Chapter 15
Fifteen
Tommy Boy
I tell her at dawn because mornings are kinder to hard truths when she has the energy for it.
The duplex is quiet, fans whispering down the hall, the lemon and laundry smell that’s become our version of incense hanging in the air.
She’s propped on pillows, hair damp from a careful shower Doc insisted on timing like a nurse tracking an eclipse.
Her hands are steady enough to butter toast today.
Getting her eating more regularly is helping her gain some strength.
She came back skin and bones, a frail shell of the woman she was.
It feels like a miracle to watch her get stronger every day, which is exactly why this is the worst time to say what I have to say.
“I’ve got club business,” I tell her feeling like I am ripping off a bandage.
It lands like a dropped plate. I see it in the flinch she tries to hide, the way her jaw tightens and her fingers pause over the bread.
“How long?” she asks, eyes on the knife, not me.
“Couple hours. Sermon. Might roll into planning after.” I make my voice soft, trying to cushion the blow. Since we got her here and through her entire detox I haven’t left her. “I’ll be back for lunch. I’ll bring soup.”
She nods too fast. “Okay. Good. Soup.” The panic doesn’t come loud; it gathers at the edges. A tiny tremor in her throat. The glance toward the door to check it’s still there. The way she pushes the toast away like it betrayed her.
“I’ll sit with you until I go,” I offer. “We’ll breathe together. Then I’ll go do the thing and I’ll come back and we’ll breathe some more.”
She swallows. “I know you have to,” she whispers. “I just—”
“—hate it,” I finish. “I know.” I scoot onto the mattress, take her hand, lace our fingers the way we’ve been practicing: firm, not clinging; present, not desperate. “I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t necessary.”
“Necessary like… paperwork necessary or necessary like you come back bleeding but swearing it’s fine?”
There is a hint of the Jami I know and love. The woman who would stand in front of a bullet for me, not that I would ever let her. It’s the way she cares, but accepts my life including the worry that sometimes is associated with it.
“Necessary like I come back for lunch with soup,” I answer, giving her what I can. “We’re doing things different.”
Her eyes lift to mine then, clear and too brave. “Promise?”
“On everything I got.”
We breathe. Head Case’s counting is in my bones now, a rhythm I’d mock if it hadn’t saved my life three times this week. Inhale four. Hold four. Exhale four. Hold. Her shoulders loosen one notch with each box breath. My chest does too. We stay like that until the clock clicks on the half hour.
“I hate this,” she whispers, quieter. “I know I need this, though.”
“I hate leaving you,” I admit. “But this is part of bringing you home for good. This is part of our life. Leaving this part you’ve endured behind you.”
Her face flickers. She knows what I mean. The men with door codes and motel curtains drawn at noon. The handler with a ledger keeping a tally that allows ends in a negative for her. The string that led from a bar to a bed to the back of a van for an escape.
“Okay,” she replies, and this time the okay is a hard-won thing, not a surrender. “If you’re not back for lunch, I’m telling Doc to get Tank to drag you home.”
I grin. “Terrifying.” My dad adores Jami and she knows it.
“Good.” She squeezes my fingers and lets go first on purpose. That’s new. That’s strength. “Bring soup. I like the loaded potato the best.”
“I’m bringing soup,” I promise, and lean down to kiss her forehead, a press that lasts a heartbeat longer than necessary.
When I stand, the room tilts for one second like grief tried to catch my heel. I plant it, nod to Doc in the hallway, and step into the morning that smells like cut grass and threat.
The cave for sermon is the only room I know where silence feels heavier than shouting.
The table’s already full when I walk in.
Tripp at the head, elbows on the wood like a man about to negotiate with a war lord.
Tank to his right, arms folded, eyes sharp.
Red, Crunch, Karma, a scatter of brothers posted along the walls, ready for whatever comes next.
I take my chair and put my hands flat so they don’t make fists on their own.
Tripp clears his throat. “Brothers.”
“Brothers,” we answer, the sound low and locked in as the unit we are.
He nods to Karma, who sits forward, that coiled-still posture he gets when what he is about to share matters.
“We did more listening,” Karma starts. “Handler we disrupted? He’s not independent. He pays tribute to a supplier out of Maryland. Those boys pay dues up the chain to the Caputo family. Not a rumor. Paper trails and mouths that like to talk when they think no one’s listening.”
The name knots the air. Caputo isn’t a myth around here. We’ve run transports for them before. They carry those mafia rules of the past. Old money, old grudges, old routes. They prefer to be a rumor until they don’t want to stay in the shadows anymore.
