Chapter 11
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— Colt —
The ride back from Betty’s had been quiet. Indira didn’t fill the silence, and I was grateful for that. She parked at the clubhouse gates, didn’t look over, didn’t offer anything. Just sat with the engine idling while I climbed out.
I stood beside her car for maybe ten seconds.
Then I went straight to my bike.
No plan, no destination. I just needed the road—the way the engine turns everything else into noise and noise into nothing, the way miles eat the worst of what you’re carrying until it’s small enough to fit back inside your chest.
I rode until the shake left my hands.
When I got back, the new addition was lit up.
Work crews had stopped for the day, but the exterior lights Dutch had rigged were still on, throwing long shadows across the framing.
Walls were up now, drywall going in, something that was starting to look like a real building instead of just a skeleton.
He’d been working toward this for months.
Legitimate operations wing, he called it.
A shared office with Indira. Conference rooms. The future.
I stood and looked at it for a moment before going inside.
The common room was what it always was: loud and warm and familiar in the way a place gets when you’ve spent enough years in it. Pool tables. The bar. Brothers who’d been through things together and knew when not to ask questions. A couple of club girls circulating the edges, doing what they do.
I found my stool and signaled for a beer.
Dutch materialized at the far end of the bar within thirty seconds of me sitting down.
Didn’t come over—just looked at me with the question in his eyes.
I gave him the look that meant I’m okay, and he read it the way he always read me, two seconds of assessment, and then he nodded and left me alone.
That was enough.
I drank my beer and let the room go on around me and thought about the first time I’d taken Lilac to the clubhouse. Not this one. The Death’s Head clubhouse in Texas. Loud and dark, and rough around the edges.
She’d been nervous. Trying not to show it, sitting straight on the stool beside mine, watching everything.
Then Barrel knocked his whole drink off the bar. Glass everywhere. He made a face like a man witnessing his own funeral, and I heard Lilac laugh beside me. A real one, unguarded, the kind that started somewhere low and just escaped.
She’d uncurled.
She’s going to be okay, I’d thought. She’s going to fit here.
And she had. Better than I’d expected, better than I’d deserved. The brothers liked her because she didn’t fawn, didn’t flinch, and gave as good as she got. The old ladies liked her because she had a spine.
I looked around the Venom Riders common room.
Louder than Death’s Head was. Warmer. Fewer of those edges you had to navigate, fewer undercurrents. The watchfulness that had just been atmosphere back then—I hadn’t understood what it meant until I knew what those men were capable of.
She’d have liked it better here, I thought.
That landed somewhere between comfort and grief, and I let it sit.
I was still thinking about Lilac when Dutch called church an hour later.
The table was the same as always: Dutch at the head, me on his right, Holden and Handful across from me, Glitch at the far end with his laptop open. Brothers sat or stood anywhere they could.
“The new wing is on schedule.” Dutch dropped a folder on the table.
“Move-in in two weeks.” He looked around the table.
“Indira’s already secured the first three contracts through her network.
Security consulting—all legitimate, all regional.
That office space earns its keep the day we open it.
” He scanned the table. “Montana runs funded the build. Eight months of hauls go into those walls. I want that remembered.”
Handful leaned back in his chair. “The Wolves’ end of things has gone quiet since the implosion.”
“Yeah.” Dutch nodded. “We’ve been running those routes with extra cover as standard—keep that in place. But we’re not filling their vacuum.” His voice went flat. “Montana stays stable, stays ours, stays quiet. We don’t need that kind of attention. Louisville is the priority now.”
“What’s the Louisville update?” Holden asked.
“We’re past the groundwork—that was months ago.” Dutch turned to a page in the folder. “The contact’s ready to move. Three distribution facilities, full security operations scope. He wants us on the ground.” Dutch looked at me. “You’re point man.”
“Understood.”
“The timeline—” Dutch paused, just briefly, the way he did when he was being specific about something, “—is flexible.” He said it to the table, not just to me, which meant it was a club position and not a private conversation.
“Louisville moves when Colt’s ready. Holden and Handful handle initial coordination in the meantime.
Colt’s personal situation takes precedence. That’s not a discussion.”
No one made it one. Holden gave the table a short nod. Handful turned a page in the folder. The decision landed without ceremony, the way Dutch’s decisions usually did when he’d already made them and just needed the room to hear it.
Church broke and the table cleared. I drifted back toward the bar with a fresh beer, not ready for my room and everything that would be in it.
I’d been there maybe ten minutes when she sat down.
She was one of the club girls—around long enough to think she could read us. She slid onto the stool beside mine with the kind of easy confidence that comes from getting away with things.
“Thought you could use the company,” she said.
I didn’t look at her. “Not tonight.”
“Come on.” Her voice dropped lower, the angle she ran. “You’ve been wound tight all week.”
“I said no.” I kept my eyes forward. “Know your place.”
She started to say something else. I heard it beginning—something about knowing what I needed, something about letting her help.
“Didn’t any of you learn anything from what happened to Crystal?”
