19
Deacon
The hospital room had started to feel like punishment for a man who hated sitting still.
Everything was too white and too clean, with the wrong things quiet and everything else making noise when I wanted peace.
The TV played some daytime garbage mostly so I didn’t have to listen to my own thoughts, and I kept turning the remote over in my hand without watching enough to know why the people on-screen were yelling at each other.
My ribs hurt if I breathed too deep, my shoulder complained whenever I moved wrong, and laughing remained a terrible fucking idea. Healing, apparently, involved discovering how many ordinary things could piss off an injured body.
Footsteps came down the hall, steady and familiar enough that I knew who they belonged to before the door opened.
Priest walked in without knocking, because of course he did, and shut the door behind him.
He looked tired. Priest never managed sloppy, but strain sat differently across his shoulders now, and the skin around his eyes looked tighter than it had before the ambush.
His gaze swept over me once, quick and assessing, checking that I remained alive enough to irritate him.
I looked back at the television. “You keep walkin’ in here like this, I’m gonna start charging rent.”
A faint smile touched his mouth as he crossed the room. “Yeah? With what money?”
“My charm.”
He snorted, then laid a piece of black leather across my lap.
Everything else in the room fell away.
My cut.
For a moment, I only stared at it. The leather was worn in all the places I knew by touch, the Saints patch sitting exactly where it belonged, familiar enough to feel like another layer of skin. Something tightened behind my ribs that had nothing to do with the damage.
“You kept it,” I said.
Priest gave me a look like I’d asked the dumbest question of my life. “Of course I did.”
I ran my thumb across the patch. Somewhere between blood on the pavement, sirens, and getting shoved into an ambulance, he had made sure the hospital never cut through it or tossed it into some belongings bag like it was another ruined piece of clothing.
“They didn’t...” I started.
“No,” Priest said. “Not your cut.”
That was enough.
I settled farther into the pillows, careful with my side, and kept my hand on the leather. “Appreciate it.”
“You’d have done the same.”
“Yeah.”
I would have.
Priest dragged the chair closer with his boot and turned it backward before sitting, his forearms resting across the back. He studied me in that quiet way that usually meant something important was coming. “You scared the hell out of everybody.”
I glanced at him. “Yeah? Or just you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
A laugh escaped me before common sense could stop it, and pain lit through my ribs. Priest watched me wince with all the sympathy of an annoyed brick wall.
For a while we stayed with easier things.
Club paperwork, Ghost disappearing into his screens, Ink growing quieter than usual.
Priest kept the details broad enough that I knew he was doing it on purpose.
He hadn’t come here to dump the club onto my hospital bed.
He had brought my cut because it mattered, and because neither of us particularly wanted to spend the visit discussing how close he’d come to watching me die.
“You going to her?” I asked.
He knew exactly who I meant. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
His eyes narrowed. “You sure you’re good?”
I shifted, searching for one position that didn’t make my side feel like somebody had stitched it together with fishing line. “I’m alive. That’s good enough for now.”
Priest kept looking at me.
I held his gaze. “Go handle what matters.”
Something flickered across his face. Priest could lead men through gunfire without blinking, but loving Blue had turned out to be the thing that kept finding places his armor didn’t cover.
He stood. “Heal fast. I’m not babysitting your paperwork.”
“Liar.”
That pulled something closer to a real smile from him. Priest reached out and squeezed the good side of my shoulder, careful even while pretending he wasn’t, then glanced once more at the cut beside me.
At the door, he stopped and looked back. “Don’t do this shit again.”
“I’ll put it on the schedule.”
He shook his head and left.
The room felt different once he was gone, quieter in a way hospitals never actually managed. Wheels still rolled somewhere beyond the door, monitors chirped down the hall, and the vents hummed overhead, but I looked at the cut and let my hand settle over the patch again.
Brotherhood took strange shapes. Sometimes it looked like men returning fire from behind an overturned truck. Sometimes it was your president remembering, while you bled all over the road, that your colors belonged with you.
