Chapter 23 Mercy
MERCY
The police station waiting room is lit by little more than glare and bad intent, all too bright and ugly for one in the morning.
The benches are the same kind I remember from visiting Gabriel’s precinct back in Ailington.
Same cracked vinyl, same smell of burned coffee and body odor.
But now I’m on the other side of the counter, clutching a paper cup of coffee so bitter it hurts, and waiting for someone—anyone—to tell me if my boyfriend is going to jail for a crime everyone in this room knows he didn’t commit.
Tank sits next to me, hands too meaty and restless for the child-sized cup of coffee he’s been trying to balance for the last hour.
He keeps glancing at the police station’s front desk like he’s daring them to arrest him next.
Bones is across from us, legs kicked out and crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his patched chest, looking like he might simply outlast the entire city with his willpower alone.
Kya’s on her third cup of terrible vending machine coffee, and Lee keeps checking his phone for updates from the brothers out searching.
I get up and start pacing again.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the linoleum,” Bones says, not looking up from his phone.
“I can’t just sit here.” My hands are shaking. “They took him hours ago. Where the hell is he?”
“We have people on it.” Bones’s voice is steady, calming. “Come sit. You’re making everyone nervous.”
I drop into the chair next to him, leg bouncing immediately. “How are you so calm?”
“Practice.” He pockets his phone. “This isn’t my first police station rodeo. Hell, one time I had to bail out Stone’s daughter from a drunk tank in Vegas.”
“Emma got arrested?” Kya perks up at this. “When was this?”
Lee sits forward, brow drawn tight. “Yeah, Bones. When the fuck was this?”
Bones just laughs. Lee’s big brother vibes do nothing to the seasoned biker, who looks around the same age as him. Both seem older than Cash, but younger than me. So I’d put them around thirty.
“About four years ago,” Bones says. “Right before she started dancin’ for the Joffrey Ballet.
” He pauses and cracks a smile. “She and some of her dancer friends decided to celebrate their acceptance by driving to Vegas on a whim. Got wasted, decided to stage a performance on the edge of the fountain at Caesar’s Palace and she fell in.
” His grin turns faraway, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever seen his expression this soft.
“Her so-called friends took off and security fished her out, called the cops, and she called me because Stone would have gone nuclear if he found out.”
Lee stares daggers at Bones, but there’s no real heat behind it. “Funny. She’s never mentioned that.”
“Probably because you still treat her like a kid sister.” Bones tips his cup in salute as Lee scoffs.
“What happened?” I ask, glad for the distraction from my own problems for a moment. “I mean, was she charged?”
“No. I paid off the hotel security to keep it quiet. Pulled her out of lockup before the news could get wind.” Bones’s expression goes gentle for a moment, like the memory of Stone’s daughter means something real to him.
“Not that she seemed bothered by any of it. When they took me in to get her out of the drunk tank, she was fucking pirouetting on the bench in the middle of the room. All these half-drunk, half-high women sitting around and Emma just—” Bones shakes his head, the fondness obvious.
“She did a whole routine with no music, then curtsied to the cop when he called her name.”
Kya cracks up, and even Lee can’t help a little grin. For a minute, the tension in the room lifts. But then the moment snaps, and the anxiety rushes right back in the moment the main station door swings open and Stone walks in, Josie trailing at his side.
I take in the grim look on Stone’s face and my stomach drops.
“He’s not here,” Stone says without preamble. “They never brought him in.”
“And they just kept us here, sittin’ on our asses while they scrambled trying to figure it out?” Lee says. “Fucking typical.”
“What?” I’m on my feet. “But they arrested him. We all saw—”
“They obviously took him somewhere else,” Josie says, her professional composure cracking slightly. “This is kidnapping, not arrest. We can file charges—”
“Fuck charges,” Lee growls. “Where is he?”
Stone’s already pulling out his phone. “Every brother, every prospect, every hang-around. I want them looking. Check every Summit property, every—”
Bones’s phone rings. He answers immediately. “Yeah?”
We all fall silent and watch his face.
