Chapter 21 #2
The farther-rear section of the property remains isolated and quieter, separated from the rest of the clubhouse. That’s where the shed sits. There’s just enough room inside to make a man regret every bad decision that led him there.
The second Robby sees it, panic explodes across his face. “Wait.”
The van comes to a stop. Nova grabs Robby’s arm and drags him out of the van. “Too late.”
The river wind carries damp heat and the smell of muddy water across the property while gravel crunches beneath our boots.
Robby digs his heels in once, and Nova slams him forward hard enough to stagger him. “Keep walkin’.”
The shed reeks of rust, bleach, river water, and old blood baked into the concrete. A single bare bulb sways overhead, casting weak light over the bolted metal chair, the floor drain, and the tools on the wall. Robby goes pale.
I lean against the wall near the door while Nova straps him into the chair. I stand directly in front of him. Robby blinks. “Don’t kill me.” Fear makes his voice crack. “Please.”
Silence stretches.
I step into his space, close enough that he has to tip his head back to look at me. “Start spillin’ your guts,” I say, voice low and dead. “Who do you owe? How much? What’d you do to get that kind of heat pointed at your sister?”
Robby’s mouth trembles, but nothing is coming out of it.
Nova plants both hands on the back of the chair and leans down by his ear. “This is the part where you decide whether you leave here busted up or not.”
Riggs doesn’t raise his voice from where he stands off to the side. “Every lie you feed us buys you pain.”
Robby shakes his head hard enough that the chair rattles. “I didn’t mean for Ruby to get touched.”
Rage flashes white-hot through me. I grab the chair’s front legs and jerk it forward until the metal screeches across the concrete.
Then I rear back and drive my fist into his face hard enough to snap his head sideways.
Blood flows from his mouth. My hand throbs, but it only makes me want to inflict more pain. I fist his hair and yank his head back.
Robby breaks. Snot, tears, blood, all of it mixing while his words trip over each other, and his chest heaves.
“Shit, shit, man, I took a job for a guy they only call by his last name, Crowley,” he gasps, voice wet and wrecked.
“It was supposed to clear what I owed. Just hold a shipment… pills. That’s it.
” He shakes so hard the chair rattles against the floor.
“But I skimmed some. Sold some. Used some. I thought I could fix it before anybody noticed.” His face crumples.
“Then I couldn’t. I ran, and they came looking. ”
Something in me goes dead quiet after that.
Not calm… worse. The kind of silence that comes right before a man does something he can’t take back.
I step in close again, and the panic in his eyes turns animalistic.
“You didn’t think,” I say, low and flat.
“That’s the problem.” My hand closes around his neck, lifting him and the chair off the concrete floor.
“You gambled with her life as if it was spare change.” My throat burns.
“She’s pregnant, you stupid motherfucker.
You put two lives on the line because your worthless ass couldn’t stop feedin’ your habits. ”
Robby struggles to breathe, but it doesn’t move a damn thing in me. I watch him turn blue, and his eyes bulge from the pressure around his neck as I squeeze.
“Catcher,” Riggs says, his voice low and hard, barely cutting through the red haze roaring in my ears. “He can’t keep talkin’ if he’s dead.”
My fingers finally unclench. Robby drops with the chair in a violent crash to the floor.
He folds forward against the restraints, dragging in ragged, choking breaths.
For a while after that, time slows. It turns into sweat stinging my eyes, rust and bleach sitting thick in the back of my throat, Riggs’ voice cutting in low and even, Nova’s boots scraping concrete every time he circles the chair, and Robby breaking a little more with every answer he gives us.
Names, places, routes, debts, drop points.
Men he worked for.
Men he owed.
Every piece of it comes out ugly and panicked, soaked in tears, fear, and the stink of a man finally realizing there isn’t a bottom to the hole he dug.
By the time two hours pass, the air in that shed feels used up.
Robby is slouching in the chair as if his body quit on him, and I’m still standing there listening to him spill enough dirty information to start a small war.
These people he got into bed with have operations spread across southern Louisiana.
Every word he says makes it clearer that Ruby got caught in something much bigger than her idiot brother ever understood.
“Lock him up,” Riggs finally says.
Nova hauls Robby out of the chair, and the bastard acts as if he can barely stand. If I had it my way, he wouldn’t.
