Chapter 11
Eleven
Tommy Boy
The text comes through: sermon.
I don’t question it. I grab my cut off the chair, sling it over my shoulders, and head out. The bike growls under me, steady and familiar, but my gut screams something is off. Something in the air feels heavy.
Sermon on a whim on a weeknight usually means trouble. Somebody stepped out of line, somebody needs to be straightened out, or some business went sideways.
But when I walk in and see who standing at the head of the table, my world tilts.
It isn’t Tripp. Although Talon “Tripp” Crews is in his seat but off to the side just a bit from the dead center. It isn’t my dad. Frank “Tank” Oleander sits to the right of Tripp his eyes watching me and hiding something. It isn’t even my grandfather, Danza as one of the Hellions original’s.
It’s Crunch. Rhett “Crunch” Oleander, my best friend, my big brother, and the look on his face has me shaken to my core. What has he done.
My blood brother. My fuck-up, recovering addict, prospect who just got his full cut back, brother.
He’s never once called sermon like this, not where I didn’t see it coming.
Hell, half the time he’s still mentally taking notes instead of voting on something.
Crunch is always calculating things, especially when he’s clean and sober.
The room is buzzing, the brothers murmuring low, curious as hell about why Crunch has the floor. He stands tall, though, shoulders squared, eyes harder than I’ve seen them in years. He is prepared for whatever is coming next.
I don’t like this at all.
Tripp sits back, arms crossed, giving him the space. That alone tells me this is serious. Tripp has that personality, the one that takes charge and commands a room.
I drop into my chair, trying to shake the unease.
“What’s this about?” I ask, leaning forward, eyes narrowing as everyone seems to be watching me.
Crunch doesn’t look at me first. He looks at the room. “Brothers, I called for sermon tonight because there’s something we need to talk about. Something that’s gonna require all of us.”
Murmurs ripple. Red sits up straighter. Boomer’s jaw works, his teeth grinding. BW is wide-eyed and alert. The way Crunch has his eyes scanning each man, reading them, makes me more on edge.
My pulse spikes. “Spit it out.”
Finally, Crunch turns to me. His eyes lock to mine, and the weight there knocks the breath right out of me.
“It’s Jami.”
The world stops.
“What about her?” My voice is sharp, already dangerous.
“She’s bad off, Tommy.” His words are slow, deliberate, like he knows everyone in this room is a potential landmine ready to set me to blow. “She’s using again. And worse.”
“No.” I shake my head hard, like I can knock the words away. “No, she—she wouldn’t.”
Crunch swallows. His throat bobs. “She is. I’ve got it from a source who wouldn’t lie. She’s not just using. She’s working the streets to pay for it.”
The room explodes, chairs scraping, curses flying, brothers throwing questions. I don’t hear any of it. All I hear is the rush of blood in my ears, and my brother’s voice breaking me in half.
“She’s selling her pussy for drugs, Tommy.”
I lurch to my feet, the chair toppling behind me. My fists slam onto the table hard enough to rattle bottles.
“Why the fuck are you saying this in here?” I roar staring him down. My voice shakes the walls. “This isn’t club business! This is my business! Why didn’t you call me, brother?” My tone is pure ice and venom on the last word.
Crunch doesn’t flinch. He holds my gaze, steady and grim. “No, brother. This is family business. You claimed her, she’s ours. We all fight together for her.”
“Fuck that and fuck you! I can save her. You should have told me, not left her hanging in the wind. You got a man on her then you yank her out and bring her home to me!”
He shakes his head. “I had to do it this way. If you go in alone, you’ll get yourself killed. Or you’ll kill someone or buy the club an enemy that we aren’t ready for.”
“Don’t give me that shit!” My chest heaves. My hands curl into fists so tight my knuckles ache. “She’s mine. You hear me? Mine. You don’t parade her name in front of everyone like this!”
Red’s voice cuts in, sharp. “Sit the fuck down, Tommy Boy!”
I whirl on him, wild. “Don’t you—”
Tank slams his palm on the table, the sound like a gunshot. “Enough!”
The room goes still.
“Sit,” Tank growls, eyes locked on me. The father taking over in him is more to fear than Tank the biker.
I force air into my lungs, my body trembling with rage and terror, and I sink back into the chair, every muscle coiled.
Pretty Boy my other brother, the quieter one, moves in close.
He stands behind me and holds his hands in a firm grip on my shoulders as if to keep me in place.
