6. Cam
6
CAM
For all I was the infamous president of a notorious outlaw motorcycle club, I spent a disproportionate amount of time in fucking Waitrose.
It wasn’t even the closest shop to my house, but fuck it. I liked the chicken. Not that I was buying chicken tonight. I chucked spring onions, eggs, and butter into the basket to go with the Irish potatoes and moved to the self-checkout till, still bristling with the fury the call to Nash’s phone had treated me to.
Sometimes people got out of my way because they knew me. Sometimes it was pure vibes, and let me tell you, that self-service till didn’t help me make any new friends.
I left the supermarket without a single person meeting my gaze and hit the road, pulling up ten minutes later outside the three-bed semi I’d once called home.
A new family lived there now. Folk saw me coming on the security cameras and waited at the door, watching me dismount and stride up the driveway with my bag of tricks like I thought I was Rubi fucking Matherson.
“What you got there?”
“Dinner.”
“Why?”
“You’re knackered and we need a fucking chat.”
“ You’re bleeding,” Folk countered, unmoved, “and Ivy’s here.”
Bleeding. Blood. Goddamn it . I flicked a glance at my split knuckle and shook it out. “I punched the self-service till in the shop.”
Folk eyed me a moment longer. Then he shrugged. “Fair enough.”
He stepped aside, allowing me into the house I’d grown up in. Decoy hadn’t done much with it when he’d first moved in, a fucking shell of a brother just trying to survive. But living with Folk had changed that. The walls were brighter now, the windows wide open more often than they were closed, and the whole place was alive with family life.
Toys.
Kids shoes.
Terrible artwork stuck to the fridge.
The place felt like home again, even if it lacked the stale scent of my ma’s old gravy pot.
I left my jacket and boots at the door and followed Folk to the kitchen. He was English enough that he drifted to the kettle on instinct while I lingered in the doorway. “Saint’s Polish.”
Folk dropped a tea bag into a mug before he looked at me. “I didn’t know that.”
“Neither did I. Viktor told me.”
“How did Viktor know?”
“Jakov did his research before Sidorov agreed to work with us.”
“Does Alexei know?”
I gave my eleventh slow headshake of the day. “He’s never looked at Saint’s records beyond the hacking he did in the hospital.”
Before Folk could react, Ivy screamed into the kitchen and attached herself to my legs. “What are you doing here? Did Saint come home yet?”
“Not yet.” I picked her up and plunked her on the counter. “Neither did your big dad, so you and me, little lady, we’re going to cook your skinny old man some dinner.”
I jabbed a thumb at Folk.
He didn’t react to that either, just peered in my Waitrose bag before he left the kitchen.
Ivy watched him go, pursing her lips. It felt like she had something to say, but I wasn’t in the business of interrogating children. I put her to work peeling potatoes and we talked about everything and nothing before she gestured for me to bring my ear to her cupped hands. “My other dad doesn’t like sleeping without my big dad.”
I’d figured. And it made sense. But Folk wasn’t the type to be pacing the house just because he missed someone. As much as he loved Decoy, he was tougher than that.
Tougher than you.
Truth.
I fried eggs and supervised Ivy mashing the potatoes, noting that she’d learned her cooking techniques from Rubi. Fucking spuds everywhere .
Behind me, Folk chuckled. He’d magicked himself back into the kitchen, hair damp from the shower, more colour in his cheeks than when I’d arrived, but still less than he’d had when Decoy had still been here.
My other dad doesn’t like sleeping...
The answer was in there somewhere.
I fed the Whitlock-Greenes. If it had been Folk on the road instead of Decoy, I was pretty sure Ivy would’ve flicked the scallions across the table at the dad left behind. As it was, she cleared her plate and Folk hustled her away for a bath.
He came back as I was clearing up. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Actually, I do. Rubi taught her to throw most of the food at the ceiling.”
“He told her you once left your pants on the roof of the police station.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s not a denial.”
“It’s not.”
I dried a pan, stalling for time. For words. And maybe even for the balls to tell Folk something that was going to piss him the fuck off, when my instinct was to keep that shit to myself.
Never fucking learn, do you?
Not often. But I tried. “Old man Doherty called Nash this morning. Asked for a sit-down.”
Folk’s steady gaze didn’t waver. He closed the dishwasher with his foot—fucking gently, not booting the shite out of it. “You didn’t have to cook me dinner to tell me that.”
“The two things aren’t connected.”
“No?”
“No, but we’ll get to that.”
“Okay.” Folk propped a shoulder against a cabinet Saint had built—cos he’d built the kitchens and beds in every brother’s house.
It was his thing.
