One Love, Vol. 2 (Celebrating One Love)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Fog rolls low across Ravell’s industrial strip, curling through busted fences and empty warehouses like smoke from an old wound. Nights like these taste like iron and bad decisions. Perfect playground for the Saints.

North stands at the front, silent as stone.

Prez doesn’t need to talk—his presence does the work.

Iron’s beside him, big and steady, the kind of man who can end you without breaking stride.

Soul checks his Glock slow, reverent, like prayer beads.

Tornado cracks his knuckles, eager to put somebody through concrete.

Colt crouches over a scrap of cardboard, sketching the map in thick pencil. “Two vans. Rivals off the river road, dropping hardware in bay three. We box ’em in here, here. Fast, clean, no fucking around.”

Shard leans close. “Hear that, Rook? No fucking around.”

I smirk. “Shard, if fucking around was an Olympic sport, you’d still lose to me.”

Colt snaps his toothpick between his teeth. “Jesus Christ, shut up and focus.”

“Let him yap. More noise, more bait.” Tornado chuckles darkly.

North’s eyes cut across us once. That’s enough. Banter dies. Silence falls sharp as a blade.

The vans roll in late; white paint, dirty plates, seven men total. Doors grind open. Crew spills out, all borrowed swagger and cheap leather. They think they’re sharks. They don’t know they just swam into the lion’s den.

Colt lifts two fingers. Go.

I break left with Shard. Tornado prowls up the middle. Soul ghosts right. Iron and North take the center path, sharp and clean. Prospects—Grimm, Stitch, and Scrap—skirt wide, hungry to prove their bones.

First man doesn’t even see Tornado coming. One slam of his skull into the van hood and the clang rings like a church bell. Another swings wild—Soul’s gun coughs twice, both bodies down before the echo fades.

“Save some fun, brother,” I call, grinning.

“Shut up and move,” Soul mutters.

Shard points. “Left!”

Kid in a baseball cap swings a pistol sloppily. I bat his wrist sideways, sinking my fist in his ribs hard enough he pukes air. He drops, wheezing.

“You want easy?” I whisper in his ear. “Easy costs extra.”

A shot sparks near North’s head. Prez doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. Iron is already moving, elbow dropping a shooter like he was born to end people.

Colt whistles. “That’s what happens when you play cowboy.”

Another charges me with a box cutter. I laugh. “Cute.” Blade nicks a thread on my cut before I twist his wrist, crank his elbow, and bounce his skull off the van door until the panel hums.

“Clear!” Colt shouts.

“Clear,” Soul echoes.

North moves through the wreckage, calm and brutal. “Grimm.”

Prospect scrambles to crack a crate. Foam pops, greased paper peels, and pistols gleam like bones in a coffin.

“Clean,” Soul confirms.

Scrap whistles low. Iron shuts him up with a look.

North’s gaze flicks to me. “Loose on the left.”

I roll my shoulder, grin cocky. “Kept our pretty faces outta the spray, Prez.”

Shard snorts. “Loose as always.”

“Ask your mom,” I shoot back.

“Children,” Iron’s voice cuts in, flat.

North doesn’t linger. “Load the vans. No noise.”

“Yes, Prez.”

Colt signals the prospects. Engines growl back to life, wheels crunching gravel. By the time we snake through Ravell’s backstreets, adrenaline’s still humming in my blood. Nights like this are why I patched in. Governor’s son or not, this is my family.

The Grindhouse burns neon green at the end of the block, clubhouse doors wide open to brothers and nobody else. Inside, it smells like leather, smoke, and whiskey soaked into wood. Saints own this floor. Pool balls clack. Laughter snaps sharp. Women hover, smart enough not to touch what’s claimed.

By the time we slide through the back alley near the bar, Blacktrope Blood glows like a square of yellow on the block, neon bleeding over wet asphalt.

The door buzzes open on our knock, and scented heat smacks us in the face—beer, knock-off leather, and the sugar-burn of cheap cinnamon whiskey.

Music leans heavy on a bass line and dares a fight to dance with it.

Faces turn, then look away. Respect. Fear.

A little worship. People are still animals, no matter what they wear.

We stack our cuts on chairs we claim without asking. Frost slides behind the bar; man always ends up there even when he’s not scheduled. He pours North a glass he didn’t ask for, then lines up beers for the rest of us. Prospects drift toward the corner table, pool cues keeping them honest.

“Clean hit,” Soul says, setting his piece under the lip of the bar before he touches his glass. “No tails.”

“Second van had Iowa plates. They’re sniffin’ the river again.” Colt clacks his toothpick against his teeth.

“Iowa,” Tornado growls, tasting the word like it’s sour. “Should break their teeth.”

North doesn’t blink. “We do not announce ourselves to toddlers. We starve them.”

I lean on my elbows, let the bottle sweat into my palm. The hum in my blood doesn’t fade quickly. Never does. The mission buzz is a woman who keeps her heels on—you chase her, keep chasing, or she disappears.

Shard hip-checks my stool. “You keep lookin’ like that you’re gonna bite somebody.”

“Only if they ask nicely.”

Iron’s look slices my way, saying young without saying a damn word. “Stand down.”

I take a long swallow and grin over the rim. “Yes, sir.”

The music shifts, drum drag slowing into something with hips.

“Rook,” Frost says, cleaning a glass that doesn’t need it. “You runnin’ hot tonight?”

“When ain’t I?”

He huffs. “Just don’t bleed on my floor.”

“Your floor, my floor.” I smirk. “Saints’ floor.”

North’s phone buzzes once. He checks it, taps it, tucks it away. His face doesn’t change. Prez is a wall storms break against, or maybe he’s the storm, and we’re just the wind behind him.

Then the door opens and a knife of cold cuts the warmth clean.

I don’t bother turning. You read a room by how it shifts.

Air changes, tightens. A bar full of wolves sniffing something new—expensive perfume laced over beer breath, high heels clicking steady as a clock.

Not one of ours. Not anybody from this side of Ravell.

Frost’s head lifts a fraction. Soul’s fingers freeze on his glass. Iron’s gaze sharpens.

“Tell me I get to bounce somebody,” Tornado mutters, amused.

“Nah,” I turn slowly, my smile already sliding into place. “Tell me if she’s trouble.”

She steps in like she’s wrestled the night and won by being shinier.

Black hair, dark eyes, a mouth made to ruin prayers.

Small as sin, or so she seems from far away.

Her coat costs more than all the booze in the bar.

Chin up, eyes scanning like she lost a safe place somewhere between downtown and this door.

“Rook,” Shard watches me. “I can hear you waggin’ your tail.”

“Shut up,” I toss back, not bothering to hide the laugh. I don’t do tails. I do teeth.

She hesitates for a heartbeat, then arrows toward the bar. No flinch when she clocks North in her periphery; either she doesn’t know what she’s looking at, or she’s too green to be scared. But her hands give her away, fists tucked into her sleeves like they’re whispering apologies.

“Don’t,” Iron says so low it might be a thought.

“Who, me?” I settle in my stool anyway, bottle a wet chill in my hand.

Frost eyes me over the rim of his glass. “Behave.”

“I’m a Saint.”

“That’s the problem.”

She reaches the bar, and her eyes land on me. Not because I’m the prettiest sin in the room—though I am—but because I’m already watching, already owning the next thing out of her mouth. Her perfume warms under the lights. Not sweet. Flowers with knives.

Up close, the fear in her pupils is a thin ring in the dark. I know it. Fear’s honest. Usually the only honest thing people bring through Blacktrope’s door.