Chapter 15
Bethany was laughing at something Breaker said—genuinely laughing, the kind that came from her belly and made her eyes water—when her phone buzzed on the bar. She glanced at the screen, saw Mickey's name, and felt the first cold finger of dread trace down her spine.
Mickey never called. Mickey barely knew how to use his phone.
"Hello?"
"Bethany." His voice was wrong. Shaky, thick with something that sounded like tears. "Bethany, you gotta—I'm sorry, honey. I'm so goddamn sorry."
"Mickey, what's wrong? What happened?"
"The bar." A sob cracked through the line. "They burned it, Bethany. The whole thing. Fire department's here but there's nothing—it's just gone."
The world stopped.
She heard the words, understood them intellectually, but they didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. The Rusty Hook was her life, her future, six years of sacrifice made solid. It couldn't just be gone.
"What do you mean, gone?" Her voice came out strange, distant. "Mickey, what do you mean?"
"I was driving by, saw the flames from the highway. By the time anyone got here..." He broke off, coughing. "There's nothing left. The roof collapsed. It's all just... ash."
The phone slipped from her fingers.
She didn't hear it hit the floor. Didn't hear Breaker's concerned voice asking what was wrong. Didn't hear anything except a high, keening sound that seemed to be coming from somewhere far away.
It took her a moment to realize the sound was coming from her.
Trawler found her on the floor.
She didn't remember falling, didn't remember the moments between Mickey's words and this—sitting with her back against the bar, knees drawn up, that awful sound still tearing from her throat.
Then he was there, massive and warm, pulling her into his lap and wrapping himself around her like he could shield her from the truth.
"Bethany. Bethany. Talk to me."
"The bar." The words scraped out like broken glass. "They burned my bar."
His whole body went rigid. She felt it—the instant transformation from concern to rage, the coiling of violence beneath his skin.
"When?"
"Mickey just called. Fire department's there but it's—" Her voice cracked. "It's gone. Everything. All of it."
"Jessup."
The name was a curse, a promise, a declaration of war. Trawler's arms tightened around her, and she could feel the fury radiating off him in waves.
"I'm going to kill him."
"Get in line," she whispered.
They rode to Port Mason at dawn.
Bethany didn't remember much of the night between—fragments of phone calls and brothers' voices and Trawler refusing to leave her side.
Someone had given her whiskey. Someone else had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
At some point, she'd stopped making that terrible sound and gone silent instead.
The silence was worse. It felt like a void where her heart used to be.
The coastal highway blurred past, salt wind cutting through her numbness. She clung to Trawler's back and tried to prepare herself for what she was about to see.
She wasn't prepared.
The Rusty Hook was gone.
Not damaged. Not salvageable. Gone. Where her bar had stood, there was nothing but a blackened skeleton of charred beams and collapsed walls. Smoke still rose from the wreckage in lazy spirals, carrying the smell of burned wood and melted plastic and everything she'd ever worked for.
She climbed off the bike and walked toward the ruins like a woman in a dream.
The neon sign—the one with half the letters burned out that she'd always meant to fix—had melted into an unrecognizable lump.
The front door was gone entirely, along with the wall it had been attached to.
She could see straight through to where the bar used to be, where she'd stood for six years pouring drinks and listening to stories and building something that mattered.
Ash. It was all just ash.
"Bethany." Trawler's voice came from behind her, careful. "Don't go any closer. It's not stable."
She didn't listen. Couldn't. Her feet carried her forward until she was standing in what used to be her doorway, staring at the destruction.
The pool table—the one Dunlap had broken, the one she'd been planning to replace—was a pile of charcoal and twisted metal.
The jukebox that only worked when it felt like it had melted into the floor.
The bottles behind the bar had exploded from the heat, leaving nothing but shattered glass and the ghost of alcohol vapor.
Everything. Every single thing she'd touched, built, loved. Erased.
"There's a message."
She turned. Hurricane had appeared at some point, standing near the ruined back wall, his expression grim. He was pointing at something spray-painted on the one section of wall still standing.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T PAY
The letters were red. Deliberate. The work of someone who'd taken their time, who'd wanted to make sure the message was clear.
"Ronnie Faulk." Hurricane's voice was flat. "Jessup's example maker. This is his signature—he likes to leave notes."
"Example maker," Bethany repeated. The words felt hollow.
