Chapter 2
The mash smelled wrong.
Jocelyn stood in her barn at dawn, staring at six oak barrels that represented three months of work, and tried to convince herself she was imagining things. But she'd been making bourbon since she was twenty-five, and she knew what fermenting grain was supposed to smell like.
This wasn't it.
She grabbed the bung mallet and popped the first barrel, already knowing what she'd find.
The mash inside had turned gray-green, a chemical sheen floating on the surface that had nothing to do with natural fermentation.
She checked the second barrel. The third.
All six, one after another, the same poisoned mess staring back at her.
Three months. Three months of corn and rye and malted barley, carefully measured and cooked and cooled. Three months of monitoring temperatures and checking pH levels and doing everything right.
Gone.
Jocelyn's hands started shaking. She gripped the edge of the nearest barrel until her knuckles went white, forcing herself to breathe through the rage that wanted to explode out of her chest.
Behind her, old Beau lifted his head from his bed in the corner and whined. Fourteen years old, half-blind, deaf as a post. He hadn't barked at anything in two years. Whoever had done this had walked right past him in the night, and he'd probably wagged his tail.
"Some guard dog you are," she muttered.
Beau's tail thumped against the floor. He didn't know he'd failed her. Didn't know that the men who'd poisoned her livelihood had probably scratched his ears on their way out.
She wanted to scream.
Instead, she walked out of the barn and stood in her grandmother's yard, looking at the property that had been in her family for four generations.
Forty acres of Carolina clay that her great-grandmother had held through the Depression, her grandmother through two decades of being told women couldn't run land alone, her mother through two bad marriages that had tried to take it.
Now Jocelyn was holding it against Ray Embry.
And she was losing.
The tires on her truck caught her eye—four mismatched replacements she'd scrounged from a junkyard after someone slashed the originals last week.
The tool shed door hung crooked on its hinges from when they'd ransacked it the week before that.
Her mailbox lay in a ditch somewhere, knocked down so many times she'd stopped replacing it.
Four months of this. Four months since Embry had shown up with a cash offer and a reasonable smile, talking about how a woman alone couldn't possibly want to keep struggling with forty acres of nothing.
She'd told him no.
He'd come back with a lawyer and a better offer, paperwork that showed just how much easier her life would be if she'd just sign.
She'd told him no louder.
Last week, one of his men had shown up on her porch while she was eating dinner. Big guy, prison-hard, the kind of smile that promised bad things. He'd started talking about how accidents happened on rural properties, how a woman alone should think about her safety.
She'd run him off with her grandmother's shotgun.
Now her mash was poisoned, her tires were slashed, and she hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch in three days because every noise outside sounded like someone coming to finish what the vandalism started.
Jocelyn walked back into the barn and stood over the ruined barrels. Three months of work. Six hundred dollars in grain she couldn't afford to lose. A production schedule that was already behind because she'd been too busy repairing damage to actually make bourbon.
Ray Embry was patient. That's what everyone said about him. He made offers, and when people said no, things started happening. Small things at first. Then bigger things. Then people sold, or people left, or people just... disappeared.
She wasn't going to be one of those people.
But she couldn't keep doing this alone.
The thought made her stomach twist. Four generations of Avery women had held this land without asking anyone for help. Her grandmother had buried two husbands and raised three children and never once admitted she needed anything she couldn't provide herself. Asking for help felt like betrayal.
But her grandmother had never faced Ray Embry.
Jocelyn had heard about the Bragg Exiles from Harold, the old man who sold her copper fittings. His nephew had gotten into trouble with some loan sharks last year, and the MC had stepped in—not for money, just because the nephew was a veteran and veterans were their people.
She wasn't a veteran. Wasn't military, wasn't connected to Fort Liberty, wasn't anything but a woman with a still and a stubborn streak. But Harold had given her a number and told her it couldn't hurt to ask.
She'd been too proud to call.
Now she was staring at three months of ruined work and wondering how much pride was worth when they finally decided vandalism wasn't sending a strong enough message.
The drive to Fayetteville took forty minutes on tires that weren't meant to match and a suspension that hadn't been serviced in two years. Her grandmother's truck groaned up every hill and rattled over every pothole, but it kept moving. Just like every Avery woman before her.
The VFW hall sat off Bragg Boulevard, surrounded by motorcycles that gleamed in the morning sun. Jocelyn pulled into the lot and killed the engine, staring at the building like it might bite her.
