Epilogue #3
"No, you don't." His thumb traced the edge of her jaw, a touch that was more claiming than gentle. "But you're going to let me fight this one anyway. Because Ruiz isn't a battle—he's a war. And you can't win a war alone."
Something flickered across her face—pride warring with practicality, stubbornness fighting against the part of her that knew he was right.
"Fine." The word came out like it hurt. "But this is still my bar. My rules."
"Your bar. My protection." Cottonmouth released her chin and pulled the burner phone from his cut. "That's the deal."
He dialed while she watched, her bloody baseball bat still clutched in white-knuckled hands.
"Church," he said when Outlaw picked up. "Tonight. Get every brother to the compound. We've got a situation."
"What kind of situation?"
Cottonmouth looked at the two men bleeding on the Crooked Porch floor, at the shattered photographs and broken glass, at the woman standing behind the bar with fire in her eyes and her grandmother's legacy crumbling around her.
"The kind that starts wars." He ended the call and met Jolene's gaze. "You got somewhere to be tonight?"
"I'm standing in it."
"Not anymore." He grabbed the big one by the collar and started dragging him toward the door. "Help me get these two into my truck. Then you're coming with me to the compound."
"Like hell I am."
"Ruiz knows you said no. By morning, he'll know his boys didn't come back." Cottonmouth dropped the body and turned to face her. "You stay here tonight, you're dead by sunrise. That a fight you want to have, or are you coming?"
The silence stretched between them, thick with Delta heat and the smell of blood and bourbon.
Finally, Jolene set down the baseball bat and moved around the bar.
"I'm driving myself."
"Fair enough." He went back to dragging the body. "But you're following my truck. And Jolene?"
She paused at the door, looking back.
"What just walked through that door isn't two thugs with a real estate pitch." Cottonmouth's voice dropped into something cold and final. "It's a Memphis drug operation declaring war on this country. And by the time this is over, a lot of people are going to die."
He watched her face for fear, for hesitation, for any sign that she understood what she was walking into.
All he saw was that same furious determination.
"Then I guess we better make sure it's the right people," she said.
And walked out into the Delta night.
Chapter Two
The broom made a sound like bones scraping as Jolene swept broken glass across the Crooked Porch floor.
Dawn light filtered through the windows, turning the destruction into something almost beautiful—shattered frames catching the pink and gold, splintered wood scattered like kindling waiting for a match.
She'd been at it for two hours now, refusing to stop, refusing to sit down, refusing to do anything except move her body through the familiar motions of cleaning up a mess.
That's all this was. Another mess.
She'd survived worse. The flood of '16 that put three feet of water in the bar.
The condemned-property notice from the county that took her six months and every dollar she had to fight.
The three separate buyout attempts from developers who thought a woman alone would fold if they pushed hard enough.
She hadn't folded then. She wasn't folding now.
Glass crunched under her boots as she worked her way toward the wall where her grandmother's photographs used to hang.
Forty years of blues history, reduced to broken frames and torn paper.
Howlin' Wolf. Muddy Waters. B.B. King before he was B.B.
King, just a young man with a guitar and a dream in a juke joint that smelled like this one.
Gone.
Her throat tightened, but she shoved the grief down where it belonged. Grief was a luxury. Grief was for women who had time to sit and cry and wait for someone else to fix things.
Jolene Mayes fixed things herself.
The rumble of motorcycle engines cut through the morning quiet.
She didn't stop sweeping. Didn't look up. Just kept pushing broken glass into a pile while the engines grew louder, then cut off in the parking lot outside.
Boots on the porch steps. The creak of the screen door.
"You've been here all night."
Cottonmouth's voice rolled through the empty bar like thunder on a distant horizon—low and unhurried, the kind of voice that expected to be listened to without ever having to raise itself.
"Somebody had to clean up." She still didn't look at him. "The mess fairy doesn't come to juke joints."
"Jolene."
"I've got glass to sweep and frames to—"
His hand closed around the broom handle, stopping her mid-stroke.
