Chapter Fifteen
Justice
The clubhouse is quieter than it should be.
An edge of emptiness that feels wrong in the bones.
The bar lights are low, glasses lined up on the shelf.
Only one table holds life tonight, Creed and Lev Ivanov, face to face, voices low and dangerous.
The rest of the room is set up like a courtroom.
There’s four of Ivanov’s men who flank him near the back wall, stiff and on guard.
The traitor stands among them, appearing calm as he faces off against who stare at him from across the room.
Together we stand along the bar, Winchester, Highway, Reaper, and me. Nobody moves except to breathe.
At the back of the clubhouse, the med room pings in my head like a warning. Devil has the women in there, Jet and the others, waiting to see how this pans out. We all know there are charts, bandages and Lucy’s father on speed dial if things go south. That thought curls in my gut and sharpens me.
Creed doesn’t smile. He doesn’t have to. He’s all measured muscle tonight, palms flat on the table, eyes cold as cut glass. Ivanov sits opposite him, suit too neat, tie too tight, with that Russian stillness about him.
Creed starts the talk. “Hector’s been seen at the docks. A friend swears it was him.”
Ivanov’s jaw tightens. He fingers the knot of his tie the way a man checks a noose, and for a second he looks human, a small crack in the stone. “Hector?”
Creed leans in, voice sharp as a blade. “We think he’s looking for revenge after Camilla. If he’s moving through Jacksonville, he’s dangerous.”
Ivanov’s eyes flick to his men standing like black angels behind him. Ivanov clears his throat, fingers working the tie again.
Creed reaches across the table and slides a folder over, slow and deliberate. “We found this.” He pushes it toward Lev Ivanov.
Ivanov takes the folder. For a beat, nothing moves except the light settling into the glass.
He opens it with hands that don’t tremble, and a single photograph lifts from the sleeve.
A grainy shot but clean enough, his man and a uniformed bureau face, a transfer of something caught mid-air.
My picture tells a story. Ivanov’s gaze locks with Creed for a moment, then returns to the photograph and goes still.
He pulls at his tie and clears his voice, it’s the only sign he doesn’t feel comfortable.
Lev’s eyes meet Creed’s when the sound of many bikes fills the air.
Outside, the night is alive with the low rumble of engines as the Royal Bastards of Jacksonville ride into their compound.
Headlights carve through the dark and reveal row upon row of bikes.
Violent men straddling steel beasts in tight ranks of ten.
Each bike faces the clubhouse, their lights shining inside, revealing every dark corner.
The sound swells and then, as one, they rev, a single war cry that rattles the glass and then cuts off suddenly.
Ivanov rises, holding the photograph close to his side. His gaze locks onto the face in the picture. “Why?” he asks in Russian, low and dangerous.
The traitor blinks, confusion on his face. “I—”
Lev Ivanov’s calm snaps. His other men move like a single thought. Hands clamp onto the traitor’s arms. One of the Russians strips back a coat and pulls a gun free. Ivanov turns to Creed, slow and deliberate.
“He will tell me what he knows,” he says. There’s no pleading in it. Only a command.
Creed’s face is a mask of stone. He meets Lev’s eyes and shakes his head a fraction, not a refusal so much as a claim. Reaper is already moving from his place at the bar, the knife at his hip a pale promise. He steps closer, and the air changes.
“No,” Creed says quietly, so the rest of the room must lean in to hear.
“You can come. But we handle the interrogation. We don’t hand over our problems to be fixed in your cellars.
If you want answers, you come with us. We take the man to our warehouse.
It’s where we do what we need to do. You’re welcome to watch.
You’re welcome to make suggestions. But this is our territory, and you, my friend, are in it. ”
Tension coils. Ivanov’s men tighten their hold on the traitor.
For a heartbeat, Lev looks at the rows of the Bastards’ bikes blinking in the dark, at the shoulders and faces lined up, at Reaper’s blade glinting like promise.
He smiles a small, dangerous smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Of course, my friend.” He inclines his head. “We will come.”
Reaper doesn’t move. Winchester stands next to him, and Highway’s a mountain beside me, silent and ready.
