Epilogue #3
But something kept him there. Something in the way she moved—purposeful, competent, alone. Something that reminded him of the Marines he'd made, the ones who didn't need anyone telling them what to do because they'd already figured it out.
The kitchen light flickered. Jolene's shadow paused at the window, and for a moment Duke could swear she was looking right at him. Then she moved away, back to whatever prep work started this early, and the spell broke.
He started his engine.
The ride back to the compound took twenty minutes, and by the time he rolled through the gates, the eastern sky had begun to gray. Brothers on night watch nodded as he passed—Marksman from his perch by the armory, a prospect whose name Duke hadn't bothered to learn yet walking the perimeter.
Duke parked in his spot by the clubhouse, killed the engine, and sat in the sudden stillness.
His body wanted sleep. His mind had other plans, already running through tomorrow's church agenda, the intel Recon had been gathering on something brewing in Port Royal, the endless maintenance of keeping this club running to standards that would make Parris Island proud.
He dismounted and headed for the clubhouse door. On the wall beside it, painted in yellow that glowed even in the pre-dawn gray, a set of footprints waited. Same color as the ones on the depot, the ones that marked where transformation began.
Duke touched them as he passed. Old habit. Old faith.
Inside, the bar sat dim and silent, the smell of leather and gun oil and motor oil wrapping around him like a homecoming. He grabbed a bottle of bourbon from behind the bar—the good stuff, the stuff they didn't serve during regular hours—and poured two fingers into a glass.
The first sip burned going down.
The second sip brought the faces. It always did. Three thousand recruits he'd made. Forty-seven Marines from his platoons who hadn't made it home. One recruit who'd died during training and become the excuse the Corps needed to end everything Duke had built.
He didn't fight the faces anymore. Just let them come, let them file past like a formation inspection, let himself remember every name and every failure and every success.
The Crucible Brotherhood existed because he couldn't save them all. But he could damn well protect the ones who made it home.
Duke finished his bourbon as the sun cracked the horizon, painting the clubhouse windows gold. In a few hours, his brothers would wake, church would convene, and whatever was brewing in Port Royal would demand his attention.
But right now, in the calm before the storm, he let himself think about a diner with its lights on at two AM and a woman who didn't look away from the patches.
Then he put the glass down, headed for his room, and grabbed what sleep he could before the world started demanding things again.
It always did.
Chapter 2
Jolene Tate saw the damage before she'd even killed her headlights.
Glass scattered across the parking lot like a thousand tiny accusations, catching the first gray light of dawn and throwing it back at her in jagged fragments.
Her front window—the one she'd replaced two years ago with money she didn't have because the old one had a crack that let in mosquitoes—lay in pieces across the concrete.
Her hands shook on the steering wheel. Ten seconds. She gave herself ten seconds to feel it—the fear, the violation, the white-hot fury that someone had touched what was hers. Then she shut it down, grabbed her keys, and got out of the truck.
The brick sat in the middle of the dining room floor surrounded by a halo of shattered glass. A note was rubber-banded to it, the handwriting blocky and deliberate.
72 hours. Next payment. Or next time it won't be the window.
Jolene read it twice. Then she folded it carefully, slipped it into her apron pocket, and went to get the broom.
The breakfast rush didn't care about her problems. It never had.
Six years of eighteen-hour days had taught her that the grill needed to be hot by five regardless of what her life looked like, that biscuit dough didn't give a damn about threatening notes, that the young Marine wives who came in broke and scared deserved hot coffee and a smile even when Jolene wanted to scream.
So she swept. Glass into the dustpan, dustpan into the trash, repeat until the floor was clear enough to walk on.
The plywood she kept in the storage shed—left over from hurricane season two years back—fit the window frame well enough.
She'd need real glass eventually, but eventually was a problem for a woman who wasn't staring at a note that promised worse.
By the time Marcus rolled in at 4:45, she had coffee brewing and bacon on the flattop.
Her morning cook stopped three steps inside the door, eyes fixed on the plywood where glass should be.
He was twenty-three, fresh out of the Corps after four years, trying to build something civilian while his wife finished nursing school.
Good hands. Reliable. The kind of kid who showed up early and stayed late without being asked.
