Chapter 6
SIX
HAWK
The compound was dark. I was pacing but the rage was so big I couldn't see around it.
She lied. She used Lena to get in. I vouched for her, brought her inside the walls.
I’d helped put her behind the bar, given her access to the men I'd kill for, the men I'd die for, and the brotherhood I’d bled with.
I brought her inside and she was feeding our enemies the whole time.
Every smile. Every drink she poured. Every night she lay in my bed with her head on my chest and her fingers tracing patterns on my skin, she was taking what I gave her and handing it to a Jackals prospect in a car park.
I wanted to break something. I wanted to ride until the engine gave out.
I wanted to go back to that room and shake her until she took it back, until she told me it wasn't true, until the last twenty minutes rewound themselves, and I was still lying in bed with the woman I loved and the world still made sense.
I walked. Boots on gravel, on dirt, on the hard-packed earth between the lodge and the workshop. My hands were shaking. My jaw was clenched so tight my teeth ached. The night air was cold against my skin, and I couldn't feel it.
But underneath the fury, the enforcer was already working. The part of me that processed, that replayed, that took information apart and looked at what was underneath.
The sex tape. Filmed without her consent.
Tyler, who'd filmed them while she was too drunk to notice, who'd shared the footage with other men for laughs.
Colt, his friend, a Jackals prospect, who'd recognised Bree and seen an opportunity.
Both of them climbing the ladder on the back of her humiliation.
Not a club operation. Two pieces of shit freelancing on a woman's body.
The bruises. The long sleeves.
The bruises I'd seen and not realised they were anything I should be worried about.
I stopped walking. Stood in the dark behind the workshop with my hands braced on the wall and my head down and let the fury shift.
It didn't go away. The betrayal was still there, still burning, a wound I could feel in every part of my body.
But it redirected. Because underneath the lie, underneath all of it, was a woman who'd been filmed at her most vulnerable without her consent, and had the footage weaponised by two men who saw her as currency.
Who had then been physically brutalised into compliance.
And I'd missed it. The enforcer. The man whose job it was to see threats. I was sleeping next to her, and I didn't see it.
I didn't sleep. Instead, I sat in the workshop until the sky turned grey behind the mountains, my hands still, my brain running through everything she'd told me, pulling it apart, putting it back together. By the time the light came through the windows I knew exactly what needed to happen.
I went to Angel at first light. He was in the kitchen, coffee in hand, Callie still upstairs. One look at my face and he put the mug down.
I told him. All of it. His expression didn't change while I talked, which meant it was bad, because Angel's face only went that still when the rage was too big for the muscles to hold. When I finished, the silence sat between us for a long time.
"Church," he said. "This morning. I'll get them in."
By nine the brothers were at the table. I stood at my spot, at Angel's left, and laid it out. The tape, the prospect, the hang-around, the blackmail, the bruises.
The reactions were what I expected. Duke's fist hit the table. Doc went quiet in a way that was worse than shouting. Rook was already thinking, already planning, his eyes moving while the rest of him stayed still. Razor's jaw tightened. Priest closed his eyes.
Ghost looked at me. Just looked, those pale eyes seeing everything I wasn't saying. The guilt, the fury, the fact that I was in love with the woman who'd betrayed us and that didn't change anything about what needed to happen next.
"Two things," Angel said. "The prospect and the hang-around pay. And the Jackals' leadership gets brought into this." He looked at me. "Hawk. This is yours."
I found Colt at a bar outside Billings. A Jackals hangout, low-end, a place that smelled like piss and stale beer.
He was at the pool table with Tyler, the two of them laughing about something, drinks in hand, not a care in the world.
Two men who'd built their ambitions on a woman's body and thought they'd gotten away with it.
I came through the door with Duke and Razor behind me. The bar went quiet the way bars do when three men in Forsaken Angels cuts walk in and the lead one has murder on his face. The bartender took one look and found somewhere else to be. The two other drinkers did the same.
Colt saw me. The recognition landed. The cockiness flickered. He tried to calculate whether this was a conversation or something else.
It was something else.
I hit him before he got a word out. My fist connected with his jaw and the impact travelled up my arm and into my shoulder, and I felt his head snap sideways and his body follow.
He went down over the pool table, scattering balls, and I grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him up and hit him again.
And again. Controlled only in the sense that I wasn't going to kill him.
Everything short of that was on the table.
He tried to fight back. Swung wild, caught me on the cheekbone, split the skin.
I barely felt it. I put him on the floor and hit him until his face didn't look like a face anymore, until his hands stopped coming up to protect himself, until the sounds he was making were wet, gurgling, barely human.
Duke stood by the door. Razor stood by the other door. Nobody moved. Nobody intervened.
When I was done with Colt I stood up and looked at Tyler. The hang-around who'd filmed Bree in the first place, who'd shared her body with other men for laughs, who'd handed the footage to Colt knowing exactly what it would be used for.
Tyler was backed against the wall. He'd pissed himself. The stain was spreading down his jeans and he was shaking so hard the bottles on the shelf behind him were rattling.
I didn't hit him as long. I didn't need to. Tyler wasn't Colt. Tyler was a coward who'd hurt a woman from behind a camera and then from behind another man's ambition. I put him down with three hits and left him curled on the floor next to the man he'd conspired with.
I crouched next to Colt. He was conscious, barely, his eyes swollen shut, blood bubbling from his nose and mouth. I leaned in close.
"The tape," I said. My voice was steady.
Flat. The calmest I'd been all night. "Every copy.
Every file. Every cloud backup. You're going to give my man access to everything you have, and you're going to pray he finds all of it.