We move out in a slow, deliberate line. Creed and Ivanov slide into the Russians’ Escalade, two of our bikes slot in front of the SUV, one on each flank, and two more take up the rear.
The traitor rides in another car, with Ivanov’s men riding point behind him.
It feels choreographed, like a funeral procession with teeth.
The warehouse smells like bleach and death, it’s a place built for interrogation, a metal table, a single light bulb hanging from a chain, the chill of spaces designed to make someone small.
They bring him in and sit him down under the bulb.
Ivanov watches while Creed speaks, all business and menace wrapped together.
The Russians stand a step back, like vultures waiting to see which way the carcass bleeds.
I walk further into the room with Winchester at my shoulder, boots soft on cement.
Reaper lingers near the door, fingers loose on his knife.
Creed’s voice is low and surgical. “Tell us what you gave the bureau. Tell us who you met and why.”
The traitor’s eyes go wild, pupils blown in fear. He tries to shake his head, tries to look pleading. “I didn’t—I swear, I thought—” His words die in his throat when he sees Reaper approach.
He’ll taste his share of blood today before he gives up what we need. This warehouse has swallowed more than its fair share of men and secrets. Reaper works the old way — slow pressure, the kind of pain that peels lies off like old paint until the truth shows up raw and panicked.
They strap the man into the chair under the single bulb.
The light swings, and his pupils have gone wide.
Reaper leans in like a surgeon and lets the knife show, an edge that draws a promise more than a wound.
It’s a threat carved in the air, we will take you apart until you hand over all your secrets.
Ivanov watches, hands twisting at his cufflinks. For a second he looks fragile, like a man who finds the world less comfortable than he expected. Then, he snaps his hand out and backhands the traitor across the face.
“Why?” Ivanov asks, voice flat with no emotion.
“Пожалуйста… пожалуйста…” the man babbles, the Russian slipping out in a terrified whisper.
Ivanov’s face hardens. He stares at Reaper. Reaper smiles, slow and leveled, and takes a step forward. There’s something in him now that’s not human.
Reaper’s touch is precise. He doesn’t carve flesh for spectacle, he makes restraint an instrument. The blade bites close enough to make the man flinch, not to maim, but to remind him there’s no safe corner left. The scream that breaks free is thin and animalistic. The chair rocks with it.
Creed steps in, voice low and controlled. “Why?”
“F-family,” the man spits, voice frayed.
“We are your family,” Ivanov says, cold as ice.
The man looks at his old boss, panic sputtering. “I have a daughter. She got picked up for…” He struggles, searching for the English word, then spits the Russian like a finality: “Наркотики.”
Ivanov looks at Creed. “Drugs.” He studies the man, then bends so his face is level with his prisoner’s. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
The man’s answer is a confession. “We weren’t supposed to have children. It makes us weak.”
Ivanov’s jaw tightens. “My men don’t have families,” he says. “It makes them weak. Leaves them open to the very thing this man has done, to betray. The men who guard me are paid well and are loyal to the Ivanov family and nothing else.”
Creed’s voice is gravel. “What’s his name?”
“Dmitri,” Ivanov says, venom threading the word.
“Dmitri, what did you tell the feds?” Creed asks.
The man locks eyes with his former boss. “I never betrayed you. I only told them about the MC and Hector Sanchez. He’s trying to get back into Jacksonville. He wants revenge on you, Lev. I—I would never betray you.”
Lev’s hand snaps up and grabs the man by the face. “By talking to them, you betrayed me!” He pushes the man away like a disgusted thing and turns his back. “Do what you must.”
One by one, the Russians around Lev shift their weight and turn their backs on the traitor, a small, slow shunning that leaves him exposed. His head shakes in disbelief, and then he sobs. Tears mix with the blood on his face as he watches the backs of the men who were supposed to be his family.
Reaper moves into Dmitri’s line of vision. “You will tell us what we need to know. In death, you will redeem yourself.” An eerie smile creeps across Reaper’s face, and I know at this moment he is lost to the bloodlust.
