Chapter 8 #2
Liberty’s tone sharpened. “You need my help…” she said.
“… So, swallow whatever pride you have left and let me do what I’m good at.
Locking shit down. When 8-Ball gets here, we talk.
You owe me a full picture. Until then, I’ll keep your piece on the board standing. That’s the best deal you’re getting.”
She ended the call with a low, “Yeah. You too,” that carried more history than I wanted to unpack.
Then she came back to us.
“Until I say otherwise,” she told Jersey, “consider yourself leverage.”
He lifted his hands slightly, palms open. “You feed me, I have no complaints,” he said. “You cage me, we might have a disagreement.”
Her smile spread slow. “You don’t get to disagree right now,” she said. “You stepped into my nest. You either let me wrap coils around you until I know you’re not going to explode, or I put you in the ground and see if digging through your bag is easier without you attached to it.”
My girls laughed. Not kindly.
He took it. Didn’t puff up. Didn’t spit back. Just took it. I filed that away too.
“Ladies,” Liberty said, without looking back, “get him inside. He’s a guest. Treat him like one. But a guest we’ll shoot if he does something stupid.”
“Best kind of guest,” Medusa muttered.
Rosé and Raven flanked him. I fell in a half step behind and to the side. Indigo posted up at the door to the clubhouse, eyes never leaving his patch. The rest fell back into their patterns, but I could feel their attention clinging to us all the way through the doorway.
Inside, the main room hummed like a living thing.
Music low but constant. The smell of oil, whiskey, sweat, a hint of perfume someone had sprayed too liberally near the couch earlier.
The overhead lights were strung through welded bike frames.
Photos lined the walls. Women on bikes. Women with bruises fading.
Women laughing with cuts on their shoulders and middle fingers raised like flags.
We led him toward the bar.
California was behind it, black hair tipped in red fluffing around her shoulders, eyes lined thick. She clocked the cut immediately and went still in that coiled way that always made me proud. Then she lifted a brow, smirked, and let the tension bleed into amusement.
“What’s your poison, Devil?” she asked.
“Whiskey,” he said. “If Liberty allows it.”
“Liberty said treat you like a guest,” California replied. “Guests drink. You start acting like a prisoner though, that list changes.”
She poured. No cheap shit. The good stuff. Liberty always says you can tell how much trouble someone is in by what you’re willing to waste on them.
He took the glass. Fingers around the rim for a second, then he braced his forearms on the bar without ever letting the backpack slip.
Raven slid onto the stool beside him, chin in hand, studying his profile openly.
“You guys really look like this,” she said. “I thought comic books made you up.”
He huffed half a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh, I’m not disappointed,” she replied. “I just thought the universe was exaggerating when hunky bikers showed up. Guess not.”
Diamondback wandered over, wiping grease off her hands with a rag that just smeared it around. She was still in ripped jeans and a tank top, hair piled messily on her head.
“Cute,” she announced. “Smooth face though. He’d be even hotter with a beard.”
“What do you think Medusa?” California asked.
Medusa kicked her boots up on a nearby table and chimed in without looking. “Yeah. Give him a beard, some road dirt, and he could pass for halfway feral. That would sell.”
I hadn’t meant to talk.
It just came out.
“No,” I said.
All three of them turned. So did he.
“He wouldn’t,” I added, refusing to change my tone. “Clean shaven is better. Less mess.” I mumbled.
“Well, well,” Diamondback said leaning closer to Raven, her grin already blooming.
“Somebody has opinions,” California said with a smile.
“Didn’t think you looked that close,” Jersey Boy said.
The audacity.
It felt like he was challenging me. I turned slowly to him and walked over to him, angry, but not the only thing coursing through me.
“I didn’t,” I replied. “You’re just loud to look at. Hard to avoid.”
Laughter flickered around us. Medusa gave a bark of appreciation. California thumped the bar.
“Loud,” he repeated. “That’s a new one.”
“You’re wearing twenty pounds of ink and a patch that screams I start trouble,” I said. “You walk into my hospital with that, it’s loud. You walk into my clubhouse with that and a bag you won’t let go of, it’s louder. Clean shaven is the least of it.”
“Could grow one if it helps,” he said. “I aim to please.”
I snorted. “You couldn’t grow a good beard. You’d get three weeks in and look like a depressed barista. Do yourself a favor and keep it clean.”
Raven nearly spit her drink out. Diamondback leaned her elbow on the bar, laughing. California looks like she just got tickets to her favorite show.
