He thought kidnapping the biker president’s girl

He thought kidnapping the biker president’s girl would make us run his drugs, yet the brutal way our club answered that threat didn’t just destroy his empire—it exposed every buried secret tearing our brotherhood apart from the inside out

If you ask ten people what a motorcycle club is, you’ll get ten different answers.

To the tourists who snap photos of us when we roll past downtown, we’re a road show. Leather, chrome, noise. A main character in someone else’s story about “that wild weekend upstate.”

To a few cops in this county, we’re a problem they didn’t create but wouldn’t mind taking credit for solving.

To the folks whose houses we plowed out in January or whose kids we loaded into trucks during the river flood two springs ago, we’re just “those bike guys” who show up when things go bad.

To me, Steel Saints MC was home.

I was sixteen the first time I heard that familiar growl coming down my mother’s block, just out of juvie, more angry than scared, pretending I didn’t care if I ended up back there. My mom’s eyes were red from crying; my stepfather never looked up from the couch.

Then “Saint” Sullivan pulled up on a black Road King, an old friend of my grandfather’s. He took one look at me standing on the porch, hands shoved into my hoodie, and said, “Kid, you got two choices. Keep going how you’re going or come see what it means to be part of something real.”

Twenty years later, I was Vice President of that same club.

That means I was the one people looked at when the president’s chair was empty. The one who took heat when the brothers made mistakes. The one who got the call when someone did something stupid at two in the morning.

I’d handled fights, bar beefs, company disputes, and one very memorable incident with an escaped goat inside our clubhouse.

I thought I’d seen most of what life could throw at us.

Then a small-time drug dealer decided to kidnap our president’s daughter.

And the argument that blew up in our clubhouse that night nearly tore us apart before we ever laid hands on him.

It was a Tuesday, the kind of gray, sticky afternoon that makes the whole town feel like a damp towel. Most of the guys were at work or pretending to be. Our chapter had gone mostly legit years ago—custom bike shop, towing service, a security contract for the county fairgrounds. A few odd jobs around the edges, sure, but nothing that kept me up at night.

I was in the shop office, fighting with the printer, when my phone buzzed.

PRES: CALL NOW.

I frowned and hit dial.

Saint picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” he snapped.

“In the office,” I said. “Printer’s winning the war again. What’s up?”

“Get to the clubhouse,” he said. His voice was too flat. “Now.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the screen for half a second, then grabbed my cut off the back of the chair and my keys from the pegboard.

Two minutes later I was on my Dyna, engine rumbling under me as I cut through town. The clubhouse was only ten minutes away, but it felt longer.

Our place sat out by the old rail yard, a low cinderblock building with a long gravel parking lot. When I pulled in, there were already seven bikes lined up out front, and Saint’s black pickup was parked at an angle near the door.

That alone told me this was bad. Saint drove the truck when he brought his daughter, Emma, around. The fact that it was here, but no sixteen-year-old girl with blue streaks in her hair and a sarcastic comment for everyone?

My stomach tightened.

I pushed through the door into the main room.

The noise hit me first: voices, rough and overlapping, like a pack of dogs all barking at once.

Steel Saints colors blurred in the flicker of the old overhead lights—black vests, silver patch, “STEEL SAINTS” on the back above “PENROSE COUNTY.” Someone had knocked over a chair. The pool balls lay scattered across the felt like someone had slammed a fist into the table.

Saint stood at the end of the bar, both hands on the scarred wood, head down.

Gray threaded through his dark hair now, more than when I’d first patched in; his beard was shot with it. But in that moment he looked ten years older than he had yesterday.

Tank, our road captain, paced like a caged bull, his boots chewing lines into the hard floor. Wally, our treasurer, hunched over his phone, fingers flying. Several patched members clustered by the big table, voices low and intense.

“What happened?” I asked, shrugging off my cut and letting it fall onto a chair.

Everyone sort of parted, leaving me a clear line to Saint.

He lifted his head.

His eyes were wrong.

Saint had the kind of steady gaze that made people stop fidgeting. The kind that had watched me throw a punch at a gas station when I was nineteen and had just said, “All done?” afterward without raising his voice.

Now his eyes looked like he’d been hit in the chest with a bat.

“They took her,” he said.

For a second, my brain didn’t process what “her” meant.

Then it hit.

“Emma?” I said, hearing my own voice go thin. “Who?”

