They just collected.
One way or another.
Whether it was cash or blood, they always got what they were owed. Always balanced the books. That was the only rule that mattered in their world.
He was a dead man walking.
He just didn’t know it yet.
And I was a ghost.
The highway stretched out before me, dark and empty, nothing but asphalt and painted lines and the occasional reflector post catching my headlights. I revved my engine and shot forward.
I had seventy-five million dollars, a flash drive full of evidence that could bring down half the corrupt officials in western South Dakota, and nothing left to lose. Just me, my bike, and seventy-five million reasons to disappear.
I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I couldn’t go back.
Not ever. Not to the Prancing Pussycat. Not to my apartment. Not to the person I had been, dancing on stage and pretending everything was fine.
As the lights of Rapid City faded behind me, swallowed by distance and darkness, I rode into the night, leaving Alexandra Jones behind with every mile. Shedding her like a snake shedding skin. Letting her die in that office with his computer and the last shred of my innocence.
Whoever I was going to be next, she would be smarter and stronger.
I would be someone who didn’t get hurt.
I would become someone who hurt back.
I would be someone who survived.
Chapter One
Nano
One week before the Death Dogs attacked.
The clubhouse reeked of whiskey, weed, and sex. The holy trinity of a Saturday night at the Brotherhood of Bastards’ compound. The air was thick with it, a humid fog of debauchery that clung to my skin, hair, and clothes. I could taste it on my tongue, that metallic-sweet combination of sweat, smoke and sin as I sat at the bar and nursed my third beer, watching the chaos unfold like I always did.
Detached.
Observing. A ghost in my own fucking life, drifting through scenes that should have stirred something in me but didn’t.
Not anymore. Not for years. And that was the rot beneath the surface, the secret I kept even from myself. I was supposed to be one of them, a brother, a Bastard. But this... this spectacle, this casual cruelty that once ignited a fire in me now left a cold, hollow ache.
To my left, Morpheus had some blonde bent over the pool table, her tits pressed against the green felt while he pounded into her pussy from behind. His cut, the leather vest with our club patch, still on because Morpheus never took that shit off, even when he was balls-deep in club cunt. The bitch was moaning loud enough to wake the dead in Mount Moriah Cemetery, but nobody gave a shit as her nails scratched at thefelt, leaving little tears in the fabric that he would bitch about later, but Morpheus was lost in her cunt, grunting and slapping her ass hard enough to leave handprints.
That was what club whores were for.
Stress relief, entertainment, and decoration. They knew the score when they walked through those doors. They knew they weren’t girlfriends or old ladies. They were playthings, and most of them got off on it.
Or so they told themselves.
Or so I told myself. Because sometimes, when I looked at them, at the glazed-over eyes, the forced smiles, I saw a flicker of something else. A desperation. A silent plea I couldn’t quite decipher, or perhaps, a plea I was too afraid to acknowledge. It was easier to believe in their supposed enjoyment than to confront the abyss of exploitation that yawned before me.
Heretic and Scythe were playing cards at a corner table, a brunette on her knees between them taking turns sucking their cocks while they argued about who was bluffing. The brunette’s head bobbed back and forth like she was at a fucking tennis match, as both brothers grinned like idiots, barely paying attention to the wet heat of her mouth. She had good technique. I would give her that. Enthusiastic, no teeth, lots of spit. Professional-grade head.
“Full house, motherfucker.” Heretic slapped his cards down with a triumphant smirk, and Scythe groaned, tossing his cards across the table.
“Bullshit. You’re cheating.”
