Chapter 8
SABER
Shelby is asleep on my chest, one hand curled against my collarbone, her brown hair fanned across my skin. The room is bright with the afternoon sun. Her breathing is deep and even, and I have been lying here for twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing.
My phone is on the nightstand. The message from earlier this morning still bothers me. I reach over her, careful not to shift the mattress, and tilt the screen.
I put the phone down. Shelby doesn’t stir. Her fingers twitch against my chest, and her lips part on an exhale. I want to stay in this bed until the desert swallows the highway and nobody can find us.
I can’t.
I slide out from under her. She rolls into the warm spot I left, presses her face into my pillow, and doesn’t wake up. I pull on jeans, a shirt, and my cut, and I stand at the dresser for a minute, looking at her.
Meeting with Nitro is something that can’t wait. But before I leave, I have something for Shelby.
The box is in my saddlebag. I bought it the morning after she told me she loves to draw. I’ve kept it there, waiting for a moment that didn’t come. Now the moment is her sleeping in my bed after I made her come three times.
I go downstairs, grab the box from the bag by the front door, and come back. Charcoal pencils. A set of blending stumps. Two sketchbooks. One small enough to carry, and one large enough to spread out on a table. I set them on the nightstand next to her phone.
No note. She’ll know.
I close the door quietly and head for Church.
Razor is already at the table with twenty more of my brothers. I take my seat at the head and don’t waste time.
“What did you find?”
Razor slides his phone across the table.
“Diner surveillance. I pulled the last two weeks of footage from the owner.” He taps the screen.
“Bull and Edge show up three times before that night. Different days, different hours. They sit in the lot, watch the building, and leave. They were mapping your routine. When you show up, how long you stay, and who rides with you.”
“They’re trying to encroach on our territory,” Duke says.
“Routes, habits, manpower.” Razor looks at me. “This was never about Shelby. She got caught in it, because you were there every morning.”
Nitro’s been at this longer than I thought. And Shelby walked into the middle of it, because I couldn’t stay away.
“The footage from that night is clean,” Razor continues. “Bull draws first. Gun comes up. Shelby hits him, and the gun goes off. Edge drops from Bull’s own bullet. She didn’t kill anyone. Bull did.”
“Anyone else in the lot?”
“Nothing on the cameras inside or out.” Razor pockets his phone. “But Joker never got the plates on that car peeling east. My guess is that’s how the Warriors know she was there. Their guy was too far out to see details. He saw the waitress standing there and Saber putting her on his bike.”
I look around the table. Every man in this room. My eyes land on the man at the far end—the one who stood up in my common room last night and called me weak.
He meets my gaze. Then he speaks.
“I was out of line.” There’s no groveling. “She protected you. We protect her. That’s the end of it.”
I hold his eyes for two beats. Nod. Move on.
“Some of you already heard what I told Deacon at the county line. I’m making it official. Shelby is mine—my Old Lady. Every man in this club treats her with the respect that comes with that title.” I stand. “I’m meeting Nitro today. Razor and Crash are with me. Duke, you’re on the clubhouse.”
The truck stop is a cracked concrete lot with two dead gas pumps and a boarded-up convenience store. Halfway between Ash Valley and Crimson Warriors territory. Nobody’s ground.
Deacon is there. So is Nitro.
Nitro is leaning against his bike.
He’s in his mid-fifties, wiry, with a silver goatee and flat, dead eyes that have seen the inside of two federal prisons. Deacon is behind him, standing by his own bike. The bruise on Deacon’s forehead from where I pressed the Glock is a fading yellow-green.
Razor and Crash stay on their bikes thirty feet back. Close enough.
I walk up to Nitro and don’t extend my hand.
“Your guys were scoping the diner in my territory.” No preamble. “Mapping my routine. Your man pulled a gun on me in my own territory and shot his own guy.” I pull out my phone and text him the surveillance link. “Watch it.”
Nitro pulls out his phone. The video plays. His face doesn’t change, but his nostrils flare. He pockets the phone.
“Bull acted outside my authority,” Nitro says. “So did Edge. I didn’t send them there armed, and I didn’t authorize them to draw on you.”
“But you sent them.”
Nitro doesn’t confirm it. Doesn’t deny it. His eyes are flat and patient, and he gives me nothing.
That tells me everything. He’s mapping our routes. Scoping our territory. Testing how far he can push before we push back. Bull and Edge were the first move in a longer game, and the fact that they fucked it up doesn’t change what Nitro was after.
I don’t say any of that. He knows I know.