“You’re sure? ... Good man. Stay there but don’t engage. We’re coming.” He hangs up. “That was Mouse. The new prospect. He was at the bar with me and Tank.”
“And?” Stone demands.
“Thought the whole thing was suspect, so I had him follow when they left. Said they took Cash to one of Summit’s abandoned construction trailers out in the industrial zone.”
I’m already moving toward the door, but Stone catches my arm. “You’re not going.”
“Like hell—”
“You’re Gabriel’s target. Walking into his trap is suicide.” Stone’s voice is sharp. “Bones, Lee, Tank, you’re with me. Kya—Steel’s outside with the bikes. Get him to take you and Mercy to the clubhouse. Go straight there and stay put.”
“Stone—”
“That’s an order.” His tone brooks no argument. “We’ll bring him home.”
Every cell in my body is screaming to fight him on this.
To demand they take me along. To refuse to be protected when Cash is the one in danger and I know it’s my fault.
But Stone’s right and I know it—Gabriel wants me there.
Wants me to walk into whatever hell he’s created so he can use me as leverage against Cash, against the MC, against everyone I care about.
“I’ll go with them too,” Josie says, moving to stand beside me. “Mercy and I have some urgent work to do.”
Stone squeezes Josie’s arm. A small, private gesture, but I catch the affection in it.
I wonder if anyone else sees the tightrope Stone is walking—holding everything together when every instinct screams to burn the world down for Cash.
Josie sees it too. She nods at him with a look that says we’re in this together.
For one crazy second, I realize how rare it is for me to see two adults share trust like that, let alone in a room crowded with berserker bikers and blood-deep adrenaline.
“We’ll go now,” Josie says. “The sooner I call Judge Martinez, the faster we push the divorce through and strip Gabriel of leverage.”
She’s hustling me out of the waiting room before my brain finishes the order.
Kya’s right beside me, her hand locked around my wrist like I might try to bolt and chase after the boys, anyway.
I want to. I want to rage and smash and get in the car and drive straight for wherever they’re keeping Cash.
But Josie’s right. I’m Gabriel’s real target.
If I walk into his crosshairs now, I’ll just hand him exactly the ammunition he needs to wreck not just my life but everyone I care about, and I have been too selfish for too long to risk that now.
Steel’s waiting in the lot, bike idling, face drawn. He nods when he sees us. “We’re heading to the clubhouse. Stone said don’t stop for anything.”
“We’ll take my car,” Josie says to Steel. “You take point on the bike.” Steel nods, glancing back at the station like he expects trouble. “Stay close,” he tells us. “If you spot a tail, honk like hell.”
Kya pulls me into Josie’s backseat before I can protest. It’s a rough dash through empty downtown, lamplight streaking white and useless across the windshield as Josie guns it.
Steel’s bike is a black phantom up ahead.
None of us speaks until we’re halfway to the clubhouse.
Every second drags like a razor across my nerves.
Kya is the first to break. “You think they’re hurting him?”
Josie doesn’t blink. “Not if they want him alive to leverage against the MC. Stone made it clear—any permanent damage, and Gabriel’s in a blood feud with the MC to the grave.”
Kya just nods, staring out the window. I listen to my own breath and count the spikes in my pulse, using it as a metronome to keep from melting down.
But my mind keeps showing me what Gabriel’s capable of. The emotional torture he perfected over years. The way he’d twist everything until you doubted your own sanity. And now he has Cash—my Cash, who’s already survived so much, who’s already been broken by people who were supposed to protect him.
What if Gabriel knows exactly where to push? What if he’s doing to Cash what he spent years doing to me—making him doubt himself, making him feel small, using his trauma against him?
The worst part is I can’t do anything but sit in this car and trust that the MC will get there in time. Believe that Cash is strong enough to survive whatever Gabriel’s doing. Count on the family I’ve chosen to bring home the man I love.
I’ve spent so long not trusting anyone. Maybe that’s the test now—learning to trust when it matters most. God, it’s hard.
Josie swings into the clubhouse lot, the prospect on duty waving us in. When we get out of the car, Steel is already off his bike and holding the door. He hustles us inside, then stations himself at the window, every inch the sentry.