Folk’s thing was patience , waiting me out, like he had the rest of his fucking life to spare.
I tossed the tea towel over the tap to dry, like my ma used to. “It’s not unusual for old timers to go to Nash instead of me if they’ve fucked up. I’m not exactly known for being reasonable.”
“Makes sense.” Folk rotated his left wrist. “What was the outcome of the contact?”
“Nash called him a cunt and hung up. Which means if Doherty really wants this meeting, he’ll have no choice but to come to me.”
“Then what?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Why?”
“Because my instinct is to hear him out, in case he has something we need. The feds have latched onto ousted brothers in the past. But if you want to kill him instead, I’m here for it.”
Folk said nothing, which I took to mean he hadn’t ruled it out.
Jesusfuck. Just when life had quietened down. “Think on it. We can talk more if he makes contact again.”
Upstairs, Ivy took the plug out of the bath, sending water careening through pipes that still sang like they had in the nineties. It was a weird end to a possibly murderous conversation, but I’d had worse.
Got the feeling Folk expected me to leave.
I didn’t. I sat on the couch with Ivy and watched some hideous Netflix fuckery about cheerleaders. Then I helped her—badly—with her maths homework while Folk studied me from the doorway.
Eventually, Ivy’s bedtime rolled around and I still didn’t leave. “I’m staying over,” I told her. “House is too empty when I ain’t even got the cat to take the piss out of me.”
Folk sighed and walked away.
I took Ivy upstairs.
“Uncle Saint sleeps on my bedroom floor when he stays over.”
“Uncle Saint doesn’t have the spine of a ninety-year-old. You want to video call your big dad?”
Stupid question. I placed the call, hung around long enough that Decoy knew she hadn’t stolen my phone, then I left her to it.
I found Folk on the couch. Without Ivy to distract him, he looked wrecked. Older, maybe. Almost sick. I took a seat on the other end of the sofa.
He spared me a glance. “You want a pillow?”
“In a bit.” I’d stolen a vape from Nash earlier. It dug into my thigh. I fished it out and realised it was fucking weed. Damn it. “Hang on.”
I took the vape out to my hog and buried it.
Went back to face a less-than-impressed Folk. “Sorry.”
“Why are you here?”
I’m worried about you, brother . “Fancied some company.”
He didn’t believe me. And he shouldn’t have. But he let it go and listened to me ramble on about the land me and Rubi still couldn’t figure out what to do with. “Weren’t you thinking about building a campsite there a while ago?”
“We talked about it, but I don’t want randos that close to the club all the time. Same with the garden centre thing Rubes was obsessed with for a while.”
Folk winced. “That might’ve been my fault. He thinks I’m bored training prospects.”
“Are you?”
“Not enough to sell pot plants instead.”
“What about the lifeboats? Is that a thing? I can’t remember.”
“It was nearly a thing, but I’m not as good at being wet and cold as I used to be.” Folk flexed his hands. “And I’m tired, to be honest. I don’t know how much use I’d be to anyone.”
“Anything I can do to help you with that?”
“Like what? Give me new joints?”
“I would if I could. I’d fucking give you mine.”
“Cam, I know that. But I have nothing going on that you can fix.”
It sounded so final. And maybe Folk meant it to be. We talked some more about the land, deducing that we needed to find a use for it that paid for itself and kept the general public away ninety percent of the time. But he knocked out before we found the answer, and the sense of failure that swept over me had nothing to do with a bunch of fucking fields.
I leaned back on the couch, moving slow, unsure of how lightly Folk slept these days. Actually, I didn’t know how he slept at all, bar what Ivy had whispered to me earlier.
My other dad doesn’t like sleeping...
Fucking hell, those words were gonna haunt me until I figured this out.
Or, you know, passed out myself, feet on the coffee table, shoulder jammed against the sofa arm, Folk’s shin pressed to my thigh.
I woke with a jump sometime later, eyes flying open to movement in the pitch dark and a low muttered curse that shocked the shit out of me.
Folk .
He wasn’t next to me. A state of affairs that should’ve been normal , but I knew before I found him hunched on the floor was the worst thing in the fucking world.
I rolled off the couch, landing on my knees in front of him, hands already raised in surrender. “Bad dream?”
Folk’s chest expanded too fast, sweat coating his skin. For a long second, he didn’t seem to see me. Then something switched. His gaze sharpened and he reached out, wrapping shaky fingers around my wrist. “Fuck.”
I stayed quiet, bracing for him to open up or push me away.
Prepared for both.
Accepting both.
“I swear he dies every time I shut my eyes.”
“Who?”
