Chapter Three #3
“That’s fair.”
She looks like she doesn’t know where to put that.
I don’t either.
Sophie’s mouth softens, and I know she’s proud of me. It should annoy me. It doesn’t.
The door opens again. This time, Whiskey comes in with rain on his shoulders and business in his eyes.
He’s one of the few men I trust with numbers, secrets, and bodies. Some men are good at making threats. Whiskey is good at finding the paper trail under them. Treasurer, father, sinner, and better at pretending he ain’t got a heart than most men ever get.
He takes in the room in one sweep.
Amelia.
Derby.
Sophie.
Royal.
Me.
Then he says, “Who’s Jeremy Vale and why the hell did I get pulled away from a good bottle?”
“Amelia’s husband,” I say.
Whiskey’s gaze moves to Amelia, then drops briefly to her bare ring mark, the bruise near her sleeve, the way she sits like she may need to run even from a chair.
His face changes only a little.
Fathers notice certain things.
“Ex-husband?” he asks.
Amelia’s mouth tightens. “Not legally.”
“Unfortunate,” Whiskey says.
Derby snorts. “That your professional assessment?”
“For now.”
I point to the chair at the end of the table. Whiskey sits.
“Vale has connections,” I say. “Maybe Pearly Gates. Maybe county. Maybe Depraved Sinners. Maybe all three if tonight wants to be especially irritating.”
Whiskey looks at Amelia. “Full name?”
“Jeremy Alan Vale.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Work?”
“Insurance. Officially.”
Whiskey’s brow lifts. “And unofficially?”
She hesitates.
“There it is,” he says softly. “What does he do unofficially?”
Amelia twists her fingers together. “He moves money for people. I don’t know details.”
“Cash?”
“Sometimes.”
“Church money?”
Her eyes lift fast.
Whiskey leans back. “That’s a yes.”
“I don’t know,” she says.
Sophie speaks gently. “You’re not in trouble.”
Amelia laughs once. “That’s a very easy thing for people to say when they’re not the ones who will be found.”
Whiskey looks at me.
We have enough.
Not all of it, but enough to know Vale ain’t just a bad husband with a bruised ego. Money. Church. Control. A wife with possible Welles blood. A kid. Oregon in the history. Paducah in the middle. Hell at the end.
This ain’t a thread.
It’s a knot.
Sophie turns to Amelia. “Did Jeremy know you were coming to Hell?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But he knew about Mike?”
“Yes.”
“And he knew your mother was from Oregon?”
Amelia nods. “He knew everything. He made a point of knowing everything. Where I came from. Who I talked to. What I bought. What time I got home. He said secrets were poison in a marriage.”
Whiskey’s face goes dark. “Men who say that usually keep the most.”
Amelia looks at him like that lands somewhere deep.
“Daddy?”
The small voice comes from the stairs.
Every man in the room turns.
August stands halfway down in dinosaur pajamas, hair sticking up, eyes swollen from sleep. Sophie is on her feet first, but Amelia moves faster, nearly knocking the chair over to get to him.
“I’m here,” she says, rushing to the stairs. “Baby, I’m here.”
He comes down two steps, then stops when he sees all the men looking at him.
He shrinks.
That pisses me off.
Not at him.
At the world that taught a five-year-old to measure a room before entering it.
I look around. “Everybody find something else to stare at.”
Men move.
Fast.
Derby is the only one who doesn’t look away. He watches the kid with the same expression he wore earlier, like someone opened an old wound and set a child in the middle of it.
August clings to Amelia when she reaches him. “I woke up.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I was right downstairs.”
“You said you’d be there.”
The accusation is small.
The hurt is not.
Amelia’s face crumples for one second before she controls it. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have been there when you woke up.”
I glance at Sophie.
Her eyes are wet.
That does something to me. It always has. Sophie crying makes me want to wreck entire towns.
August looks over Amelia’s shoulder. His gaze lands on Derby.
“You didn’t find the dinosaur,” he says.
Derby freezes.
Whiskey’s eyebrows lift.
Royal looks like he might actually enjoy this.
Derby points at himself. “Me?”
“You said motorcycles find things.”
“I did not say that. She said that.” He points at Sophie like a man identifying the true criminal.
Sophie wipes under one eye and says, “I remember Derby volunteering.”
“I did not volunteer.”
August stares at him.
Derby stares back.
The kid wins.
They always do. That’s why I avoid negotiating with them.
Derby mutters, “Fine. Tomorrow. If your mama says it’s all right.”
August looks at Amelia. “Can he?”
Amelia’s expression is caught between exhaustion, disbelief, and something fragile that looks too close to hope.
“We’ll see,” she says.
Derby makes a pained sound. “That means no.”