“Here’s how this works,” I say. “Bull goes back to you today. Your dead man is already buried. We’re done. For now. But you started this, Nitro. And if you continue, we’ll be the ones finishing it.”
Nitro tilts his chin. “And the woman?”
“Shelby is mine.” I step close enough that he has to look up.
“If she gets hurt by your brothers, by someone connected to Crimson Warriors, or by a fucking stray bullet that traces back to your zip code, I won’t call a meeting.
I won’t send a message. I will come for you, and it will be the last thing either of us does. ”
Nitro holds my eyes. He’s not afraid. Men like Nitro burned the fear out of themselves a long time ago. But he’s calculating, and right now the math doesn’t add up to war.
“Truce,” he says. “For now.”
“For now.”
He gets on his bike. Deacon follows. The engines turn over, and they pull out of the lot.
Crash rides up beside me. “You believe him?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But he needs time to regroup.”
I nod, agreeing. “Have Joker dump Bull at the county line. Blindfolded. He can walk back to his territory.”
We ride back to the clubhouse.
Shelby is in the common room.
Sitting at the table. Not standing. Not pressed against a wall, trying to stay hidden. She’s sitting with the sketchbook open and a charcoal pencil in her right hand, and she’s drawing Duke.
Duke is at his usual spot with his cards, and he’s pretending not to notice, but his chin is angled a fraction higher than normal. He’s posing. The bastard.
Shelby’s hand moves in quick, confident strokes. She’s absorbed in it. Her shoulders are open, her spine is straight, and she’s taking up space at that table like she belongs there.
She looks up. Her eyes land on me, and her whole face opens. “You bought me art supplies.”
“You said you draw.”
She looks down at the sketchbook and smiles. A real one. “Thank you.”
She presses her fingers to the page, but I don’t need her gratitude, because what she’s doing with the gift is better than any words.
I pour two cups of coffee and sit across from her, handing her a cup.
“Nitro’s handled. The Warriors aren’t coming for you.”
She sets the pencil down. “Is it over?”
“For now.” I’m not going to lie to her. “It’s enough.”
She wraps both hands around the mug and nods. I can see her processing—not the danger, but what comes next. The practical questions she’s been carrying since the night I put her on my bike.
I go first.
“Your apartment. I paid the rent for the next three months.”
Her head comes up fast. “Why?”
“You haven’t worked. I didn’t want you to lose your home. If you want to go back to it, the key is where you left it.” I don’t look away. “But I’d rather you come to the ranch to live with me.”
“I don’t want to depend on a man,” she says. “Not again.”
There it is. The wall. I can see it go up behind her eyes. A man paying her rent. A man telling her where to live. Kyle’s playbook with a different cover.
“I know.”
“Saber, I mean it. I need to be able to take care of myself if I ever need to.”
She’s not wrong. And I’m not Kyle. So I’ll prove it the only way that counts.
“Bank account.” I set my coffee down. “Your name. Your money. I’ll put in enough to cover twelve months of whatever you need, and I won’t touch it. No joint access. No monitoring. You spend it, save it, or light it on fire. I don’t give a fuck what you do with it. I don’t get a say.”
She’s quiet. Her thumb traces the rim of the mug.
“I’ll owe you.”
“You won’t.”
“That’s not how money works.”
“You want to work, work. But not because you have to.” I lean forward. “What do you actually want to do?”
She looks at the sketchbook. At the charcoal smudges on her fingertips. Then back at me.
“Marketing.” It comes out like a confession. “I wanted to go to college. Study marketing, maybe design. I was eighteen when I moved in with Kyle, and he told me I didn’t need school because he’d take care of everything.” She swallows. “So, I didn’t go.”
Six years. Six years that piece of shit stole from her.
“Then go,” I say. “I’ll cover it. Tuition, books, whatever you need. You get the degree. You build something that’s yours. And if you wake up one morning and decide you don’t want the ranch, or the club, or me—you’ve got the education to walk out and never look back.”
Her eyes are wet. She blinks it away, but I caught it.
“Why would you give me the ability to leave you?”
“I don’t want you here because you’re stuck. I want you here because you chose it.”
She stares at me for a long time. The common room is empty. Duke slipped out at some point, cards and all, and I didn’t notice.
“I want to go to school.” Quiet. Like saying it out loud might break it.
“Then it’s done.”
She picks up the charcoal pencil. Rolls it between her fingers. “Your ranch. Is there room for me?”
“The whole house is yours.”
Then her full, real, devastating smile makes my chest ache.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll come to the ranch.”
I nod. Pick up my coffee. Drink it.
I’ll have prospects at her apartment within the hour to get her things.