“Rocco.” Folk brought his free hand to his head, taking a moment before he let go of my wrist and rose.
I went with him, knees cracking, guiding him back to the couch. “I’ll make the tea.”
He didn’t answer, but I left him anyway. I had fucked-up dreams sometimes, and unless it was Saint or Alexei—and sometimes not even then—I didn’t want anyone in my face while I tried to figure out which way was up.
I didn’t want tea either. I wanted a drink, cos I knew if this was the moment Folk talked, it was going to be fucking hard. But he didn’t have the luxury of taking the edge off, so I left Decoy’s beer stash alone and made myself a Rubi-style builder’s brew.
Folk was still on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at the spot on the skirting boards my little brother had burned with battery acid twenty years ago.
He took the tea, blowing out a breath. “Thanks.”
“It’s all I have, brother.” I folded myself onto the sofa beside him. “I rebuilt my house trying to get rid of these fucking nightmares, and they still get me from time to time.”
“How often?”
“I don’t keep track. That way I don’t know when they’re getting worse.”
“What are they about?”
I cupped my hands around my tea. “Lots of things. But they started when I got spiked with ket. Before then, my nightmares had always been real.”
“That’s what I thought.” Folk studied his tea. “I’ve seen some of the worst things you can imagine—men burning alive, dead kids at the side of the road, but I never got PTSD, even when I demobbed and took a break from killing people.”
“What changed?”
“Rocco went missing. I knew he was dead before Embry told me, but I never saw his body.”
A chill rattled my spine. Folk hadn’t seen Rocco’s remains, but I had, and it wasn’t a sight I wanted to relive. I thought about my best friends, the brothers I’d grown up with. Rubi. Nash. Would I have survived it if I’d seen them like that? Or would taking someone else’s word for it have killed me just as much?
Either way, Folk had been right about there being no easy fix. It wasn’t as if I could go back in time and make a different decision about who got told what and when. Or if I’d even change my fucking mind. Rocco was dead regardless, and I couldn’t see how laying eyes on his rotting corpse would’ve made Folk any better.
“I’m sorry.”
In the dark, Folk almost smiled. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For being hard on you these past few months. I know you’re doing your best.”
“Yeah, well.” I drained my tea and set the mug on the table. “If that ain’t ever good enough, I need people to tell me. So don’t worry about a fucking thing.”
We lapsed into silence. Folk drank his tea while I tried to be subtle about watching him.
I wondered if he’d go to bed.
If he thought I’d leave.
Neither happened and I fell into a drowse again until my phone roused me with a text.
Viktor.
Frowning, I swiped the screen. Despite the day of fun we’d spent together last week, we weren’t in the habit of texting on our personal phones, but the message he’d sent chilled my blood.
I glanced at Folk.
His innate calm had returned to him, but the shadows I wasn’t used to seeing in him lingered. He leaned back, stretching his legs in the dark. “When you talk to Doherty, I’m going to be there.”
* * *
Doherty didn’t keep Folk waiting long. Maybe he’d got wind half the council were away on the road or whatever, but that cunt called me up four days later and I set the meet with bile in my throat.
That evening, I lurked in the chapel, reading through the mad-cap email Rubi had sent from the passenger seat of the Bone Rattler, full of grand ideas for Crow Land. “What’s he talking about fucking hashtags for?”
Folk glanced up from the health and safety audit bollocks he’d been helping Locke with. “Who?”
I showed him the email.
He read it, face as blank as it had been all week. “He has a better heart than me.”
“They both do. I smell Nash all over this shit.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever they want. If the accountant says we can afford it.”
Folk almost smiled, but my phone flashed with an alert from the gate and all humour evaporated.
I moved to the window, watching as old man Doherty rumbled in on the custom Dyna other brothers had put back on the road for him more times than I could count.
Lazy piece of shit .
His years at the club used to mean he had a prime parking spot. He rolled towards it, casual as you fucking like.
River blocked him, sneering with the same violence I’d seen in him when we’d put Priest down.
Him.
Me.
My fucking sister.
On cue, the clubhouse doors opened, and I braced myself for Orla. But Nash emerged instead, his glare lethal enough that Doherty faltered as he dismounted his hog, turning away to find himself in Embry’s path instead.
Doherty paled. Every brother in this club knew the good father had done a long bird for murder.
I allowed myself an internal chuckle, nursing a vape that generally made me want to off people. Embry wasn’t going to kill Doherty on sight—I’d ordered him not to—but Doherty didn’t know that, and this cunt deserved the fear clenching every muscle as he shuffled towards the chapel, unaware the brother waiting on him was more dangerous than Embry, Nash, and River combined.
