10. CHAPTER TEN #2
The compound opened up beyond the gate. Gravel lot, well-maintained, Harleys parked in a long row under a corrugated awning that ran the length of what had to be the clubhouse.
The building itself was massive – a converted warehouse, corrugated metal siding painted matte black, the Wicked Mayhem MC logo emblazoned across the front in crimson and white that caught the floodlights and held them.
Two stories, maybe three, windows few and high-set, the main entrance a set of double doors reinforced with cross-braces and what looked like bulletproof glass.
Warm light spilled from the doorway, yellow and steady, cutting a long rectangle across the gravel where a handful of men stood smoking in the cold.
Mustang killed the engine. The truck settled with a sigh, and he sat there for a long beat, both hands on the wheel, eyes sweeping the lot. Exits. Heads. Terrain. Reading all of it the way he read everything—thoroughly, silently, missing nothing.
Then he was moving. Door open, boots on gravel, the sound sharp in the quiet. I reached for my handle, but he was already there, circling the front of the truck with that unhurried stride that covered ground faster than it had any right to, and my door opened before my fingers touched the latch.
He stood there with one hand on the door frame and the other extended, palm up. Not impatient. Not performative. Just there, offering a hand I could take or leave.
I took it. His palm was warm, callused, sure against mine, and he guided me down from the cab like he intended for me to land on my feet no matter what waited outside.
The cold hit me full in the face. Sharper than the mountain, carrying engine oil, cigarette smoke, and the emptiness of places where men gathered to do things they didn’t talk about.
The clubhouse loomed ahead, warm light spilling from the doorway, voices carrying low and overlapping on the night air.
Mustang’s hand stayed on my lower back as we walked toward the doors. Not possessive. Not controlling. Just present, solid enough that I could lean if I needed to.
I didn’t need to lean. But knowing his hand was there made the cold air easier to breathe.
The common room hit me like a warm wall.
Heat from a wood stove somewhere in the back, the smell of leather and gun oil and food cooking that wasn’t canned stew.
Low ceiling, exposed ductwork painted black, scarred wooden tables arranged without any obvious pattern across a concrete floor worn smooth by twenty years of boot heels.
A pool table dominated the center under a hanging light with a green glass shade, cues racked along the wall beside a chalkboard covered in scores I couldn’t read.
The bar ran along the back wall: solid oak, dark with age, lined with bottles in no clear order and a row of club patches mounted in frames behind glass.
Wicked Mayhem MC. Est. 1998. The dates underneath told their own story.
Men occupied the space the way men occupy spaces they built: sprawled, comfortable, taking up more room than they needed because nobody had ever told them otherwise.
Some at the bar. Some at the tables. Some working on bike parts near a garage door that stood half-open to the night, tools spread across a workbench under fluorescent lights that threw every surface into harsh relief.
Socket saw us first. He was halfway through a sentence to someone I couldn’t see, a wrench in his right hand, grease darkening his palms, when he turned and did exactly what Mustang did: swept the room, took inventory, landed on me.
Then he looked to Mustang, and whatever passed between them didn’t need words.
Socket’s mouth closed. The wrench hung in midair for a beat before he set it down with a clank that turned heads.
Screwball was at the bar with a beer in front of him and a grin already forming, slow and wide, the scar along his jaw pulling tight as his mouth curved. “Well,” he said, voice carrying across the suddenly quieter room, “that’s not a dead woman.”
Mustang didn’t turn. Didn’t shift his weight. Just said, “Shut up, Screw,” flat and final, the way you tell a dog to stop barking when you’re not actually mad about the barking.
Screwball’s grin didn’t falter. If anything, it widened, and he lifted his beer in my direction – not a toast, exactly, but an acknowledgment – before taking a long drink that emptied half the bottle.
At the far end of the room, near the garage door, a man I hadn’t noticed straightened from whatever he’d been working on.
Dark hair, trimmed beard, eyes that held mine for one measured beat before he nodded once – sharp, respectful – and reached for the nearest stool.
