Chapter 7
The eastern Montana badlands rise up around me like God's graveyard—ancient spires of eroded sandstone carved by wind and time into shapes that don't make sense. Red rock striations glow silver under the moon. Deep gullies cut between formations like open wounds in the earth's skin.
This land doesn't forgive.
Doesn't offer second chances or soft places to land.
It just is. Brutal, and honest, and unashamed of what it's become.
I get that. Understand it in my bones.
The bike eats up highway, then dirt road, then the unmarked two-track that leads to the compound. Dust plumes behind me in the headlight's wash. The air tastes like sage, and diesel, and something older—minerals, maybe. Stone ground down to powder over millennia.
Out here, you see what everything becomes eventually.
Dust, and silence, and wind that never stops.
The gate appears ahead, chain-link and razor wire catching moonlight. Two prospects lean against the guard shack, cigarettes glowing orange in the dark.
I slow. Stop.
Neither one meets my eyes.
Dusty shifts his weight. Crow stares at his boots like they're suddenly fascinating.
The gate opens. No words exchanged. No acknowledgment.
Just the mechanical grind of the motor pulling it aside.
I ride through.
Behind me, it closes with a metallic clang that sounds too much like a cell door.
How long?
The question sits in my chest like a stone.
How long has Brick been running this operation for the Feds?
Two years of nomads who aren't nomads. Two years of brothers voting on club business with federal prosecutors pulling their strings from the shadows.
Two years of lies, stacked on lies until the whole structure's rotten.
And how many men here hate it? How many are as pissed as I am about bein' used like pawns in somebody else's game?
I park the bike in its usual spot. Kill the engine.
The silence that follows feels heavy. Weighted with all the questions I can't ask and all the answers I already know.
However many men are angry, it's not enough.
Not enough to stand with me tomorrow when Brick calls church and demands his twenty-five-thousand-dollar blood price.
Not enough to vote against a president who's already proven he'll sell out anyone to protect his own skin.
Not enough to matter.
I pull off my helmet. Hang it on the handlebar.
The clubhouse squats ahead—cinderblock and corrugated steel, lights bleeding through dirty windows. Normally at this hour, there'd be noise. Music. Voices. The low rumble of brothers who can't sleep congregating in the bar to drink away whatever demons chase them.
Tonight—nothing.
Just the wind moving through the compound like a ghost looking for somewhere to haunt.
I push through the front door.
The bar's empty.
Completely empty.
No Diesel nursing a beer. No Chains sketching at a corner table. No prospects cleaning up or hanging around hoping to catch scraps of conversation that might teach them how to survive here.
Just empty tables. Stale air. The neon beer signs buzzing their lonely electric prayers into the dark.
In all my years at Badlands—prospect days, prison, coming home, getting patched—I've never seen this room empty.
Not once.
Paranoia crawls up my spine like something with too many legs.
Are they having a vote without me?
The thought hits sharp and cold. A secret church session where they decide my fate before I even walk through the door tomorrow.
I turn. Head back outside. Cross the compound toward the church building—the original structure, older than everything else here, where real club business gets handled.
The door's locked. No sound, no clues, just nothing.
I step back. Light a cigarette with hands that want to shake but won't let themselves.
Maybe everyone's asleep. Maybe it's late enough that even the insomniacs and addicts have given up and crawled into beds, or couches, or wherever the fuck they pass out.
Or maybe they're avoiding me.
Maybe I'm already dead, and they just haven't figured out how to tell me yet.
"Fuck it," I mutter to the empty compound.
I head for the bunkhouse. Climb the exterior stairs to the second floor. The hallway's dark except for one flickering overhead light that's been dying for six months. Nobody's fixed it. Nobody's going to.
Room 3. I open the door. Step inside. Close it behind me.
The space greets me the same way it always does—bare, and spartan, and deliberately free of anythin' that might make it feel like home.
Steel bed frame. Thin mattress. Gun rack bolted to the wall. Duffel bag in the corner containing everything I own that matters.
I strip off my cut. Hang it carefully on the hook by the door.
The brand underneath aches. Always aches now, even weeks after the infection. Scar tissue pulling wrong. Shape distorted where they cut away too much dead flesh trying to save my life.
I peel off my shirt. The B is barely recognizable. Just a mess of scars that burn when I move. Then the jeans. Kick them into the corner.
The shower’s cramped, but it's better than nothin'. I turn the water on. Step under the spray before it's even warm. The cold water hits like a baptism.
I stand there. Let it pour over my head. Down my back. Washing away road dust, and Savannah's perfume, and the residue of every choice I've made that led me here.
If I could go back—
The thought rises unbidden.
If I could start over. Be fourteen again. Before Eleanor really got to me. Before she haunted my mind with truths and consequences. Before the club. Before I convinced myself that power and brotherhood were the only things worth having.
Would I do it different?
I press my forehead against the tile.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would.
I'd take Savannah's hand that first day in the silo and tell her the truth. That I already loved her. That I'd always love her. That whatever happened, she was the only good thing I'd ever touch.
I'd keep my distance from Badlands. From Brick's offers, and Diesel's knowing looks, and the magnetic pull of belonging to something bigger than myself.
I'd work honest jobs. Save money. Buy that farmhouse she imagines when she's riding me slow and looking at me like I'm the answer to prayers she didn't know she was saying.
At the very least, I'd make myself something she could take home. A man who wouldn't embarrass her. I'd be the man she deserves, instead of the demon she settled for.
But I can't go back.
Can't undo the choices that carved me into this shape.
