Chapter 7 Sons & Shields
SEVEN
SONS & SHIELDS
ISAIAH (STEEL)
The clubhouse is tucked behind chain-link fencing and guarded by security systems, and worse, men who never blink. From the outside, it looks like a forgotten machine shop. Gray, industrial, lifeless. But inside, it's loud with memory.
You can smell the steel before you ever see it.
The new Clubhouse looms like a beast at the edge of the world, gray, caged behind a chain-link fence and razor wire, crouched low and wide like it’s waiting for the next war.
My boots crunch gravel as I step out of the truck, staring up at the faded machine shop sign half-buried in rust.
“You sure this is it?” I ask, squinting.
Dad, Tama, The General, just grunts from the driver’s seat. “It’ll bleed if you cut it. That makes it home.”
But it’s not just him with me today. Aria leans against the hood of her silver Charger, arms crossed, blue eyes cutting through the haze like truth itself.
She’s in tight black jeans and a leather jacket that somehow looks both corporate and rebellious.
Her dark hair’s twisted up, but I know how it falls, soft and wild when she lets it.
“This place smells like testosterone and liability,” she says dryly, smirking.
I grin. “So… basically, home?”
She rolls her eyes, but her lips twitch at the corners. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah. But I’m yours.” That stops her for a breath. The air between us tightens like wire.
Dad slams the truck door and walks ahead without comment, but I catch the flicker in his expression. Approval? Maybe. Suspicion? Always.
Inside, it’s barely controlled chaos. The main room is exactly as I remember from the last walkthrough.
Couches like leather carcasses, cluttered walls breathing with old road maps and ghosts.
The air smells like tobacco, oil, and stubbornness.
Someone’s blasting Sabbath in the back. A fight’s either just ended or about to begin.
“This place is a mess,” she murmurs.
“It’s also sacred.”
She nods slowly, eyes scanning each room, the patched brothers, the sweat and loyalty worked into every beam. “I get it. I think.”
I touch her lower back. “You don’t have to understand it to belong in it.”
She looks up at me. “But I do understand it. That’s the problem.”
This place isn’t pretending to be anything. It’s not clean. It’s not neat. It’s real.
Dad walks ahead, hand braced on the wall like he’s grounding himself. I follow in his wake, eyes drinking it in. A flat screen flickers with a paused football game. The Saints flag above it isn’t folded or honored. It’s just there, like a warning.
“You hate it?” he asks over his shoulder, lips twitching.
“I think it’s perfect,” I say.
He chuckles. “Yeah. That’s the problem.”
We pass the bar. Scratched wood, liquor lined up like ammo, and Sharpie graffiti so thick it’s a language all its own.
“Who writes that shit?” I ask.
“Everyone who matters,” he says. “That wall remembers.”
I trail a finger over one message:
God rides on the back.
Whoever wrote it they meant it.
We keep walking down the narrow hall. Prospects. Patches. Guests. No frills. No lies.
“You’ll get a room when you stop sleeping at your damn desk,” he mutters.
I laugh. “I like my books. They don’t throw punches.”
“They don’t cover your back either.”
He stops at a door and slaps it. “This one’s yours. If you’re serious.”
“I’m serious.”
He nods. No ceremony. No congratulations. Just don’t screw it up.
The garage’s out back, through a reinforced door. It smells like oil, steel, and testosterone. I’ve heard music blasting from there at night, along with grinding metal, maybe welding, maybe rage.
Then there’s the basement. It’s where we keep our ghosts.
The whole place hums with unfinished business.
Later, Aria and I are in the legal den, reviewing a zoning permit that smells like fire hazards and bullshit. Aria’s pacing, glasses perched on her nose, flipping through paperwork I scanned in a hurry.
“Did you even read the fine print on page five?” she mutters.
“I skimmed.”
“Isaiah.”
I grin. “You only use my full name when I’m in trouble or when you’re about to kiss me.”
She slams the folder shut, storms over, and kisses me. Hard.
It’s not polite. It’s not clean. It’s hands in hair, lips biting back the years we spent pretending we were just friends. Her jacket falls halfway off her shoulder, and I grip the curve of her waist like it’s mine because it is. It always has been.
When we finally break, she whispers against my mouth, “You scare me, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I love this version of you. The one who fights clean in a dirty world. And I’m terrified what that world might do to you.”
I press my forehead to hers. “Then stay close.”
“I already am.”
