32
Deacon
Church usually settled me. Priest at the head of the table, Graves with security notes, Rook looking like he’d rather handle an actual threat than sit through numbers, Ledger buried in paperwork, Ink taking notes, Ghost behind his laptop, Nomad quiet and watchful.
The familiar rhythm had always fit deep in my bones, but today my mind kept slipping away from it.
Mostly to Jade. That still hit me strange sometimes, how fast she had become the center of things.
One day I hadn’t known she existed; the next, my whole life had cracked open around a sixteen-year-old with dark hair, green eyes, and enough attitude to keep me humble.
I’d watched Priest with Jax, Nomad with Asher, Graves with those twins crawling all over him like he wasn’t terrifying to half the county.
I knew men loved their kids. Feeling it myself was something else entirely.
Then there was Lila. Always right behind Jade in my head, sharp-eyed enough to know when I was holding back and still guarded enough around me that one wrong word could tear open everything I was trying to rebuild. Jade had started letting me in. Lila was another matter, and I couldn’t blame her.
Graves finished his security report, Rook covered clubhouse concerns, Nomad gave the route update, and Ledger walked us through numbers from The Bar, Red Mercy, Retribution Auto, and Last Rites.
Ink filled in where logistics met intel.
I heard all of it. I just had to keep dragging myself back to the table.
Then Priest leaned back, and the room changed. Business was business. Joker was personal. “Talk to me,” Priest said.
Ghost tipped his screen down, and the set of his mouth told me he already hated the answer. “Nothing useful.”
Priest’s jaw tightened. Weeks of waiting had worn through everybody’s patience, but Joker belonged to him in a way the rest of us understood. “Nothing?”
“Nothing that holds.” Ghost stayed flat, irritation cutting through anyway. “No fresh movement I can tie to Joker. Nothing solid on Sadie either. No chatter that isn’t smoke. No trail that stays live long enough to matter. It’s too clean.”
That got everybody’s full attention. Ghost continued before anyone interrupted him.
“That tells me he planned for this. Long before he needed it. Safe names. Safe places. Men who owe him. Dead channels until he needs them. Joker’s not the kind to wait until the walls are closin’ in before he figures out an exit.
”\nPriest’s attention shifted to Ink. “What about Jackknife?”
Ink stopped turning his pen between his fingers.
We’d kept the Dead Man’s Hand prospect alive because a breathing source was worth more than another body, and so far the kid had given us just enough to prove he knew things.
Old routes. Names. Places Ghost could verify.
Nothing that brought us any closer to Joker.
“Still talking,” Ink said. “Still stopping right before anything useful becomes current.”
Ghost nodded from behind his laptop. “What he’s given us checks out.”
“That’s what bothers me.” Ink’s eyes narrowed slightly, his focus going somewhere beyond the table.
“Joker sent a prospect straight into our hands knowing there was a damn good chance we’d kill him.
Kid showed up already knowing how to make himself useful enough to stay breathing.
” His pen went still against the page. “I can’t figure out why Joker picked him. ”
Priest watched him. “You think there’s more to the kid.”
“I think Joker doesn’t do anything without a reason.” Ink glanced down at his notes again. “And that one keeps scratching at me.”
Priest gave a slow nod. “Keep scratching.”
Nomad broke the silence, the same frustration riding under his question that sat in all of us. “Fallen Angels still got nothin’?”
“Not yet,” Priest said. His answer left us exactly where we had started: waiting on a man who had already proven how much damage he could do from the shadows.
Rook’s mouth flattened. Patience had never been his favorite weapon. “He’ll surface.”
I agreed with him, though there was no comfort in it. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Bastards like that always do.”
Priest’s gaze moved around the table, making the waiting sound like an order instead of helplessness. “Then we stay ready till he does.”
That ended it. Church broke in the scrape of chairs and low voices.
Graves and Rook left first, Nomad headed toward the lot, and the rest gathered papers, notes, and electronics until only Priest and I remained with cooling coffee and the weight that always seemed heavier after everybody else walked out.
He studied me for a second, shifting from club business to the thing that had been living in my head all morning. “How’s Jade?”
The smile came before I could stop it, and Priest caught every bit of it. “Good,” I said, leaning back. “Real good.”
