Chapter 21 #2
That was the thing about men like us. Sometimes forgiveness didn’t come in apologies or speeches. Sometimes it came in the form of insults, practical truths, and a grim admission that nearly losing someone put the rest into perspective.
“I didn’t know if we were… you know,” I said, hating how stupid I sounded the second the words left my mouth.
“Still brothers?” he supplied, saving me from myself with all the tenderness of a man kicking a body into a ditch. “Vienna, I watched you bleed out in fucking Church. Whatever weirdness was left after the hair-buddies disaster sort of got swallowed up by the whole not wanting you dead thing.”
“Romantic.”
“You bring out my softer side.”
I shook my head, but there was warmth beneath it now, and the job in front of us suddenly felt lighter for reasons that had nothing to do with cameras or routes.
It mattered, this. More than I liked to admit.
The club was built on blood and violence and loyalty, and every now and again you needed reminding that even when we fucked things up—and Christ knew I had—the foundation could still hold.
Hacksaw tossed me the second camera and nodded toward a narrower line of brush to our right. “That one goes there. Lower than you think. If they’re moving small quantities first to test the route, we’ll want enough angle to catch plates or faces if they come through on bikes.”
I caught the camera and headed where he pointed, pushing through the undergrowth until I found a decent trunk with clear sight toward the trail. The ground was uneven here, the sort of terrain that slowed men just enough to make them visible if they weren’t careful.
Good.
Let the Riders get lazy. Let them think nobody was watching the edges anymore. The more comfortable they got, the easier it would be to map the shape of whatever they were building.
I fastened the strap and adjusted the angle twice before stepping back to check the line.
Through the gaps in the trees, I could just make out the faint outline of the route that led deeper into Rider land.
Somewhere beyond that, hidden by distance and trees and more barriers than I cared to count, was Gabriella.
I told myself that wasn’t why my stomach tightened every time I looked in that direction.
I told myself the route mattered because of the product, the girls, the rising tension, the chance of finding out where the Riders were moving their shipments before they flooded our streets with cut-up poison and left bodies in the aftermath.
All of that was true.
And still, beneath it, there she was.
When I made my way back to Hacksaw, he was kneeling in the dirt with the audio recorder laid out in front of him.
“This one should pick up enough if they’re using that side route by the service track,” he said, tapping the map we had scrawled over earlier.
“Voices won’t come through crystal clear unless they’re nearby, but we might catch enough to know who’s moving what and when. ”
“Assuming they’re dumb enough to talk whilst doing it.”
He gave me a flat look. “Have you met bikers?”
“Tragically, yes.”
He gave a small laugh. “If they don’t talk, then they don’t talk. We’re in no worse a position than we’re in now. But on the off chance they say something useful, we’ll be ready.”
We set the recorder together, both of us crouched in the dirt and working mostly in silence, and it struck me then how easy this part used to be when I was younger.
Not the work itself, but the compartmentalising.
Club business in one box. Personal life—or whatever scraps of one I could claim—in another.
But the older I got, the more those lines bled into each other.
The Riders moving product mattered because it was club business.
Missing girls mattered because they were vulnerable and because men like Nico never stopped at one kind of cruelty.
And Gabriella… Gabriella mattered because she had always mattered, long before logic or practicality had anything to do with it.
Hacksaw rose to his feet and brushed the dirt from his hands. “That should do for tonight,” he said. “If they’re moving anything through these tracks, we’ll know soon enough.”
I stood a second later, rolling the stiffness from my shoulders and taking one last look around the woods. The cameras were hidden well. To anyone passing through, the land would look untouched. Just trees, brambles, and darkness.
But now there was a net in place.
Not around her.
Around the world that kept swallowing her up.
We started back toward the bikes in companionable silence.
“You know,” Hacksaw said after a while, his voice casual in that way that usually meant he was about to be a prick on purpose, “you always were pathetic where that girl was concerned.”
I huffed out a laugh before I could help it. “You weren’t around to see the worst of it,” I said, without bothering to deny it.
“It was worse than this?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure you are, brother. And the only reason you volunteered to come tonight was for strategic purposes.”
“This is strategic.”
“Course it is.”
“It is,” I insisted, though there wasn’t much force behind it.
Hacksaw unlocked his bike and slung a leg over it before looking back at me. “Whatever helps you sleep, brother.”
I rested my hand on the handlebars of my own bike and looked out through the trees one last time, my mind snagging not on Gabriella as she was now, trapped behind locked doors and fear, but on something older.
Softer. A version of her that existed before the cage had fully closed around her, before Nico, before all the years of damage and blood and wrong turns.
There had been a time when I hadn’t needed to stand in the dark and wonder what she was to me.
There had been a time when she was simply mine.
Not in the way men like Nico meant it. Not ownership.
Not possession. Nothing ugly. Just the quiet, fierce certainty of two stupid kids choosing each other in whatever scraps of secrecy the world allowed them.
A time before locked doors and silence, before every glance had to be translated and every touch stolen through glass.
My girl.
The words came unbidden and sat heavy in my chest.
And before I could stop it, the memory was already there, curling at the edges of my mind like smoke. Her at seventeen, eyes flashing, mouth too smart for her own good, looking at me like I was something worth choosing. Worth keeping.
Worth the risk.
I slid the helmet over my head and kicked the bike to life, but the woods, the cameras, the job—all of it had already begun to fall away.
Because now I wasn’t thinking about routes or shipments or the Riders getting bolder.
I was thinking about the first time Gabriella had truly been mine.