Chapter 16
CENTURY
We took the driver first. He’d been trying to disappear into the noise of the track near the back side of the lot, like he knew he was being hunted.
Nitro stepped out of the dark in front of him, while Gauge closed the angle from the left and Fury came in from behind with all the patience of a man who ran a bar and had removed plenty of problems without flinching.
The driver looked past them and found me standing with my feet spread wide and arms crossed over my chest. Whatever excuse he’d been about to make died in his throat.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
His gaze jerked toward the exit. “Race is over.”
“Yeah.” I started toward him, my boots grinding over loose gravel. “But we’ve still got business to handle.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing under the track lights. “I don’t know what you think—”
“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” I warned, my voice low and wrapped in steel.
Fury’s mouth twitched. “Let him finish. I’m curious how stupid it gets.”
Nitro grunted. “I’m not. Heard enough stupid tonight.”
The driver tried to step back, but Gauge caught his arm and twisted him just enough to convince him the movement had been a bad idea.
He wasn’t an officer in their club, and neither were the three brothers we collected after him, but that didn’t matter.
They were low enough to be disposable, high enough to carry a message, and unlucky enough to still be breathing when the Redline Kings decided how that message would be delivered.
We took them to The Pit.
To the level two floors down, past reinforced doors and locking systems most federal buildings would envy.
The air turned cold, the walls were thick concrete, and the floors tiled for easy cleaning.
No cell signals reached the space, no sound crawled out of it, and nobody ended up there unless the club had already decided normal consequences weren’t enough.
The four Diesel Serpents understood that as soon as we brought them through the steel door.
Once they were secure in a cell, Edge and Drift joined us.
“You cheated.”
The driver’s lip was already split from the fight it took to get him loaded into the van at the track, and his breathing came shallow through his nose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Edge sighed. “I hate when they start boring.”
Drift looked at him. “You say that every time.”
“Because every time, some asshole thinks lying is a strategy.” Edge pushed off the wall, the knife vanishing into his hand like it had never been there. “It’s not. It’s just foreplay for consequences.”
The driver’s gaze swung back to me, panic starting to bleed through the arrogance. “We raced. You won. Deal’s done.”
“The race was done when I crossed the line.” I stepped closer. “The deal is done when your club honors it. But as for the debt for putting slick down on my track and trying to make me wreck? That’s separate.”
His face went gray beneath the bruising.
“You threatened my woman. You used her sister. Came into Redline Kings territory and tried to cheat on our track. So I’m gonna explain this once, and you’re gonna remember every word because tomorrow morning, you’re taking it home.”
He licked blood off his lower lip, saying nothing.
“Your club stays away from Saylor Everett. Your club stays away from Sutton Everett. Your club clears whatever debt or offense Sutton owed, pulls every asset out of our territory, and doesn’t so much as whisper around a race we control unless Kane gives permission. You understand?”
“I’m not the president.”
“No.” I smiled without a shred of humor. “That’s why you’re the envelope, not the recipient.”
The rest of the message we were sending didn’t need much talking. By the time we were done, all four men were bloody, swollen, and breathing hard through broken pride and worse pain. They were alive, and that was about the kindest thing anyone could say about their condition.
A little before three in the morning, we hauled them upstairs and out to the back parking lot where a plain black van waited.
One of the bastards groaned when Nitro shoved him into the van, and Nitro paused long enough to stare at him.
The man shut up so fast it almost would’ve been funny if I hadn’t been thinking about Saylor sleeping in my bed at the compound.
“You good?” Drift asked quietly as we watched the doors close.
“No.”
He didn’t ask me to explain. Didn’t have to.
Kane rolled in a few minutes later, the same cold focus he’d carried at Torque Ridge.
“Let’s ride,” he ordered.
The drive to Savannah took five hours through dark highways and empty stretches of road. Fury and Wrench drove the van ahead with the four broken Serpents inside, while Kane, Edge, Nitro, Axle, Drift, and I followed on our bikes.
My body was tired, my knuckles ached, but my mind stayed locked on the only thing that mattered.
Saylor.
I wanted to get this done so I could go home, get my woman in my arms, and make sure she knew exactly what she meant to me.
