Chapter Twenty-Four
Amelia
Kentucky looks different after Oregon.
Not because the hills changed. They are still green and rolling, stitched with black fences, sometimes white and horse farms that pretend money can keep ugliness from crawling under the gate.
The sky still hangs low and humid. The roads still twist past old barns, roadside churches, gas stations with hand-painted signs, and fields that look peaceful if you don’t know what men can bury near tree lines.
But I changed.
That is the problem with leaving.
You come back and expect the old place to swallow you in the same shape, only to find your edges don’t fit the mouth anymore.
Derby rides beside our borrowed ride on Widowmaker like a dark promise with pipes loud enough to wake county grudges.
August sleeps in the back seat with Blue Rex tucked under one arm and Princess Chomp under the other.
Every few minutes, I look at him in the rearview mirror to make sure he is still there.
Breathing. Safe. Sticky from gas station candy and sunburned across the nose from Oregon wind.
Behind my left ear, the little crown burns.
Not from infection. Hot Mama’s woman, Sagebrush, gave me enough aftercare instructions to make the tattoo seem like a newborn and a legal liability. It burns because I know it’s there. Because Derby knows it’s there now too.
Now we are back.
And I’ll be walking into the Lockup with a crown behind my ear, a dead husband in the ground, and a living biker at my back who looks at me like he wants to stand between me and every shadow but is trying, painfully, not to.
The clubhouse is too quiet for a place built out of cells.
Morning light slides through high old windows, catching on iron bars that were left in place because the Kings of Anarchy have never been subtle about their sense of humor.
Chairs are pushed in. The long table is clear except for a stack of unopened mail, two mugs, and an ashtray someone cleaned but did not move.
Lottie sits at the clubhouse kitchen table.
Waiting.
She has a mug of coffee in front of her, hair pinned up, floral blouse crisp, earrings shaped like tiny pistols today.
Her face is calm. Too calm. The little crown behind her ear is hidden under soft brown highlighted hair, but I see it anyway.
Not with my eyes. With the part of me that now understands marks can sit under skin too.
In Oregon, they called her Julip.
Here, she is Lottie again, and somehow that scares me more.
Derby stops beside me at the kitchen doorway. “You want me here?”
The fact that he asks almost undoes me.
I look at Lottie.
She doesn’t look at Derby. Only me.
“No,” I say softly.
Derby’s jaw tightens.
Not anger. Not at me.
Instinct fighting itself.
“You sure?”
“No.”
His mouth curves slightly, but his eyes stay dark. “Honest.”
“I need to do this alone.”
He nods once. “I’ll be outside.”
“Derby.”
He turns back.
“If I need you…”
“You say my name, I break the door.”
“It’s not locked.”
“Then I’ll open it aggressively.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
Lottie lifts her mug. “Good Lord, the romance of outlaws. Poetry weeps.”
Derby gives her a look that would scare a saner woman.
Lottie sips coffee.
Derby leans close enough that only I hear him. “You don’t owe her more than truth.”
I touch the skin behind my ear. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
His face hardens with understanding.
Then he walks out.
The clubhouse door closes behind him, and suddenly the old jail feels larger.
Lottie looks at the chair across from her. “You sitting or looming?”
“I learned looming from bikers.”
“You need more practice. Your shoulders aren’t judgmental enough.”
I don’t sit.
Not yet.
I stand across from her at the kitchen table, both hands at my sides, and try to see the woman clearly.
Not Lottie who brought groceries. Not Lottie who teased Derby and tucked August into safety.
Not Lottie who drove me across the country with snacks, cash, and a mouth sharp enough to cut through panic.
The other Lottie.
The one with a crown tattoo.
The one who called Hot Mama. The one who knew how to disappear a woman and child before dawn. The one who might have made a call that ended with Jeremy’s car wrapped around a tree.
“I need to ask you something,” I say.
Lottie sets her mug down. “I figured.”
“Did you set up Jeremy’s accident?”
The word accident tastes wrong.
Lottie doesn’t blink.
She looks at me for a long moment, then turns her mug slowly in both hands.
“Accidents happen.”
My stomach drops.
“No.”
Her brows lift.
“No pretty little sayings. No old-lady riddles. No outlaw poetry.” My voice shakes, but I keep it sharp. “I asked you a question.”
Lottie sighs. “Bad men drive bad roads.”
“Lottie.”
“Sometimes a woman prays, and the road answers.”
The old jail goes so quiet I can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and Derby’s boots shifting somewhere outside.
My skin goes cold.
“So yes,” I whisper.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said enough.”
“I said roads answer.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
Her face changes then.
