Chapter Twelve
Nitro
I set my pen down and rubbed at my eyes, letting my head tip back against the worn leather of my office chair.
The strip club was hitting that midnight energy peak -- music thumping through the walls, the bass line from the main floor vibrating the metal desk beneath my forearms. I reached for my water, drank half in one pull, and forced my attention back to the column of expenses that wasn’t going to add itself.
The office had never been much to look at -- twelve-by-twelve with concrete walls painted institutional beige, a single window that faced the parking lot, and a fluorescent light that buzzed faintly overhead.
I’d hung a Reckless Kings banner behind the desk when I’d first taken over management, but that was the extent of my personal touches.
The place was what it was -- a source of income and information, not somewhere I spent time by choice.
My gaze drifted to the security monitor mounted on the wall.
The screen cycled through sixteen different feeds -- front door, back entrance, the main floor from four different angles, the parking lot.
A redhead was working the stage, her body moving in rhythm with the music, a twenty-dollar bill tucked into the waistband of her G-string.
At the bar, Slider was pouring shots for a table of college boys, his face set in that particular blank expression he used when he was counting to ten instead of breaking someone’s jaw.
The smile faded slowly as reality settled back into place around me. The office smelled like whiskey, cigarette smoke, and old paper. Music pulsed faintly through the floorboards from the club below, bass heavy enough to vibrate through the legs of the desk. Familiar. Normal.
But none of it held my attention for long anymore.
I glanced down at the ledger spread open in front of me, numbers blurring together after the third line. Money in. Money out. Inventory. Payroll. The kind of work I’d done for years without thinking twice about it. Tonight, every column felt like static in my head.
Because all I could picture was Willa standing barefoot in the nursery the other day, one hand braced against the small of her back while she stared at the wall decals Lyssa had brought over.
Tiny moons and stars still sat half-applied because Willa couldn’t decide if they looked “cute” or “like a Pinterest mom had thrown up in the room.”
I’d laughed. Actually laughed.
She’d turned toward me with narrowed eyes and one of the stickers still stuck to her wrist. “You’re supposed to help me decide.”
“I did,” I’d said. “I decided I don’t give a shit about moons.”
“That’s because you have terrible taste.”
“Baby, you do remember I’m a biker, right?”
Her snort had caught me off guard, quick and sharp and real enough that I’d stopped what I was doing just to look at her. She’d noticed immediately. Willa noticed everything.
“What?” she’d asked warily.
“Nothing.”
But it hadn’t been nothing.
It had been the realization that I was starting to memorize her. The different kinds of smiles. The way she rubbed her stomach absently when she was tired. The crease between her eyebrows when she got overwhelmed and tried to pretend she wasn’t.
The office suddenly felt too small.
I leaned back in the chair and stared toward the dark window behind the desk. My reflection stared back -- tattoos, cut, tired eyes, a face people usually crossed the street to avoid. Not exactly the picture of domestic stability.
And yet every night lately ended the same way: my hand spread over Willa’s stomach while she slept against my side, both babies moving beneath my palm like they already recognized their dad.
A strange tightness settled low in my chest. Not panic. Not fear. Worse.
Attachment.
The dangerous kind. The kind that gave a man something to lose.
I exhaled slowly and closed the ledger. There wasn’t a fucking chance I was getting work done tonight.
My gaze dropped to my cut. I’d had the ultrasound picture in my inner pocket since the appointment.
I pulled it out and laid it flat on the desk beside the ledger.
The technician had told us our children’s faces would be clearer in a few weeks, that the babies were still small enough certain details would be hard to make out.
But I could see it -- the curve of a spine, the outline of a foot, the shadow that might have been a hand.
One boy. One girl. Two lives that were mine not because they had to be but because I’d decided they were. It wasn’t obligation. It wasn’t circumstance.
The sound hit without warning -- a single gunshot, sharp and unmistakable, punching through the loud music on the main floor.
