Chapter Twenty-Eight
WILL
The Next Day
The Chapel doors close behind me with that soft, heavy sound that always feels like crossing a line you don’t get to uncross. The air inside carries the familiar weight of leather and the gravity that settles over this room whenever the outside world gets shut out.
Church.
Every chair around the table is already filled. Cuts on backs, arms folded, boots planted like the floor owes them something. The stillness that comes after a war, when everyone is waiting to talk about what almost went wrong.
That’s what I expect this to be.
A debrief.
A reckoning.
A post-mortem on how close we came to getting buried under the Alliance’s mess.
I move to my usual spot against the wall, my shoulder finding the familiar groove in the plaster like my body remembers where it belongs, even if my mind hasn’t caught up yet.
Sin sits at the head of the table, one hand resting on the wood, his poker chip lying still for once.
Something about that feels off, but I don’t follow it.
This is business.
It has to be.
Damage assessment. Strategy. Lessons learned.
No one speaks.
Just a pause that hasn’t been filled yet.
Nitro didn’t even look at me when I entered, which is unusual enough that it flickers somewhere in the back of my mind.
Ghost’s laptop is closed. Deek’s mouth is shut.
Even Koa’s stopped bouncing off the walls for once, the entire room pulling itself tight while everybody waits to see what happens next.
I assume this is what the aftermath feels like. The kind of silence that follows when everyone is tallying up what it cost and what it didn’t.
Sin finally lifts his gaze to me.
It’s not the sharp, assessing look he gives when he’s about to dissect a situation. It’s not the warning look he gives when someone is about to get put in their place. It’s something heavier.
Two years of standing in rooms like this have taught me how to meet that look without shifting my weight or giving anything away that could be read as uncertainty. I hold it steady, hands loose at my sides, posture relaxed in the way that took me months to learn and years to perfect.
If this is about the Alliance fallout, I’m ready for whatever comes with it.
If it’s about what we did right, I’ll listen.
If it’s about what we did wrong, I’ll own it.
What I’m not prepared for is the way Sin leans back slightly in his chair, the movement slow, like he’s clearing space for something larger than a conversation about strategy.
“You know why you’re in this room?” he asks.
I don’t hesitate. “Alliance fallout. Figured we’d run the play back.”
A few heads shift.
A breath hitches somewhere to my left. Deek’s jaw twitches like he’s fighting something that wants out. Sin’s mouth moves at one corner, not quite a smile, not quite anything I can categorize.
“That’s part of it,” he says.
The easy atmosphere disappears fast.
I feel it this time. A subtle change in pressure. Like the air has dropped half a degree, and everyone but me noticed it before it happened.
My instinct is to straighten. To prepare for impact. To recall every decision I made in the last few weeks, in case this turns into accountability.
Sin lets the silence sit.
Lets it stretch.
Lets it become something I can’t quite name.
“Step forward.”
For one second, I genuinely think I’m about to get my ass handed to me in front of every brother I’ve bled beside.
So, I do.
And I walk straight into the moment that changes everything.
“Two years ago,” Sin says, his voice low and unhurried, filling the room without effort, “Will came to this club as a prospect. He didn’t come in with something to prove. He came in with something to earn. There’s a difference. Most men don’t know what that difference feels like… you did.”
Nobody moves. Deek, beside Dad, has his forearms on the table and his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between me and the surface of the wood, and I can see the muscle in his jaw working.
He’s not going to look at me yet. I know my brother.
He’s waiting until he can do it without his face giving him away entirely.
Dad is watching me directly. He has been watching me directly since the moment I walked in.
Sin finally speaks, “You know what most men think earns them a seat at this table?” No one answers. “Noise,” he says. “Big moments. Flash heroics when there’s an audience.” He leans back slightly. “That’s not how this works.”
Half the room freezes, waiting to see what happens next.
“You earn it in the moments nobody claps for,” he continues. “In the mornings nobody’s clocking. In the small decisions nobody writes down. In showing up when there’s no credit waiting at the other end.”
Ghost nods once, almost imperceptible.
Sin’s gaze never leaves me. “Discipline,” he says. “Consistency. Character that doesn’t change depending on who’s in the room.”
