5. Chapter 5
Colt
The church was packed for a Wednesday afternoon.
That wasn't unusual. Club meetings happened when they needed to happen, regardless of what day it was or what other commitments members had. But the number of people present today suggested something significant was being discussed.
I counted at least forty brothers. Ditch was at the head of the table, flanked by the club's other officers. Prez looked tired in a way that sleep wouldn't fix. His jaw was tight, his fingers drumming against the table in a rhythm that suggested frustration.
I took my seat as Sergeant at Arms, and immediately I could feel the weight of expectation. This was my job. To listen. To assess threats. To protect the club's interests through any means necessary.
The problem was, I couldn't focus.
The room was too loud. Even before anyone started speaking, the ambient noise—the scraping of chairs, the murmur of conversations, the bass from a radio somewhere in the garage—was hitting my nervous system like physical assault.
My body was interpreting normal club sounds as threat signals.
My eyes kept tracking the windows, counting exits, assessing which doors could be locked and which were still vulnerable.
"We've got a problem," Ditch said, and the room quieted.
He outlined the situation. Evidence disappearing from police custody.
Witnesses in the Don case suddenly unavailable—some moved out of state, some refusing to cooperate anymore, one found dead in a way that looked like suicide but felt orchestrated.
Former Xtinction associates who should have been easy to locate were vanishing.
The task force members who'd been implicated in Colt's abduction were claiming immunity or lawyering up hard enough that prosecution looked unlikely.
"Officially," Ditch said, "Don is dead and Xtinction is neutralized. Unofficially, someone is still cleaning up."
That last sentence made me go very still. My hands clenched on the table.
"The Lords are expanding," Ditch continued.
"Eric and Petrov have an arrangement that's opening doors we didn't know existed.
But it also means we're seeing some of what's happening in the broader network.
And the consensus is that Don had backup.
Someone who benefited from his operation enough to keep protecting it even after his death. "
Prez leaned forward. "We need to know who. And we need to know why."
The conversation continued. I tried to follow the threads of it. Tried to contribute when it seemed necessary. But something was happening inside my chest—this pressure, this tightness, like my ribs were being wrapped in wire and someone was slowly pulling it tighter.
A prospect dropped something in the kitchen. The sound was loud, sudden, unexpected. I was on my feet before I could think about it, before I could remind myself that a dropped dish wasn't a threat. My hand had gone instinctively to the knife I kept in my boot. Several brothers were staring at me.
"Sorry," the prospect said, pale-faced. "Just dropped a plate."
I sat back down. But my heart was still racing. My hands were shaking slightly. I could feel sweat on my palms.
"You good?" Ditch asked quietly, noticing what nobody else had bothered to acknowledge.
"Fine," I said flatly. "Just need coffee."
It was a lie, and he knew it. But he didn't push. Just went back to the briefing while I sat there and tried to manage the sensation of my own nervous system betraying me.
The meeting lasted another hour. I made it through most of it by fixing my attention on a single point on the wall and not moving. By breathing slowly. By reminding myself that nobody here was going to hurt me. That this was my family. That I was safe.
My body wasn't listening.
By the time Ditch adjourned the meeting, I felt hollowed out. Raw. Like I'd run a marathon while sitting in a chair.
Sweet was waiting for me in the garage. He didn't ask how the meeting was. Just caught up to me as I was heading toward my truck and said, "We should talk."
Every part of me immediately wanted to refuse. Wanted to say something sharp that would make him back off. But Sweet had been there when I needed him. Had trusted me with his family's safety. Had never treated me like I was broken.
"About what?" I asked anyway, already knowing the answer.
"About the fact that you're falling apart and you're too proud to ask for help."
The words hit different than they should have. I knew Sweet meant well. Knew he was trying to help. But somewhere in my broken brain, kindness and concern felt like judgment. Felt like pity. Felt like being told I was failing.
"I'm handling it," I said.
"You're not. You're self-destructing, and everyone can see it. The boxing matches are getting more reckless. You're isolating yourself. You're lashing out at people who care about you. And now you're sitting in meetings like you're about to have a heart attack."
"I said I'm handling it."
