Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nova
Kat picks me up from the airport in a black Tahoe with tinted windows.
She's standing outside the truck when I come through the terminal doors, her dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail, her nails freshly done, looking like the president's wife even in jeans and a tank top.
She doesn't say anything when she sees me. She just opens her arms.
I walk straight into them.
She holds me in the pickup lane of McCarran International with my bag at my feet, the Vegas heat pressing down on us, and taxi drivers honking.
I don't care about any of it because my sister is here and I can finally stop holding myself together.
She takes my bag, puts it in the back, and opens the passenger door for me.
I climb in. She goes around to the driver's side and pulls out of the airport without asking where I want to go, because there's only one place to go.
We drive in silence for twenty minutes.
The Vegas suburbs slide past the windows—strip malls, stucco, and palm trees planted in medians, the desert visible in every gap between buildings.
It looks nothing like Chihuahua.
The heat is different here, concrete and exhaust instead of dust and mesquite.
The sky is different too—hazy, washed out, the mountains in the distance faded behind smog.
Kat reaches over and takes my hand.
She holds it while she drives, her thumb rubbing slow circles on the back of my knuckles.
She doesn't ask a single question. She just drives, holds my hand, and lets me sit with whatever I'm carrying.
When we pull into the compound, she parks next to a row of bikes I don't recognize and turns off the engine.
The Vegas charter clubhouse is bigger than Amara's.
Clean walls, a real bar inside, a pool out back that nobody uses.
It smells like leather cleaner and beer when we walk in, and nothing about it smells like home.
Kat sets my bag inside the guest room door, then comes back to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. She leans against the counter with her arms crossed and waits.
"How bad?" she asks finally.
I look at my sister. Her dark eyes are steady, patient. Waiting.
"Bad," I say. My voice cracks on the word and that's all it takes.
She crosses the kitchen and wraps both arms around me. I bury my face in her shoulder and cry the way I've been holding back since I walked away from Doom at the gate—ugly, heaving sobs that shake my whole body and leave dark spots on her white tank.
Kat holds me through it.
She doesn't shush me or tell me it's going to be okay.
She just holds on and lets me fall apart against her, one hand on the back of my head, her chin resting on top of my hair.
When the worst of it passes, I pull back and wipe my face with both hands.
My eyes are swollen. My nose is running. I look like hell and I know it.
"I reported him," I tell her, my voice raw. "I went to Amara and I reported Doom."
Kat's expression doesn't change. She's been a president's wife long enough that she's learned to listen before reacting.
She pulls a paper towel from the roll by the sink and hands it to me without a word.
I blow my nose. "His father is part of the Kodiak MC.
An Enforcer. He showed up at the gate wearing a Kodiak cut and tried to recruit Doom.
Talked about feeding intel on the charter, the cartel connections, all of it.
And Doom never told anyone. He never told the club, never told me.
I've been sleeping in this man's bed, and he was carrying an enemy connection he never thought to mention. "
Kat nods slowly, processing. Her eyes are sharp but her hand is on my arm.
"Did you hear Doom's response?" she asks.
I shred the paper towel in my lap. "Not all of it. I heard enough to know his father was recruiting him. I left before I heard what Doom said back."
Kat tilts her head. "So you don't know if he refused," she says, and it's not a question.
I shake my head and stare at the shredded paper towel. "No."
She squeezes my arm. "You did what any ol' lady worth her salt would do, Nova. You heard a threat to your charter and you took it to your president. That's not betraying anyone, that's showing your loyalty."
"Then why does it feel like I ripped his heart out?" My voice breaks again, and I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Kat rubs her thumb over my knuckles. "Because you love him. And loving someone doesn't make the right thing feel any less like shit."
The kettle whistles behind her.
She turns and makes two cups of tea without asking what kind I want, because she already knows, because she's my sister, and she's known since we were kids.
She sets my mug in front of me and sits down across the kitchen table.
"You're staying as long as you need," she says, wrapping her hands around her own mug. "Damon already cleared it. The guest room is yours."
* * *
The first two days are the worst.
I sleep in the guest room down the hall from Kat and Damon's bedroom.
The bed is too soft after being on Doom's narrow mattress at the clubhouse.
The sheets smell like fabric softener instead of leather and soap.