We take him into the clubhouse through the back entrance and shove him into one of the old, never-used rooms. The place is bare bones—no window, no decorations, nothing soft in it except a narrow cot shoved against the wall and a stained blanket folded at the foot.
A concrete floor, cinderblock walls, and one weak ceiling light hums overhead.
It’s the kind of room built to strip a man down to his nerves.
Nova backs out first, then Riggs pulls the door shut, and the deadbolt slides into place from the outside with a heavy thunk that leaves Robby locked in with nowhere to run and nothing in that room but his own fear.
Riggs’ eyes settle on me next. “Ruby comes back here once she’s discharged.”
“Already planned on it,” I say.
Riggs nods. “Go get your woman. Once everyone is here and the clubhouse is locked down, we’ll hold church.”
I head outside to where I keep my old truck parked and climb into the cab.
The drive back to the hospital feels longer somehow.
Streetlights streak across the windshield while my ribs scream every time I shift behind the wheel.
By the time I walk back into Ruby’s hospital room, the clock on the wall reads a little after six o’clock.
Her curls spill messily around her face, eyes heavy with exhaustion, but alert the second they land on me standing in the doorway.
For a second, neither of us says a word. I stand there looking at her, making sure she’s breathing, making sure she’s real, and hating how close I came to losing something I never even got the chance to call mine out loud.
Her gaze drifts over my face slowly. “Robby?”
Even after everything, she still asks about him first.
I move farther into the room, shutting the door quietly behind me before crossing toward the chair beside her bed.
“He’s alive.”
Her shoulders loosen a fraction. “Thank you,” she whispers, and it sounds like it hurts her to say it.
I sit down. “Don’t thank me yet.”
Ruby studies me through the silence. The air between us feels different now, closer, heavier, not awkward anymore. Just charged with too many truths sitting out in the open.
She closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, there’s guilt sitting there so thick it twists something ugly in my chest. Silence stretches between us, broken only by rain against the glass and distant hospital noise in the hallway. “What happens now?”
I drag a hand over my jaw. “You’re coming back to the clubhouse.”
“Catcher.”
“Not gonna argue with you about this, babe.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “You don’t get to bulldoze me at every turn and make decisions for me.”
“The hell I don’t,” I say, and it comes out wrecked around the edges.
Ruby says nothing.
“Ready to get out of here?”
Ruby sighs, conceding, for now. “Yeah.”
The drive back to the clubhouse happens just as daylight starts bleeding out of the sky. It’s that strange Louisiana hour when the sun hangs low and heavy behind dark storm clouds, casting streaks of orange and deep blue across wet pavement as the city shifts from daytime noise to nighttime chaos.
Ruby sits beside me in the truck, wearing a pair of borrowed sweats and an oversized hoodie that one of the women brought up to the hospital for her.
The sleeves swallow her hands. Her curls are piled messily on top of her head, bruises visible along the side of her face.
Seeing what they did to her keeps dragging violence right back to the surface inside me every time I look at her.
The windshield wipers drag rhythmically across the glass while the city glows around us in blurred streaks of color and wet concrete.
Ruby stays mostly quiet, tired and hurting, but now and then, I catch her glancing toward me as though she’s trying to read whatever’s happening inside my head. And if I’m honest with myself, I want her to know.
Ruby’s fingers twist together in her lap.
Outside, dusk settles heavier over the city with every block we pass, and the closer we get to the clubhouse, the more tension I feel rolling off her. It’s not exactly fear, but more like nerves, as if she understands that coming back here tonight changes something between us.
I park the truck, climb out, and stroll around to the passenger side. I open the door, unbuckle Ruby, and scoop her into my arms.
She lets out a tired breath against my shoulder. “Catcher, I can walk.”
I don’t respond, close the truck door, and head inside.
The clubhouse is loud, the kind of noise that comes from too many people packed into one space, carrying tension they’re trying not to show.
Voices overlap near the bar, glasses clink, and the smell of whiskey, coffee, leather, cigarettes, and something cooking hangs thick in the air while brothers move in and out of rooms, handling lockdown business.
The second I step through the front door with Ruby tucked against my chest, the conversation dips.
Ruby’s arm tightens around my neck when I start toward the stairs. She’s light, but I still move carefully because every bruise on her body feels burned into my own skin.