Spade (Royal Harlots MC: Las Vegas, Nevada Chapte #2)

Chapter 1

Spade

The room was windowless, with no escape.

The air had a sourceless chill, just like my childhood.

The overhead lights were set a notch too high, which meant every surface—walls, table, my boots—threw hard-edged shadows.

There was no clock on the wall, just the soft tick of the notepad whenever the therapist flipped a page.

On the low table between us, a ceramic dish in the shape of a lotus released a whisper of lavender that never reached the corners.

I sat with my spine straight and my boots flat on the floor.

My jacket was draped over one arm of the chair, and the sleeve hung down like an empty limb.

I pressed my hands onto my thighs, fingers splayed, the way they told you in interviews to look “grounded.” The chair wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was too soft, which made sitting at attention into a test of muscle endurance. I passed the test.

The therapist asked about my father. She asked like it was an innocuous box to check—History of Substance Abuse, Y/N?—but she already knew. They always did. I gave her the same answer I gave the first three: “He drank. He yelled. Sometimes he missed.”

She blinked once, quick, then looked at her notes, not at me. “What do you remember most about him?”

I picked a detail. “The sound his boots made in the hallway. He walked heavily on the heel and dragged the toe. If he was drinking, the sound got slower.”

She waited, pen hovering over the page like she was drawing blood with it. When I didn’t say more, she filled the silence with, “How did that make you feel?”

I let the quiet sit. She thought I was refusing, but really I was calibrating. “It made me plan,” I said. “I knew how much time I had before he got to the door.”

She nodded again, and I realized she did this every time she wanted to prompt a follow-up but didn’t want to ask outright. I counted her nods. She was at five.

She tried to redirect. “What about your mother?”

I smiled with my lips only. “She was there. She wasn’t.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“Some nights she locked herself in the bathroom. Other nights she went out and didn’t come back until morning.

” I didn’t tell her about the time Mom had come home missing a shoe and with the back of her shirt torn.

I didn’t tell her what she smelled like.

I didn’t tell her how, once, she sat at the edge of my bed and stroked my hair, then fell asleep mid-sentence, her hand tangled and deadweight.

I didn’t tell her because she didn’t ask the right question.

The therapist let the silence work. I respected that.

She wore flats and tailored slacks, always with a soft sweater, always in muted colors.

Today’s was gray, with a pill at the elbow from being laundered too many times.

She kept her hair short and neat, a no-nonsense cut, and wore a ring on her left hand even though she never mentioned a partner.

Everything about her was designed to be unthreatening, and I found that more suspicious than the alternative.

“Did you have any siblings?” she asked.

My body went still in a way that wasn’t composure. It was the kind of pause you did when you walked into a room and saw something wrong, but hadn’t figured out what yet. “Yes.”

“How old were they?”

“She was ten. I was thirteen.”

She wrote that down, the numbers hanging in the air like ages on a tombstone.

“Tell me about her.”

“She was small. She slept curled up, always. When she was little, I used to make a circle with my arms, and she would fit inside it.” My voice cracked once, so I put it back into place. “She had a gap in her teeth and chewed her hair. She was scared of the dark, even when we were older.”

“Did you feel responsible for her?”

I stopped looking at her and stared at the dish of lavender. “She was my sister. That’s not a feeling, that’s a fact.”

“Did you ever try to protect her from your father?”

The air changed. The question was routine, the kind you’d hear on a daytime talk show, but it dropped the temperature in the room by a full degree. “Yes.” The word came out flat.

She waited.

“I kept her in my room some nights. I’d block the door with a chair.” I looked down at my hands, remembering the imprint of the chair back against my palms. “It didn’t always work.”

“Did something happen to her?”

I closed my fists on my thighs and felt my knuckles press through the denim. “Not the way you’re asking.”

The therapist made a noise, halfway between a sigh and a hum. “Not the way I’m asking?”

“She’s not dead. She got out.” My mouth was dry, and I could feel my pulse in my teeth. “She moved away after high school. Changed her name. Last I heard, she was living up in Oregon.”

“Do you talk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I thought about the last phone call. The sound of her voice was so bright, so careful not to let any of our history into it. “She wants to be someone else. She doesn’t want this following her.”

