Dust and Flowers (Book of Legion: Badlands MC #1)

Chapter 1

Hell isn’t a place you go, it’s a place you carry back.

That’s my poetic opinion after serving three years in prison for something I didn’t do.

Willingly, I might add. Not the shit I didn’t do, but the shit I went in for.

But if you want my professional opinion on hell—and at this point in my life, I feel like I’m qualified to have a professional opinion—Hell is just… well, everything around you.

This world. These people. All the rules, all the traps, the entire fuckin’ game is rigged.

That’s hell.

It’s everywhere.

But… occasionally.

Every once in a while.

There is a day like today that makes Hell not so hot.

The gates of Whitefall Prison open in front of me. Loud, and clanging as radio chatter from the guards fills the gap between this world and that one. The June morning spreads out before me in a way I’ve never noticed before. Bright, hot, and… oddly, empty.

One of the guards starts yappin’ at me to fucking get on with it and starts the mechanism to close the gates back up as he makes pointless, hollow threats. So when I do get on with it, I pass through just before the heavy steel gates slam closed.

It’s a lot of pointless drama.

Another guard heckles me from the tower when I pause, fumbling through the yellow envelope that contains pretty much everything I own at the moment—a twenty-seven-dollar cash-out from my prison account and my driver’s license, two years expired—and remove a pack of Reds.

Demon this, the hecklin’ guard says. Demon that. Demon… Demon… Demon.

Cause that’s me.

Legion Kane.

We are many.

I take out a smoke, light it up using the Bic that also did time with me, suck in my freedom, and slowly distance myself from the three years of time I did, but didn’t have to.

Trying to remember to appreciate it.

Inhale. A ritual to keep me standing.

Exhale. The smoke drifts up like a prayer.

I take a few steps away from the prison, no urge to look back, and just scan the world before me as I continue smoking.

It’s a whole bunch of nothin’. I’m talking big sky over vast badlands and that’s about it.

But it shouldn’t be this way.

This parking lot should not be empty.

But I guess it checks out, because I’m early.

One day early.

What could that possibly mean? What government facility actually makes mistakes in your favor? It doesn’t happen.

There should be bikes here. All lined up.

Should be brothers with cuts, and grins, and the promise of whiskey.

Badlands owes me that much.

Where the fuck is everyone?

As if on cue, as if this whole fucking thing is a movie, as if I was cast in the leading role of a story no one bothered to write an ending for—the wind shifts, and suddenly, in the distance, appears a white Ford F-350.

Dust blowin’ up behind it, catching sunlight in ways that make it look like somethin’ holy.

I squint my eyes, take a drag on the smoke, and watch as it screams into the parking lot like judgment day arriving early.

One day early.

The Ashby Ranch logo gleams on the door panel—a stylized "A" with barbed wire wrapped around it. In some places, money whispers. In Eastern Montana, money announces itself with chrome trim and custom wheels.

Cash Ashby skids the truck to a stop twenty feet away. The engine idles like it’s alive. Baring its teeth, waitin’ to bite. He kills it with a press of a button and the silence that follows feels deliberate, like a statement.

When the driver's door swings open, his boots hit gravel with a crunch that carries weight. And it’s not just a sound—it’s a fuckin’ proclamation. The kind that comes with land deeds, water rights, and bank accounts that never run dry.

Cash steps out, all six-four of him the product of pure Montana breeding just like the cattle he runs. His Stetson catches the morning June sun, brim pulled low, but not so low I can't see his eyes sizing me up.

What’s ol’ Legion been up to, that look says. How much has he changed. How far can I push him.

"Well goddamn, Kane. Three years looks good on you." His mouth lifts up at one corner—that half-smile that's gotten him out of bar fights and into bedroom windows across three counties. "Prison food must be better than they say."

My face plays it cool. Not because it can’t smile, it just kinda forgot how.

"Caaaaaash." I drag the word out slow, lettin’ my drawl thicken. "Thought the welcoming committee would have patches, not polo shirts."

Cash leans against his truck door, crossing one ostrich-leather boot over the other. Casual as a shiv between the ribs.

"So how was it really?" he asks, like he cares. "Life inside treating Legion Kane to all the amenities?"

I give him what he wants to hear. What men like Cash always want—stories that make them feel better about never having to find out for themselves.

"Oh, you know. Won the prison talent show.

Twice." I pull from the cigarette, let smoke curl between us.