"Miss Jolene—"
"Don't." She didn't turn from the grill. "I already know what you're going to say."
"I can't." His voice cracked on it. "They came to my apartment last night. Two of them. Told me what happens to people who work for women who don't pay their debts."
Now she turned. Marcus stood with his shoulders hunched, hands shoved in his pockets, looking everywhere but at her face. She'd seen that posture before—on the young wives who came in with bruises they wouldn't explain, on the kids who flinched when voices got loud.
"They threaten Destiny?"
He nodded, jaw tight. "Said they knew her schedule at the hospital. Said they knew which parking garage she uses."
Jolene's fingers curled into fists at her sides.
She wanted to tell him to stay, that she'd protect him, that whoever these men were couldn't touch anyone under her roof.
But she looked at this boy—because that's what he was, a boy playing at being a man the way the Corps had taught him—and she couldn't make promises she might not be able to keep.
"Go home to your wife."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Miss Jolene—"
"Don't be sorry. Be safe." She crossed to him, pressed two hundred dollars into his palm before he could protest. "That's for this week. You earned it. Now go."
Marcus left without looking back. The door swung shut behind him, and Jolene stood alone in her kitchen with bacon starting to smoke and a debt she didn't understand clawing at the edges of everything she'd built.
She saved the bacon. Muscle memory. Six years of working this grill meant her hands knew what to do even when her brain was screaming.
The first customers arrived at 5:02—a table of four Marines in civvies, probably coming off night shift at the depot. She served them coffee and menus with steady hands and a smile that felt like broken glass in her cheeks. They didn't notice the plywood. Or if they did, they didn't ask.
By 6:30, the breakfast rush was in full swing.
Jolene worked the grill alone, calling orders to Tammy—her only waitress on weekday mornings—and trying not to think about how she was going to cover the lunch shift without Marcus.
The regulars flowed in and out: retirees who'd been eating here since her aunt's day, young families stretching military paychecks, the occasional trucker who'd heard the biscuits were worth the detour.
She was flipping eggs when the bell over the door chimed and Sarah Reeves slid onto her usual stool at the counter.
Jolene's heart clenched. Sarah was twenty-two, married eight months to a Lance Corporal currently deployed to Okinawa, and pregnant enough to be showing.
She came in every Tuesday and Thursday for breakfast because her apartment was lonely and Jolene's coffee was strong enough to make her feel human.
"Morning, Miss Jolene." Sarah's smile was tired but real. "The usual, please."
"Coming right up, honey." Jolene poured coffee, set out cream and sugar, and tried to keep her face neutral. Normal. Nothing to see here.
But Sarah's eyes drifted to the plywood, and her smile faltered. "Is everything okay?"
The lie came easy. They always did. "Just some kids with too much time and not enough sense. You know how it is near the end of summer—teenagers get bored, do stupid things. Already called the sheriff, they're looking into it."
She hadn't called the sheriff. Wouldn't call the sheriff. Whatever this was, whoever these people were, they weren't the kind of problem that got solved by filing a report and waiting for a deputy who had better things to do.
Sarah nodded, accepting the explanation, and Jolene turned back to the grill before her expression could betray her.
The morning crawled. Without Marcus, she was running herself ragged—grill, register, bussing tables when Tammy fell behind.
By the time the breakfast crowd thinned and the lunch prep started, her shoulders burned and her feet throbbed and the note in her apron pocket felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
She was chopping onions when her phone rang.
The number was local but unfamiliar. She almost didn't answer—telemarketers, probably, or someone trying to sell her a new credit card. But something made her thumb the screen, made her press the phone to her ear.
"Tate's Diner, this is Jolene."
"Miss Tate." The voice was smooth, professional, the kind of voice that sold timeshares and foreclosed on widows. "My name is Dale Fitch. I'm calling on behalf of Vann Recovery Services regarding an outstanding debt attached to your property."
Jolene's hand tightened on the knife. "I don't have any outstanding debts."
"I'm afraid you do. Your aunt, Margaret Tate, took out a loan against the diner property approximately three years ago. Medical expenses, I believe. Unfortunately, she passed before the debt could be resolved, and as the current owner, you've inherited the obligation."