough to keep beer chilled.
He kicked the Scythes’ clubhouse door so hard it ricocheted off the wall, rattling the ancient Coors Light clock and sending three hang-arounds bolting for the back.
Cutler didn’t bother to look at them—he only had eyes for the main room, for Damron at the bar, and for me, standing arm’s length from Melissa.
For a split second, the room was silent except for the clink of pool balls and the low static of the radio. Then the Leatherbacks fanned out, covering every exit, and the temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.
Damron set down his beer without looking up. “That’s a lot of turtles for breakfast,” he said. “You boys get lost on your way to the aquarium?”
“Business,” Cutler growled, voice sandblasted from years of whiskey and betrayal. “Private. You want to clear the civvies, or should I?”
Damron’s face didn’t move. “They’re with me. So’s Augustine.” He nodded at me, then at Melissa. “What’s the problem?”
Cutler’s eyes found Melissa. She went white, but to her credit, she stood her ground. I put myself between her and the Leatherbacks before I even realized I’d done it, hand hovering near my Glock, spine locked straight. Cutler’s lip curled.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “You finally grew some balls, Augustine.”
“Didn’t take long, either,” I shot back.
He glanced at Damron, then at me, then at Melissa again. “We’re here for the girl.”
Melissa’s voice was a rasp. “Fuck you, Dad.”
Cutler didn’t blink. “You always did have your mother’s mouth.
And her sense of timing.” He stepped forward.
Three Scythes at the bar rose in unison, hands at their sides, but Cutler ignored them.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he said, and the whole room leaned in to hear it.
“You’re going to return my daughter to Leatherback territory in two days.
If you don’t, we burn your clubhouse to the ground and salt the ashes. You got me?”
He locked eyes with Damron, waiting for a flinch. He didn’t get one.
“I don’t take orders from turtle soup,” Damron said, calm as a preacher. “And you don’t walk into my house and start making demands.”
Cutler smiled—a tight, sharklike thing. “You want a war, St. James? Because this is how you get one.”
“I want you off my property,” Damron said, and the two men sized each other up, years of mutual hate simmering between them.
Cutler’s gaze cut over to me. “I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Not today. But if you think you’re gonna keep her, Augustine, you’re dumber than you look.”
I felt Melissa press into my back, fingers digging through the leather of my cut. Her breath was sharp, frantic. I didn’t move.
“She stays,” I said.
Cutler’s eyes went narrow. “I’ll give you one warning. I don’t expect a second.”
“Don’t need one,” I said, and that was it. Every man in the room tensed, fingers flexing, feet edging wide for balance. The Scythes and Leatherbacks squared off, each side measuring distances and targets, all of them calculating how many would walk out if things went hot.
Damron was the only one who didn’t go for a weapon. He stepped between Cutler and the rest of us, palms out, like a referee at a dog fight.
“Nobody wants blood on the floor,” he said. “Let’s keep it professional.”
But Cutler was already moving. He took a hard step forward, crowding my space, his six backup dancers flanking him with matching sneers. Melissa shrank behind me, but I felt her straighten, like she was ready to throw hands herself.
Cutler glared at her, then at me, his voice low enough to rattle my teeth. “You sure about this, Augustine? You want to die for a Leatherback whore?”
I drew my Glock in one smooth arc, the click of the safety off echoing louder than the jukebox in the corner. Instantly, a half dozen guns leveled at my head—Leatherbacks and Scythes both, all of them locked in a dead man’s geometry.
Nobody breathed. Nobody blinked. My finger curled around the trigger, and I counted the heartbeats—one, two, three. Damron’s eyes were on me, warning me without a word that if I pulled, everything would burn.
Melissa’s lips were at my ear. “Please don’t die for me,” she whispered, and I realized she’d started to shake.
I kept my eyes on Cutler. “She stays. Two days, or you come back with more bodies.”
He studied me, as if he could will me to crack. Then, all at once, the threat drained out of his posture. He spat on the floor, holstered his piece, and nodded to his goons.
“You’re a dead man, Augustine,” he said. “But I respect the play.”
The Leatherbacks backed out, guns still up, and the second they hit the porch, the Scythes dropped their aim and let out the breath they’d been holding. Cutler lingered at the doorway, eyes drilling into me.
“This is personal now,” he said.
Then they were gone, the sound of their bikes tearing the silence to shreds as they peeled away from the clubhouse. Nobody moved until the last engine faded. Only then did Melissa let go of my jacket, her hands leaving sweat prints on the leather.
Damron turned to me, his voice barely above a whisper. “You just wrote our death sentence.”
I shook my head. “He was never going to let us walk. Now at least we’ve got time to prepare.”