"Food was five-star. Especially Tuesdays.

Taco Tuesday in Whitefall is something spiritual.

Made friends with the warden. Good man. Collects model trains and photographs of other people's wives.

" I flick ash toward the ground. "Got my GED.

Then a PhD in theoretical physics. Wrote my thesis on the space-time implications of watching paint dry on cinder block. "

Cash's eyes narrow just enough to tell me he doesn’t find me funny.

Which is fair. I’m not sure a single person on this planet finds me funny.

"So what about you, Cash?" I shift the weight of my envelope, watching his eyes track the movement. "Still breakin’ hearts? Or have you fucked your way through all the local fancy bitches and moved on to the rural trash?”

“Like your—” But he doesn’t finish. He catches himself in a way that doesn’t quite add up.

“Like my what?” I ask, eyes narrowing. “Were you gonna say my mother?” Who died nine years back? Nah. That’s not what he was gonna say.

But before I can ask questions about his remark, he tilts his chin toward the passenger side of the truck and jangles his keys between fingers weathered from reins and rope, calloused in ways money can't prevent. "Need a ride?"

The question hangs between us, simple on the surface.

But nothing's simple with an Ashby.

I take stock of my options. Released one day early. Governments fuck up plenty, but not about release days.

No club here to welcome me back with a patch I earned with my silence.

Cash shows up.

Twenty-seven dollars won't get me far and walking sixty miles back to Drybone isn't my idea of a good time.

I nod once. "Sure. Appreciate it."

No eagerness, or reluctance. Just survival math.

I slide into the passenger seat, body adjusting to the smooth, soft leather.

The truck is new and isn’t a work truck, per se.

Not with the upgrades. It was custom. So there’s a big ol’ screen built into the dash.

Wide, and pretty, and full fuckin’ color.

And on that screen is a picture of Savannah Ashby, Cash’s younger sister, her long hair catching the golden hour sun like an angel.

But she's not alone.

A man stands beside her, hand resting possessively on her lower back. Tailored suit. Political smile. The kind of man who's never had dirt under his fingernails that wasn't put there deliberately for a campaign photo op.

I let my eyes linger just long enough to catalog details. The way her head tilts toward him. The diamond catching light on her left hand. The careful staging of intimacy.

The photo sits prominently displayed. Impossible to miss.

Cash says nothing.

I say nothing.

The truck roars out of the parking lot the same way it came in.

Highways in Eastern Montana stretch long and far. Empty land on both sides, nothing but fence posts marking property lines that mean everything to men like Cash and nothing to men like me.

The first twenty miles pass in silence.

Not the comfortable kind. The kind that performs itself—two men who have nothing to say pretending they're just choosing not to speak.

I watch Cash's eyes flick to the rearview. Once. Twice. Third time his jaw tightens, muscle jumping beneath tanned skin. His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

He's worried about something.

Badlands, probably.

They're gonna be pissed about missing my release day. Three years of keeping my mouth shut, taking the fall, earning my patch—and now the welcome wagon's a no-show because Cash Ashby pulled strings to grab me first.

Why?

It’s anybody’s guess.

The AC hums cold against my skin. Some sad-sack country song whispers from the speakers, turned down low enough that I only catch fragments. Something about burying love next to the hunting dogs out back.

My fingers trace the edges of the letters inked across my knuckles. M-E-R-C-Y. My baby sister. Nine years old and already carrying the weight of our family's broken promises. The one person who never stopped needing me, even when I chose not to be there.

Because that’s what this prison sentence was.

A choice.

I didn’t do it.

And I get it, everyone says that.

But no. I really, really didn’t do it.

I was just the cleanest motherfucker without a previous felony record within reach. A guaranteed slap on the wrist.

Three years. I mean, I guess it’s a helluva lot better than twenty, but it’s still three fuckin’ years.

Cash clears his throat like he's about to deliver a sermon. His finger taps the photo, just sittin’ there on the screen in all its loud, static stillness. "That's Marcus," he says, eyes sliding sideways to gauge my reaction.

Here it comes. The whole reason for… whatever this is we’re doin’ in this truck.

"Marcus White Jr. Montana State senator's son. Georgetown Law. Worked on two presidential campaigns."

I don't give him the satisfaction of a flinch.

"He and Savannah have been together almost two years now." Cash keeps talking, voice casual like we're discussing cattle prices. "Getting engaged this weekend. Big party at the ranch. Half the state's invited."