He picked up his phone off the bar and shoved it toward me.

On the screen was a text.

BLOCKED NUMBER.

The photo attached made my vision go sharp around the edges.

Emma sat in a metal chair, hands tied in front of her with a length of cord, duct tape over her mouth. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, the blue streak hidden for once. A bruise darkened one cheekbone.

The background was a concrete wall with a spray-painted tag I didn’t recognize, a cheap folding table in the corner, a single bare bulb hanging overhead.

Under the photo, the words:

YOU WANT HER BACK YOU MOVE FOR ME. LOADS RUN FRIDAY. SAY NO AND I CUT MY LOSSES.

My hand tightened around the phone.

“How long ago?” I asked.

“An hour,” Saint said. “She was supposed to be at the community center. Volleyball practice. She left there at four. Never made it home.”

“You call the cops?” I asked automatically.

He gave me a look.

Right. Dumb question.

“Emma texted me at four-oh-five,” he said. “Said she was grabbing a soda from the corner store. That was the last I heard.”

“They used her phone to send this,” Wally said, holding up his own screen. “Her number. They must’ve grabbed it off her.”

“Any idea who?” I asked.

Saint’s jaw clenched.

He nodded once.

“Kid calling himself Blaze,” he said. “Some genius who thinks dealing in our county without talking to us first is a good idea.”

I knew the name.

We all did.

Blaze was twenty-five, maybe. Skinny, pale, always chewing on a toothpick like he’d seen it in a movie and thought it looked tough. He’d started out peddling pills behind the high school, then “expanded” into whatever he could buy cheap and flip fast—little bags in nightclubs, party favors for college kids, that kind of thing.

We’d told him once, years ago, to keep our name out of his mouth and his business away from our people.

He’d smirked, lifted his hands, and said, “Hey, I’m just a businessman. No hard feelings.”

Now he’d decided the way to grow his “business” was to grab the daughter of the one man everyone in a hundred-mile radius knew not to cross.

“He wants us to move his stuff,” Tank said, voice full of disgust. “Use our trucks, our routes. Thinks he can treat us like his private shipping company.”

“He thinks he can treat my family like leverage,” Saint said quietly. “That’s his first mistake.”

“First?” Wally said. “You going soft in your old age? That’s his last mistake, far as I’m concerned.”

A low rumble of agreement rolled through the room.

Somewhere in there was the “brutal” response Blaze had just signed up for.

But under that was something else.

Fear.

For Emma.

For what a stunt like this could unleash.

For what we might have to do to get her back.

Tank slammed his fist onto the pool table.

“Enough talking,” he snapped. “We know where he hangs out. We roll up, we take his whole crew, we get the girl, we burn his world down.”

This was Tank’s solution to most problems: roll heavy, hit hard, sort it out later.

Under different circumstances, I might’ve been tempted.

But Blaze knew who he was dealing with.

He’d planned this.

He wasn’t going to be sitting on a lawn chair in front of his usual spot with Emma right next to him.

“We don’t know where she is,” Wally pointed out.

“Then we find out,” Tank shot back. “Shake every tree in this town till something drops.”

“While he gets spooked and moves her,” I said. “Or hurts her because he thinks we’re not playing along.”

Tank turned on me.

“You got a better idea, Knox?” he demanded. “Or you just here to poke holes?”

Knox. My road name. A joke from when I was nineteen and decided Fort Knox was the name of the only bank I trusted: my pocket.

I ignored the flash of anger in his tone.

“We have to think,” I said. “We go in swinging blind, we make mistakes. We hit the wrong place, we spook the wrong guy, and Emma pays the price. That’s not happening.”

The room buzzed louder.

Saint said nothing.

He watched.

He listened.

That was his way.

“You want to call the law, then?” Tank sneered. “Let them handle it? They’re going to care more about what’s in Blaze’s trunk than who he’s got tied up in some basement.”

“They’d have a point,” Wally muttered. “You know the DA’s been itching to make a big show about this ‘drug epidemic.’”

“We’re not calling the cops,” Saint said finally.

His voice cut through the noise, calm and solid.

Everyone shut up.

He straightened up from the bar.

“I’m not handing my daughter’s life to people who don’t know her name,” he said. “Who see this as a case file, not my kid. This is on us.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Tank said. “Us. Now. Bikes. Trucks. Guns. We—”

“Sit down, Tank,” Saint said quietly.