Can only stand here under cold water and wish I was someone else.
The water turns warm. Then hot. I scrub myself clean with bar soap that smells like nothing. Rinse. Turn off the spray and dry off with a towel that's rough from too many industrial washings. Then I pull on the only clean sweats I've got left—gray, worn soft, hanging low on my hips.
Back in the main room, I dig through my jeans pocket until I find the pack of cigarettes. Shake one loose. Light it up and lie down on the bed.
Then… I stare at the ceiling.
I smoke.
Ash into the empty beer can on the nightstand.
Try to sleep.
Can't.
Tomorrow changes everything.
One way or another, when dawn church convenes, and Brick calls my name, and asks if I've got his money—
Which I don't, so…
So what. What's gonna happen tomorrow? I haven't really let myself think about it, but obviously, the fine is a way to get me to cave. To accept the rats and work for them. Spy, or whatever the fuck it is they're doing.
That's how fines work. You pay, one way or the other. If a brother owes a fine and misses his deadline, depending on the amount, he might get roughed up a bit or he might get put in the ground.
Twenty-five grand is an obscene amount of money to owe.
I roll over. Try to find a position that doesn't make the brand ache. My elbow hits something.
I freeze, my hand closing around something hard and lumpy beneath the pillow—something that definitely wasn't there the last time I was in this bed.
"What the fuck…" My voice comes out rough, edged with exhaustion and suspicion. It better not be a goddamn mouse that crawled under there to die, or I swear to Christ I'll burn this whole bed.
I sit up fully, joints protesting the movement, and reach back under the pillow with more purpose this time. My fingers find fabric and I pull it out into the dim light filtering through the blinds.
A drawstring sack. Canvas. Worn smooth at the edges like it's been used before, handled plenty. And heavy.
My pulse kicks up a notch as I work the drawstring loose with fingers that suddenly don't feel quite steady. The mouth of the sack opens, and I tilt it toward the weak light coming from the security lights outside.
Stacks of twenties. Banded tight with those little paper wraps.
I dump the whole thing onto the mattress in front of me, watching the stacks tumble and scatter across the rumpled sheets. My hands move automatically, separating them, lining them up, fingers rifling through the edges to count. My brain's already doing the math before I'm halfway through.
Already know what the total's gonna be before I finish the last stack.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
Exactly.
I count it again just to be sure. Separate the stacks. Hundreds mixed in with the twenties to make the math work.
$25,000.
My fine. My blood price. My Get-Out-of-Consequences-Free card.
There's a note in the bottom of the sack.
I unfold it.
Typed. Block letters. Nothing handwritten. Nothing that could be traced back to whoever put this here.
Three words:
GOT YOU TOMORROW.
I stare at it.
Read it again.
Got you tomorrow.
Could mean: I've got your back. I'm covering you. You're safe because someone paid your debt.
Could mean: I've got you trapped. You owe me now. This isn't freedom—it's a different kind of leash.
Could mean: I've got plans for you. This money buys your life, but it also buys your loyalty. And you'll pay it back in ways you won't see coming until it's too late.
Could mean: I've got faith in you. Fight tomorrow. Survive tomorrow. This is just the first move in a longer game.
Could mean: I've got nothing to lose. If you go down, I go down. So here's a lifeline. Use it or don't—but know that someone's willing to burn their own resources to keep you breathing.
I turn the note over.
Nothing on the back.
No signature. No clue.
Just those three words that could be salvation or damnation depending on who left them.
Diesel?
He said he had my back. But twenty-five grand is serious money. More than most brothers keep liquid. More than you hand over without expecting something in return.
Savannah?
She's got access to that kind of cash. But she doesn't know about the fine. I didn't tell her. Didn't want to drag her into club business.
Brick?
Fuck, what if this is a test? What if he wants to see if I'll take the money or refuse it on principle? What if paying the fine with mystery cash just digs me deeper into whatever hole he's already planning?
Someone else entirely?
A brother I don't know as well. Someone who sees the same rot I see and wants an ally when the reckoning comes.
Or a Fed wearing a cut, buying my cooperation with cash that disappeared from an evidence locker without anyone noticing.
I pick up one of the stacks. Flip through the bills.
All real. All used enough to have been in circulation. Nothing sequential. Nothing that screams trap.
Just money.
Twenty-five thousand reasons to shut up, and show up tomorrow, and hand Brick exactly what he asked for.
I set it down. Light another cigarette.
The note stares at me from the mattress.
Got you tomorrow.
Promise or threat.
Salvation or sentence.
I won't know until tomorrow which one it is.
I lie back down. Money scattered around me like some fucked-up parody of wealth.
Smoke rises toward the ceiling. It curls in the air currents, a draft from the broken window I never fixed.
Outside, the compound's still silent.
No brothers drinking. No music. No voices raised in argument or laughter.
Just wind. Just distance. Just the space between breaths where everything waits.
I don't sleep.
Can't sleep.
Just lie there watching the ceiling while the hours drain away.
Thinking about Savannah's poem. About her certainty. About the way she looked at me in the silo like I was still worth saving despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Thinking about Mercy at Rimrock. Safe. Happy. Finally getting the childhood she deserves.
Thinking about Diesel's warning. About Brick's betrayal. About forty-seven men who sold their souls in different increments to different devils.
Thinking about the money scattered on my bed and the note that won't tell me who to trust.
The only thing I know is that when the sun clears the horizon, I'll walk into church with twenty-five thousand dollars I didn't earn.
And then... I'll find out exactly what it costs me.