She looked up then, ready to snap at him, and found him standing closer than she'd realized. Close enough to see the iron-gray threading through his temples, the pale scar running down his forearm, those river-mud eyes that seemed to see straight through every wall she'd ever built.
Two more men stood behind him in the doorway, both wearing the same leather cuts with the Delta Destroyers patch. One was lean and weathered, with the patient look of a man who'd learned to wait. The other was younger, broader, watching her with an assessment that said he was reserving judgment.
"Let go of my broom."
"When's the last time you slept?"
"When's the last time you minded your own business?"
Something flickered across his face—not quite a smile, but close. He released the broom and stepped back, giving her space she hadn't asked for but found herself grateful to have.
"This is Outlaw and Crossroad," he said, nodding toward the two men. "They're going to assess the structural damage, make sure Ruiz's people didn't leave any surprises."
"Surprises?"
"Accelerants. Timed devices. The bars in Leland and Hollandale didn't burn by accident.
" Cottonmouth moved through the room, his boots crunching on glass, his eyes cataloging every broken frame and shattered window.
"Ruiz doesn't do half-measures. If he wanted this place gone, he'd make sure it went. "
Jolene's grip tightened on the broom. "So what—they were just sending a message last night?"
"They were testing you. Seeing how you'd respond, whether you had protection, how hard you'd fight." He stopped in front of the wall where the photographs used to hang, studying the empty spaces like they meant something. "Now they know."
"Now they know what? That some biker I've never met decided to beat the hell out of them in my bar?"
Cottonmouth turned to face her. "Now they know you're not alone."
The words hit harder than she wanted them to. Twelve years she'd been running this place by herself. Twelve years of handling every problem, fighting every battle, shouldering every burden because there was no one else to do it.
And now this man—this stranger with his motorcycle club and his calm authority—was standing in her grandmother's bar telling her she wasn't alone like it was supposed to mean something.
"I didn't ask for your help."
"No, you didn't." He crossed back toward her, that slow deliberate stride that made her want to step back even as something else made her want to stand her ground. "But you're getting it anyway."
"And if I don't want it?"
"Then you're dead inside a week." He said it flat, matter-of-fact, like he was discussing the weather.
"Ruiz has done this a dozen times across three states.
He finds crossroads locations along his distribution route, sends men to make an offer, and when the owner says no, he makes them disappear.
The bars burn. The land gets bought through shell companies.
And six months later, there's a new business on the property that moves product instead of pouring whiskey. "
Jolene felt cold despite the morning heat already building outside.
"The corridor from Memphis to Greenville is half-built," Cottonmouth continued. "Ruiz has been acquiring locations for months—quietly, systematically. The Crooked Porch is the last holdout on this stretch of highway. You sign over or you die, and either way, the corridor gets completed."
"So this isn't about me."
"It was never about you." Something shifted in his expression—not softer exactly, but more intent. "It's about territory. Geography. Moving product from Memphis to the Gulf without interference. You're just in the way."
She should have felt relieved. It wasn't personal. It wasn't about her grandmother's legacy or her twelve years of blood and sweat or any of the things she'd poured into keeping this place alive.
Instead, she felt fury building in her chest like a brushfire.
"So I'm supposed to—what? Hand over forty years of my family's history because some Memphis drug dealer drew a line on a map?"
"No." Cottonmouth stepped closer, and this time she didn't give ground. "You're supposed to let me handle it. Let the club handle it. Because Victor Ruiz has forty armed men and a proven system for grinding down resistance, and you have a baseball bat and a bad attitude."
"That bad attitude has kept this place open for twelve years."
"And it'll get you killed inside twelve days if you try to fight this alone."
They stood there in the wreckage of her grandmother's bar, close enough that she could smell leather and motor oil and something underneath that was just him—warm and dangerous and completely infuriating.
"Why?" The question came out before she could stop it. "Why do you care what happens to some juke joint on a back road?"
"Because this is my territory." His voice dropped lower, rougher.
"Every crossroads between Memphis and Vicksburg is under Destroyer protection.
Every bar, every family, every piece of ground that the state forgot about and the money men want to steal.
We built this club to protect people like you—people nobody else is coming for. "
"I'm not some damsel who needs—"