Melissa stared at the floor, her face pale and drawn. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice barely audible.
I touched her arm. “You didn’t start this,” I said. “But we’re going to finish it.”
In the distance, I could still hear the Leatherbacks howling up the road, hungry for blood.
War was coming, and I couldn’t wait.
***
The real war, as always, started in the back room. Our “boardroom” was a scarred slab of wood ringed with mismatched chairs, and by the time I got there, it was already filling with the club’s old guard and young guns, all of them stinking of sweat and fear and cheap lager.
The second I set foot in the room, the noise hit like a shot. Everyone had an opinion, and every opinion was a fist:
“We give her up, we live.”
“We stand, we die like men.”
“They’ll steamroll us. D’Agossa’s not bluffing.”
“He never bluffs, you fucking idiot—”
Damron sat at the head of the table, hands folded tight, jaw clenched. He didn’t bother trying to talk over the pack. Instead, he let the chaos burn until it threatened to collapse the roof, then barked, “Sit down and shut the fuck up.”
It worked. The room fell into a hostile, breathing silence.
Seneca Wallace stood, pale and calm as ever.
Most people called him The Sadist. He had the kind of face you could never picture as a child, just a battered adult’s mask with dead eyes and a long white scar along the jaw.
He cleared his throat. “Leatherbacks roll in heavy,” he said.
“At least thirty patched, another fifty hang-arounds. Call it forty who can handle a weapon.”
Someone cut in. “Half of ‘em couldn’t hit a barn sober.”
Seneca ignored it. “We got a dozen full-patch. Fifteen prospects. Five on suspension or parole.” He met Damron’s stare. “We can hole up, but we’re dead by Saturday.”
A ripple of nervous laughter. Nobody really believed in the strength of numbers; most wars in New Mexico were settled by who had the worst friends.
Damron looked to me. “Your call, Augustine. She’s yours; you brought her in.”
I looked at the faces around the table. Most of them had spent the last five years waiting for me to fuck up. Now I had, and it was biblical.
“We don’t hand her over,” I said, my voice coming out raw. “She’s ours now.”
A few heads nodded; most didn’t. Seneca scratched at his jaw and stared at the table, then said, “So we fight. And we die.”
“Better than living as turtle bitches,” said the youngest prospect—Razor, I think his name was, but it hardly mattered.
Damron silenced him with a look. “Anyone else want to weigh in?”
The room spun out again, everyone talking at once. I tuned it out, watching the door to the hallway. Out of habit, I counted the seconds since I’d last seen Melissa. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. My palms started to sweat.
Seneca went on, voice dry and even: “Cutler’s a bastard, but he’s not an idiot. He knows if he takes a shot at the Scythes, he’s looking at six months of federal heat and a half dozen dead. He wants the girl, not a massacre.”
“Then why the threat?” Damron asked.
Seneca shrugged. “He needs her scared enough to come back. Or desperate enough to run.”
My stomach dropped. I pushed up from the table so hard the chair skidded back on the tile. “Where’s Melissa?” I asked, loud enough to cut the din.
Nobody answered. I stalked out of the room, boots pounding the hallway. Her borrowed boots were gone from by the couch. The door to my quarters hung half-open, and the tiny prickle at the base of my spine became a full-body scream.
I checked the room—bed made, water bottle gone, window wide open. There was a dusty footprint on the sill, and beyond it, a splash of sun catching on a bright red jacket as it ran up the dirt path.
She was gone.
My hands shook. I turned and sprinted back to the meeting, every part of me locked in the same dead panic as the night I buried my uncle.
Damron stood in my way. “Augustine,” he said, quiet, trying to block the door. “Let her go.”
I shoved him. “She’s out there alone with Leatherbacks hunting her. You think Cutler’s gonna play nice if she shows up on her own?”
He didn’t answer.
I checked my Glock, racked it, and grabbed my keys off the wall. “If she’s gone, so am I.”
Damron put a hand on my chest. “You leave now, you start the war yourself.”
“Then let it start,” I spat and pushed through him. “I’m not going as a Scythe. I’m going as me.”
“You’re going as a Scythe,” Damron corrected. When push came to shove, we were all one.
I hit the parking lot at a run, the sun burning through the haze and making every shadow a potential death trap. In the distance, I caught the blur of Melissa’s hair as she sprinted toward the old train depot, a half mile off and closing fast.
Behind me, Damron’s voice was a curse and a benediction at once: “You got two days, Augustine! Two fucking days before this all goes to hell!”
But I didn’t turn. I just twisted the throttle on my Harley and took off after her, the roar of the engine drowning out every thought except one.
If I didn’t get there first, neither of us was making it out alive.