Chapter One
Slaughter
I stood in the nursery at the clubhouse, staring down at Aurora sleeping in her bassinet.
Three weeks old. So fucking small. Her tiny fists curled against her chest, her mouth making those little sucking motions babies did in their sleep.
She looked like Julie. Same nose. Same chin.
Same dark hair that would probably lighten to brown as she got older.
I couldn’t breathe.
My hands were shaking so badly I had to shove them in my pockets. Tears burned behind my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. Not here. Not where the brothers could see me falling apart worse than I already had.
I tried. God knows I had tried. But every time I looked at Aurora, all I saw was what she cost me. Every time she cried, I heard Julie’s heart monitor flatlining. Every time I held her, I felt Julie’s hand going limp in mine.
It wasn’t Aurora’s fault. I knew that. She was innocent. Perfect. Everything Julie had wanted.
But I couldn’t be her father. Not like this. Not when I was drowning in grief so deep I could barely function. Not when holding my own daughter made me want to put my fist through a wall and scream until my throat bled.
She deserved better than a broken man who couldn’t look at her without falling apart.
I reached down, my hand hovering over her head. I wanted to touch her. Wanted to be the father she needed. But I couldn’t. I just fucking couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, baby girl,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Then I turned and walked out.
Stella was in the hallway, leaning against the wall like she had been waiting for me. Digger’s old lady. My sister-in-law. The woman who had been helping with Aurora since we brought her home from the hospital.
“I need to go,” I said, my voice rough.
She didn’t ask where. Didn’t try to stop me. Just nodded. “I’ll take care of her.”
“I know.”
I walked past her, down the stairs, through the common room where a few brothers were drinking and playing pool. Nobody said anything. They all knew. Knew I was barely holding on. Knew I was about to run.
My bike was waiting outside. Black and chrome, the only thing in my life that made sense anymore. I threw my leg over the seat, fired up the engine, and felt the vibration rumble through my bones.
Then I rode.
The highway stretched out before me, endless and dark, disappearing into a horizon I couldn’t see.
The asphalt was a black ribbon cutting through the desert, illuminated only by my headlights slicing through the night.
I pushed the throttle harder, the engine roaring beneath me like a caged beast finally set free, the speedometer climbing past eighty, ninety, a hundred.
The numbers kept rising, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
The wind cut across my face like knives, cold and brutal, stinging my cheeks and forcing tears from the corners of my eyes. But I welcomed it. Needed it, even. Wanted it to hurt. Wanted something, anything, to feel worse than the gaping wound in my chest that threatened to swallow me whole.
The road blurred into streaks of white and yellow.
My eyes burned from the wind, from exhaustion, from everything I was trying not to think about.
I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t care.
The destination didn’t matter when you were running from yourself.
I just needed to move. Needed to keep the wheels spinning and the miles accumulating.
Needed to outrun the memories that chased me like demons, relentless and hungry, reaching out with phantom fingers to drag me back into the darkness I’d barely escaped.
But they were faster. They always were.
I could smell her. Julie’s shampoo, that jasmine, lavender shit she loved, the expensive kind from the salon on Fifth Street, carried on the wind as I passed fields of wildflowers stretching out endlessly on both sides of the highway.
Could hear her laugh in the rumble of the engine, that high, clear sound she would make when something caught her by surprise or when I had taken a turn too fast just to get a rise out of her.
Could feel her arms around my waist the way she used to hold on when we rode together, her fingers laced across my stomach, her cheek pressed against my back between my shoulder blades, her trust absolute and unquestioning even when I pushed the bike to its limits on these back roads we used to claim as our own.
“I love riding with you, Chap. Makes me feel like we could go anywhere. Do anything.”
We’d talked about taking a cross-country trip after the baby was born.
Just the three of us. Seeing the country, making memories together as a family.
She had been so excited about it, spending hours poring over maps and travel guides, planning routes and stops with the kind of meticulous care she brought to everything she loved.
She talked endlessly about teaching our child to love the open road the way we did, about showing her the majesty of the Grand Canyon at sunset, the endless wheat fields of Kansas, and the misty mountains of the Smokies.
She wanted our girl to feel the freedom of the highway, to understand that home wasn’t just four walls but anywhere we were together.
Now she was dead, and I was alone, and our daughter was back at the clubhouse with a woman who wasn’t her mother because I was too much of a coward to stay.
I couldn’t look at that tiny face without seeing her eyes, couldn’t hear those little cries without remembering the sound of her laughter.
So I ran. Like I always did when things got too hard, too real, too painful.
I pushed harder. Faster. The bike screamed beneath me.
The tires ate up the asphalt like they were starving for it, the world a dark blur on either side.