He grinned. That full, real grin. There was a tiny nick still at the corner of his mouth, a healing remnant of some older fight.
“You’re very sure for someone who’s only known me half a gunfight,” he said.
I leaned in. “We’ve had men like you drift through our peripheral for years,” I said. “We know the type. Pretty. Dangerous. Think the world owes you something for the scars you’ve collected. Newsflash. It doesn’t.”
His eyes flickered. Something old flashed there. He didn’t hide it fast enough, not from me.
“I never said it did,” he answered quietly. “I just want it to stop throwing stray bullets at my head while I visit my best friend.”
Best friend. That tone was unmistakable.
Loyalty sounds different coming out of a real mouth than it does in a story. It’s heavier.
My gaze drifted to the strap on his shoulder again.
“And carry someone else’s apocalypse for them,” I said. “Don’t forget that part.”
“You sound like you have a problem with me doing that,” he said.
“I have a problem with anyone dragging that kind of heat, whatever it even is, over our line,” I said. “But I’m not blind either. I know you didn’t choose it.”
That part was true. You don’t pick up a bag like that because you want to. You pick it up because leaving it behind feels worse. Makes things worse.
“You don’t have to like being here,” I added. “You just have to accept it. For now, you’ve got a roof, a drink, and a promise from Liberty that we won’t let someone put a bullet in your head while you sleep. It’s more than what most people get.”
“A hostage with benefits,” he muttered.
I smiled. Sharp. “You’re not that special,” I said. “Our bunnies get better perks.”
One of the newer club girls, perched near the jukebox, flipped her hair and snickered. “He’d make a cute bunny though,” she said.
“Bunnies?” he asked. “You have those here too?”
“What, you think just because we’re an all-female MC we don’t get to have groupies?” Raven asked him. “We like pretty distractions just as much as the next club.”
“You’re not my type,” Medusa called from the table. “Too symmetrical. I like ’em fucked up.”
“Give it time,” he said.
A laugh broke out in response.
I fought hard against it and quickly hid my smirk. Almost got me.
The other girls moved in after that and I could see Jersey Boy mentally trying to put names to faces as the conversations flowed.
Rosé swung by, Arizona snapped a picture, and India lingered nearby with a book in hand.
Diamondback then hopped up onto the bar. I thought she was about to perform her own version of Coyote Ugly, but instead she put her feet on a barstool and leaned closer to Jersey Boy.
“So, Devil’s Aces,” she said. “You guys as scary as the stories say, or are you all just loud and shiny?”
“Depends on who’s telling the stories,” he replied. “And whether they’re still alive to finish them.”
California chimed in. “He has some bite.”
“Relax,” I said, my tone more of an order then a request. “He’s not here to impress you. He’s here because Liberty says so,” I reminded.
“Liberty say we can look?” Raven asked.
I could already see by her expression she was melting for him. This boy was going to be trouble.
“Look all you want,” I answered. “Just don’t touch the bag.”
“Noted,” India said from the doorway. “Bag is lava. Lava is bad.”
Conversations splintered after that. Diamondback left, probably back to the garage.
Medusa returned to her table, eyes half-lidded but alert and argued with Cobra over music.
India returned to her book, while Raven stayed put, leaning into her personal space with all the subtlety of a cat deciding on if to take a nap or not.
I felt my teeth grind.
Stupid. He’s not yours.
Liberty and Indigo were talking near the back wall, their heads close, voices low. Arizona hovered near them with her camera, capturing angles.
I stayed and slid onto the stool beside him. Not close enough for our arms to touch. Close enough that if anyone reached for that pack, they’d have to get through two of us.
“Liberty says you’re not leaving,” I started.
“For how long?” he asked, fingers circling the rim of his glass.
“Until she hears what she wants from your VP and your Prez,” I said. “Until she knows what exactly is in that bag and how likely it is to get us all killed. Until she decides whether you’re either a liability or an asset.”
“And if she decides I’m a liability?” he asked.
I studied his face. It was strange, seeing so much steel in someone who looked that young around the eyes. He wasn’t young, not really. No one with that many miles in their stare could be. But there was something in his features that hadn’t hardened all the way.
“Then I wouldn’t advise you sleep too deep,” I said. “But I wouldn’t worry about it yet. You seem very attached to whatever you have. That means it’s important, and that makes you valuable. Valuable people live longer. Usually.”
“How comforting,” he replied.
“You want comfort, you picked the wrong clubhouse,” I said.