By the time we rolled into Savannah, the sun was rising behind low buildings, turning the edges of the streets pale gold. Jax had found the Diesel Serpents’ compound earlier and sent us the location.
The clubhouse sat at the end of an industrial road, a squat brick building with bikes lined along one side, a rusted gate hanging open, and a serpent emblem painted across the front wall.
Kane parked first, and the rest of us pulled in behind him, engines cutting one after another until the sudden silence felt louder than the ride.
The van stopped near the front door, and Fury climbed out, rolled his shoulders, and opened the side door.
One of the guys inside made a pained sound when light hit him.
Edge grinned like the morning had improved.
“Rise and shine,” he called. “You boys are home.”
“Ain’t that kind of us.” Axle smirked, stepping up beside me. “Door-to-door service.”
Nitro glanced at the clubhouse. “Rating’s gonna suffer.”
Drift said nothing, but the look he gave the building suggested the entire place had already failed inspection.
I walked up the shallow steps and pounded on the door hard enough to rattle the frame. “Open the fuck up.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then boots thudded inside, locks snapped, and the door jerked open to reveal a thick-necked biker with sleep-creased skin, bloodshot eyes, and an irritated expression. His gaze moved over my cut, then past my shoulder to the vehicles, and his mouth opened in a sneer.
“You lost, asshole? Get the fuck—”
I stepped aside. Then Nitro, Axle, Edge, and Drift each dragged one of their broken brothers forward and dumped them at his feet.
Bodies hit the porch boards in a heavy tangle of groans, blood, and torn leather.
The guy in the doorway froze, his curse dying halfway out of his mouth as recognition struck.
He stared down at the mess we’d delivered, then up at us, and whatever sleep had been hanging onto him vanished.
Then Kane stepped forward. And the biker shrank back before he seemed to realize he’d moved, his eyes going wide as our prez’s shadow fell over the doorway.
He stood there with the lethal stillness that had made billionaires, racers, cops, killers, and men with more bullets than brains rethink their entire day.
“Tell your president Kane Beckett brought him a package,” Kane demanded. “And a message.”
The biker swallowed so hard I heard it from the steps. Then he stumbled backward, nearly tripping over one of the bloody men on the floor as he turned and yelled into the clubhouse.
We waited.
A few minutes later, a biker stomped through the doorway, tougher looking than the first idiot but built scrawny under a sleeveless shirt and cut that had seen better days. He came out mad, shoulders set, mouth open, already preparing to perform for his men.
“I’m Bomber,” he barked. “President of the Diesel Serpents. What the fuck do you think—”
His gaze landed on Kane, and the performance died instantly. Color drained from his face so fast it was almost impressive. His throat moved, and his mouth opened again, but this time no anger came out.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, failing to hide the wariness behind his eyes. “Kane fucking Beckett.”
Kane tilted his head slightly. “You heard of me.”
Bomber stared at him like that was the stupidest question ever asked. “Everyone’s heard of you.”
“Then why the fuck would you sign your own death warrant?”
Bomber’s eyes jumped from Kane to the four battered men at his feet, then to Edge, and finally to the rest of us.
I could see the calculations moving behind his face, ugly and frantic.
Which lie might survive. How scared he could afford to look before his own men lost faith.
Whether backing down in front of the Redline Kings would leave him breathing long enough to pretend it had been strategy.
Finally, he dragged a hand over his mouth and looked away. “Look, I let some of my boys send in that bitch to get intel on your shit. I’ll own that. But they went rogue after. Anything they did with your woman, the sister, the track, that was on their own. I didn’t give permission.”
Kane stared at him, and the silence stretched until Bomber shifted, his boots scuffing against the boards. “That’s the truth.”
“That your whole explanation? I was waiting for you to get to the part where I’d have a reason to care whether those assholes acted with or without your knowledge and permission.”
Bomber sputtered. “You can’t blame me for every stupid thing a few boys did off leash.”
Kane didn’t so much as blink. “The fuck I can’t.”
The words cracked through the air like a gunshot in a silent room.
Bomber’s mouth snapped shut, and he shifted, as if he was about to step back but stopped himself at the last second.