Chapter 33
Four weeks later
It’s quiet in here. The usual bustle of the South Bay Police Station a world away as I sit in this office, behind a desk that isn’t mine.
The shelves are empty, drawers cleaned out. Everything is gone.
The reign of Chief Martin Wells is over.
It’s interesting how a single room can showcase an entire career, an entire person one day, then be packed up and shoved into boxes to be stored away and forgotten the next. No more framed service awards, family photos, or pictures of important people shaking hands. Just bare walls and empty space.
All that’s left is this desk and this chair. And me.
I kick my feet up and lean back, letting my lids close as I exhale a deep breath.
At the sound of a throat clearing, I crack open an eye.
Axel Donovan is propped against the doorframe of the chief’s office. “OPP all cleared out?”
It’s been a hell of a month. Full of statements, incident reports, the media breathing down our necks. That’s what happens when a cop dies in the line of duty. There are questions and investigations and piles of paperwork.
Allen got a funeral he didn’t deserve. Closed casket. Flying flags. Police escorts with flashing lights.
Part of me wanted to go. To watch all the people pay their respects, his grieving family. Not to add insult to injury, but as I dug that knife into his throat, as I watched his life end, I understood. Why he was who he was.
Vengeance. A sentiment I’ve become intimately familiar with. I’ve been in that head space, practically fucking lived in it for a decade, where it’s the only thing you can see, the only thing that matters. Retribution.
I understand it, but I wouldn’t change what I did. Allen wasn’t going to let Grace go. I could see it, feel it.
There would be no talking him down, no convincing him to walk away.
Grace is Jimmy Donovan’s daughter. The man he holds responsible for killing his brother.
She was never gonna survive that. And there’s no way in hell Allen was gonna let me live.
He needed someone to blame. And my connection to the Sinners made me the perfect scapegoat.
A gift-wrapped little loose end with a pretty bow ready to be handed over on a platter to the chief.
I couldn’t have that. I had to protect myself, my town. Protect what’s mine. He threatened that. And now he’s in the fucking ground.
I nod at the Sinner prez. “Last one packed up this morning.”
The Biker Enforcement Unit’s investigation into the South Bay Sinners has been put on an indefinite hold. A high-ranking OPP officer tried his hand at vigilante justice. At least, that’s the story. It was easy to spin since most of it was true. I just kept myself out of it.
Allen’s reputation is in the shitter. Morgan’s been asked to step down. Murphy might be looking at jail time. Three other OPP officers have been put on leave. Shit’s only just starting to settle, but I’m glad to have my town back. It was getting too damn crowded around here.
“You look good in here, Deck,” Axe says. “It suits you.”
Snorting, I drop my feet to the floor. “Not really my style.”
He hums. “Heard the board’s been throwing your name around for the new top dog.”
It’s a joke, really. And not a funny one.
An embarrassment , they called it. The chief of police brought in provincial muscle to take down the Sinners, then wiped his hands clean of the biker problem plaguing South Bay.
Now there are a bunch of bodies in the morgue and the media is throwing around words like “incompetence” and “corruption” and “police brutality.” There’s no scenario where Wells comes out looking like anything less than a complete fucking idiot.
He was done the second the story hit the news.
Somehow, I managed to get out of all this without so much as a smear to my name. And now it’s being tossed into the hat of contenders for Wells’s job. All while the dirt from this whole mess still sullies my hands.
Allen went off the rails. He planted evidence, used unnecessary force, performed illegal traffic stops. He hired a rival outlaw biker gang to take out the Sinners because of a personal vendetta.
He’s the dirty one.
And me? I’m the cop who reined him in, who stood up for what was right despite the target it painted on my back. I put my life on the line to protect my town, to protect the integrity of the badge.
I’m the fucking hero in all this.
Like I said. A joke.
Can’t say I’m not happy with the outcome, given the alternative.
But I don’t feel completely off the hook.
I got a hold of Allen’s cell phone before every cop in the district swooped in on that junkyard, so all that video evidence he was threatening me with has long been destroyed.
But I still have no idea if he had anything else on me.
I may never know. Or maybe one day in the near future the law will come banging at my door, and I’ll end up like Allen.
Bleeding out on the ground at the hands of my brothers in blue.