The next knock came a few minutes later, hesitant enough to tell me it wasn’t Priest coming back.
“Come in.”
Ghost stepped through first with Ink behind him. Ghost took one look at me and smirked. “Jesus. You look like shit.”
I snorted and immediately regretted it when my ribs protested. Ink dragged an armless chair toward the bed and sat backward across it while Ghost leaned against the wall by the window, apparently committed to his lifelong suspicion of furniture.
“Good to see you too,” I muttered.
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, well. You don’t look great either.”
That landed. Ghost’s mouth pulled into a grimace, and I took a better look at both of them. Shadows sat deep beneath Ghost’s eyes, while Ink carried his exhaustion in the set of his jaw and the tension around his gaze. Whatever they had been working on had kept them running too long.
I shifted the cut from my lap and laid it carefully beside me. “What’s goin’ on?”
Ghost glanced at Ink before pushing away from the wall. “We thought you’d want an update.”
“Start talking.”
He shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “We ran the three-route bait exactly like planned. Coastal, southern, industrial. Kept them separate. Kept them clean. No crossover, no obvious tells.”
I knew enough of that from Priest, though most of the details had reached me through medication and fractured sleep.
“Most of it came back dead,” Ghost continued. “No chatter worth a damn. No movement we could pin to the routes specifically.”
“But.”
Ink’s mouth twitched. “There’s always a but.”
Ghost ignored him. “Industrial got a flicker.”
That pulled every bit of my attention into the room. “What kind?”
“One of ours spotted two Dead Man’s Hand patches parked off the north stretch near Iron Cut. They didn’t move in or follow. Just sat there.”
“Could be coincidence.”
“Could,” Ghost agreed, sounding like he believed in coincidence about as much as I did.
Ink leaned forward against the chair. “Industrial was also the only route with casual overlap near the women last week. Background conversation, nothing presented like club business.”
I looked between them. “So either Dead Man’s Hand got lucky, or somebody repeated exactly what you fed them.”
“Bar, pool tables, women,” Ink said. “Three versions, three audiences. Industrial’s the only one that gave us anything back.”
“Priest still steady?”
Ink gave me a dry look. “Since when is that man anything else in public?”
That answered the question.
Priest would look like ice while privately trying to chew through concrete. He hated uncertainty, especially when the threat might already be inside his perimeter.
I rubbed a hand across my jaw. “You two think it’s a leak?”
Ghost hesitated long enough for Ink to answer first. “I think somebody either has long ears or Dead Man’s Hand decided to get patient.”
“Difference?”
Ink’s gaze held mine. “Long ears might belong to someone we let close.”
The room tightened around the words.
Nobody needed to dramatize it. A leak inside Saints meant somebody we knew had decided our brothers were worth selling.
“We got anything else?”
Ghost nodded. “A few digital overlaps. Weird timing. Nothing I’m ready to put a name on.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m not throwing a name into the room until I can bury it under proof.”
There he was.
Ghost might have looked half-dead from exhaustion, but his mind was still cold where it needed to be. If he finally named someone, I knew exactly how much evidence would be sitting behind it.
I studied him, then Ink. “You both look like hell.”
“That’s sweet,” Ink said.
“I mean it.”
Ghost shrugged with the same none-of-your-business attitude I’d used on Priest for years. Seeing it reflected back at me was irritating as fuck.
“Deacon,” Ink said, his voice gentler, “you got shot.”
“And?”
“And maybe don’t go full older-brother while you look one cough away from tearing your stitches.”
Another laugh tried to escape me, and I caught most of it before my ribs punished me again. “I hate both of you.”
Ghost finally smiled. “No, you don’t.”
He was right.
Ghost had arrived at Saints carrying enough damage to make trust feel like another trap, all sharp edges and suspicion until he figured out nobody here wanted anything from him except the truth.
Ink went farther back. Military days, dust and blood and the kind of odds that turned strangers into brothers fast. I’d dragged his ass out once, and somewhere along the way both men had become mine in the irritating younger-brother sense of the word.
I’d kill for either of them.
