Chapter 25
?
— Holden —
D utch was three days into his honeymoon and Colt was running things, but with Lilac halfway through the pregnancy and Colt unwilling to be far, most meetings had been over at his house.
Tonight she was napping and Betty had Luca and Knox, so he’d dropped by the clubhouse to go over Louisville logistics with me.
We had the corner table, route maps spread between us, my coffee gone cold an hour ago.
Dutch hadn’t cleared me for runs yet, but I could do the paperwork, the intel analysis, the administrative work that kept the machine turning.
The door to the main room opened and a woman walked in.
She was maybe mid-twenties, dark hair pulled back, wearing a jacket that didn’t quite close over her stomach. Pregnant. She stood in the doorway and looked around the room. Seemed like she’d probably rehearsed what she was going to say and was now trying to figure out who to say it to.
“I need to speak to the Road Captain,” she said. Loud enough to carry. Not aggressive — but not asking, either.
A couple of brothers looked up from the pool table. One of them — Target, I think — let out a low whistle through his teeth.
“Road Captain’s busy, sweetheart,” someone called from the bar. “You got an appointment?”
She didn’t flinch. “No. But he’s going to want to talk to me.”
“Yeah?” Target leaned on his cue. “What’s your name, darlin’? We get a lot of girls coming through here looking for their baby daddy.”
There was laughter. Low, the kind that comes easy in a room full of men who’ve seen this play before. Patch chaser walks in, tells a story, wants money or a ring or both.
The woman’s jaw tightened, but she held her ground. “My name is Joanne. And I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking for the man who got me pregnant.”
“Aren’t they all,” someone muttered.
“The man I slept with,” she said, cutting through the noise, “was your Road Captain. Holden.” She looked around the room. “Where is he?”
My head shot up.
Someone near the bar laughed. “Brother, she’s asking for you by name. You gonna leave her standing there?”
Another voice. “Holden, come claim your girl before Target does.”
More laughter. Easy, stupid, the kind that comes from men who think this is entertainment. I couldn’t move. Colt was watching me from across the table, very still, waiting.
“I was here,” she continued. “A few months ago. I’d been drinking.
I came with a friend who knew someone, I don’t even remember who.
We ended up at the bar. A man started talking to me.
” She touched her stomach without seeming to notice.
“We went to his room. We didn’t exchange names.
Wasn’t really that kind of night.” She let that land.
Her eyes found me then — landed right on me, held for half a second — then moved on. She scanned the room, brother to brother, like she was looking for someone else entirely.
“How do you know Holden’s the baby daddy if he didn’t tell you his name?” someone called out. A few of the brothers laughed. Someone slapped a hand on the bar.
“His cut was hanging on the back of the door,” she said.
“Road Captain. Holden. I remember that because I thought it was a strange name.” She frowned slightly.
“It was loud that night. People coming and going at all hours. I remember thinking something had happened — everyone seemed wired. I left before he woke up. I didn’t think I’d ever need to come back. ” She paused. “But here I am.”
The room was very quiet.
I knew what night she was talking about. Everyone in that room did now too. A few months ago. The night the run went wrong, the night Danny died, the night we came back to a building full of people we couldn’t send home because Dutch needed everything to look normal.
And one of them had ended up in my room.
I stood up.
“Well, shit,” someone muttered.
Colt looked at me. I could see him working it through — the same calculation I’d already run, arriving at the same answer. My room. My cut. My blackout. The night I couldn’t remember, the hours I’d built an entire confession around.
“That’s me,” I said.
Joanne turned to face me. The frown came immediately — small, involuntary, the kind you make when a puzzle piece doesn’t fit. “You’re Holden?”
“Yeah.”
She studied my face. But she didn’t say anything yet. Maybe she was second-guessing her own memory. She’d been drunk that night. So had I — past drunk, past functional, past anything resembling a person who could make decisions.
“Okay,” I said. My voice sounded flat, even to me. “Whatever you need. Whatever arrangement works for you — I’ll make sure the baby is taken care of. I’ll step up.”
The words landed in the room. I heard them from somewhere outside myself, like watching a man sign a document he couldn’t read.
Because here it was. The thing I’d been carrying for months, the weight of what I’d done in that room — it wasn’t just a memory anymore.