A little softer. A little harder. Both at once.
“Sometimes brakes fail,” she says. “Sometimes The Widow gets tired of watching bad men drive free.”
Dead Man’s Curve flashes through me.
Hell Road.
The woman in white. Derby’s voice saying, stories are how folks tell the truth when nobody can prove it.
My hand grips the back of the chair.
“So it wasn’t just Oregon,” I say, rolling my eyes.
Lottie’s mouth barely moves. “Roads talk, honey. Some women know how to listen.”
My stomach turns.
“Sit down, Amelia.”
“No.”
“Fine. Stand there with your righteous knees locked if it helps.”
“Righteous?” A laugh tears out of me. “My husband is dead.”
“Your abuser is dead.”
“That doesn’t make murder right.”
“No,” she says. “It makes it finished.”
The words slap the air from my lungs.
I grip the edge of the table. “You admit it.”
“I admit Jeremy Vale was always going to come back.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“Jeremy hurt your boy, didn’t he?” she asks suddenly.
It feels like a shot.
My eyes flood as I wrap my arms around myself. I nod and hang my head.
“Then why do you care why he’s dead?”
“I don’t,” I say, honesty finally hitting home. “Just want to know who I owe my thanks.”
“You can thank me.”
“Thank you.”
The woman in front of me can make a death happen with a phone call and drink coffee afterward. This is my new world. Just different bars on different windows if I’m not careful.
“I don’t want to owe you,” I whisper.
Lottie’s expression softens.
Then the softness shifts.
Not away.
Under.
A blade under a quilt.
“You should stick around then.”
My spine prickles. “What does that mean?”
“It means Kentucky is where your brother is. Where Derby is. Where the Kings can watch the roads and the Queens know where to find you.”
A chill moves over my skin. “That sounds like a threat.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
She studies me. “Good. Means your ears work.”
My heart starts beating harder.
“Lottie.”
“You got that crown now, whether you understand it or not. Hot Mama don’t hand those out because she likes symmetrical head art.”
I touch the tender skin behind my ear.
The tiny tattoo still aches.
“She said it wasn’t property.”
“It isn’t.”
“She said I owed nothing for surviving.”
“You don’t.”
“But?”
Lottie’s eyes hold mine. “But women who get roads opened for them should remember who moved the trees.”
There it is.
Not a demand. Not yet. A reminder. A hook with velvet wrapped around it.
I think of Hot Mama’s voice in the garage.
If one day we call you, you remember who opened the road.
My stomach turns.
“What will she ask me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
Lottie smiles faintly. “Look at that mouth coming back.”
“What will she ask?”
“I said I don’t know. Hot Mama plays long games. Maybe nothing for years. Maybe a call tomorrow. Maybe she only wanted to settle a debt to Caroline and see if Mike Welles’s girl had enough spine to keep breathing.”
“My mother owed her too?”
“Your mother owed a lot of people a lot of things. Some good. Some ugly.”
I grip the table again.
“What happened with Caroline?”
“That’s Hot Mama’s story.”
Then the front door opens.
Derby steps in first.
His eyes find me immediately, scanning. Always scanning. Behind him comes Legend.
Legend looks different than he did when I left. Tired. Hard. A bruise under one eye of his heart if not his face. Sophie isn’t with him, and that absence makes the room feel colder.
He carries a set of keys.
My pulse jumps.
Lottie looks at the keys, then at Legend. “Well, hell.”
Legend ignores her.
He walks to me.
Not to Lottie.
Not to Derby.
Me.
“I need to show you something,” he says.
His voice is gruff in that way I’m beginning to recognize as emotion with its teeth clenched.
I look at Derby.
He nods once.
“You okay?” he asks.
No.
“Yes.”
His eyes narrow.
“Later,” I whisper.
His jaw works, but he nods.
Legend holds out his hand. “Come on.”
We leave the old jail in tense silence.
Lottie stays behind.
So does the weight of what she confessed.
Derby walks beside me but not too close, like he knows if he touches me now I might either cling or shove.
Legend leads us outside to his truck. We drive only a few minutes, out past the main road, toward a stretch of Kings-controlled land I had seen from a distance but never visited.
Not the clubhouse. Not Derby’s place. A little tucked-away lot near trees, close enough that bikes could reach it fast, far enough that it feels separate.
A trailer sits there.
Not fancy.
But not falling apart either.
White with blue trim, small porch, gravel drive, two planters by the steps even though nothing is planted in them yet. The windows are clean. The grass is cut. A little shed sits out back. Beyond it, a line of trees gives privacy without isolation.
My throat tightens before I understand why.
Legend parks and turns off the truck.