"Kid who gets off on destruction. Burns things, breaks things, makes sure people remember what happens when they cross Jessup." Hurricane's jaw tightened. "He's been wanting to prove himself since Dunlap died. Looks like he got his chance."
She stared at the message. At the deliberate cruelty of it, the theatrical malice. This wasn't just destruction—it was performance. Ronnie Faulk had wanted her to see this. Wanted her to know exactly who had taken everything she had.
Something shifted inside her chest.
The grief didn't disappear. It was still there, a black hole of loss that threatened to swallow her whole. But something else was rising alongside it—something cold and hard and utterly focused.
Rage.
"Where is he?" Her voice came out steady. Steadier than she expected.
Hurricane and Trawler exchanged glances.
"We're tracking him," Trawler said carefully. "He's got a safehouse in Port Mason, uses it when he's working this territory. Should have a location by tonight."
"Good."
"Bethany—"
"I want him to know." She turned to face them, and whatever they saw in her expression made both men go still.
"When you find him, when you do whatever you're going to do—I want him to understand exactly what he destroyed.
Not just a building. Not just a business.
Six years of my life. Everything I sacrificed, everything I built from nothing.
I want him to look at me and know that before he dies. "
Trawler stepped closer, his dark eyes searching her face. "That's not—you don't have to be there for that."
"I know I don't have to. I want to." She held his gaze, letting him see the ice that had formed where her heart used to be. "I want to watch. I want him to see my face. I want the last thing he ever knows to be exactly how much he took from me and exactly what it cost him."
"Bethany..."
"Don't." She cut him off, voice sharp. "Don't try to protect me from this. I killed two men three days ago, and I'd do it again without hesitating. This isn't about protection anymore. It's about justice."
Silence stretched between them. The morning sun crept higher, casting harsh light on the devastation around them. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed—too late, always too late.
Trawler's jaw worked. She could see the war in his eyes—the protective instinct battling with respect for what she was asking. For who she'd become.
"Okay," he said finally.
"Okay?"
"You want to be there, you'll be there." He reached out, cupping her face in his scarred hands. "But you stay behind me. You don't take risks. And when it's done, we leave together."
"Deal."
Hurricane let out a low whistle. "She's really one of us now, isn't she?"
Bethany turned back to look at her bar—at what used to be her bar. The ashes were still warm, still smoking, still carrying the scent of everything she'd lost.
She should cry. She knew she should cry, should grieve, should let the tears come and wash some of this poison out of her system.
But the tears wouldn't come. She'd locked them away somewhere deep, somewhere they couldn't soften her, couldn't weaken her.
She was saving everything she had for Ronnie Faulk.
"Six years," she said softly, to no one, to everyone. "I saved for six years. Worked doubles, ate ramen, counted every penny. And some punk with a gasoline can and a spray paint fetish thinks he can take that from me?"
Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
"He's going to learn different."
Trawler's arm came around her shoulders, solid and grounding. She leaned into him, drawing strength from his presence, from the promise of violence that radiated off him like heat.
"Tonight," he said.
"Tonight," she agreed.
She took one last look at the ruins of her dream—the ashes of The Rusty Hook scattered across the lot like a funeral pyre—and let Trawler lead her back to the bike.
She didn't look back again.
There was nothing left to look at.
The ride back to the compound was silent, but it wasn't the comfortable silence she'd learned to love. This was something harder, sharper—a silence filled with planning and rage and the cold calculations of revenge.
When they arrived, brothers gathered without being called. Word had spread. Bethany saw it in their faces—anger on her behalf, the kind of fury that came from watching one of their own get hurt.
One of their own. She was, she realized. Somehow, without meaning to, she'd become part of this family.
And families protected each other.
"Church in one hour," Anchor announced, his steady voice cutting through the murmur of conversation. "We're ending this."
Bethany felt Trawler's hand find hers, fingers interlacing, holding tight.
"You sure about this?" he asked quietly. "What you said back there—watching Faulk die. That's not something you can take back."
"I'm sure."
"It might change you."
She thought about The Rusty Hook—the way the morning light used to filter through the windows, the sound of Mickey's terrible jokes, the satisfaction of a perfect pour at the end of a long shift. All of it gone now. All of it ash.
"I'm already changed," she said. Her voice was steady, cold, certain. "Jessup did that when he burned my bar. All I'm doing now is making sure Ronnie Faulk understands exactly what he destroyed."
She looked up at Trawler, letting him see the ice in her eyes.
"Before he dies."