“Does it follow you?” the therapist asked.

I looked at her then, really looked. Her eyes were plain brown, no flecks, but there were shadows underneath, like she’d seen a lot of sleepless nights. “Not unless I let it.”

She wrote something on her pad, then set the pen down with a deliberate little click. “It’s okay to be angry about it.”

I barked a laugh, short and not kind. “I’m not angry. That would mean I still cared.”

Her eyebrows came together for the briefest second, like she’d spotted a lie but wasn’t sure how to call it out.

She tried a different angle. “You said earlier that you ‘plan’ when you hear his boots. Is that a habit you still have?”

I blinked. The air felt thicker. “I always have a plan. That’s not trauma. That’s common sense.”

Her voice was gentle, but she pressed: “How does that play out in your current life?”

I shrugged, even though it was the wrong move for the chair. “I make sure no one can get the drop on me. I walk with my keys between my fingers. I memorize the exits. If I don’t like the feeling in a place, I leave.”

She nodded, slow. “You’re the Sergeant at Arms for the Royal Harlots, correct?”

I didn’t answer. She already knew the answer.

“Does the club give you what your family didn’t?”

I thought about the clubhouse, the red-lit bar, the roar of the bikes in the lot, the way the women looked at each other—sometimes like enemies, more often like packmates. “The club is family.” The words felt like code, and I meant them that way.

“Do you trust them?”

That was a trick question. I weighed it, then said, “I trust them to be who they are.”

She left that alone. “Do you feel safe with them?”

I considered the last week: someone slashing the tires of the club van, the new girl catching a fist to the mouth for mouthing off, a member’s daughter getting hauled in by the cops again. “Safe’s not the word I’d use.”

“What word would you use?”

I thought for a long moment, then said, “Predictable.”

That was the thing about MC life, the thing no one on the outside ever got. It wasn’t about chaos or freedom or whatever the documentaries thought; it was about knowing what to expect and who to expect it from. That was the real comfort.

The therapist let the lavender haze settle. Then she said, “Earlier, you said your sister wanted to escape your family’s shadow. Do you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. I stared at the dish. At the box of tissues I’d never touched, though the therapist sometimes nudged it closer to my side of the table. I could feel something thick and mean behind my ribs, pressing up.

I flexed my hands, opening and closing them. “I don’t think about it.”

“You don’t think about escape?”

“No. I’m not in a cage.”

“Are you sure?”

That was a sharper question than she usually allowed herself. I respected it, so I didn’t lie.

“I built my own cage. I’m the only one with the key.”

She looked at me, really looked, and for a second I thought she might say something honest. Instead, she reached for her pen and said, “That’s all the time we have for today, but I’d like to see you again next week.”

The closing script. I nodded, picked up my jacket, and stood. I could feel the imprint of my palms on my thighs, a ghost touch that would last all the way to the parking lot.

Just as I reached the door, she said my name. Soft, careful. “Spade.”

I stopped, half-turned.

“It’s okay to use the tissues.”

I smiled. “Not my style.”

Outside the room, the air felt heavier, thicker. The scent of lavender still clung to my clothes, and I hated that it did.

I walked to the elevator, ran my fingers over the frayed edge of my jacket, and tried to forget what it felt like to fit my arms around something small and fragile and still lose it anyway.

The elevator opened, I stepped on, and the doors glided shut with the kind of finality that made my neck tense.

The walls inside were stainless steel and polished, but not enough to hide a life’s worth of shoe-scuffs and fingerprints.

My own reflection was a hard line running vertical, cut in two by the seam of the doors.

The overheads cast a strip of hospital white that buzzed even when you told yourself it was silent.

A track of elevator muzak—someone’s limp take on a chart hit, the edges rounded until it meant nothing—filtered through the tinny speakers overhead. I pressed L for lobby and watched the red LED over the doors glow, dull and accusing.

I didn’t notice him at first. I was busy tracking my own pulse—up, but not over. The air in elevators always smelled faintly of metal and old rubber, but this one had a halo of chemical sweetness that didn’t belong. I found him in the reflection first, a distortion at the edge of my periphery.