To his credit, Tank did.

He dropped into a chair, jaw tight, foot bouncing.

Saint looked at me.

“Talk to me,” he said.

Three words.

They hit me like a weight.

He wasn’t asking for a miracle.

He was asking for a plan.

“I don’t like any of this,” I said. “But here are our choices as I see them.”

I ticked them off on my fingers.

“One, we do nothing and hope he blinks first. Not happening.”

A dark chuckle went around the room.

“Two, we go in blind and hope we get lucky. Also not happening.”

Tank rolled his eyes.

“Three, we play along. For a minute,” I said.

A low, angry rumble.

“Absolutely not,” Tank snapped.

“I didn’t say we actually move his stuff,” I said. “I said we make him think we will long enough to get a location. We set up a meet. We stall. We listen. Meanwhile, we send people to watch his usual spots, his girl’s apartment, his cousin’s place. We pull in every favor we’ve got. We find her.”

“And we just trust him not to hurt her while we’re ‘stalling’?” Wally asked, the skepticism in his voice sandpaper rough.

“No,” I said. “We don’t trust him. At all. We assume he’ll do something stupid. So we’re ready when he does.”

The room buzzed.

The argument was serious now—not just about tactics, but about who we were.

We’d spent years clawing our way out of the kind of life that would’ve made this a simple problem: they hit us, we hit back twice as hard, let the pieces fall where they may.

We were trying to be different now.

Better.

But there’s only so much “better” you can be when someone has your president’s kid.

Saint scrubbed a hand over his face.

His fingers trembled.

I’d never seen that before.

“Blaze wants us to move for him,” he said slowly. “He thinks we’re sitting on all this potential. That we’re idiots for not using it.”

“He’s not completely wrong,” Tank muttered. “We got routes, trucks, contacts. We could crush every other crew in three counties if we wanted.”

“We don’t,” Saint said sharply. “We didn’t pull ourselves out of one kind of mess to dive into another.”

“Tell that to him,” Tank shot back. “He don’t care about our redemption arc. He cares that he’s got leverage.”

“Which is why we use that,” I said.

Every head swiveled toward me.

“We tell him yes,” I said. “We play along. We tell him we’ll run one load, meet him, see how it goes. We make him think we’re swallowing his line.”

“You asking me to dirty this patch?” Saint asked quietly.

I met his eyes.

“I’m asking you to lie to a man who kidnapped your daughter,” I said. “If that’s dirty, I’ll take it.”

Wally snorted.

“For the record,” he said, “I’m okay with lying to that guy.”

Saint looked down at the photo again.

At Emma’s bruised cheek.

At the duct tape over her mouth.

He nodded once.

“Okay,” he said. “Knox, you’re on the phone. You’re the one who talked to him last time about staying out of our lane. Maybe his ego will like that.”

“On it,” I said.

“Tank,” he continued. “You put together a scouting crew. Nothing heavy, nothing obvious. Unmarked trucks, brothers in civvies. I want eyes on his usual spots in thirty minutes.”

Tank’s foot stopped bouncing.

His eyes went sharp.

“Done,” he said.

“Wally,” Saint said. “Start pulling names. Who owes us favors. Who hates Blaze enough to talk. I want intel. Now.”

Wally nodded.

Saint took a breath.

His voice dropped.

“And brothers,” he said quietly, “let me be clear. Whatever we do next will say a lot about who we are. To Blaze. To the town. To ourselves. We screw this up, Emma pays. We turn into who we used to be, we lose ourselves. But we let this slide, we lose everything anyway. So we walk this line careful. Understood?”

A rumble of “Yeah” and “Yes, Pres” filled the room.

Saint nodded.

“Then move,” he said.

The club exploded into motion.

Tank barked names—“Rook, you’re with me. Jax, grab the Tahoe. Ghost, lose the cut, you’re riding shotgun”—and brothers peeled off.

Wally shouted for someone to bring him the old contact book.

I stepped outside with my phone.

The air felt cooler out there, the sky bruised with low clouds.

I took a breath.

Dialed the number from the text.

It rang.

Twice.

Three times.

On the fourth, someone picked up.

“You got my picture, old man?” A male voice, young, slick, too loud. Blaze.

I could practically hear the smug smile.

“This is Knox,” I said.

A beat.

Then a low whistle.

“Vice President himself,” he said. “I’m honored. Didn’t think you’d call me so quick.”

