Chapter 13 #2
Montana glanced at me, then back at the phone. “Shame dug up some information on Brandy’s family. Turns out her father is Hex. Former Silver Shadows VP out of Little Rock.”
Another beat of silence.
Then King exhaled slowly, the sound crackling through the speaker. “Jesus Christ.”
“So you know him,” Montana said.
“I was a fucking kid when the shit went down,” King said, his voice careful, measured. “But yeah, I’ve heard the stories. Everyone in the Silver Shadows has heard the stories. Hex is... he’s a fucking legend, man. The kind of legend you don’t talk about unless you have to.”
“What happened?” I asked, leaning forward.
King was quiet for a moment, like he was deciding how much to say. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, heavier.
“Hex was Titan’s VP back in the day. This was—fuck, twenty- maybe thirty-some years ago now.
Before my time. Before most of the current chapter presidents’ time.
Hex, and a few other brothers were on a club run.
I don’t know all the details—no one does, really—but shit went sideways. A federal agent ended up dead.”
My stomach tightened.
“The Feds came down hard,” King continued. “I mean hard. They were going to dismantle the entire Silver Shadows organization. Seize assets, arrest every patched member. It would’ve been the end of the club.”
“So what happened?” Mercy asked quietly.
“Titan made a call,” King said. “To save the club, someone had to take the fall. And Hex... Hex stepped up. He took the murder charge. Claimed he acted alone, that it wasn’t club business, that the other brothers had nothing to do with it.
The Feds bought it—or at least, they accepted it. Hex went down for twenty-five to life.”
I felt something cold settle in my chest.
A man who’d sacrificed everything to protect his brothers.
“But he didn’t serve the full sentence,” Montana said.
“No,” King agreed. “Five years in, new evidence came to light. Exonerated him completely. Turned out the Fed was dirty and his death wasn’t even a murder—it was self-defense, and there was video footage that proved it. Footage that mysteriously didn’t surface during the original trial.”
“Convenient,” Fury muttered from across the table.
“Yeah,” King said. “Real fucking convenient. Hex got out, and everyone thought that was the end of it. That he’d come back to the club, take his place as VP again, maybe even challenge Titan for the presidency. But that’s not what happened.”
“What did happen?” I asked, though part of me already knew.
King’s voice went flat, emotionless. “Hex showed up at the Little Rock clubhouse about a week after his release. Walked right in during a party, found Stone, Titan’s son, and beat him within an inch of his fucking life.
I’m talking broken ribs, a shattered jaw, internal bleeding.
The brothers had to pull Hex off him before he killed him. ”
Montana leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable.
“After that,” King continued, “Hex went outside, stripped off his cut, and burned it in the parking lot. Then he blacked out every piece of ink he had. Every club tattoo, every symbol, every mark that tied him to the Silver Shadows. He walked away and never looked back.”
“What did they argue about?” I asked. “Hex and Stone. What was the fight about?”
“No one knows,” King said. “Titan never talked about it, and Stone refused to say a word. And Hex... Hex disappeared. There are only a couple of old timers left who might know what went down that day. One of them is Freeway.”
“Freeway?” Montana repeated.
“He was there when Hex came back,” King explained. “Saw the whole thing go down. But Freeway escaped during the Death Dogs’ attack in Diamond Creek. No one knows where he’s at. Some think he’s dead. Others think he went into hiding. Either way, he’s not talking.”
The room was silent.
I tried to process what I’d just heard.
Hex had taken a murder charge to save his club. Had served five years in prison for brothers who should’ve had his back. And when he got out, when the truth finally came to light, he’d come back not for gratitude or reinstatement, but for vengeance.
Whatever Stone had done—whatever betrayal had occurred during those five years—it had been bad enough to make Hex walk away from everything he’d built. Everything he’d sacrificed for.
“So that’s why he’s untouchable,” Mercy said quietly. “That’s why the Federation rule exists.”
“Hex didn’t just leave the club,” King said.
“He was excommunicated in all but name. The Federation couldn’t officially kick him out because he’d been exonerated, but they made damn sure no one could bring him back in.
The rule about excommunicated brothers and their families?
That was written specifically because of Hex.
To make sure no one could use his kids or his wife to pull him back into the life. ”
“Or to make sure no one could use them as leverage against him,” Montana added, his voice grim.
“That too,” King agreed.
I stared at the phone, my mind racing.
Brandy was Hex’s daughter.
The daughter of a man who’d sacrificed everything for his brothers, only to be betrayed so deeply that he’d burned his entire life to the ground.
A man who’d walked away from the MC world and made damn sure no one could ever drag him—or his family—back into it.
And now I’d gotten his daughter pregnant.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” King said. “Fuck is right. If Hex finds out one of you knocked up his daughter, he’s going to lose his shit.
And if he finds out you’re trying to claim her under club protection despite the Federation rule, he’s going to come for all of you.
And trust me when I say this—you don’t want Hex coming for you. ”
Montana’s jaw tightened. “We’re not afraid of some ex-brother.”
“You should be,” King said flatly. “Hex isn’t just some ex-brother.
He’s a man who survived five years in federal prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
A man who walked back into his old clubhouse and beat the president’s son half to death with his bare hands.
A man who’s spent the last thirty something years living off the grid, raising his family, and making damn sure no one from his old life ever finds him. ”
“Until now,” I said quietly.
“Until now,” King agreed. “And when he finds out—and he will find out, Torment—you better be ready for what comes next.”
The line went dead.
Montana set his phone down slowly, his expression dark.
No one spoke.
The weight of what we’d just learned pressed down on all of us, heavy and suffocating.
I’d thought this was just about Brandy. About a club whore who’d run away because she was scared.
But it wasn’t.
It was about a man who’d been betrayed by the very brothers he’d sacrificed everything to protect. A man who’d walked away from the MC world and built a new life, a clean life, far from the violence and chaos that had destroyed him.
And now I’d dragged his daughter right back into that world.
“We need a plan,” Mercy said finally, breaking the silence.
Montana looked at him, then at me. “Yeah. We do.”
But as I sat there, staring at the phone on the table, I couldn’t help but think that no plan in the world was going to be enough.
Not when we were dealing with a man like Hex.
Not when we’d just crossed a line that should never have been crossed.