Chapter Thirty-Nine
Evan
I hit the front door hard enough to make the hinges cry out in agony.
It doesn’t open. Inside, The Noble Fir is dead silent.
No clinking glasses. No music. No laughter.
Just a room full of patched men probably laying down judgment on the woman I started loving in high school and haven’t stopped loving since.
“Open this fucking door or I will fucking ram it open with my fucking Nissan Versa.”
After a moment, the door opens just a crack. I see Mayhem’s face through the slit.
“Hey, Evan. Good morning. What’s up? Are you really going to kamikaze our clubhouse with a Nissan Versa?”
“I will if I have to. Just let me in, Mayhem.”
“You know I’d shoot you if you tried anything with that car, right?”
“You know I want to shoot myself every time I get behind the wheel of that thing, right?”
“I don’t blame you.”
“You going to let me in? I’m not here to fight. I’m here to save your lives.”
“I kind of want to see what happens if you try to ram your way in with that car. I don’t know if it has the power you’d need to break the door down.”
“Do you really want to find out?”
“Yes, that’s why I said it out loud. But I don’t think Rabid would like that.”
“Why don’t you tell Rabid that I have information the club needs if you all want to stay alive, and I won’t give it to you until you let me in and let me see Molly.”
“Fine,” he says, the word coming out exasperated, like a foiled child. “Let me go check. Wait here, please.”
I wait.
Moments later, he returns. The door opens. “Come on in.”
I enter. I don’t stop to read faces. I don’t stop to find exits.
I don’t stop to think about how fast I can die if Rabid inclines his head in the wrong direction.
I walk straight in — past the tables, past the bar, past the long line of Devils eyeing me with a mix of curiosity, anger, and an absolute readiness to take my head off — and I see her.
Molly.
Standing like she’s waiting for an execution. Chin up. Eyes bright with pain she refuses to show.
My chest caves in on my heart, and I swallow it down and keep going.
Rabid is in the center of the room, shoulders squared, standing the kind of still that means violence is already decided.
Goldie is a half-step behind him, arms crossed, gaze sharp.
There’s a tattoo that says ‘Namaste’ visible just above his left wrist. Claire and Alessia stand off to the side, and both are watching me like I’m a grenade with a loose pin.
Molly’s eyes meet mine, and for one split second, I see it again — us at eighteen, pressed against the wall behind the gym, her red lipstick smeared, her fingers fisted in my shirt like she doesn’t know how to let go.
Then her expression hardens into something that could cut steel, and she looks away.
I deserve nothing else. Not after what I’ve done to her.
And what she’s about to face from the people she loves as family?
She doesn’t deserve this.
I stop in the open space between Molly and Rabid. I meet the president’s eyes, unwavering.
“Why are you here, Evan?” Rabid says.
I keep my hands visible. Palms open. Throat raw.
“My name is Evan Wilder,” I say, voice steady enough to sound like I’m not shaking inside.
“My road name’s Gator. And I’m the reason you’re in danger.
Not her. She’s innocent. I used her.” Molly makes a small sound; it’s not a sob, not a gasp, more like a slight sound of her heart being hit.
“I was sent here,” I continue. “Not by accident. Not because I ‘moved back home.’ I was planted. By the Sons of Sorrow.”
A low, dangerous murmur ripples through the Devils. Bishop shifts. Tank’s eyes go flat. Mayhem’s grin rakes over me with all the sharpness of a razor blade.
Molly doesn’t move. Her face is white. Her eyes are wildfire.
“Why?” Rabid asks, calm and lethal. “Start there.”
“Because they have my sister. June.” I swallow.
“They grabbed her because her ex is one of theirs. Wraith. He’s a possessive piece of shit.
When they decided they want to expand from their territory in Salem and found out about my connection to Molly, Wraith and the enforcer for the Sons, Midnight, took June as leverage. ”
Molly flinches at the name like she’s already filed it away for later revenge.
“What was your mission?” Rabid says.
“They told me to get close to the Twisted Devils,” I say. “To get information. Access. Names. Routines. Information. Anything that would make it easier to hit you. And I got it. And I gave it to them.”
Silence, thick and loaded, settles over the room.
I look at Molly again, and she looks like she might shatter me with her eyes. Within those wide pools there is rage, betrayal, hurt, vengeance, all simmering, and yet, even now, I want to lose myself in them.
Because under it… under all that fury… I see something that makes my heart seize — love. Fighting. Refusing to die.
Love I don’t deserve, but am ready to die for.
“I love you,” I say, because I’m done lying. “You’re innocent in all this, Molly. Because all you did was love and trust me, and I used you. And I won’t let you pay the price for what I put you through.”
Molly’s eyelids flutter as if the words physically strike her. She raises a hand and covers her face. But she doesn’t turn away.
I turn back to Rabid, because that’s the man holding both our fates.
“I’m not asking to live,” I say. “I’m asking you to listen.”
Rabid pauses a moment, considering, and then he steps forward.
Slow. Measured. Like a predator that knows the prey can’t run.
He draws his gun. The barrel touches my forehead.
Cold.
Final.
His voice drops into a growl meant just for me. “Why should we believe a damn word you’re saying?”
I don’t flinch. I don’t close my eyes.
I lift my chin into the metal.
“Because if you want to survive what the Sons of Sorrow have planned,” I say, steady as a vow, “you’ll need to do exactly what I say.”