The weeks stretch long. I’m buried in legal red tape, protecting this club like it’s my own blood because it is. Rock becomes my shadow. I teach him how to file while he teaches me how to see the fight coming before it lands.
But Aria… she’s the only thing that quiets my head.
Sometimes she shows up with coffee and sarcasm.
Sometimes with nothing but silence and the weight of her hand on my shoulder.
On the bad days, she sleeps on the leather couch while I write until dawn.
On the worst days, she sleeps in my bed, half dressed, fully tangled in me, skin to skin like she’s anchoring me to earth.
It starts in silence. No sparks. No games. Just the quiet sound of her knocking once on the bedroom door before slipping inside like she’s done it a hundred times. Like she knows she doesn’t need to ask.
The hoodie she’s wearing isn’t hers. It’s mine. Faded and stretched at the sleeves. Her long, dark hair is loose down her back, and her eyes, those razor-sharp blues, are softer in the low light.
I sit at the edge of the mattress, head bowed, fists pressed into my knees.
The war in my chest won’t stop. My name’s stitched into a patch I haven’t earned.
There’s something wrong with my Dad. I see it in the way he holds his breath, like he’s trying to hide from the world.
The way his eyes glaze over like he’s remembering things he doesn’t want to.
The club is watching me like they already know I’ll take the throne.
But right now, all I can feel is her.
Aria doesn’t say anything at first. She just walks over and eases the hoodie up over her head, slow and certain. No lace beneath it. Just skin. Warm and real and bare. She slides under the blanket beside me and pulls my hand to her ribs.
“Lie down,” she whispers.
I do.
Her body curves into mine like she was always meant to fit there. My arm wraps around her waist, hand splayed across her stomach. Her back presses against my chest. Her thighs tangle with mine. I breathe her in, vanilla and law books and whatever makes her Aria and no one else.
She reaches down and laces her fingers with mine, where they rest against her.
“I hate when you shut down like this,” she says softly, voice almost lost in the dark.
“I don’t mean to.”
“I know,” she breathes. “But I can feel it when you vanish in your head. And it scares the hell out of me.”
I bury my face in her neck. “He’s slipping, Aria. And there’s nothing I can do. I’m not ready to lose him.”
Her grip tightens on my hand. “You don’t have to be ready,” she murmurs. “Just don’t go through it alone.”
I shift, needing to see her. I roll her onto her back, hover above her, and study her face in the moonlight leaking through the blinds. Her eyes shimmer like they want to cry, but she doesn’t.
Neither do I.
Instead, I kiss her. Slow at first, reverent. Then deeper. She opens for me, fingers threading through my hair, pulling me closer. Every soft sound she makes cuts through the armor I’ve built.
My mouth trails down her throat. Over her collarbone. Across the curve of her breast. She arches into me, thighs parting instinctively. Her hands roam over my shoulders, my back, like she’s memorizing me in case I disappear.
“I’m here,” she whispers, lips brushing my jaw. “I’ve got you, Isaiah.”
And she does. We don’t rush. We take our time. Moving like we’ve got forever, even if deep down we know we don’t. I lose myself in the rhythm of her body, in the heat of her breath, in the way her eyes lock onto mine when she falls apart beneath me.
Later, when we’re tangled in the sheets and her head rests on my chest, she traces the ink over my heart. “I’ll stay as long as you let me,” she says quietly.
I kiss the crown of her head. “You’re already part of me.”
And she is. Maybe that’s why it’s going to destroy me when she’s gone.
We don’t talk about labels. We don’t talk about the future.
One night, under the buzz of the common room fluorescents, I catch her watching me. She’s barefoot, wrapped in one of my hoodies, fingers tucked in the sleeves.
“What?” I ask, not looking up from my case file.
“I used to imagine you in court,” she says. “Shiny suit. Polished speech. Climbing to the top.”
“And now?”
“I see you here. With grease on your collar and heat in your spine. Fighting with paper instead of bullets. Still climbing. Just... sideways.”
I close the folder. “Do you think I made the wrong choice?”
“No,” she shakes her head, her long, dark hair cascading down her back. “I think you became exactly who you were meant to be. That’s what scares me.”
I walk to her. Tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know how this ends, Aria.”
She leans into me, breath warm against my throat. “Then don’t let it.”
The legal work comes faster than I expected. On paper, the Saints Outlaws look cleaner than a politician’s bank account. That’s my job now, bury the blood in bureaucratic mud.
Somebody’s gotta keep the Saints clean enough to ride. Might as well be me.