Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Nova
I make it to the bathroom before my hands start shaking.
I close the door, lock it, and stand at the sink gripping the edge of the counter, staring at myself in the mirror.
My face doesn't look like my face. It looks like someone drained the color out of a photograph.
The Kodiak MC.
An Enforcer from Kodiak MC rode up to the club’s gate, called Doom his son, and pitched him on prospecting for an enemy club.
I heard him talk about feeding intel—the compound layout, the personnel, the cartel connections, whatever Alejandro Ramirez is running through here.
Those were his words.
I stood fifteen fucking feet away with a plate of food going cold in my hand and heard an enemy Enforcer tell a Reapers Rejects prospect exactly what kind of information he wanted, and Doom stood there and listened.
I heard him mention a sister.
The one Doom told me about in the dark, the date tattooed on his ribs, the woman in Canada who won't speak to him.
But hearing it from his father's mouth is different. Hearing a Kodiak Enforcer talk about her like a chess piece, like something he can use—that's not the quiet confession Doom gave me in his bed.
I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face.
The water is lukewarm—nothing runs cold in Chihuahua in the afternoon—and it doesn't help.
My hands won't stop trembling. I grip the counter again and watch the water drip off my chin into the basin.
There's a part of me, a loud, desperate part, that wants to believe this doesn't mean what it sounds like.
Doom has been here for years.
He bled for this club. He went to Colombia, he planned the Diego rescue, he carried Mateo Torres out of that compound on his back.
That's not the resume of a man who's working against the people he's fighting beside.
But I didn't hear him say no.
I replay it in my head, standing at the sink with water running and my reflection staring back at me, looking like a stranger.
I heard the Enforcer's pitch. I heard him talk about the relationship Doom always wanted—father and son, same club, same patch.
I heard him use a sister as leverage.
And then I couldn't hear anymore because the blood rushing in my ears drowned out everything else, and I set the plate down and I walked away.
Maybe he told his father to go to hell.
Maybe he refused everything.
Maybe he's standing at that gate right now, gutted and loyal, wondering why I walked away without a word.
Or maybe he didn't refuse.
I press my wet hands against my eyes and breathe.
The other part of me… the part that grew up in a house where lies weren't tolerated and secrets weren't kept, where my mother and my three fathers built their entire relationship on the principle that honesty isn't optional—that part knows that none of it matters.
Not Doom's track record, not his loyalty, not the way he holds me at night like he's afraid I'll disappear.
What matters is that his father is part of the Kodiak MC, and he never told anyone.
Mom would know what to do. She always knows.
I could call her right now, hear her voice, let her talk me through it the way she's talked me through everything since I was old enough to have problems worth solving.
But this isn't a bad grade, a breakup, or a fight with Jordyn.
This is club business. And club business doesn't go through your mother. It goes through your president.
I think about Dad, about the quiet way he handles hard things.
How he listens before he speaks and never raises his voice even when he's furious.
He'd tell me to breathe. He'd tell me to think it through. And then he'd tell me to do the right thing, even when it costs me.
I think about Pops, who would ask me one question: "Is anyone in danger?"
I think about Daddy, who wouldn't ask me how I feel about it. He'd ask me what I'm going to do about it. Daddy doesn't sit with problems. He moves through them.
Then Mei crosses my mind.
Mei, who sleeps twenty feet from me every night.
Who was chained to a bed in Colombia and sold at an auction and still wakes up screaming.
She's in this compound right now, painting faces with the kids, because she trusts that this place is safe.
Lashes is pregnant, healing, and learning how to want her baby in a club she believes is protected.
Xiomara and Itzel are building new lives here. Imani's father is recovering in a room downstairs.
If there's even a chance that Doom's connection to Kodiak puts any of them at risk, I can't sit on it.
I can't tuck it away and hope for the best because the man I'm sleeping with makes me feel safe.
Feeling safe and being safe aren't the same thing. Every club kid learns that young.
I dry my face with a towel and look at myself in the mirror one more time. My eyes are red. My jaw is set.
I know what I have to do.
I hate it. I hate it more than I've ever hated anything in my life. But I know.
Amara's office is at the end of the hallway, past the room where they have church.