She went still. Then she was gone, slipping off the stool without another word.
Holden was three stools down. I heard him set his glass on the bar.
He didn’t come over, didn’t look my way—just let the silence settle, which is what everyone did when Crystal’s name came up.
The club had absorbed that lesson in blood, the way all the real lessons get absorbed.
Club girls who mistake proximity for power.
Who think what happens inside these walls is currency they can spend on the outside.
A brother used a club girl the way he used anything else that took the edge off a bad night.
Nothing given back. No warmth implied, no claim granted, no morning after that meant anything.
The women who accepted that did fine. The ones who decided it was something else—Crystal was what happened when that went all the way to its conclusion.
I didn’t feel righteous about it. It wasn’t a speech. It was just the only name that ended things cleanly.
I wanted to be left alone. And I was for twenty minutes until Glitch wandered over. “Surveillance room,” he said. No preamble. “You should hear this.”
The room smelled like old coffee and electrical heat. Six screens. The main display cycling through city camera feeds. He pulled a monitor around to face me and sat down.
“I was focused on the six months before,” he said. “Now we know what happened then.” He pulled up the first screen. “So I went digging again. At her life since.”
Glitch pulled up a new file. Appointment records in a clean column, seven years deep. Neuropsychological therapy, every three months, never missed. Headache management protocols. Sleep monitoring.
“Night terrors,” he said. “Years of them. Waking up screaming. She couldn’t tell anyone what from—just the fear. Some of it has settled.” He paused. “Not all.”
I thought about that. Waking up terrified in the dark for years and not knowing why. Going to appointments for injuries she had no context for. Being treated for damage from a night she couldn’t remember.
She’d been doing it for seven years. Without knowing what she was carrying, without knowing where any of it came from.
“The treatment isn’t cheap,” Glitch said.
“She’s worked a string of part-time jobs over the years.
Retail, admin, the library gig she has now.
Income’s covered the boys—food, clothes, school stuff.
The medical bills are a different story.
Iron Wolves have been carrying those. Betty and Graham both chipped in whatever they could on top. ”
He brought up another window. Employment records, tax filings, a rental history that showed the same modest address for years before moving here with Betty.
“She didn’t want the help,” he said. “Took awhile before she accepted it. But she did it for them.” He paused. “No holidays. Eats at home. A cheap, reliable car.” Another pause. “The boys have everything they need. Little bit extra, even. She made sure of that.”
I looked at the column of appointments on the screen. Four times a year, seven years, her name at the top of each one. Her maiden name. Not Spencer.
“I want the full list,” I said. “Everyone at Death’s Head who knew what happened that night and kept their mouths shut.”
“Already building it.”
?
The night had gone cold.
I found a spot near the new addition and stood with my back against the wall, looking at what Dutch had built.
Two weeks and it would be a thing you could walk through, run a business out of, bring someone home to.
Dutch and Indira’s future in concrete and lumber.
He’d built it because she made him understand that the only way forward was forward, and he’d finally decided to build a better future.
I thought about Lilac in Betty’s living room earlier today. The way she’d held herself braced, arms folded, waiting for whatever I was going to do with the space she’d given me.
She used to fall asleep against my shoulder on long hauls. Dead weight, completely under, trusting me so absolutely she didn’t even stir when I shifted. I’d carry her to bed those nights because I couldn’t bring myself to wake her.
Seven years of appointments. Years of waking up screaming from nightmares that didn’t have faces. Two boys she raised alone on a librarian’s salary, making sure the medication got filled and the rent got paid and neither of those kids went to bed without knowing they were loved.
Louisville moves when Colt’s ready.
I thought about the boys. Both of them looking up at me with those green eyes I hadn’t known existed until days ago.
If I had known, I would have been there every single day.
I knew now.
That didn’t change what she’d said in that living room. That she needed time. That she couldn’t give me anything yet, maybe not ever, and I had to sit with that and not push. I’d said I understood. I’d meant it.
I’d be there for the boys regardless—school pickups if she’d let me, weekends if she’d allow it, whatever shape she’d accept.
If she never let me back in, I’d spend the rest of my life making sure Luca and Knox knew their father showed up.
That part wasn’t conditional. That part wasn’t about her at all.
But I wanted her back. I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise, not even to myself, standing alone in the dark with nobody to perform for.
The thing was, I wasn’t a patient man. Never had been. I made decisions and I moved on them, and waiting had always felt like losing ground. Seven years of not knowing where she was, and I hadn’t even been waiting—I’d been living the lie, thinking she’d walked.
Now I knew. Now I had to stand still and let her come to it in her own time, if she came to it at all.
I looked at the framing going up. Dutch had waited too, in his way. He’d done it badly at first, same as all of us do. But he’d figured out the difference between patience and inertia. Between giving someone space and disappearing on them.
I’d figure it out too.
She’d call when she was ready. And until then I’d be exactly where I’d said I’d be—close enough to matter, far enough back to let her breathe.