It was a child. A real, living consequence of the worst night of my life, growing inside a woman whose name I’d just learned and whose face I didn’t remember.
I’d spend eighteen years, at least, tied to this stranger.
To that night, to Danny dying and Bea leaving and the bottle I’d crawled into instead of calling for help.
Every time this child visited, every birthday, every handover in a car park somewhere — it would be there. The proof. The thing I did.
And Bea. If I’d had any shred of hope left — any quiet, stupid, middle-of-the-night fantasy that I might earn my way back to her — this killed it. She’d have to look at this child and see the evidence of what I’d done to her. No woman could live with that. No woman should have to.
I’d been right to end it. That was the sick irony. I’d been right all along, and now I had proof, standing in front of me in a jacket that wouldn’t close. But being right didn’t feel like anything. It just felt like a door locking from the outside.
“I appreciate that,” Joanne said slowly. She was still looking at me with that frown. “But—” She stopped.
“What?”
“You’re not him.”
“Well, fuck me,” someone muttered from the bar.
The room had been quiet before. But now it was even quieter — every brother leaning in, watching, waiting to see where this landed.
“The man I was with was—” She made a shape in the air with her hand.
“Taller than you. Six-two, maybe six-three. Sandy blond hair. He had a drawl — deep South, Georgia or maybe Alabama. And the tattoo on his forearm — it was a hawk, wings spread.” She shook her head. “You don’t look anything like him.”
I couldn’t speak. I was aware of Colt behind the desk, his hand flat on the surface.
“You were in my room,” I said.
“You’re Holden?” she said again.
I nodded.
She studied me for a long moment, then shook her head. “It wasn’t you. I talked to this man for an hour at the bar before we went anywhere. I wasn’t that drunk. I remember his face.”
“Then how’d you get pregnant?” I said. I knew what was coming the second the words left my mouth.
The clubhouse erupted. Brothers howling, someone shouting about the birds and the bees, one of the club girls calling out from the bar — “You need us to draw you a diagram, Holden?” Even Colt had a slight smirk on his face.
I recognized the voice — one of the club girls who’d been around for the past few months, easy company, the kind who showed up because she liked the vibe and would move on when the phase ran its course.
Under King there’d been a whole lot of politics to the club girls — the kind of thing that had torn up relationships and started fights.
After Dutch got Indira back, all of that had quietly dissolved.
The girls who came through now were different.
Friendly. No agenda. Nothing like the old days, and nobody wanted them back.
“Alright, you lot, settle down.” I waited for the noise to die back. “I meant there was a condom wrapper. In the room. On the table.”
“Probably poked a hole in it,” Target muttered. “Oldest trick in the book.”
Joanne’s head snapped toward him. “He pulled it out of his own jeans pocket. Apparently it didn’t work.
” Her voice was flat, steady. “Believe me, I wasn’t planning to get knocked up.
Last thing I wanted was a surprise pregnancy with a man whose name I don’t even know.
” She looked back at me. “But here I am.”
The room went quiet again, every brother leaning in, waiting to hear what came next. I caught at least one fucker with his phone out, recording.
Glitch appeared out of nowhere. I hadn’t heard him approach — but that was Glitch. He’d been standing there long enough to hear what mattered.
“The interior cameras,” he said quietly.
To me, but also to the room. “The ones on the motion sensors, on the separate drive. I’ve been meaning to pull that footage since that night.
” He paused. I could see the frustration on his face.
Or maybe it was anger. Glitch hated missing things.
“Danny. Reyes. With everything going on, I didn’t get to it. ”
He looked at Joanne. Then at me. Then at Colt.
Colt nodded once. “Let’s do it.” He stood, then looked at Joanne. “You want to sit down? Get you some water, something to eat?”
She blinked, surprised. “I’m fine.”
“Sit down anyway.” He said it gently, but it wasn’t a suggestion. He pointed at one of the prospects. “Get her some water. Stay with her. Nobody talks to her until we come back out.”
The security room was small and cool and full of the quiet hum of equipment. Colt sat beside Glitch. I stood against the wall with my arms crossed, waiting.
Glitch typed for two minutes without speaking. Found the drive. Found the date. Found the feed.
He pressed play.