Doherty reached the chapel, his footsteps heavy with trepidation.
I took my seat while Folk rose and melted into the back corner.
Benign.
Deadly , if his mood was right, and honestly, I wasn’t fucking sure. I hadn’t asked him what he’d planned for this. What he wanted . I’d spent a lot of time with him over the past few days, forcing my company on him whether he wanted it or not, but we hadn’t talked about Doherty. We’d talked about other shit. Important shit. Like whether he jumped off a cliff five nights ago because he wanted to swim or fucking die. And how the fuck I’d found out about it.
Sorry, Viktor.
The chapel door opened. Doherty lumbered inside, head down, eyes trained on the floor.
I leaned back, switching the vape for the first goddamn cigarette I’d had all day. “Look at me.”
Doherty raised his gaze, darting it around the chapel, relaxing when he saw only Folk at my back.
Fucking fool.
“I gave you a warning.” I lit my smoke. “That I didn’t want to see your face unless it was under the wheel of my hog. So whatever reason you have for crawling back here better be a fucking good one.”
Doherty shuffled his feet. “You didn’t take my patch?—”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” I pushed out of my chair and rounded the table. “Arms up.”
He’d been frisked at the gate. I repeated the procedure—for show more than anything. If he’d had anything on him, Folk would’ve told me by now.
“Stay there.” Leaving him on his knees, I returned to my seat and my festering cigarette. “Get on with it. I ain’t got time for bullshit.”
Doherty listed forward, already red in the face from the stress position I’d put him in. “Someone’s following me.”
“So?”
“Gotta be feds.”
I snorted. “Why? What’s so important about you?”
“What if they think I’ll talk?”
“About what? You’ve been here a long time, but you’ve never mattered more than the piss stains on the wall.”
“I know shit. You know I do.”
“All I know about you is that you raise hands to little girls and let your thick-as-shit gene pool bring blades into the ring cos they can’t handle one brother between three of them.”
I mean, it was Ranger , but that was beside the point.
“I didn’t hit that kid.”
That kid.
Ivy.
We’d been through this, me and Doherty, so lucky old me had got to learn he’d known better than to lunge for Liliana. But with Folk silent and violent behind me, I didn’t feel like going over it again. “Why do you think you’re being followed?”
“Can hear it, can’t I? On the road and over the house every night this bloody week. Maybe it’s mafia. Like that Sambi?—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Doherty snapped his lips together while I brooded on the words I’d let him speak and the ones I’d cut off. Sambini . Far as I knew, there were none of those fuckers left, at least none that gave a shiny shit about us. But we’d been enemies a long time. It made sense that Doherty had heard their name and remembered it.
It made no fucking sense he thought they knew his. I dialled deeper into what he’d actually said. On the road and over the house. Far as I knew, he didn’t have a fucking house—his missus liked me more than she liked him and she’d booted him out.
Has to be living somewhere...
Though by the look and smell of him, it was somewhere without a bath. “ What do you mean over the house? The fuck does that mean?”
“Dunno. Fucking drone or something.” Doherty wrung his bloated hands, his bloodshot eyes wide with a fear I realised was real. “I can feel it chasing me. Hear it in the night, like it’s buzzing the roof, shaking the ground. They’re gonna kill me, I know they are.”
“The feds?” I laughed. “Sounds like you’ve pissed them off more than I ever have.”
“The maf?—”
“ No .” I snatched the nearest chair and hurled it, aiming for the space beside Doherty, scaring the fuck out of him rather than battering him. That shit was too easy. “You’re fucking scum. You’re nothing . There’s no reason for any cunt to be wasting their time stringing out the end of your miserable life. You think a drone’s chasing your hog? Bury your keys and get checked for dementia. Now get the fuck out of my face.”
Doherty knew me better than to open his fat mouth again. He staggered to his feet and made for the door, almost gone before Folk stayed him.
“It’s dark out there, isn’t it? In the woods, in that old caravan.”
Doherty tripped, turning his head to where Folk had stepped out of the shadows. “All I got, ain’t it?”
“For now.” Folk folded his body into the seat that belonged to Mateo—by chance or choice, I was too thick to tell.
He said nothing else.
Doherty stared.
Folk stared right back, and I shivered, cos honest to God, I’d have rather fought Alexei at this point.
Doherty finally left. The chapel door banged shut, and a beat of brutal silence lingered.
Then Folk laughed, with humour not death. “That’s cheered me right up.”
“What has? Knowing that idiot has been boshing acid since we turfed him? Fucking drones. What a cunt.”
“Cam, it’s not a drone.”
“Eh?”