Pulled it away from the table it belonged to and set it closer to the bar, within the circle of warm light, then stepped back without a word.
An offer. Wordless, but clear as anything spoken aloud.
It was Socket who actually spoke to me first. He’d crossed the room while I was watching Torque, dropping the wrench on the nearest table with a clatter that made Screwball wince, and now he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, grease darkening the tribal tattoos that ran up both forearms and disappeared under his sleeves.
“You the baker?” he asked. Direct. Unadorned. A question that expected a direct answer or none at all.
I blinked. “How did you—”
“Word travels,” Mustang said from behind my left shoulder. His voice carried that dry edge he used when he was amused but wouldn’t admit it.
Socket barked a laugh. Short, sharp, from the chest and ending as abruptly as it started.
He shook his head once, almost to himself, and something in his expression softened, not much, just enough to notice, before he turned back toward the garage door where whatever he’d been working on still waited.
Screwball slid a mug down the bar toward me.
Not a beer. Coffee, black, steam rising in a thin curl that caught the overhead light.
“Heard you make cinnamon rolls,” he said, leaning against the bar with his elbows planted wide.
“Just putting that out there. No pressure. Except there’s pressure. I really like cinnamon rolls.”
I wrapped both hands around the mug. The tin was warm, almost hot, and the coffee smelled better than anything that had come out of the cabin’s tin pot — rich, actually brewed, made by someone who gave a damn about ratios.
I took a sip and didn’t wince, which seemed to please Screwball enormously based on the way his eyebrows went up.
The room settled around me. Not with welcome exactly, but with acceptance.
I had been accounted for and filed under not a problem.
Socket went back to the engine part. Screwball kept talking.
Torque stayed quiet at the far end, hands busy with something that caught the fluorescent light in dull gleams.
I watched Mustang move through the room.
He didn’t move like other men. Each step had purpose, each gesture already decided.
The prospect near the door straightened when Mustang passed.
Socket tilted his head to catch a low word near the workbench.
Screwball’s commentary died the moment Mustang’s expression shifted from neutral to business.
The man who drew cinnamon-roll jokes and the man who could field-strip a handgun were the same person, and the transition took no effort at all.
By the time Mustang came back to stand beside me at the bar, the coffee in my mug was half-gone and the room had forgotten I was new. Or if it hadn’t forgotten, it had decided that new wasn’t the same as unwelcome, and that was enough.
I set the mug down. The tin made a soft click against the oak, and I turned toward him, close enough that my shoulder brushed his arm, and said it quietly enough that only he could hear it: “They’d do anything for you.”
Mustang didn’t answer right away. His eyes stayed on the row of patches behind the bar — crimson and black, mounted in frames that caught the light. Something moved across his face. Not pride. Something heavier.
Then: “Yeah. They would.”
Two words. He said them the way he said everything, plainly, like there was nothing left to argue. Truth that didn’t need dressing up because it stood on its own, solid as the oak bar beneath my palms.
I looked around the room. The patches on the wall.
The bikes visible through the half-open garage door, lined up under the awning like machines waiting for orders.
The men who hadn’t flinched when Mustang walked in with a woman no one was supposed to know existed — who’d nodded, poured coffee, pulled out a stool, and gone back to work because whatever their president had brought home was, by definition, worth bringing home.
This was what he protected. Not territory.
Not money. Not reputation. This room. These men.
Socket cussing over a stripped bolt, Screwball cutting tension with jokes, Torque anchoring the far wall without saying much at all.
This was worth walking away from fifty thousand dollars for.
Worth burning a safehouse for. Worth whatever came next.
I understood it then, standing at the bar with Mustang’s shoulder against mine and coffee warming my hands. Not with my brain. With my bones.
The realization settled across my shoulders, heavy and sure. I leaned into it the way I’d leaned into his hand on my back, because some weights were meant to be carried, and some men were worth carrying them for.