“No,” Sophie says. “That means she is a mother who has learned not to promise things she may not be able to give.”
The room quiets again.
Amelia looks at Sophie with gratitude that hurts to witness.
Derby looks at Amelia.
That look ain’t lust, though I’m sure lust is in there somewhere because Derby is Derby and Amelia is a pretty woman with a mouth on her. It’s something else tonight. Protective and irritated and unwilling.
Trouble.
I recognize trouble in a brother before he does.
Amelia carries August back to the table but doesn’t sit. “I need to put him to bed.”
“Yes,” Sophie says. “Come on.”
This time, Amelia lets Sophie lead her toward the stairs. Before she goes up, she turns back to me.
“I didn’t come here to take anything from you.”
The words are quiet.
I believe she means them.
That don’t mean she won’t.
“I know,” I say.
Her eyes search my face. “Do you?”
No.
Not fully.
But I want to.
That is dangerous enough for tonight.
“I know you didn’t come here the way an enemy would,” I say.
It’s the closest to comfort I can offer without lying.
She nods once and follows Sophie upstairs with August tucked against her.
When they are gone, the room exhales.
Derby turns on me first. “You came at her too damn hard.”
Royal’s head tilts. “Bold, considering you greeted her with underwear commentary.”
“She needed to laugh.”
“She needed not to be interrogated after midnight,” Derby shoots back.
I look at him. “You attached already?”
His face closes. “Don’t start.”
“Too late.”
He steps closer to the table. “She’s got a kid, Prez. She’s scared out of her damn mind. You saw that bruise.”
“I saw everything.”
“Then act like it.”
Whiskey says, “Careful.”
Derby’s eyes don’t leave mine. “I am being careful.”
The room gets tight.
Derby is a loyal brother, but loyal men still test lines when a woman gets under their skin. Especially a biker who don’t want to admit she has.
I hold his stare. “You think I’m going to throw her out?”
“No.”
“You think I’m going to hand her to Vale?”
His jaw flexes. “No.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
He doesn’t answer.
Royal does.
“He’s worried you will treat her like a threat until she stops feeling human.”
Derby’s face hardens because Royal has put words to something he wanted to keep ugly and nameless.
Whiskey leans back in his chair. “And he’s worried because the kid looked at him.”
Derby points at Whiskey. “Stay out of my soul, money man.”
“Gladly. It appears cluttered.”
Under any other circumstance, I might laugh.
Tonight, I drag a hand over my face and feel ten years older.
“She’s a threat,” I say. “Not because she means to be. Because blood is always a threat in the wrong hands.”
Royal’s expression changes at that.
He knows.
His sister showing up has already proved it.
“Two sisters,” he says quietly.
I look at him.
Royal’s face is still, but his eyes are not. There is a storm there. Old grief. Old rage. The kind that made him dangerous before he ever patched in.
“Yours,” he says. “Mine. Same damn season.”
Whiskey taps his fingers once against the table. “Could be coincidence.”
All three of us look at him.
He shrugs. “I said could be. I didn’t say I’m stupid enough to believe it.”
“Find Vale,” I tell him. “Start with Paducah. Insurance, church accounts, property, tax liens, arrests that went away, complaints from women, payments to anyone with Pearly Gates attached to their name.”
Whiskey nods. “And Oregon?”
My jaw tightens. “Quietly. Old chapter. Lonerock. Caroline Bell. Any Welles connection. Anyone currently holding power out there who might want to reach into Kentucky.”
Royal says, “You think the Oregon sent her?”
“I think if I ignore Oregon and it bites us, I deserve the blood loss.”
Derby shakes his head. “She was a kid when she left.”
“Kids get used by adults all the time.”
That shuts him up because he knows it’s true.
The stairs creak.
Sophie comes down alone.
Every eye shifts to her.
She takes in the table, the tension, Derby’s clenched fists, my face, Royal’s shadows, Whiskey’s calculating stare.
Then she says, “No.”
I blink. “No what?”
“No to whatever all of this is.” She points at the table. “She is upstairs crying quietly enough to not wake her son because she thinks being inconvenient will get her thrown out. So before you turn her into a conspiracy with hair, I need you all to remember there is a woman in that room.”
No one speaks.
Sophie looks at Derby. “You did good bringing her here.”
Derby looks uncomfortable. “Wasn’t leaving her on the road.”
“I know.”
She looks at Whiskey. “Find what you need to find, but don’t let this become gossip.”
Whiskey nods. “It won’t.”
She looks at Royal. “Whatever is happening with your sister, don’t lay that shadow over Amelia unless you know it belongs there.”
Royal inclines his head, grave as a priest and twice as sinful. “You’re right.”
Then she looks at me.
