Chapter Twenty-Two
The Vote
Colt stood before the full assembled membership of Eisenwolf in the clubhouse's main room, the exit documents signed and sitting on the table in front of Rein, his patch already removed and folded beside them, and felt, for the first time in fifteen years, entirely unafraid of what this room thought of him.
"I'm leaving," he said, his voice carrying clean through the cavernous space, no tremor in it despite the dozens of eyes fixed on him.
"I've surrendered every claim I had to this club's protection, its income, its structure.
I'm not asking permission and I'm not asking forgiveness.
I'm telling you what's already been signed.
Whatever consequence you decide to make of that tonight, it isn't going to change the decision. "
Rein rose slowly from his seat at the head of the room, his expression unreadable in the harsh overhead light. "Fifteen years," he said, "and you walk away over a woman who's divorcing you."
"I'm walking away because staying was killing something in me that took me thirty four years to even notice was dying." Colt held his gaze, steady. "You can call that whatever you want. I know what it actually is."
The room's temperature shifted, a current of unease moving through the assembled members, and Rein's jaw tightened in a way Colt recognized as the precursor to violence. "Take the patch back," Rein said, quieter now, dangerous. "Last chance. Or we decide tonight what an example looks like."
"No."
What happened next moved fast: Rein's hand came up, a signal, and two of the men nearest the door started forward with an intent that needed no further explanation.
Colt braced himself, understanding with total clarity that whatever came next, he wasn't going to fight his way out of this room, only absorb what he had to absorb and hope it ended somewhere survivable.
The door at the far end of the depot banged open before the first blow landed.
Senna walked in with Sabine a half step behind her, and the sight of her, calm and utterly unafraid in a room built entirely on the threat of violence, stopped the two advancing men mid-stride, uncertain, glancing back toward Rein for direction that didn't immediately come.
"Everyone in this room already knows he's not the same man who's been sitting outside my studio every night for two months," Senna said, her voice carrying with the same precise, unshakeable clarity she used to direct a difficult scene, cutting through the tension like something honed for exactly this purpose.
"I've watched him refuse a promotion for me.
I've watched him take a beating rather than escalate to a weapon that could hurt someone.
I've watched him give up every claim this club ever offered him without asking me for a single thing in return.
If you punish him tonight for finally becoming someone worth trusting, all you're proving is exactly what kind of family this actually is. "
Silence spread through the room, broken only by the distant hum of the depot's fluorescent lights. Ledger stepped forward from the crowd, positioning himself visibly beside Colt, and after a beat, two more members did the same, a small but unmistakable shift in the room's balance.
Rein's eyes moved between Senna, Colt, and the men now standing in visible support, calculating something Colt couldn't read. Whatever he found in that calculation seemed to cost him something, a long, tense moment stretching out before he finally, abruptly, waved the advancing men back.
"Exile," Rein said, his voice flat, stripped of its usual amusement.
"Clean. No further business between us. You're nothing to this club as of tonight, and this club is nothing to you.
" He looked at Colt for a long moment, something almost like grief flickering behind the cold authority. "Get out of my yard."
Colt didn't wait to be told twice. He crossed the room to Senna, close enough to see her hands shaking despite the steadiness of her voice, and neither of them spoke as they walked together toward the door, Ledger and Sabine falling in behind them, the whole room watching in a silence that felt, for the first time in Colt's life, like something other than judgment.
Outside, the cold hit hard and clean after the depot's smoke-thick air. Colt's bike sat where he'd left it, but he didn't move toward it, and Senna, beside him, didn't ask why.
"Leave it," she said quietly. "Walk with me."
They left the bike behind, walking out through the chain-link gate and into the freezing Frankfurt night on foot, side by side, two people with nothing left between them but each other and the cold, honest air.
"You could have been hurt in there," Colt said finally, his voice rough.
"So could you. I decided I'd rather stand next to you and risk it than watch from a distance and wonder for the rest of my life whether I could have changed the outcome.
" She glanced over at him, something fierce and tender in her expression.
"I'm done deciding what your silence means from behind glass, Colt. I want to be in the room."
He reached for her hand, and this time neither of them hesitated, fingers lacing together as they walked, the industrial dark of Gutleutviertel giving way slowly to the more familiar streets that would eventually lead them home, neither of them speaking again for a long while, the silence between them, for the first time in months, entirely without weight.