“Think about it. It’d have to be the size of a chopper to shake the ground, and who do you know with one of those who might enjoy making Doherty cry?”
Without the old git in my line of sight, firing the rage in my belly, I was feeling kinda slow. It took me a second. Then, for the second time in a week, Viktor had me doubled over laughing and the pretty bastard wasn’t even here. “That motherfucker. Is that a thing? Chasing hogs with birds?”
Folk stretched his legs out, amusement still warming his face. “If Viktor served in the naval unit I think he did, he can probably land a Chinook on a potato without breaking a sweat, so this would be nothing to him.”
“He’s that slick?”
“I wouldn’t want him chasing me.”
“Lucky he’s our friend then, eh?”
Folk shrugged, grinning a bit. “He’s all right.”
“I like him.”
“Good.”
“Is it?”
Folk gave me his full attention, his gaze less haunted than it had been. “You only have to see how he loves that dog to know what kind of man he is.”
“That’s what convinced you?”
“It’s what reminded me, before I knew about him and Ranger. But sometimes, when things happen so far away from where I am now, it’s hard to assimilate them.” Folk paused, thinking. “It’s like trying to merge a cartoon with a black-and-white film.”
Made sense. Sometimes I forgot Folk had known Viktor’s face longer than any of us. Because I didn’t like picturing him at war on the other side of the world. Because I loved him.
Did I love Viktor?
Probably.
I took a breath to put that to Folk, craving the wisdom of someone far cleverer than me while Saint and Alexei were gone, but a commotion in the yard drove me to my feet and to the door.
Cold air hit me. Aware of Folk at my back, I surged into the yard, ready to throw hands, the violence I’d festered for Doherty raw and unused in my veins.
Please still be here so I can break your fucking face.
I got my wish.
Doherty remained. But Lida had beaten me to the punch, aggression raging in every sharp bark, hackles up as she cornered him, Viktor watching on from a distance, his stance casual enough that I knew this hadn’t happened by accident.
“Call your fucking dog off!” Doherty hit a wall, his rasping scream ringing out across a yard where he used to have friends. A veritable cohort of cunts for backup.
Now, though, brothers turned away, loyal to me , not a mythical fucking narrative from the past.
And Viktor?
His bright gaze held a threat Doherty would never understand, and I was here for it.
I laughed some more as he summoned Lida with the faintest whistle and Doherty scrambled away. Greeted him with a hug as he reached us. “You’ve got that prick hiding under his bed from killer drones. Is there any point me asking you to stop?”
“None at all.” Viktor returned my embrace. Then stepped back to run his gaze over Folk. “You are good?”
Folk shrugged. “I’m dry.”
Viktor said something Russian.
Folk laughed, and I sighed, out of the loop as fucking usual, but I didn’t mind. These brothers hadn’t been with me as long as the others, but my heart beat for them just as hard.
I shepherded them inside and poured rum and brewed tea. Cooked them hot food, grateful to learn Viktor was less stressful to feed than Ranger. Grateful for him being so fucking easy to be around that the night unfolded in a haze of fraternal companionship. Quiet companionship. Folk didn’t say much, and eventually, he slipped away, but with Ivy sleeping on the compound, I knew he wouldn’t stray far. So I let him go with a promise to find him tomorrow. One that earned me a droll grin and another couple hours with Viktor until he left too, disappearing into the night the same way Saint used to before I grew lucky enough for him to stay.
It was early by then but still dark. The rum I’d drunk had long worn off and I was starting to think about coffee. Or admitting defeat and finding a bed that didn’t smell of hemp seeds and Chanel. Or banging my head against a brick wall, as frayed as Folk seemed to be without brothers around me.
I took comfort in the fact that River would be up soon and drifted outside to smoke, perversely craving company while enjoying the solitude of a perfect cigarette. A flawless contradiction in the cold twilight, one that hurt my tired brain so much I shut my eyes to hide from it, almost missing the footsteps that came up on me from behind.
My eyes flew open.
Nash chuckled, lines from the bar cushions he’d crashed out on imprinted on his scruffy cheek. “Easy, brother. It’s almost over.”
“What is?”
Nash drew closer, stealing my smoke and tossing it away, wrapping his familiar fraternal arm around me. “ Listen .”
I strained my ears, hearing nothing but fucking seagulls over the yawning emptiness that had crept up on me. But the force in Nash’s gentle persistence was strong and a low rumble reached me, growing louder with each passing second. Harsher, with the jangling sound that belonged to the rig Rubi had named Grumpy Gertrude, the engine noise unmistakable, and what it meant to me something I couldn’t fucking quantify.
Saint .
He was home.