I give Axe a tight smile. “Don’t get too excited. I pulled my name well before they had a chance to seriously consider me.”
He grunts. “Heard that too.”
His focus shifts behind him to the bullpen, where a small cluster of patrol cops shuffle around paperwork. Then he steps inside my office and closes the door. No. Not my office. This will never be my office.
“Wish you hadn’t done that,” he says.
“Oh, I bet.”
He plops down in the leather chair across from me, legs spread wide.
“We’re square. I’ll keep my word on that.
Your business with the Sinners is done if you want it to be.
But, uh”—he angles forward and rubs the back of his neck, tension winding in his shoulders—“it’s going to be…
difficult for me, explaining that to my old man.
You’re putting me in a spot. Especially since you were a shoo-in for the new chief of police. ”
I cock my head. “Jimmy’s back in town, what? A month? And he’s already running the show?”
Axe slips on that scowl of his, his jaw tightening. “Only one running things around here is me ,” he says. “Don’t fucking forget that.”
The ex–Sinner prez and his old lady rolled into South Bay shortly after we were almost taken out by Allen and his band of Raider fucks. I’m hoping to hell he doesn’t stick around too long. But that’s no longer my problem.
I grin at the obvious nerve I hit. “I know the pecking order. But does Jimmy?”
He drags his hands down his face as he sags in his seat. The sigh that he expels is long and deep and laced with irritation. “My father has… inserted himself into my business. And it seems he’s here to stay. At least for the time being. I’m trying to be… amenable.”
A chuckle rolls out of me.
His scowl deepens. “Think that’s funny?”
Shoulders bouncing, I bite down on another laugh. “It’s kind of like when you move back in with your parents after being on your own for a while. And you’ve suddenly got someone asking you where you been and where you’re going.”
“Yeah, except his questions are more along the lines of why I don’t have anyone in this shithole of a department in my pocket, and how the fuck you managed to slither your way out of it.
” Another sigh, and he angles forward, elbows on his knees.
“I pay well. You know I do. And South Bay will need you. We might have sent the Raiders packing, but you and I both know this is far from over. We can protect the town together. We don’t…
” He closes his eyes as if he’s trying desperately to force the next words from his mouth.
“We don’t have to be enemies. Take the job, take my money, and stay. ”
Stay.
South Bay is my home. At the end of the day, at the end of the ride, I’ll always find myself back here.
But when I was faced with the choice, I had to ask myself, what’s left here for me? What am I living for? Who the fuck am I without this place?
After that, the decision was easy. She made it easy.
“My leave started twenty minutes ago. I’m going. There’s no changing my mind.”
Brow pulled low, Axe subjects me to that stare everyone in his fucking family has perfected. Don’t fuck with me. A look that’s hot as hell on his sister. Not so much on him.
“Don’t look so pissed off,” I tell him. “OPP’s gone. The dust has settled. You got your people out of lockup, your old lady back by your side. I can’t give you anything else. For now, I’m done here.”
Allen has been labelled a traitor. An embarrassment to the badge.
That’s not just a stain on the department.
It’s a stain on every case he’s touched.
I’ve never seen the Crown drop so many charges so fast. Triss was like a kid in a fucking candy store.
I didn’t think that woman was capable of smiling so damn much.
“What are you playing at?” he growls. “This life, that badge, it’s in your veins like the patch is in mine. You were born to be a cop.”
I shake my head. “The blood that runs through me is the same blood that runs through your VP. Maybe there’s no fighting that.”
Axe was right about me. I was always going to be this man. He may have backed me into a corner, he may have forced the first injection of violence into my veins, but I still took that first life. Without question. Without hesitation.
Vengeance. Retribution. Tipping the scales back into place.
I am who I am.
Lincoln Decker. The boy scout. The hero. The outlaw. The asshole.
It’s just getting harder to see how this badge fits into who I’ve become. If that man still deserves to wear it.
Axe stares me down, but eventually he sighs and pushes up.
With his hand on the doorknob, he turns to me and says, “You come back here, you’ll have a decision to make.
Can’t be fucking with a girl like Gracie and still hold on to that uniform.
And like I said, South Bay is gonna need you. She really worth letting all this go?”
I’ve asked myself over and over who I am without this badge.