I don’t give a fuck. This shit gets any worse, blood or not, I’ll fucking end him to get out of here and to her.
Crunch’s voice drops low, just for me. “You think I wanted to say it like this? You think I don’t know what this does to you?
But if you found out alone, you’d already be dead or in prison, Tommy.
She’s in deep. Not just drugs—she’s on somebody’s leash.
Territory we don’t control. Closest club to that place is an hour away.
She found a small town hole and hunkered down. ”
My chest is on fire. My vision blurs at the edges. The thought of her—my Jami, my Tiny—out there, lost, hurting, being used and discarded—my stomach twists so hard I think I’ll be sick. I know how much doing this shit before haunts her. How will she come back from this relapse?
“Where,” I grind out, my voice raw. “Where is she?”
Crunch shakes his head. “Not yet. We move as a unit. The guys she’s tied up with—they don’t let go easy. If you go charging in, they’ll bury you. Or worse, they’ll hurt her worse than they already have.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” I snarl, slamming my fist into the table again. “I’ll burn the whole damn world down to get her back!”
“I know.” Crunch’s eyes soften, just a fraction. “That’s why I called sermon. Because if we’re gonna take them out, you’re not doing it alone. You’ll have your family at your back. And we do it so she comes home in one piece.”
The room is silent now, every brother’s eyes on me. Waiting. Measuring.
My hands shake. My jaw aches from clenching. My heart feels like it’s splitting open.
I want to tear the walls down. I want to scream until the roof caves in. I want to demand they all get the fuck out of my way so I can run to her, find her, hold her, fix her.
But somewhere under all the rage, the truth digs in.
If I go alone, I’ll die. And she’ll still be there, without me, maybe worse off than before. I drop my face into my hands and drag them down, forcing myself to breathe.
Crunch’s voice is steady. “She’s in deep, brother. But we can get her out. Together.”
I lift my head, lock eyes with him. “If anything happens to her because we sat here talking instead of moving, I’ll never forgive you.”
Crunch nods once. A silent understanding between us. “Then let’s not waste another second.”
The table erupts again, voices rising—questions, logistics, strategy. I don’t hear most of it. My mind’s already with her, picturing her alone, scared, hurting, doing whatever it takes for another hit.
Every part of me screams to run, to ride, to find her right now. But for once, I force myself to stay seated. To let my brothers plan.
Because they’re right.
She’s my heart. My soul. My everything.
And if I’m gonna drag her back from the edge, I’ll need every one of them at my side.
Still, the rage simmers. The guilt burns.
And I swear to God, if I find the motherfuckers who put her there, I’ll show them what it means when you take something that belongs to Tommy Boy Oleander.
They tell you there’s a change before any storm, a way the air gets heavy, like a room that hasn't breathed in a while. I feel that in my chest. It’s the whole house gone quiet, like somebody pulled the plug on the world and left me standing with my hands out.
Crunch called sermon. The whole lot showed up.
We heard the truth in the room and the world tilted.
Jami out there, deep in someone else’s teeth.
Selling herself to feed a habit that wasn’t hers to keep.
Ezra Rivera marked her from childhood and even dead the man still fucks with her.
The thought of it makes bile burn the back of my throat the way cheap whiskey did when I was younger and thought anything could fix me.
We don’t go into territory to roam around.
We don’t throw our weight around unless it’s neat, planned, and the club says so.
But the club is my family and she’s mine, and the way those two things collided tonight — Crunch standing there, telling the room she was out on the street — I felt a part of me die slowly.
Not because I don’t trust them to take care of her, but because this is mine to handle.
I’ve been so caught up in letting her go because she asked me to, I failed to keep watch on her.
I failed her.
Now we’re in the lead-up. The pause before we move.
It’s the worst part, because my head does what my hands can’t, it paints scenarios.
I sit in the lot and watch the brothers come in.
Red with that same heavy stride, Tripp calm like he’s already cataloging the pros and cons, Tank’s shadow across the gravel like a warning.
Karma shows up too, quiet as a threat, and when the man with that name speaks, even the hardest of us keep our mouths closed.
“You boys ready?” Karma asks, not bothering to look at me first. He looks at Crunch, who looks back like a man who’s seen the worst and keeps walking anyway.
“We go together,” Crunch says. No dramatic flourish. Just a statement like a nail through two boards. “We don’t separate. We get in. We pull her out. We get out. We don’t play hero.”
There’s talk then. Rules to call. Votes to take.