The room is quiet in a way that feels wrong—no Compass clanging in the garage at midnight, no hearing Oakleigh’s radio bleeding through the walls, no sound of Doom's boots in the hallway that my body had learned to listen for even in sleep.
The Vegas heat is different too. Chihuahua is dry and dusty, the desert pressing against the compound walls with the smell of mesquite and cookfires.
Vegas heat is concrete and exhaust, the sun bouncing off stucco and asphalt, air conditioning running constantly so the inside of every building feels like a refrigerator compared to the blast furnace outside.
I miss the Chihuahua clubhouse with an ache that surprises me.
I miss the courtyard and Oakleigh's mural in the main room, Ruby's kitchen, and the rooftop where Doom sits in a beat-up lawn chair and stares at the city lights.
I miss him.
I don't eat much. Kat brings me plates, and I pick at them. I take long showers where I stand under the water and think about the look on Doom's face in the main room when he realized I was the one who went to Amara.
That nod. That small, devastating nod that said he understood.
I replay it until the water goes cold and Kat knocks on the bathroom door to make sure I'm still breathing.
On the second night, I call Mom.
I don't tell her all of the details, but she hears it in my voice.
She stays on the phone for two hours and talks about everything and nothing, asking me how Luna and Aurora are—Damon and Kat’s kids.
Every time she can, she fills the silence with her laugh, her stories, and the warmth that's kept me grounded my entire life.
She doesn't push. She doesn't pry. She just stays on the line until I tell her I'm okay enough to sleep.
I'm not okay.
But I'm her daughter, and I know how to hold myself together long enough to sound convincing.
Dad shows up on the third day.
I'm sitting on the back patio of the Vegas compound, staring at the pool and drinking coffee that's gone cold in my hands, when I hear the front gate open and a truck pull in.
Kat's voice carries from inside the clubhouse, warm and welcoming, and then footsteps on the patio concrete behind me.
I know it's him before I turn around.
Dad doesn't announce himself. He never has. He just appears, solid and steady, filling a doorway or a chair without asking anyone to make room.
He's wearing jeans and a worn Henley pushed up past his forearms, his cut over top with the Montana rocker across the back, road-worn boots, and the same leather watch he's had since I was a kid.
His face is calm but his eyes give away the worry he's trying not to lead with.
There's road dust on the cuffs of his jeans. He drove here. Didn't fly. That tells me everything about how fast he left when Mom called.
"Dad." The word comes out thick.
He pulls out the patio chair beside me and sits down. Doesn't hug me yet—he knows I'll come to him when I'm ready, and pushing will make me hold tighter to whatever I'm carrying instead of letting it go.
"Your mom called me," he says, resting his forearms on his knees. "Didn't tell me what happened. Just said you needed your dad."
I almost smile. "Which one?"
"She called all three of us." He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "Pops wanted to come. Daddy offered to drive. I pulled rank."
I wrap both hands around my cold mug. "You don't have rank."
His mouth twitches. "I have seniority when it comes to you, little one."
He means that he’s my biological father. Kat is Daddy’s, and Jordyn is Pops.
I set my cold coffee on the ground beside my chair and look at him. Really look at him.
The gray at his temples that wasn't there two years ago.
The laugh lines around his eyes that deepen when he smiles, which is often.
He is steady in a way that has never wavered, not once.
"I did something," I say. "Something I think was right. But it hurt someone I care about, and I don't know how to live with both of those things at the same time."
He doesn't rush to respond.
He sits with it, his hands hanging between his knees, his eyes on the flat blue surface of the pool.
That's Dad. He never fills silence with noise just to make it less uncomfortable.
He lets the words land and gives them the weight they deserve before he speaks.
"Tell me about him," he says, turning his head to look at me.
I wrap my arms around my knees. "What do you mean?"
"The man you're hurting over." He leans back in the chair and crosses one ankle over his knee. "Tell me about him. Not what happened. Who he is."
So I do.
I tell him about Doom.
About the pancakes at six in the morning and the way he barely speaks, but every word he does say matters.
About the red bandana, the chain around his neck, and the tattoo on his ribs with the date he got his sister out.
About the way he showed up at my apartment every day to check locks he installed himself because he couldn't think of another excuse to see me.