Chapter 34 #2
“She should have died with the others.” Doc French finally spoke, his voice thin and reedy. “I checked her myself. She wasn’t breathing. The prospect was supposed to dispose of her with the rest.”
“But he didn’t.” I took a step closer. “He saved her. And she survived. And now you’re all going to answer for what you did.”
The old man laughed again. “Answer to who? You? You’re one man with a grudge and a couple of—”
I shot him in the shoulder. The laughter cut off in a scream.
“I’m the man whose wife you nearly murdered.
Whose sons grew up without a father because of your lies.
Who spent seven years believing the woman he loved had betrayed him.
” I stood over him, watching the blood spread across his shirt.
“You took everything from me. And now I’m going to take everything from you. ”
What followed wasn’t pretty.
Scar and Doc French had tried to murder their own president.
Instead they’d triggered a bloodbath and spent seven years covering up the rampage and the plot that caused it.
The old man had accepted their protection, asked no hard questions, and gone along with burying eight bodies and one marriage to keep his club out of a courtroom.
Coin, the club secretary, had kept the books clean and his mouth shut.
They’d all made their choices. They’d had seven years to make different ones.
They’d chosen silence. They’d chosen complicity. They’d chosen their own deaths. We chose no mercy.
Scar died first—Holden’s knife work, slow and precise. He screamed for longer than I would have expected, begging for mercy that wasn’t coming. When it was over, Holden wiped his blade clean and moved to Coin.
Doc French tried to run. Handful caught him before he made it three steps, slamming him against the wall so hard I heard ribs crack.
“Please—” Doc French gasped. “I was just following orders. I didn’t have a choice—”
“You gave him the drugs.” I walked toward him, each step deliberate.
“You and Scar planned it together. You picked the dosage. You knew exactly what you were putting in him and what it was supposed to do.” I crouched down to his level.
“That’s not following orders. That’s attempted murder. You just got the outcome wrong.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go like that—”
“But it did. And when it did, you walked through that room. You stepped over the bodies. You found my wife. You knew—” I stopped. Steadied myself. “You knew those were my sons she was carrying. And you declared her dead anyway.”
“They would have killed me if I hadn’t—”
“So you chose your life over hers.” I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. “Bad choice.”
I didn’t make it quick. For what he’d done—for being there when Lilac was dying, for knowing she was pregnant with my babies, for lying to my face—he didn’t deserve quick.
By the time I was done, my hands were slick with blood and my soul felt lighter than it had in years.
The old man was last.
I’d left him for last deliberately. Made him watch as his brothers died, one by one. Made him understand that everything he’d built was crumbling around him.
“Any last words?” I crouched in front of him, studying the fear that had finally crept into his eyes.
“You’ll never get away with this. Other charters will come for you. The whole MC world will—”
“The other charters don’t give a fuck about you.” I cut him off. “Graham’s been talking for weeks. Everyone knows what happened here. What you covered up. You’re not martyrs—you’re monsters. And no one mourns monsters.”
“She was just a woman!” He spat blood at my feet. “One fucking woman! She wasn’t worth all this!”
I stood, drawing my gun. “She is my wife. The mother of my children. The love of my goddamn life.” I pressed the barrel against his forehead. “And you’re wrong. She is worth all of this and more.”
I pulled the trigger.
It was nearly dawn by the time we finished.
The Death’s Head clubhouse burned behind us, flames reaching toward a sky just starting to lighten. Every officer was dead. Every member who’d been present was dead. The club girls had been sent running with a warning to forget everything they’d seen.
Death’s Head MC was finished. Wiped off the map. Their charter would be dissolved, their territory absorbed, their name forgotten.
Justice. Finally, after seven years, justice.
Dutch stood beside me as we watched the fire from a safe distance. “How do you feel?”
I thought about it. Searched for guilt, for regret, for any of the things I probably should have been feeling after a night of bloodshed.
Found nothing but peace.
“Like I can finally move on.” I looked at my brother, my president, the man who’d stood beside me through all of it. “Like I can go home.”
He nodded once. “One more thing,” he said, pulling out his phone.
He made a call to the Tigers’ clubhouse. Spoke to whoever answered. “Seven years ago your club was set up. It led to a pointless war. Tonight that’s been rectified.” He hung up and pocketed his phone.
“Seven years,” I said.
“Yeah.” He looked at the fire. “The fuckers.”
Then he raised a hand and the group split without a word. Dutch and the others turned north—back to Millfield, back to give the word that it was over, back to Indira and the lockdown that could finally be lifted.
I turned east. Louisville. The meetings, the contracts, the legitimate reason any of us were supposed to be out here. The cover that had to hold a few days longer.
I let the others pull ahead and sat there a moment longer, watching the last of Death’s Head die in the fire. Seven years of lies and silence and ruined things.
Gone.