Chapter 12 Dean
Dean
The wood-paneled clubhouse was never quiet, but there were gradations to the noise—sometimes a background hum, sometimes the hollow boom of laughter, sometimes the silverware-on-metal scrape of threats made polite for company.
Tonight, it was a silence pressed so tight by smoke and fear that it made your teeth itch.
You could hear the wet in the insulation, the minute cracks in the lacquer of the table, the way the space between every word hung heavy, ready to catch fire if someone so much as breathed too loud.
I sat at the head of the long table, Secretary patch clear on my cut, Ma’s dog tags cold against the old black of my T-shirt.
The minute book lay open before me, cheap spiral-bound, club logo stamped on the cover so you knew exactly which brand of bastard you were.
My pen was the kind you stole from a bank: lightweight, oily, tip chewed flat.
It made a dent in the paper deep enough that you could read it with your eyes closed.
Damron started the meeting the way he always did, but his voice was different tonight—less grandstanding, more eulogy.
He leaned back in the captain’s chair, broad arms stretched along the edge, letting the tattoos flex and settle.
His beard had grown in thicker since last month, shot through with silver that made him look both ancient and bulletproof.
When he talked, the words landed heavy and low, vibrating through the ribcage of anyone stupid enough to pretend they weren’t scared.
“Brothers,” he said, and the thirty men around the table answered with a single guttural rumble. “Tonight’s business is family. We’ll keep it short, because what’s coming won’t be.”
He let that hang for a moment, eyes sweeping the room.
Every set of eyes watched him back—some angry, some hollowed out, some just waiting for a target.
Even the prospects in the back corner, hunched over their Pbrs and ancient Playboys, snapped to attention.
The smell of cigarettes was so thick you couldn’t taste your own spit.
“We all know what went down at the bank,” Damron continued. “We all know what they took from us.” He didn’t say Ma’s name, but the scrape of a boot under the table told me someone did.
He laid it out—how the Sultans were a cancer, metastasizing from the Albuquerque sprawl into every small-town racket up the highway.
How every stolen shipment, every bent cop, every shakedown that bled over into our turf was an affront.
How this last act—this robbery, this shooting, this murder—was the end of all patience, the last thin slice of mercy cut and swallowed.
There was a script for this kind of thing. Damron read from it with a preacher’s timing.
“The club has always settled its own debts,” he said, pacing the syllables. “We will not let this slide. We will not go begging to the law. We will do what’s right, the way we always have. And we’ll do it together.”
I recorded the words, every sentence a little tighter than the last. I made a show of keeping my handwriting straight, of not looking up at the men who watched my hands like they were watching a firing squad load rounds. My body wanted to shake, but I made it wait.
Damron went down the line, calling for the vote by rank and seniority.
Each man stood, spoke his name, then his answer—“Aye” or “No,” though nobody ever said “No.” It was a blood ritual, an old one.
The act of standing, of putting your own boots on the line, made it count more than just a voice in the dark.
“Medina,” Damron said, looking at me dead-on.
I stood, though my knees hated it, and spoke clearly, “Aye.”
The sound echoed, then faded, then landed on the page.
It was unanimous, as always. The club would go to war.
The rest of the meeting was logistics—who would handle which corners, who’d keep an eye on the local deputies, how to squeeze the Sultans until there was nothing left but panic and skin.
Nitro and Augustine mapped out runs on the whiteboard, using colored markers for routes, black for the names of anyone who’d flipped or disappeared.
Someone brought out a list of Sultans’ plates, hand-typed, stained with grease.
Someone else made a joke about the one time a Sultan cried when you broke his hand, and the laughter was so sharp and sudden it made the air in the room flip from deadly to electric.
I kept writing, cataloguing every threat, every promise, every shift in the way the men leaned forward or sucked their teeth or cracked their knuckles when Damron’s gaze passed over them.
I watched the way Augustine’s hands moved when he talked about the next planned run, the way Nitro didn’t bother to hide his hate for the other club, the way even the newest prospects sat like they were on trial.
When it was over, Damron slammed his gavel—a literal one, made from the head of a piston, welded to an axe handle. The sound was final and ceremonial and just a little bit stupid, but nobody laughed.