Deek exhales hard through his nose. “Jesus, just say it,” he mutters.
“Shut up,” Koa tells him.
“I’m helping,” Deek insists.
“You’re vibrating,” Nitro says. “It’s distracting.”
Sin ignores them both. “This week,” he continues, something shifts in his tone, something that pulls every spine in the room a fraction straighter. “This week tested every one of us.”
A chair creaks, and someone clears their throat.
Sin continues, voice calm and steady. “We had pressure. We had risk. We had reason to fracture.” His hand taps once on the table. “And we didn’t.” He looks at me again. “You didn’t.”
The silence deepens.
Deek finally lifts his eyes. They hit mine for half a second before he looks away again. “Yeah,” he says roughly. “He didn’t.”
Dad speaks for the first time, voice low but carrying through the room anyway. “No,” he says. “He didn’t.”
Sin nods once. “And that matters. There are men in this room who have been patched for years, and there are decisions they’ve made that cost them less than what Will put on the table ten days ago…
” He pauses, and the pause has weight, the kind that lands in the chest rather than the ears.
“He came to me with information that was going to complicate one of the most important days of his life, knowing it might cost him everything… but he told me the truth anyway. Because that’s who he is…
” Another pause. His eyes don’t move from mine. “That’s who we’re patching today.”
Something shifts in the room, a collective exhale, a settling, and I realize I’ve been holding every muscle in my body taut against the moment.
Sin looks around the table and doesn’t need more words than that. The vote had already been unanimous. Now, this is the rest of it, the shape of it, the reason behind it.
Nitro has the patches in his hands, already laid out. He sets them on the table and steps back, because this part isn’t his.
Sin looks at Dad and tips his head once toward me.
Dad stands up slowly. He moves around the table the same way he always does, carrying that solid presence that makes people pay attention without him needing to demand it. Then he stops in front of me with the patches in both hands.
Before anything else, his hand comes up and settles on my shoulder.
I look up.
It’s only a second—maybe less.
But it’s enough.
No speech or big ceremony, just that look. The kind that says everything without him having to spell it out.
You did it, son.
It lands harder than I expect.
Something in my chest tightens, then steadies. Like all the noise, all the doubt, all the miles it took to get here… settle under the weight of it.
I hold his gaze for a fraction longer, then nod once. My hands move, reaching for the front of my cut, my fingers finding the worn leather, the weight of it familiar, earned. I shrug it off my shoulders and hold it for a second, just long enough to feel it in my hands.
Then… I pass it to him.
He takes it without hesitation.
He doesn’t make a speech.
Dad has never been a man who needs speeches.
The room feels smaller with him this close, the air heavier with everything that has led to this exact point. I can hear the faint scrape of someone shifting in their chair behind me, the low hum of the ceiling fan, my own pulse steady but louder than it has any right to be.
He holds up the top rocker first.
DEFIANCE.
Simple. Absolute. Final.
My eyes lock on it.
Two years of standing at the back of rooms. Of listening instead of speaking, of earning every inch of ground I was allowed to stand on, of proving, over and over again, that I belonged here.
His hands are steady, practiced, fingers moving with the care of someone who understands the permanence of what he is doing. The first stitch bites into leather. The sound of it lands in the room like punctuation.
Something in my chest answers it.
No one speaks.
He finishes, then steps back just long enough to meet my eyes before lifting the bottom rocker.
LAS VEGAS.
Home.
Not where I started.
Where I stayed.
Where I chose.
It settles beneath the first, completing something that has existed in potential for two years and is only now allowed to become real.
I feel that settle too.
He presses the final thread through.
Ties it off.
Then he reaches for the center patch logo.
This one he holds for a second longer.
Not hesitation—recognition. I feel it in the way my spine straightens without thinking, like something in me knows this is the part that matters most.
He positions it with both hands, smoothing the leather flat like he’s setting something sacred in place. When the needle goes through this time, the sound feels louder, more final, like a door closing somewhere far behind me. And something is opening in front of me.
Everything it took to get here presses in at once. The mistakes, the distance, the choices that could have gone another way, but didn’t.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe properly until he’s done.
When he steps back, the room exhales as one.
Sin watches me for a long moment, poker chip still between his fingers for once.
The room narrows to the space between us.