Page 5 of Sinner’s Torment

Another silence fell, but this one was different. Less hostile. More... resigned. We were all coming to terms with the same brutal reality: our brother was gone, our president was fighting for his life, and the club we’d devoted ourselves to had fundamentally changed.

Nothing would ever be the same.

“I miss him,” Storm uttered suddenly, his voice cracking. “I miss Malice. I miss his smartass comments and his weird Catholic guilt and his stupid obsession with those nasty green apples. I miss knowing he was there, you know? That he had our backs.”

“He died having our backs,” Fury whispered, and for the first time since we sat down, there was emotion in his voice. Raw. Painful. Real. “He died protecting Sandman. Protecting all of us.”

“He died a Soulless Sinner,” Mercy declared. “And we’re going to make damn sure everyone remembers that. Arizona, Dakota, the Death Dogs. They’re all going to learn what it costs to fuck with this family.”

Heads nodded around the table. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A shared purpose. A common enemy. Something to focus on besides the grief that was threatening to drown us all.

“What about Montana?” I asked. “What’s the latest?”

Bane pulled out his phone, scrolling through messages. “Tessa says he’s stable. Still in the ICU, but we’re cautiously optimistic. He’s strong. He’ll pull through.”

“And when he does?” Vicious probed. “What then? Does he come back to a club that doesn’t exist anymore? Does he help Reaper lead the Golden Skulls? Does he⁠—”

“He leads us,” Mercy firmly stated. “I don’t give a fuck what patch is on our backs. Montana is our president. That doesn’t change.”

“Reaper might have something to say about that,” Shame called from the corner, still not looking up from his laptop.

“Then he can say it to my fucking face,” Mercy growled.

I watched the fire return to his eyes, the steel straighten his spine. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. We were all finding our footing again, remembering who we were, what we stood for.

We were Soulless Sinners.

And Sinners didn’t go down easily.

“We need to visit Montana,” I said. “All of us. He needs to see that we’re still here, still standing, still his brothers. He needs to know the club didn’t die in Diamond Creek.”

“Agreed.” Mercy nodded. “We’ll head over there tomorrow. Tonight, we drink to Malice. We remember our brother. And tomorrow, we start planning how to end the motherfuckers who took him from us.”

Chairs scraped against the floor as everyone stood. The meeting was over, but nothing had been resolved. We were still adrift, still uncertain, still grieving.

But we were together.

And maybe, for now, that was enough.

I was the last one to leave the room, pausing at the doorway to look back at Montana’s empty chair. The weight of everything we lost, everything that had changed, settled over me like a shroud.

I was the club’s therapist. I was supposed to have answers, supposed to help my brothers process their trauma, supposed to guide them through the darkness.

But who guided the guide?

Who healed the healer?

I didn’t have those answers, and that scared me more than anything else as I flipped off the lights and closed the door behind me, sealing the boardroom in darkness.

CHAPTER TWO

Brandy

Three weeks later...

I stared at the pregnancy test in my trembling hands, willing the lines to disappear, to fade, to reveal themselves as some cruel trick of the light. But they didn’t. They stayed exactly where they were. Two bright pink lines that might as well have been neon signs screaming that my life was officially fucked.

This couldn’t be happening.