One Look Was Enough

I had put men in the ground and buried a brother of the patch and I thought I was done being surprised by anything. Then I walked into a paint bay off Furnace Street to pick up a tank for the club and I saw a woman pull one long pinstripe freehand, no tape, no do-overs, one steady line from headstock to fender, and that was it. One look was enough. I am Soren, the Pale Rite calls me Reaper, and I knew before she ever said my name that I would burn the whole world down before I let anything happen to her.

Nicolette does not want a biker standing in her doorway. She has a shop she built with her own two hands, a little girl named Jessamine, and a deadbeat half-brother whose debt has the Low Rosary circling her like water going down a drain. She does not want my protection and she does not trust my patch, and she is right not to, because the club that owns me is about to make a deal that trades her brother's safety for peace, and I am going to sit in that room and vote for it and say nothing.

I told myself it was the code. I told myself it was the war I had been carrying since Soot went in the ground. What it cost was her, the shop she loved burned to the slab and the truth of what I knew landing on her like a dropped engine, and there is no line you can pull to fix a thing once you have lifted the brush.

So I am going to earn it back the only way that counts. I will put my patch on the table. I will give up the name Reaper and the blood I swore. I will rebuild her shop board by board with my own hands and ask for nothing, and stand in front of the one woman who ever made me want to be more than the worst thing I have done, and let her decide if a man like me gets a second line.