The room broke into fragments, small groups forming at the edges, men slipping out to the garage for a smoke or a quick line of whatever made them feel brave.
The bar at the back filled up, and someone fired up the jukebox, letting Johnny Cash compete with the undertone of bad ideas.
The meeting table emptied, save for the stains, the minute book, and me.
I stayed in my chair, copying the last of the notes into the log, making sure the vote was recorded for anyone who might bother to look after the world stopped spinning.
I could hear the sound of pool balls cracking in the next room, the slam of a door against the brick, the distant echo of Nitro yelling at a prospect to quit touching his bike.
It all faded in and out, muffled by the thickness in my skull.
I was halfway through my second summary when Damron’s shadow cut across the table. He waited until I looked up, then nodded at the corner booth.
“Need a word, Secretary.”
I followed him, trying not to limp. The booth was a private relic, upholstered in cracked red vinyl and tucked away behind a half-wall of glass block. It smelled like decades of spilled whiskey and secrets, which I guess was the point.
Damron slid in first, folding his arms on the table. He gestured for me to do the same.
“You been scarce,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Not like you.”
I shrugged, picking at the corner of the minute book. “Lot going on.”
He watched me, eyes hooded but sharp. “We all got shit. But it’s not like you to miss three Friday nights in a row, even with your Ma gone.”
He didn’t say it as an accusation, but I could feel the edge. I stared at the clock above the bar, the sweep of the red second hand lagging just enough to be unsettling.
“Been helping out at the Humane Society,” I said. “Somebody’s gotta feed the mutts.”
His eyebrow ticked. “That a new thing?”
I shook my head. “Ma liked it. I keep it up for her, I guess.”
He nodded, as if he’d heard an excuse but wasn’t sure if it was the one he wanted. “You’re a good son,” he said, then leaned in, lowering his voice to a growl. “But I hear other things.”
I waited, careful not to show anything.
“Rumor is you got friendly with the girl who runs the place,” he continued. “Emily something. Is that true?”
My jaw wanted to grind, but I held still. “She’s just someone I know. Nobody’s business but mine.”
Damron’s mouth twitched—smile, maybe, maybe not.
“You think I care who you fuck? This isn’t a church.
Hell, if she gets you to crack a smile now and then, good for her.
” He paused, and his hand moved to the table, tapping out a rhythm that matched nothing in the jukebox or the room.
“But I want you to remember something, Medina.”
I let him go on.
“Attachments outside the club make you vulnerable. I don’t care if you’re fucking the Governor’s daughter or the town librarian. You’re the Secretary now. When war starts, they come for us through the people we let close.”
He let that settle, then drummed his fingers a little harder.
“I’m not telling you to quit her. I’m not your Ma. But if she becomes a weakness, it’s on you to handle it.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
He looked at me a second longer than he had to, then sat back and exhaled.
“You’re one of the smartest men I’ve ever patched.
Sometimes I think you’re the only one of us who isn’t already half in the ground.
” His voice lost the threat, gained something like exhaustion. “Just don’t make me regret it.”
I found my hand had drifted to my chest, rolling the dog tags between thumb and forefinger.
“She’s not a weakness,” I said, voice even. “She knows how the world works.”
He nodded again. “They always do, until they don’t.”
He stood, letting his hand linger on my shoulder just a second longer than necessary. Heavy, almost fatherly, but with enough weight to leave a bruise if I let it.
“See you at first light,” he said, and was gone.
I stayed in the booth, minute book in my lap, pen pressed so hard against the page it nearly tore. I waited until the clock above the bar reset itself to midnight, and then I left, the sound of men plotting violence echoing in my bones.
The air outside was cold enough to bite. I started the bike, let the engine settle into its old, loping idle. I thought about the meeting, the vote, the way every man in that room had stood up and chosen violence with the same shrug as picking a brand of cigarettes.
I thought about what Damron said, about Emily, about weakness and where you let it live. I didn’t know if I agreed. But I knew I wasn’t going to quit her, either.
I rode into the dark, the minute book heavy in my pack, the dog tags colder than ever against my skin.
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