The door is closed. I stand outside it for a full thirty seconds with my fist raised, not knocking.
My heart is slamming against my ribs.
Behind this door is a conversation I can't take back.
Once I say the words, they're out.
The club will do what the club does, and I won't be able to control any of it.
I think about Doom's face at the gate.
The way he looked when his father mentioned his sister.
The devastation in his eyes, the way his hand shook on his weapon.
That wasn't the face of a man who's working with the enemy. That was the face of a man being torn apart.
But I didn't hear him say no.
I knock.
"Come in." Amara's voice carries clearly through the wood.
I open the door and step inside.
She's behind her desk, papers spread out in front of her, a laptop open to one side.
She looks up and her expression shifts—a quick assessment, the kind a president makes automatically when someone walks into her office looking like I look right now.
"Nova." She sets her pen down. "What's going on?"
I close the door behind me.
My hands are steady now.
They went still the second I started walking down the hallway, like my body decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it without falling apart.
"I need to tell you something about Doom," I say.
Her expression doesn't change.
She leans back in her chair and folds her hands in her lap, giving me her full attention.
Amara listens the way a judge listens—completely, without interruption, with the understanding that whatever comes out of your mouth is going to have consequences.
So I tell her.
I tell her about the bike that pulled up to the gate.
The Kodiak MC cut.
The Enforcer who called Doom his son.
The pitch about prospecting for Kodiak, about feeding intel on the charter.
The mention of a sister in Canada. The leverage.
I tell her all of it, and with every sentence I feel something tearing loose inside my chest, because I'm reporting the man I'm falling in love with to the president of his club, and I know exactly what this is going to do to him.
Amara's face goes clinical while I talk.
Not angry. Controlled.
The face of a woman who's processing information through the filter of what it means for her people, her compound, her charter.
When I finish, the room is quiet.
Just the hum of her laptop fan and the faint sounds of the compound outside the window.
She sits still for a long moment, staring at a point somewhere past my left shoulder.
I can see her working through it—the implications, the questions, what needs to happen next.
"How much of the conversation did you hear?" she asks finally, her voice level.
"A lot of it," I tell her. "I came outside to bring Doom a plate. I was close enough to hear once the Kodiak Enforcer started talking. I heard the recruitment pitch, the intel request, the mention of his sister."
"Did Doom agree to anything?" Amara leans forward slightly, her eyes sharp on mine.
The question hits me in the sternum.
"I don't know," I admit. My voice cracks on the last word and I hate it. "I didn't hear everything. I left. I couldn't—" I stop.
Amara nods slowly. She picks up her phone and types something. Short. A few words.
"You did the right thing," she says, setting the phone down. Her eyes meet mine, and there's something in them that almost looks gentle, which is jarring on Amara's face. "I know what this cost you, Nova. And I know it doesn't feel right. But you brought this to me, and that's very important."
"What happens now?" My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
"Now I do my job." She stands up from behind the desk. "I'm calling church. Emergency session. You don't need to be there for this part."
I nod. My legs feel hollow but they hold me up. I stand and walk to the door.
"Nova."
I stop with my hand on the knob.
"You're Roxy's daughter," Amara says. "She'd be proud of you right now. I mean that."
I can't respond.
If I open my mouth, the thing I'm holding together in my chest is going to collapse.
So, I nod and walk out and pull the door shut behind me.
* * *
Church happens fast.
I hear it from the common room. The thud of boots in the hallway as patched members respond to Amara's text.
Python first, his stride long and purposeful.
Zorro behind him.
Razor, then Axel.
Boulder comes in from outside, still wiping grease from his hands.
The church door opens and closes and opens and closes, and each time the latch catches it sounds like a verdict.
I sit on the couch by Oakleigh's mural and listen to the sound of Doom's world being dismantled on the other side of a wall.
They send someone to get him.
I hear Rooster's voice in the hallway, low and tight, saying something I can't make out.
Then Doom's boots—that deliberate, weighted tread that I've come to know better than my own heartbeat—heading toward the church room.
The door closes behind him. The latch catches.
Voices rise, muffled by the wall.
I can't make out words but I can hear the tone.
Amara's voice cutting through, controlled and commanding.