“How deep?” Red asks.
“Deep enough to make the handler feel untouchable,” Karma says. “Not deep enough to be irreplaceable. The family sees him as cheap labor and plausible deniability. Our move cut into two things they like: revenue and silence.”
“So we go cut a deal,” Tank responds. Not flippant; practical. “We don’t want a war. We want them to stop feeding him. If the snakes head can’t be fed, the body dies. Caputo knows the Hellions own the Carolinas.”
Tripp looks to me then pauses. I don’t usually get the floor this early unless we’re talking bricks and contracts. Today, the weight of what he’s asking lives under the table with my rage.
“I know where your heart is,” he says. “But we do this clean. You hear me, Tommy?”
“I hear you,” I reply understanding I can’t be a lone wolf. “We stop the supply. We stop him. He doesn’t get to buy her life again.”
“Or anyone’s,” Crunch adds, voice low.
Karma laces his fingers. “Caputo senior is insulated. You can’t shake that tree and get an apple. You talk to the son — Vinnie. He runs day-to-day and likes to be seen as a made man. He’ll take a meet if he thinks it keeps things smooth. He won’t if he smells a corner.”
Tripp’s phone is already on the table. “I’ll make the call,” he says. “I’ll do it on speaker so we all hear the words he chooses.”
He scrolls, finds a number men like us get through favors we don’t write down, and presses it. The line rings, rings, clicks. A man answers with a voice like velvet on a knife. “Vinnie.”
“Tripp,” our President says, easy as oil. “Hellions MC.”
A pause. “Not sure we have called for a transport, Tripp.”
“No, you haven’t in a while. Need a chat and I prefer to call before I come to dinner,” Tripp replies. “We are gonna have a conversation. Not about you. About a man who thinks he’s under your umbrella. He stepped on our family.”
Another pause. Vinnie Caputo isn’t stupid. He can count. Family means more than the room we’re in. He knows enough names to know this is a courtesy call.
“Where?” Vinnie asks.
“Half way,” Tripp answers. “Neutral site. No surprises. No one walks out embarrassed.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Vinnie gives back. “Warehouse at the docks. I’ll send the details. Maryland side. You know the one.”
“We’ll be on time,” Tripp states before he ends the call. He looks around the table. “We roll at first light.”
My back is straight enough to be a board. “I’m riding,” I say.
Tripp doesn’t argue. “You’ll bring the face of the club, Tommy Boy. You won’t bring a fuse. You understand me?”
“I’m not the fuse today,” I respond. “I’m the reminder.”
“Fair,” Tank mutters.
Karma flips a page in his notebook. “We don’t post up in a way that shows our hand.
We don’t threaten. We lay out facts. We take offense when our people become someone else’s ledger line.
That said, we don’t want their routes that go outside of the Carolinas.
We don’t want their money. We want that handler cut loose and blackballed.
If we see a return to business as usual in our backyard, we will not call next time. ”
“And if he calls our bluff?” Red remarks.
Karma’s eyes go still. “Then we’ll have a different sermon and a different shape to our week.”
No one smiles. The room is full of men pulsing with adrenaline and a fierce desire to protect what is our own.
We move to logistics. Numbers. Bikes and vans.
Cuts under plain jackets. No patches in the first meet — respect and deniability.
We bring our lawyers’ cards in case anyone wants to pretend this is a thing that can be solved with invoices.
We bring medical kits because we pray and plan.
We bring nothing we don’t need and everything a man alive to the world might need to not become a ghost.
When the meeting breaks, I find the wall and put my shoulder to it, counting breaths again so I don’t put my fist through sheetrock just to feel something that isn’t memory.
Crunch slides in beside me. “You good?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “But I’m here.”
He nods. “Jenni will sit with her until you return.”
“She’s breathing, Tommy,” he reminds me, and his voice goes gentle, that rare thing with him. “Let the anger do work, not damage.”
“I hear you,” I say. I mean it.
I keep my promise. I bring soup. We eat together, small bites, big silences. Knowing what is coming and coming quick, I decide to tell her about the call with Caputo and leaving for Maryland.
“Maryland?” she affirms, and the word is a shore she hasn’t seen.
“Maryland,” I confirm.
“How long… gone?”
“Out early before the sun comes up. Probably three or four in the morning. Back by dinner if men decide to act like men.” I hesitate. “Later if they act like men who forgot they aren’t invincible.”