Chapter One
Vendetta
The sun was barely visible on the horizon when Vendetta rolled into Oak Grove in his courier van.
It was early enough that the roads were still quiet and held little traffic, but late enough that the night’s shadows still clung to the edges of buildings and businesses.
It was a typical small Southern town, and it honestly hadn’t changed much in the months since he was last here.
Oak Grove wore the ghost of its better days like an old, threadbare coat.
There were hints that it had once thrived.
Maybe a couple of decades back when the factories still ran and every porch on Main Street was filled with families and the elderly in the grace of their retirement.
There were no newer buildings that he could see as he drove down its main street.
The small collection of buildings that made up the town were weather-beaten and worn, with paint peeling off brick like old skin.
Half the storefronts were tagged with graffiti, and the windows that weren’t busted out were fogged from the inside with neglect.
The people he saw starting their day just looked older and tired.
Some walked with hunched shoulders and hollow eyes, some with faces aged beyond their years.
It was like everyone in Oak Grove had seen too much.
They’d stopped looking for hope long ago.
He didn’t have to be here. He could have moved on and tried to put his life back together in another town like Oak Grove, under another name.
It would have been easier. Most people, if told what had happened to him here just a few short months ago, wouldn’t have blamed him if that had been his choice.
What happened to Tank? The story the Oak Grove Cottonmouths fed the Abingdon chapter was clean and quiet. They said Tank didn’t agree with the club’s new direction and hit the road and went nomad. Just like that.
And Abingdon bought it. No questions or pushback. They accepted the lie like it was gospel, like Tank walking away without a word made any damn sense. Maybe they believed it. Maybe they were too afraid to challenge Oak Grove. Either way, no one came looking. No one checked on him.
It was a second betrayal, colder than the first. They buried him without a body, without even realizing it. And that, more than the noose or the chain, was the wound that never stopped bleeding.
The new name fit him like armor. Vendetta.
He was no longer Tank. No longer the man who believed in doing the right thing and expected others to feel the same way.
No longer the man who believed brotherhood still meant something.
For now, he kept his scars hidden beneath the ordinary clothes he wore as a delivery driver.
The long scar around his neck still ached in the cold, a chilling reminder of how close he’d come to death.
He wore hoodies, jackets, and bandanas and left his hair down when he could to hide it.
What gnawed at him in his quiet moments, the ones that hit hardest late at night, was this: no one ever found a body.
That made their story believable. Tank had just disappeared, gone nomad.
But what if he hadn’t survived that night?
What if his heart had stopped out there under the trees, lungs crushed, neck broken?
Would they have come back for him? Would they have buried him? Or just left him there to rot like nothing? And if they had come back for the body and found it missing… That meant he could still be alive.
Did Eli suspect he was alive? Was he haunted by the possibility that his ghost still walked? He hoped so. He liked the idea of that. The fear creeping in, the doubt festering. Let Eli feel hunted for once.
He’d been doing his homework. The criminal organization that had infected the Oak Grove Cottonmouths used the name Sinister Skin Holdings.
They’d tried really hard to infiltrate Mercy too, a neighboring county, awhile back.
The Hounds kicked them out, protecting the town and its people from the corruption and filth that Eli Crizer and his followers welcomed.
For now. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded to be rid of the fuckers, so he waited.
When the word went out on certain channels that they were looking for a Hound out of Mercy traveling with a young woman, Vendetta had set out to find them and he did.
Knowing what they were up against, and to gather a little intel, he’d helped Outcast and his girl Anya escape the assholes.
The fact that the woman had been the captive of Sebastian Six, one of Sinister Skin Holdings’ top dogs, made it all the sweeter for him.
He helped get them back to Mercy in one piece when the odds were stacked against them. Someone had to.
There was a final showdown, and Vendetta had been there for it, helping the Hounds with their common enemy.
Watching Outcast shoot Six in the face had given Vendetta back his fire, his need to make things right.