My wife to be.
My queen.
The woman who walked into my violence and refused to become small.
“And you,” she says.
I lean back. “Here we go.”
“You saw your father in her and it scared you.”
The room goes too damn quiet.
I could lie.
I don’t.
“Yes.”
Sophie’s expression softens. “That doesn’t make her him.”
“No.”
“And it doesn’t make her one of his mistakes.”
I look toward the stairs.
My father’s daughter is up there in a borrowed room, probably lying beside her kid because the boy woke scared. She came for him too late, and because he is dead, I’m what she found instead.
That feels like a punishment.
It also feels like a chance.
I don’t know what to do with either.
“He should’ve known,” I say.
Sophie comes closer. “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.”
“If he knew, he left her out there.”
“Yes.”
No comfort. No excuse.
That’s Sophie’s gift too. She doesn’t make pretty lies out of ugly truths.
My throat tightens in a way I don’t appreciate.
“My father left a lot of people out there,” I say.
Sophie stands beside my chair and touches the back of my neck. Her fingers slide into my hair, gentle where the night is not.
“Then don’t be him.”
It’s simple.
It’s brutal.
It’s the kind of thing only Sophie can say to me and live.
Derby looks away.
Whiskey studies his hands.
Royal watches the stairs like he is seeing another woman, another sister, another ghost.
I close my eyes for one second.
When I open them, I’m president again.
“Hear me,” I say.
Every brother in range stills.
“Until we prove otherwise, Amelia and her boy are under Kings protection. Not as guests. Not as strays. As blood.”
Derby’s gaze snaps to mine.
Royal’s expression sharpens.
Whiskey nods once.
Sophie’s hand tightens on my neck.
If she ain’t blood, we can walk that back later.
If she is and I fail her tonight, there ain’t no walking that back at all.
“If she’s lying,” I continue, “we handle it. If she’s being used, we cut the strings. If Vale comes for her, he goes through us. If Pearly Gates, the Depraved Sinners, Oregon, or anyone else thinks they can use a woman and child to get inside this club, they learn why Hell belongs to the Kings.”
A low sound moves through the room.
Agreement.
Violence.
Family.
Sometimes they are the same thing here.
The front door opens again, and Wildcat steps inside holding something wrapped in a faded T-shirt.
“Prez,” he says.
I stand.
The room tightens.
Wildcat walks to the table and lays the bundle down. He unfolds the shirt carefully.
Inside is an old photograph, creased at the corners, soft with age.
My father stares up from it.
Younger. Cocky. Shirtless, with a championship belt over one shoulder and a grin that could talk angels into bad decisions. Beside him stands a woman with dark hair, laughing at something off-camera. She has one hand pressed to his chest like she is either holding him close or pushing him away.
Not Caroline Bell.
I know before anyone says it. It’s Hot Mama, from the old Oregon Kings chapter.
There is a bracelet around her wrist. Thick silver. A piece my father wore for years before it disappeared from his arm sometime before I took my first real ride.
On the back of the photo, written in faded ink, are four words.
Mike and Mama, Oregon.
Under that, in different handwriting, smaller and shakier.
Amelia’s father.
The room fades at the edges.
Sophie’s hand slides from my neck to my shoulder.
No one talks.
For once, not even Derby has something smart to say.
I stare at my father’s young face until grief and anger knot so tight I can’t tell one from the other.
The photo proves Caroline Bell got close.
It proves my father knew her.
It doesn’t prove Amelia is blood.
But it makes sending her back into the dark impossible.
The dead man has done it again.
Reached up.
Grabbed hold.
Left me to decide what kind of man I’m going to be with what he abandoned.
I pick up the photograph.
The paper feels thin.
The weight doesn’t.
“Wake Whiskey’s contacts,” I say, voice rough. “Quietly. I want confirmation on Caroline Bell, Lonerock, Paducah, and Vale.”
Whiskey nods.
I look at Derby. “You’re on Amelia and the kid tonight.”
He don’t joke.
He don’t complain.
He only says, “Yeah.”
Then I look up the stairs.
My sister is asleep in my clubhouse.
Maybe.
Probably.
God help anyone who tries to take her before I know for sure.
Sophie steps closer, her voice low enough only I hear.
“You believe her now?”
I look at the photo again.
My father’s grin.
The handwriting that feels like a door opening ten years too late.
“I believe my father was exactly the kind of bastard who could leave a daughter behind,” I say.
Sophie rests her cheek against my shoulder for one brief second.
“And Amelia?”
I pocket the photograph carefully.
Then I look toward the stairs where blood, trouble, and a sleeping child have just changed the shape of my family.
“I believe she made it to Hell,” I say. “That means she’s ours until she decides different.”