Inside, the main room is dead quiet—no music, no laughter, not even the usual after-hours bickering about who owes for beer.
I head to the kitchen, ignoring the judgy looks from the hang-arounds at the table.
I pour myself another cup of coffee and don’t protest when Kya adds a slosh of whiskey ‘for my nerves’.
She pours herself one neat for good measure, and we sit at the battered kitchen table, pretending that caffeine and a splash of liquor might be enough to keep the panic at bay.
Josie paces the room’s perimeter, phone glued to her ear as she makes calls.
Her lawyer voice is all precision and threat, crisp enough to slice through city bureaucracy if she wanted.
I keep half an ear on her end of the conversation, the rest of me straining for any sound from the front door, from the family I borrowed hurtling into the dark after my man.
Kya watches me over her coffee cup. “You holding up OK?” she says, reaching over the table and squeezing my arm.
Josie ends her third call and turns to us, her mouth a thin line. “Judge Martinez is not happy about being woken at two in the morning.”
My heart sinks. “Does that mean she won’t—”
“But,” Josie continues, “when I explained that Gabriel has escalated to kidnapping and assault, she agreed to push through an emergency order. She’s driving to her office now to sign the decree.
Given Gabriel using his badge and your marriage to terrorize you, she’s willing to backdate it to Monday when we filed.
” She checks her phone. “The court clerk is meeting her there. We should have confirmation within the hour.”
“Is that even legal?” Kya murmurs.
“It’s irregular,” Josie admits. “But judges have broad discretion in cases involving law enforcement abuse and imminent danger. Gabriel crossed a line tonight. Martinez wants to remove any legal claim he thinks he has over Mercy.”
We wait in tense silence. I stare at my coffee cup, remembering the china set Gabriel insisted we register for.
Royal Albert, Old Country Roses pattern.
I broke a teacup once, and he made me stand in the corner of our dining room holding the pieces in closed fists for an hour.
“So you remember to be more careful with nice things.”
Twenty minutes pass. Kya refills our cups—whiskey only this time. Neither of us touches it.
I think about the teaching job I turned down because it required background checks Gabriel would have traced. The apartment with the garden I couldn’t rent because the landlord wanted references, and I had no one I trusted to vouch for me without leading Gabriel straight to my door.
Twenty-five minutes. Steel shifts at the window, checks his phone, goes back to watching.
All the normal things I couldn’t do because running meant staying invisible. Every choice weighed against the risk of him finding me.
Thirty minutes. I lift my mug and take a big, burning gulp.
But also—that first time I ate a whole pizza by myself without anyone counting slices. The tattoo I got at 2 AM just because I could. The night I danced at Devil’s until my feet blistered and no one told me I was embarrassing myself.
Cash.
Thirty-five—
Josie’s phone buzzes.
We all freeze. She looks at the screen, expression unchanging. Then she opens the message, and her eyes scan whatever’s there.
“It’s done.” Her face breaks open, a smile taking over.
I can’t breathe. “What?”
“The decree is signed and filed. Mercy...” She looks up at me, and her voice softens. “You’re officially divorced.”
The words don’t make sense. They’re just sounds floating in the air.
“I’m...” My voice cracks. The room tilts. “I’m free?”
“You’re free, Merc,” Kya says softly, reaching for me.
Free.
Thirteen months of running. Of looking over my shoulder. Of jumping at unexpected phone calls. Of Gabriel’s name hanging over everything like a storm cloud. Of being Mercedes even when I tried to be Mercy.
It’s over.
The sob that tears out of me doesn’t sound human. Kya’s arms come around me as I collapse into her, my whole body shaking. I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe—years of fear and control and diminishment pouring out all at once.
“It’s over,” I gasp into Kya’s shoulder. “It’s really over.”
“It’s over,” she confirms, holding me tight.
But even as relief crashes through me, terror chases right behind. Because I’m free, but Cash is still out there. Still with Gabriel. Still—
The rumble of motorcycles slices through everything.