Bikers. She was asking bikers for help.
Her grandmother would have had opinions about that.
But her grandmother had also said "don't let them take it," and right now, bikers were the only option Jocelyn had left.
She got out of the truck and walked toward the door, her boots crunching on gravel, her chin lifted even though her heart was hammering. The building looked like every VFW hall she'd ever seen—brick and bunting and a flagpole out front. Nothing about it screamed "motorcycle gang."
Except for the two men flanking the entrance, leather cuts over broad shoulders, watching her approach with the calm assessment of predators sizing up prey.
"Help you?" The one on the left had a beard and a scar that bisected his eyebrow.
"I'm looking for someone who can help with a property dispute."
The men exchanged a look. "You military?"
"No."
"Veteran?"
"No."
Another look, less friendly this time. "This ain't a law office, lady."
"I know what it is." Jocelyn held her ground, even though every instinct screamed at her to get back in her truck and drive away. "Harold Finney gave me a number. Said you helped his nephew last year. Said you might listen."
The name changed something. The man with the scar studied her for a long moment, then stepped aside.
"Inside. Ask for Cipher."
Jocelyn walked through the door into a world she'd never been part of and wasn't sure she wanted to join.
The main room was bigger than she'd expected—a bar along one wall, tables scattered across the floor, men in leather talking quietly or cleaning weapons or doing things she didn't want to examine too closely.
Every head turned when she entered.
She'd spent her whole life being looked at by men who assumed she couldn't handle whatever was in front of her. These looks were different—not dismissive, just assessing. Measuring her the way you'd measure a piece of equipment before deciding if it was worth the investment.
"I'm looking for Cipher," she said, loud enough to carry.
A man at the back of the room stood. Weathered face, gray at his temples, eyes that had seen more than she could imagine. He moved toward her with the easy confidence of someone who'd never had to prove himself to anyone.
"I'm Cipher. And you're Jocelyn Avery."
She blinked. "How do you know—"
"You called yesterday. Left a message." He gestured toward a table in the corner, away from the others. "Sit. Tell me what Ray Embry's done to your property."
Jocelyn sat.
And for the first time in four months, she told someone the whole truth.
The cash offers. The lawyer. The man on her porch and the shotgun she'd pointed at his chest. The slashed tires, the ransacked shed, the poisoned mash she'd found this morning.
Four months of escalation, four months of fighting alone, four months of watching everything she'd built get systematically dismantled by a man who was patient enough to wait her out.
Cipher listened without interrupting. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"Embry's been expanding his operation for years," he said finally. "Your land sits between two of his key properties. He needs the corridor."
"I don't care what he needs. That land belongs to my family."
"I understand that." Cipher's voice was calm, not patronizing. "But understanding doesn't change the math. You're one woman against a man with twenty-plus soldiers and fifteen years of experience making people disappear."
"So you won't help."
"I didn't say that." He leaned back in his chair. "Embry's operation has been bleeding into veteran communities around Spring Lake. Taking him down isn't just about your forty acres—it's about protecting people we've sworn to protect."
Something loosened in Jocelyn's chest. "What does that mean?"
"It means I'm sending someone to assess the damage. Figure out what we're dealing with, what kind of resources Embry's committed." Cipher's eyes held hers. "If it's what you say it is, we'll discuss next steps. But I need to know you understand what you're asking for."
"What am I asking for?"
"Violence." The word landed flat and final. "Men like Embry don't negotiate. They don't back down because someone asks nicely. If we get involved, people are going to get hurt. Probably killed."
Jocelyn thought about her grandmother's shotgun. About four generations of women who'd refused to sell. About the promise she'd made at a graveside three years ago.
"I understand."
"Do you?" Cipher studied her. "Because once this starts, there's no going back to how things were."
"Things aren't how they were." Jocelyn's voice hardened. "They stopped being how they were the first time Embry showed up on my property thinking he could take what my family built. I'm not asking you to negotiate. I'm asking you to help me fight."
Something shifted in Cipher's expression. Approval, maybe. Or recognition.
"Tomorrow morning," he said. "Someone will be at your property to assess. His name's Anvil. Try not to shoot him."
Jocelyn stood. "I'll try."
She walked out of the VFW hall with her shoulders straight and her heart pounding, past the men who'd watched her enter and were now watching her leave with something like respect in their eyes.
She'd asked for help she never wanted to need.
Now she just had to survive long enough for it to arrive.