Because if that footage surfaces anywhere, ever, I'm coming back.
And next time I won't stop, because you are a fucking piece of shit.”
He made a sound that might have been agreement. I stood up. Wiped the blood from my hands on my jeans and walked out as if this were just another day.
Rook's man was already waiting in the car park.
A hacker, quiet, professional, someone who didn't ask questions and didn't remember faces.
He went in with a laptop and came out forty minutes later with both phones, both cloud accounts, and every trace he could find.
Digital is digital. Total certainty doesn't exist. But he was good, and what he found, he killed.
The meeting with the Jackals happened later that day.
A stretch of empty road between territories, dust and scrub and nothing for miles. Angel and me on one side, our bikes behind us, Ghost and Rook fifty yards back. The Jackals president on the other side, two of his officers flanking him, their bikes idling behind them.
Angel walked forward. I walked with him.
The Jackals president met us halfway. He was a big man, older, thick through the chest and shoulders, the kind of face that had been hit enough times to stop caring about it.
He looked at Angel first, president to president. Angel looked at me. Gave a single nod.
The Jackals president's eyes shifted. He understood the gesture. This conversation wasn't coming from the president. The president was here to sanction it but the conversation was coming from me.
"Your prospect went rogue," I said. No preamble. No warmth. "Ran an unsanctioned operation against my club. Used a sex tape to blackmail a woman into spying for him. Your boy was freelancing on her body to earn his patch."
The Jackals president didn't flinch. He shifted his weight, folded his arms, looked at me with an expression that said he wasn't going to give an inch in front of his own men.
"That's between you and the prospect," he said. "I don't babysit."
"The prospect's been dealt with. Him and the hang-around who filmed her."
His eyes dropped to my hands. The split knuckles, the dried blood still under my fingernails. He did the maths on what dealt with meant from a man who looked like I looked right now.
"So what are we doing here?" he asked.
I stepped closer. Not much. Half a step. Enough that he had to adjust his weight, enough that the two officers behind him shifted on their feet.
"That footage surfaces anywhere," I said. "Any platform, any form, any device. It's not a conversation. It's not a negotiation. It's war. And I won't be starting with the prospect next time. I'll be starting with you."
The air between us changed. His jaw tightened.
Something flickered behind his eyes, a calculation, a reassessment.
He glanced at Angel. Angel's face gave him nothing.
The president of Forsaken was three feet away with his arms folded, and his silence said everything.
This's president, and his silence said everything. This was sanctioned. Every word of it.
The Jackals president looked back at me. Held my gaze for a long beat.
"I'll handle my people," he said. "You handle yours."
He turned. Walked back to his officers. Got on his bike.
Angel and I stood there until the sound of their engines faded into the distance and until the dust settled.
"Good enough?" Angel asked.
"Good enough."
She was in the lodge. Not my room. The common area, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up, wearing one of my shirts.
She looked like she hadn't slept. Her eyes were red, her face bare, no makeup, no mask, nothing between her skin and the world.
She looked up when I walked in and the fear on her face nearly took me out at the knees.
She was waiting to be told to leave.
I sat down next to her. Close, but not touching.
My knuckles were raw, swollen, the skin split across three of them.
She looked at my hands. Looked back at my face.
I could see her putting it together, the violence written on my body, and I watched her flinch and then force herself not to look away.
"The prospect and the hang-around have been dealt with," I said. "Rook's man wiped every copy of the tape he could find. The Jackals president knows that if that footage ever surfaces, it's war. He's pragmatic enough to make it disappear himself, because keeping it is a liability now."
She didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"Nobody is ever going to use your body against you again."
Her face crumpled. Not slowly, not gracefully. When the grip finally breaks, there's nothing controlled about the fall. Her hand came up to her mouth and a sound came out of her that I felt in every part of my chest.
I pulled her into me. Wrapped my arms around her, both of them, tight, her face against my neck and her body shaking so hard I could feel it in my bones. I held her the way I'd always held her. All action. All body. The only language I'd ever been fluent in.
But this time the words came too.
"You lied to me," I said, my mouth against her hair. "You used Lena to get in. You fed them information that could have gotten my brothers killed. That's going to take time. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't."
She was crying. Silent, shaking, her fists balled in my shirt.
"But you told me the truth when the cost was everything. You chose honesty when it meant losing me. You chose me over your own safety." I pulled her closer. Tighter. "You're mine, Bree. You've been mine since before either of us knew it. And I'm not letting go."
She broke apart in my arms. Completely, totally, crying that didn't make a sound. I held her through it. Held her until the shaking stopped, until her breathing evened out, until she went quiet against my chest.
I pressed my mouth to the top of her head. Breathed her in.
I held her. I didn't let go.
It was a Friday night at the Angel’s Rest.
Bree was behind the bar, pulling pints, wiping counters, laughing at something someone said. The brightness was back but it was different now. Steadier. Realer. The light of a woman who's stopped performing and started living.
I was in my booth. Watching her the way I always did.
Duke was at the pool table, chalking a cue, talking shit.
Doc and Rook were at the bar. Angel and Callie were at a table near the window, her hand in his, his eyes on the room.
Razor and Priest in and out of the bar area.
The club, present, settled, men living their lives.
She caught my eye across the room. Smiled. The real one. The one she used to hide behind and now just wore because she could.
I held her gaze. Lifted my glass an inch off the bar. Just for her.
She smiled wider. Turned back to pouring drinks.
I sat there in my booth with my whiskey and my brothers and the quiet inside me that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with peace, and I watched the woman I loved do the thing she was born to do in the place where she belonged.
The slow fuse had burned down. What it lit wasn't destruction.
It was something else entirely.