Probably bitch about it afterward.
“So what’s the plan?”
Ghost folded his arms. “We stay boring.”
“Priest’s idea.”
Ink nodded. “Nobody twitches. Nobody changes routine enough to show nerves. If there’s a leak, we let them keep thinking they’re hearing scraps.”
“And if there isn’t?”
Ghost’s face went blank in that way that meant somebody else was eventually going to have a terrible day. “Then the Hand’s fishing blind and we keep them hungry.”
I glanced at my cut on the bed. “Priest worried?” Both of them looked at me like I’d suffered brain damage.
“About the leak?” Ghost asked, while Ink answered at almost the same time, “About every goddamn thing. You know how he gets.” Yeah.
I did. “Anything else?” I asked, and the glance they exchanged made me narrow my eyes. “What?”
Ink stayed where he was. “We’ve got a prospect outside your room.” I stared at him. “You’ve got what?” Ghost folded his arms. “A prospect. Security.” When I pointed out, “This is a hospital, not a compound,” he gave me a flat look. “Still has doors.”
“Absolutely not.” I looked between them, but Ink only lifted one shoulder. “Already done.” That earned both of them a glare. “You two lose your minds while I was unconscious?”
Ghost stepped closer, irritation overtaking whatever tact he’d planned to use. “You got ambushed and almost died. Everybody who gives enough of a shit can figure out which hospital you’re in. You really think we’re leaving you up here alone because there’s a nice woman at reception?”
“I’m not helpless.”
“Didn’t say you were,” Ink replied, while Ghost crossed his arms. “You’re also not at full strength.” I hated that there wasn’t much room to argue. “Who is it?”
“Patch right now,” Ink said. “Switch and Bender will rotate in.” I dragged a hand over my face. “This is overkill.” Ghost answered, “It’s caution,” and I shot back, “It’s babysitting.” Ink watched me for a second before saying quietly, “It’ll make us feel better.”
That shut me up.
There was no strategy hidden underneath it. No order from Priest or security argument designed to win me over.
They were worried.
I looked at the two stubborn bastards standing in my hospital room pretending this was just another operational decision. They had brought me an update themselves, put one of ours outside my door, and apparently planned to keep doing it whether I appreciated the effort or not.
“You’re both a pain in my ass.”
Ghost grinned. “That’s not a no.”
I exhaled slowly, and my ribs complained with the rest of me. “Fine. He can stay out there.”
Ghost started to speak, but I pointed at him. “Out there. I’m not having some prospect sitting in the corner while I piss in a plastic jug or try to sleep.”
Ink snorted.
“Jesus,” Ghost muttered. “Fine.”
“And only because it makes you idiots feel better.”
“Sure,” Ink said.
Ghost glanced at him. “That make you feel better?”
“No.”
Both of them laughed, rough and brief, and some of the pressure left the room with it.
We sat quietly for another minute. Ghost drifted back toward the window while Ink stayed in the chair, and the silence between us felt easier now. Men like us rarely said the important shit directly when there were twelve other ways to make it understood.
Ink finally stood and put the chair back. “We should let you rest.”
“I’ve done enough resting to last a lifetime.”
Ghost smirked. “Try not to get shot again and maybe you can cut back.”
I gave him the finger, then grimaced when the movement pulled at my shoulder. The bastard noticed.
Ink opened the door and paused. “If anything feels off, you call. I don’t care what time it is.”
“Same,” Ghost added.
I looked at them and saw the worry beneath all the bullshit. “Yeah. I know.”
Ink nodded once. Ghost lingered a second longer, apparently checking that I meant it, before following him into the hall.
The door shut softly behind them, and a moment later I heard low voices outside. One belonged to Patch.
I shook my head against the pillow.
Fuckin’ overkill.
My cut rested beside me, the leather warm from lying against my leg, while one of ours stood watch beyond the door in a hospital corridor that smelled like bleach and old coffee. I was bruised, stitched together, and thoroughly sick of being trapped in this room, but I was alive.
Apparently, my brothers intended to keep it that way.