When they parted ways that night, Outcast had looked him in the eye and said, “If you ever need us, you call. We’ll come.
” A nod from their president, Razor, confirmed it.
Vendetta hadn’t called in that favor yet. But he would. When the time came, and the reckoning hit Oak Grove like a bullet hitting bone, he’d want the Hounds at his back.
Until then, Vendetta would be just another shadow.
He’d scored himself a job working for a delivery service in and around Oak Grove, and that would have its uses.
He found himself staying in a rundown motel at the edge of town, cash only, no questions asked.
It smelled like bad sex, mildew, and cigarettes, but the lock on the door was solid and the window faced the lot. It was all he needed.
Sinister Skin Holdings had failed to root in Mercy, but they’d found fresh soil here. Eli Crizer had let the fuckers in. The Oak Grove Cottonmouths had sold out for blood money, dirty deals, and human cargo. They’d taken the offer the Hounds solidly rejected.
He promised himself it wouldn’t last long.
Vendetta would move through Oak Grove like smoke.
He would watch everything. After all, he knew how they operated and where they trafficked.
Vendetta even knew who they leaned on and all the locations where product was moved and stored.
If he could control the fury that clawed inside his chest whenever he thought about it, he could find a way to end them and their entire fucking operation.
That was his mission now.
When Vendetta pulled his van into the cracked lot behind INeeda Medical Supply just after seven, the morning fog was still clinging to the pavement.
His was a pre-owned cargo van with a few dings in its white paint, but he’d gotten a deal on it at the city auction.
Stepping out of the van, he took in the warehouse where he’d be working.
The building looked like it had been repurposed.
It looked like it could have been a tire shop or auto body place.
Someone’d slapped a vinyl sign over the front and started pushing boxes of wound care kits and portable oxygen tanks.
Vendetta met Freddie, the manager, at his one interview for the job.
People weren’t showing up in droves to work as a delivery driver and he didn’t get the impression that he’d been up against anyone else for the job.
Freddie met him at the door just as he said he would.
He looked like the kind of guy who told the same three jokes at every company get-together.
Mid-fifties, thinning hair slicked back, probably the same way he wore it in the ‘90s. The man’s stomach pressed a little too tight against his neatly tucked button-down and he wore khakis like they were tactical gear.
He seemed friendly enough, but he had the kind of humor that made people laugh more out of habit than actual amusement.
It didn’t make him a bad guy. Just the kind of man who thought charm and authority came from a tucked shirt and a clipboard.
The man grinned as he approached the loading dock, clipboard in hand. “You’re early, Jason Evans,” he said. “Didn’t figure a guy with that much beard would be punctual.”
The long beard wasn’t something he’d worn as Tank.
It gave him a different look and that was useful.
Vendetta gave a tight smile and said nothing.
He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here to work, to watch, and when the time came, to strike.
He towered over Freddie who had to glance up to hold his gaze.
The lack of friendly banter had the man skipping more talk and moving ahead to the work.
Vendetta was anxious to get on with that.
Freddie grabbed a folded uniform shirt from the table behind him, squinting at the chest like he was already picturing the embroidery.
“We do names here. Customers like it. And it helps the drivers feel like part of the team. You want ‘Jason’ stitched on yours, or something cooler?” He grinned like he thought that was hilarious.
Vendetta shook his head. “No name. I’m good.”
Freddie paused in folding the shirt. “C’mon, man, makes it official.”
Vendetta met his gaze. “Still Jason. Just don’t stitch it.”
Freddie looked like he wanted to push, but something in Vendetta’s expression must’ve told him not to. Shrugging, he laughed and handed him the shirt. “All right. Suit yourself, mystery man.”
Vendetta didn’t answer, just pulled the shirt on right over the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore to conceal his scars; the one around his neck along with those from service, and any identifying tattoos.
He followed Freddie out the warehouse doors.
Leading him through the back of the warehouse, his new boss pointed out shelves stacked with everything from wound dressings to portable oxygen tanks.