Dmitri breaks, he names names, stammers out the contacts, where the papers changed hands, a meeting time, a place. He tells us the bureau man’s name, the whispered code words. For every name he gives, Reaper smiles wider.
Ivanov watches the man disintegrate, and his face becomes one of satisfaction tempered with worry. “If Hector is moving, I will fix this,” he says finally, to Creed, to the room. “If he is a problem for my shipments or my men, I will remove the problem.”
Creed nods once. The lines of kinship and threat are clear now, we are allies. We all have something to lose.
When we finish, when the traitor has given what he can and trembles into silence, Creed makes the decisions that stitch us back together for the moment.
We take Dmitri outside. There’s not much left of the man he once was.
Reaper has seen to that. Lev Ivanov holds out his hand, and one of his men hands him a Glock.
He points it at the back of Dmitri’s head and pulls the trigger.
This demonstrates to his men that he will not suffer traitors and proves to us he’s willing to do whatever he needs to do to keep us at his side.
Dmitri’s body does a half twist before it falls to the ground with a sickening thud.
My ears still ring with the sound of the shot.
Moving forward, with gloves on, I pick up one of Dmitri’s arms and Winchester grabs the other.
Together we drag him toward the swamp and the alligators, who will eat the evidence.
Their bite can exceed two thousand pounds per square inch, and their stomachs are extremely acidic, by the time they are done, there will be no trace of the Russian.
When Winchester and I return, we see Lev Ivanov shaking hands with Creed. I can’t hear what they are saying, but judging by the smiles, the Russians are on our side.
“That’s good,” mutters Winchester.
“Yeah,” I agree.
The Russians get into their SUV and drive away. Creed whistles loudly, hand in the air making a circle, indicating we are to mount up and go back to the clubhouse.
On the way home, my mind drifts to Jet, and I wonder what she thinks of me now. She must know what we’ve done here tonight and why. It wasn’t only to protect ourselves, but it was also to protect the women who escaped the Crimson Wheelers.
The women in the med room are awake, some have eyes rimmed with red. Devil stands guard at the door, her usual fire dimmed to a simmer. She’s waiting for Creed, I can tell by the way she keeps glancing toward the hall.
Jet’s the only one who meets my gaze. A flicker, unblinking, unreadable, passes between us. Relief? Fear? Gratitude? Hell if I know. But it hits somewhere I don’t want to feel.
She lowers her head and slips past me toward her room. The click of her door closing echoes too loudly in the quiet.
I stare at the empty space she leaves behind, a dull ache twisting in my chest. This is why I don’t get attached.
Why I move from one woman to the next, never long enough for it to matter.
My life isn’t a home behind a white picket fence, it’s here, with my brothers, built on sweat, and blood.
It’s the only life that’s ever made sense to me.
Jet’s not built for this world. Not really. She’s cut from something softer.
A hand lands on my shoulder. Lyric’s standing there, eyes kind but sharp. “Go talk to her.”
I snort. “And say what?”
“Everything. Or nothing. Just… show up.” Her voice drops, quieter now. “She likes you, Justice. Even if she’s trying not to.”
I study her face, looking for the tell. “You sure about that?”
Lyric smiles, small and knowing. “She asked about you tonight. You were the only one she asked about.”
Before I can answer, Highway slides in behind her, arms circling her waist. “This one’s mine,” he says with a grin. “Find your own, brother.”
Lyric twists in his hold and kisses him, quick and certain. “He knows I’m yours.”
Highway smirks at me over her shoulder. “Yeah, just making sure he knows too.”
I shake my head, the corner of my mouth twitching despite myself. “You two need a damn room.”
Leaving them behind, I head for the stairs. My boots echo against the wood. Halfway up, I stop.
Every logical thought says to keep walking. But logic’s got nothing to do with the way her voice still lingers in my head or the way she looked at me as though she wanted to trust me but didn’t know how.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath, turning back and moving down the hallway.
Her door’s closed, a faint line of light showing beneath it. For a second, I just stand there, knuckles hovering midair. Then I knock — once, twice — soft enough not to wake the others, hard enough to mean I’m here.