"No, you're not. You're pretending to handle it while you're actively coming apart. There's a difference, and I think you know that."
The anger came fast. Hot. Irrational. "You don't get to tell me how I'm handling my own trauma. You don't get to sit there and act like you understand what I'm going through."
"I'm not saying I do. I'm saying I care about you, and I can see you hurting yourself, and I can't just watch that happen."
"Then don't watch." I turned toward my truck. "Go live your life with your wife and your kid and your normal problems. Stop worrying about me."
"That's not how this works," Sweet said, and his voice was steady despite my attempt to cut him down. "That's not how family works."
I stopped walking. Stopped moving entirely. Because the word—family—hit something inside me that I thought I'd already deadened. Something that remembered what it felt like to belong somewhere. To know that people had your back. To believe that you were part of something worth protecting.
All of that felt so far away now.
"I can't," I said quietly. "I can't do this right now."
I walked to my truck and I left the club. Didn't say goodbye. Didn't acknowledge anything Sweet was trying to do. Just left.
The gym was empty when I arrived. It was late afternoon, that dead space between the lunch crowd and the evening rush. I had the heavy bags to myself.
I didn't wrap my hands. Didn't warm up or stretch or do any of the things you're supposed to do before training. I just hit the bag. Hard. Fast. Without strategy or technique or anything except the need to make the noise inside my head stop.
The pain was immediate and real. My knuckles screamed with each impact. After maybe fifty punches, I could feel blood running down the back of my hands. But the bag was still intact. Still hanging there like it was absorbing my rage and asking for more.
So I gave it more.
I hit the bag until my shoulders burned. Until my ribs ached from the impact of doing this on a body that was already bruised from the underground matches. Until my breathing came in gasps that sounded like drowning.
And it wasn't enough.
The pressure was still there. The panic was still circling. The memories were still sharp at the edges of my consciousness. Physical pain was supposed to fix this. Physical pain was supposed to reset my nervous system and buy me a few hours of quiet.
But it wasn't working anymore.
I moved to the concrete wall in the corner of the gym. The one I'd used as a target before but never like this. Never while actively trying to hurt myself. I wrapped my damaged hands again—tape and gauze and determination—and I planted my feet and I swung.
The impact was different than the heavy bag. Concrete didn't give. Concrete didn't absorb. Concrete was absolute, immovable, unyielding.
I felt my knuckle connect with something that shouldn't connect with concrete. Felt the sharp crack of bone meeting surface. Felt the sharp, bright pain that suggested I'd just done something seriously wrong.
I pulled my hand back and I looked at it.
Three of my knuckles were bleeding badly. My whole hand was swelling with remarkable speed. The pain was escalating beyond anything I could ignore or override.
And I was staring at it like it belonged to someone else. Like I was watching a stranger destroy themselves and not quite understanding why they were doing it.
That was the moment I realized I didn't recognize myself anymore.
This person who beat his own hands into bleeding submission.
This person who couldn't sit through a meeting without his nervous system attacking him.
This person who lashed out at people who were trying to help.
This wasn't me. Or maybe it was me now. Maybe the black-site had broken something fundamental and this was what I'd become—a weapon with no clear target, turning the violence inward because that was the only safe direction.
I wrapped my hand in my shirt and I sat down on the gym floor with my bleeding knuckles and my panic attack and my complete and utter loss of control.
And I realized that the boxing wasn't working anymore. The self-harm wasn't fixing anything. The pain was escalating but the quiet never lasted longer than a few hours. Eventually I'd need something stronger. Eventually I'd need something more.
I'd read the statistics. Knew what the trajectory looked like. Knew that I was somewhere on a path that ended in one of a few specific ways, and none of them ended with me alive and functional and part of the family I'd chosen.
The pressure on my chest got worse.
I sat there on the cold gym floor with my bleeding hand and my destroyed knuckles and my complete inability to stop the spiral I was in, and I understood—really understood, for the first time—that I couldn't fix this alone.
Caroline's words from the second therapy session came back to me: Eventually, the control breaks down.
She was right. The control was breaking. I was breaking.
And I had no idea how to stop it.