Chapter Thirty Eight
Tape cordoned off the building. A smell lingered. Old smoke. Charred remains casting shadows in the night. The frontage of the shop had collapsed onto the ground, half melted, half destroyed.
I slid off the bike, pulling my helmet off carefully, the slow drag over split, swollen skin excruciating.
Slowly, I moved, every part of me aching.
My legs from the scaffolding pole, my arms and back from hanging from the rafters of the cellar.
My stomach was bruised. I could feel it, deep and throbbing, and when I glanced across at Jazz, settling the Hayabusa on to its stand, that feeling was bottomless.
She’d never complained. Barely mentioned it, the bruises on her face still changing colour, tortured at the hands of my club.
And still she saved me from the wrath of hers.
Now we were both on the run. Together. My chest filled.
Terror. Feelings I couldn’t describe. When I looked at her, I saw through the swelling on her face, my cock reacting instantly.
But it was more than just lust. It was belonging.
Belonging to her. Belonging to someone. To something.
“You ok, Chase?” her voice broke through my thoughts, soft, always sultry.
“Yeah. Just looking at the mess.”
“This was all yours then, huh?”
“My home. My business. My world outside the club. Gina taught me how to run a business. This one just involved less body parts and more bike parts.”
I hadn’t realised I’d walked forward, my feet crunching on broken glass.
“Can it be saved?”
“Possibly. In time. Took me years to build it. It’s insured, of course. But it’s not the money. It was all mine. Something I’d actually worked for. My focus after the track. After I’d stopped fucking about with Gina.”
I caught the look on Jazz’s face. I should have explained some more. But it was what it was. And as my business lay there, destroyed by the brothers I’d betrayed, I didn’t have the energy to explain my past better than that.
Jazz said nothing, quietly coming to stand beside me, and we both watched on into the debris, the sun rising from the east, a glowing terracotta red growing behind the blackened structure.
Ominous. A gloved hand slipped inside mine, the leather cold on my bare palm.
Her fingers didn’t move, waiting for my reaction, looking for acceptance.
I didn’t deserve that gesture. Didn’t deserve her.
I should be wallowing in despair right now, but instead I was standing with her by my side.
The two of us having betrayed the ones we loved.
I closed my fingers around her gloved hand, holding her tight. She was the last thing I had.
Almost the last. There was something else. Buried. Hopefully retrievable.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her gently.
The ground crunched beneath my boots. Glass, brick, something unrecognisable.
The air was still thick with the ghost of smoke, a tang of burnt oil and plastic that clung to the back of my throat.
My shop was almost unrecognisable, just a skeleton of twisted metal and charred beams, a hole ripped through the ceiling, wallpaper hanging from the exposed apartment overhead.
I stepped over what used to be the counter, eyes scanning, trying to orient myself in the wreckage. The workshop floor was buried under blackened debris, but I knew where it should be. We kept moving, carefully stepping, under the beam that had separated the showroom to my garage room.
Carcasses of motorbikes. Twisted frames and melted fairings.
All but one had been in for repair, or for custom work.
The last lay on its side, warped and charred.
The dull light from a red sunrise caught on what was left of her, and my chest hollowed out.
The Gamma. Or what used to be. The fairing had melted into twisted, blackened curls, dripping like wax over the frame.
The tank had caved in, silver turned soot-black, and the engine block sat exposed, warped by heat.
My throat tightened. She’d been a monster once.
Square-four two-stroke, the kind of bastard that tried to throw you off if you didn’t show her respect. Now she was just bones and ash.
I crouched down, running a hand through the soot, the grit biting under my nails. There was a smell. Burnt oil and metal. Sharp enough to sting my eyes. Gone now, same as everything else. Almost everything.
My heart pounded, tension twisting in my chest. Five steps from the compressor, two from the rear pillar.
I kicked at the rubble, hands shaking, every scrape of a boot against concrete a curse under my breath.
Then I saw it. A hint of metal half-hidden under ash and melted wire.
The corner of the hatch. The fucking cellar door.
My chest tightened as I dropped to my knees, scraping at the soot with raw hands until the handle came free. Still solid. Still here.
I twisted the ring. One in each hand, both grinding loudly, the mechanism sprang free. I folded the doors back, exposing a deep black hole. It was cooler, a breeze rising to fight the fuzzy dying heat of a fire not long extinguished.
“What’s that?” Jazz asked, her voice from behind me.
“My last stand. Insurance if this ever happened.” And I didn’t mean the fire.
I stared down the hole, not moving, too frightened to find out if it was still there. And suddenly there was a stab of light. Moving. Illuminating.
“You’ve got a mobile?” I asked, turning to look at the phone Jazz pointed down the hole.
“Aye,” she shrugged.
“Won’t the Kings be able to track you?”
“It’s a burner, babe. Been brought up in an MC, remember? Always had a stash of these in case my brother tried to track me.” Jazz shrugged.
“Point it down there then.”
I grabbed her hand and guided her down the ramp. The light filled the cavity under the garage. Metal shelves filled with three rucksacks and the bike. I circled it twice. Looking for damage. Not quite believing my eyes. My Unicorn.
“Shit,” Jazz swooned from behind me. “Is that a…”
“An NR750. Honda’s impossible dream.”
I ran my hand over her. She was crimson and black, gleaming, untouched by the soot from the chaos above. The paint looked molten, like blood and mercury had been poured over the fairing and left to set. Exotic, experimental, and stupidly rare.
“Fuck,” Jazz breathed. “She’s a beaut. Have you ridden her or just wanked over her?”
“Both, Tiger. She’ll hit a hundred and seventy if you have the guts to keep your wrist steady, and fuck, can she move.”
Jazz understood that. I could see it in the dark eyes hungrily sweeping over the bike.
It wasn’t the speed that made the NR750 special.
It was the way she moved. Smooth, silent, like she was part of you.
Like she forgave you everything, even when the rest of the world didn’t.
My bike. My heart. The only other thing in all this madness that I’d die to protect, and here she was.
I ran a hand along the smooth fairing, and the world outside, the club, the Kings, everything that could have destroyed me for good, faded for a heartbeat.
Relief, disbelief, and something dangerously close to awe collided inside me. She was mine. Still.
I kicked my toe in the crumbling concrete, pepper potted with cobbles, feeling for the brick in the floor that stood out a little too pronounced. Nudging it free, I felt in the gap, my hand sliding into the cavity to the left. Metal. Rubber. Keys.
The starter whirred, then she roared to life, a deep, mechanical growl that vibrated through the concrete floor and walls.
In the cellar, she was a monster trapped in a cage.
Every intake hiss and exhaust bark magnified, bouncing off the low ceiling and stone walls.
She was loud, angry, alive and every rumble, every thrum through the frame, felt like she was speaking directly to me.
She was perfect, untouchable, a creature I’d cared for daily, nurtured, tended to like no one else could.
The roar of her engine wasn’t just sound; it was a pulse, a heartbeat in sync with mine, reminding me why I rode.
Jazz stood watching. Her eyes dark. The same richness I’d seen in them when she’d come on my cock, the bike doing to her what it did to me.
I thought I’d belonged with the Rats. I thought they were my calling.
My everything. But the moment they’d dragged her from that van, something had shifted inside me.
I didn’t know what it was then. But I knew it now.
That missing piece of me. Jazz was that piece.
And maybe now I was complete? I would be.
But there was something I needed to do first. A line to draw under my old life.
“I need to do something, Tiger. My last journey.”
She raised an eyebrow, waiting for more.
“Gina.”
It was all I said, and I’d expected her to kick off. To complain. To screw her face up. She did none of that, just nodded like she understood.