His mouth twitched because apparently my face had already answered more than I intended. “Yeah?”
I looked down at the scarred table, still not used to how easily she could wreck me. “Didn’t know a man could feel that much that damn fast.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Moment I looked at her and knew she was mine...” A rough laugh caught in my chest. “Shit, Priest. I was gone.”
Priest didn’t smirk. He just nodded like a man who understood exactly what I meant. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.” I’d watched fatherhood sharpen him and steady him at the same time, so I knew he did. Then his expression changed, and the understanding between us shifted with it. “And Lila?”
The smile disappeared. I leaned forward, staring at the table between my hands. “Man,” I muttered, “I think I may have really fucked things up with her.”
Priest stayed quiet, giving me nowhere to hide behind advice or interruption. I kept going. “She knows I’m keepin’ somethin’ from her. Hell, she flat-out told me. And she’s right.” I lifted my head. “She always was too smart for me.”
Priest folded his arms. “Over the years you told me you left because you learned her dad did something unforgivable and it would’ve made her choose between him and you.” His gaze held mine. “You gonna tell her what it was now?”
The answer should have been yes. Hell, it should have been yes years ago.
I dragged a hand over my jaw. “After I dropped her off that night, I went back to the clubhouse. This prospect I knew called, said he needed help with somethin’.
I get there, I’m lookin’ for him, and I hear voices in the office.
Prez and VP.” The memory still tightened everything across my shoulders.
“They were in deep shit. Talkin’ about runs, money, women, kids.
Drugs. Guns. Skin. Talkin’ like all of it was simple inventory. ”
Priest’s face went cold, but he let me finish, so I pushed through the part that still made my stomach turn. “Then they started talkin’ about cops. Paid ones. Men who’d look the other way. Men who’d bury evidence and keep their people busy when the club needed room to move.”
That made him go still. I met his eyes because there was no soft way to say the rest. “One of those cops was Richard Morgan.”
Silence sat heavy between us before Priest asked, “You sure?”
“Yeah.” My voice flattened with the certainty of a memory I’d spent years wishing I could doubt.
“Heard enough that there was no mistakin’ it.
Deputy chief. Money changin’ hands. Favors already bought.
And all I could think was that if Lila’s daddy was that deep in their rot, there was no world where he ever let her choose me over what he wanted her life to look like, and he would never want me around her with the chance that she could find out what he was involved in.
That daddy, who was her moral compass, was actually part of the rot below the town’s shine. ”
Priest leaned back, eyes still on me, while I forced myself through the choice I had spent years defending.
“I knew if I told her then, she wouldn’t just let it lie,” I said.
“She’d have questions. She’d push. She’d fight.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.” I stared past him for a second, seeing that hallway again.
“When I backed away from that office, a prospect saw me in the hall. Saw where I was. Saw my face. And I knew by the look on his face, that he knew I’d heard somethin’ I had no business hearin’.
” My mouth flattened. “Once that got back to the wrong men, I wasn’t gettin’ out clean.
They’d have dragged me in deeper, made sure I stayed owned, or they’d have put me in the ground.
Either way, I was done.” I looked Priest dead in the eye.
“And there was no way I was lettin’ Lila get chained to that with me. So I ran.”
Priest let that settle, then asked the question that mattered now. “And now?”
I knew where he was going. I just didn’t want to hear it.
“Now,” Priest said, “you tell her everything.” He watched me absorb it, apparently uninterested in letting me stall again.
I exhaled hard, but he kept going, stripping away the last excuse I had for protecting Richard’s secret.
“She deserves to know,” Priest went on. “And you got no loyalty to that bastard. Not for what he did, not for what he cost you, and damn sure not for the way he still looks down his nose at you like you’re no better than the dirt under his boots.
” He leaned forward. “You want her back? You stop holdin’ the truth like it’s yours to keep. ”
I looked at him, but there was no room in his expression for the excuses I’d been using on myself.
“She already knows you’re keepin’ somethin’. That’s the part that’s killin’ you right now. Come clean. Let the rest be his problem, because that’s exactly what it is. His.”
He was right. I hated that too. I pushed back from the table, and Priest’s mouth twitched. “About damn time.”