My body was moving before the echo died -- the ledger knocked sideways, water glass tipped over, chair legs scraping against the concrete as I came to my feet.
My hand closed around the grip of the Glock holstered at my hip, fingers finding the exact position they’d been in a thousand times before.
No hesitation. No thinking it through. Just the recalibration of a man who’d heard enough gunfire to know exactly what it meant. I was across the office in three strides, the door already open.
For one suspended moment, my thoughts went to Willa -- to the way she’d looked at me over breakfast that morning, to the ultrasound image still warm from my pocket, to a boy and a girl who were not yet born and already mine in every way that mattered.
Then the moment passed, and I was moving -- gun already drawn, already clearing the doorway, already scanning the corridor ahead for threats and angles.
The club was mine to protect. The girls were mine to keep safe.
The Kings were mine to represent. And in that moment, heading for the main floor with instinct already taking over, the life waiting for me at home felt tied to all of it in a way I couldn’t untangle anymore.
They were different points on the same line, connected by the choice I’d made when I’d looked at Willa across that table and decided she was worth whatever it cost to keep.
I hit the narrow back corridor at a controlled run -- the thud of my footfalls swallowed by the noise bleeding through from the main floor.
I’d walked this path a thousand times, knew exactly how many steps it took to get from the office to the club entrance, knew exactly which door would open silently and which would creak.
I killed my speed at the corridor’s end, back pressed flat against the wall, breath held as I scanned the room through the narrow gap between the door and the frame.
The bass line had stopped -- someone had killed the music the second the shot went off -- but the silence that replaced it was worse.
Not the quiet of a room holding its breath, but the ragged, fractured sound of people trying not to be noticed.
What I found: a redhead named Cass was down near the far end of the stage, one hand pressed to her upper arm, blood soaking through her fingers and dripping onto the lacquered stage floor.
Her face was bone-white beneath the stage lights, her free hand braced against the floor to keep herself upright.
Ten feet away, another dancer -- a blonde whose name I couldn’t remember -- was frozen in a half-crouch, attention fixed on the center of the room.
The other girls were scattered in clusters -- some behind the bar with Slider, some ducked behind tables, some already moving toward the back exit.
Most were still in costume, sequins catching the light as they moved, but a few had grabbed jackets or coats, were pulling them on with shaking hands as they backed toward the wall.
The customers had upended tables and chairs, creating a haphazard barrier between themselves and the center of the room, where a man with a semi-automatic pistol was turning in a slow circle, the weapon held in a two-handed grip that shook with every breath.
Mid-thirties, if I had to guess. Sweat-soaked T-shirt, dark hair plastered to his forehead, gaze moving too fast, too wide to track any one thing for more than a second.
The kind of volatile that had no plan and no ceiling -- the kind of man who’d walk into a crowded club with a gun and no exit strategy because he’d never thought past the moment the weapon cleared his waistband.
I evaluated the room in seconds. The shooter’s back was partially to me, his attention split between the bar and the stage -- between Slider, who was reaching slowly for something beneath the counter, and Cass, who was trying to drag herself toward the edge of the platform without being seen.
There was a clear angle through the gap between two overturned tables if I moved fast and low, cutting along the far wall and coming up behind one of the support pillars before making my final approach.
I went.
Three steps in, staying tight to the wall, using the shadow cast by the emergency exit sign to mask my movement.
Five steps, the club floor sticky beneath my boots, the smell of spilled beer and perfume sharp in my nostrils.
Seven steps, passing a table where a college kid was curled into a ball, his arms wrapped around his head, his breathing coming in short, controlled bursts like he was counting to keep from screaming.
I was fifteen feet from the shooter when his head snapped sideways -- some instinct, some peripheral flicker catching his attention -- and the gun swung around. I didn’t stop moving. Couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. My body was already dropping, already angling to close the distance.
“Don’t --” he started, the word breaking in the middle as his finger tightened on the trigger.