Every muscle in my body was tense, coiled tight as a spring.
My hands ached from gripping the handlebars so tight, my knuckles white even in the darkness.
The wind tore at my jacket, whipped against my helmet, but I barely felt it.
My face was wet—rain or tears, I didn’t know, didn’t care. Probably both.
The road stretched out endlessly ahead of me, empty and black, illuminated only by my headlights cutting through the night.
I leaned into a curve, felt the bike respond, the engine roaring its approval.
This was all I had left. Speed. Motion. The pure physical act of going somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was away.
A song came through my headphones. Garth Brooks. “To Make You Feel My Love.”
Our wedding song. The song I had sung to her as she died, holding her hand in that sterile hospital room while machines beeped their indifferent rhythm and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
I nearly lost control of the bike. I swerved hard.
The tires skidded across the wet pavement, and my heart slammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape.
I managed to straighten out, but I was shaking so badly I had to pull over.
I guided the bike to the shoulder, killed the engine, and just sat there in the sudden silence, breathing hard, my whole body trembling.
And there I sat, on some nameless highway in the middle of nowhere.
The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the ticking of the cooling motor and the whisper of wind through the dried grass along the roadside.
I ripped off my helmet, letting it fall to the cracked asphalt with a hollow thud.
Then I bent over the handlebars and let the sobs tear out of me, raw and ugly and broken.
The kind of crying that shakes your whole body, that leaves you gasping for air, that doesn’t care about dignity or pride or any of that bullshit.
I was looking for her. That was what this was.
This desperate, pointless ride into the night, mile after mile of blurred white lines and empty road stretching endlessly before me.
I was looking for Julie. Looking for some sign, some answer, some fucking something that would make this bearable.
Maybe a memory around the next curve. Maybe her ghost in the rearview mirror.
Maybe just exhaustion deep enough to finally let me sleep without seeing her face.
But there was nothing out here. Just me and the bike and the vast, indifferent darkness.
She was gone. Really, truly gone. And no amount of riding would bring her back.
No amount of speed or distance or running would change the fact that I had watched her die and couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it.
I held her hand as the light faded from her eyes.
I whispered things I should’ve said years ago, words that came too late, apologies that dissolved into the sterile hospital air like they’d never been spoken at all.
I was searching for peace I would never find.
Forgiveness I didn’t deserve. A way to go back and change everything—every harsh word, every missed dinner, every time I chose work over her, every moment I took for granted because I thought we had all the time in the world.
I thought we were invincible. I thought she’d always be there.
And all I had was this bike, this road, and a grief so heavy it was crushing me alive.
Mile after mile, the asphalt blurred beneath my tires.
The engine roared, but it couldn’t drown out her voice in my head.
The wind whipped at my face, but it couldn’t blow away the memories.
I rode until my body ached and my eyes burned, hoping exhaustion would bring some kind of numbness. It never did.
I didn’t know how long I sat there on the side of that empty highway, staring out at nothing.
It could’ve been minutes. It could’ve been hours.
Time didn’t seem to mean much to me anymore.
A dull ache settled in my chest, mingling with a strange sense of relief—like I’d finally let myself feel something after being numb for so long.
I wasn’t sure if I was running from something or toward it.
The silence pressed in on me, heavy and absolute, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
A couple of trucks had blown past me, their drivers probably wondering what kind of idiot parked a motorcycle in the middle of nowhere.
I didn’t care. Eventually, I put my helmet back on, fired up the engine, and kept riding.
The familiar rumble beneath me was the only thing that felt real.
The lights of a small town appeared on the horizon, maybe twenty miles down the road.
Some nowhere place I’d never visited and would probably never see again.
One of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it towns with a gas station, a diner, and maybe a bar if you were lucky.
I thought about stopping. Getting a room at whatever sad motel they had.
Drinking until I couldn’t remember my own name, or hers, or why I was out here in the first place.
But I didn’t. Instead, I just kept riding.
Because stopping meant thinking. Thinking meant feeling.
And feeling meant accepting that Julie was dead, and I had abandoned our daughter, and I was the worst kind of man—the kind who ran when things got hard.
The kind who chose his own pain over his responsibilities.
The kind who looked his little girl in the eye and walked away because he couldn’t handle the weight of his own grief.
So I rode. Into the night. Into the darkness.
Mile after mile, town after town, state line after state line.
The engine’s roar drowned out my thoughts during the day, and the cheap motel TVs did the same at night.
I was searching for something I knew I would never find.
Some kind of redemption, some kind of peace, some way to outrun the memory of Julie’s last breath and my sleeping daughter’s face.
But I couldn’t outrun myself. I could only ride until the tank ran dry.