“You got the club’s attention,” I said flatly. “You got what you want?”

“Almost,” he said. “You say the word. You say, ‘We’re in, Blaze, we’ll move your product,’ and I send you the address. You show up, you see the girl’s fine, we go from there. Nice and civil.”

“You expect us to agree sight unseen?” I asked. “Without proof of life?”

Another laugh.

“You’re hearing her breathing on that picture, Vice?” he said. “Relax. I’m not stupid. I hurt her, you never work for me. But you don’t say yes soon…” His voice dropped. “I got no reason to feed her anything but air.”

My hand tightened on the phone.

“You want an answer,” I said. “Fine. You got it.”

The club might’ve argued.

Saint might’ve wanted to be the one to say it.

But I was on the line.

And sometimes, being second-in-command means jumping first.

“We’re in,” I said. “One load. One time. You give us the address, we see she’s alive, we talk details.”

Silence.

Then a slow clap.

“Didn’t think you had it in you,” Blaze said. “All that talk about being ‘legit’ and ‘clean’ and ‘we don’t do that anymore.’ Guess a little leverage goes a long way.”

Anger flickered in my chest.

I pressed it down.

“This isn’t a partnership,” I said. “It’s a trade. You get one shot. You try anything, you don’t walk away.”

“Big words, Vice,” he said. “But sure. I’ll play.”

He rattled off an address.

On the edge of the industrial park, near the river. One of those old warehouse strips that had been half-empty since the factory closed.

“You come alone,” he said. “Just you and your president. No army. No law. No trucks. You see she’s breathing, we drink a beer, we talk shop. You don’t show, I find a new way to send a message.”

The line clicked dead.

I exhaled slowly.

Texted the address to Wally with a single word: NOW.

Then I went back inside.

The clubhouse felt different already.

Tighter.

Sharpened.

Everyone in motion.

Saint stood by the wall map, Tank and Wally flanking him.

“That address ring any bells?” Saint asked as I walked up.

“Warehouse strip near the river,” I said. “Gabe’s old place is three blocks over. Same alley we chased those copper thieves out of last year. Couple of small operations on that block, but nothing big.”

“We got time before dark,” Tank said. “Sun sets at eight. We can be in position by six if we roll now.”

“No rolling,” Saint said. “Blaze wants just me and Knox. We give him that. Out front.”

“And what, the rest of us sit here and knit?” Tank snapped.

Saint gave him a look.

“You think I’m walking in there with no backup?” he said. “You think I hit my head?”

Tank’s tension eased a hair.

“We do it quiet,” I said. “Unmarked trucks a block away. Brothers on rooftops. Eyes at both ends of the alley. No colors. No showing our hand until we have to.”

“No gunfire unless I say so,” Saint added. “The second anyone hears a shot, Emma’s the one who takes the first bullet. We treat this like a hostage situation, not a war.”

Tank grunted.

He didn’t like it.

He didn’t have to.

He just had to follow it.

“And Blaze?” Wally asked. “When this is over?”

Saint’s eyes went cold.

“Then we do what we do,” he said quietly. “We make sure he never thinks about using family like that again.”

The way he said it sent a chill down my spine.

It was in that space, between those two pieces—rescue and aftermath—that the argument really exploded.

“Once we have her back, we walk away,” I said. “We let law take him. We pass off what we know.”

Tank rounded on me.

“You serious, man?” he demanded. “We let him live after this? We let him breathe our air? What, so he can brag about how he made Steel Saints jump?”

“We made a choice a long time ago,” I said. “No more bodies if we can help it. That was the whole point of going straight.”

“That choice didn’t apply to people who grab kids,” Tank shot back. “You want to sit in church next to a guy who tried to ransom your president’s daughter?”

“Church?” Wally muttered. “You think Blaze goes to church?”

“You know what I mean,” Tank snapped. “He walks around town like nothing happened, like we’re his errand boys now. We can’t let that stand.”

“Law can handle him,” I said. “We give them everything. We point them at his stash, his routes, his suppliers. We bury him in charges. He rots behind bars.”

“And when he makes friends in there?” Tank said. “When he comes out early because some slick lawyer found a loophole? When he sends someone else after us from a cell? You gonna trust that system more than you trust us?”

The room split along that line.

Younger guys—Ghost, Jax, Rook—shifted, uncertain. They’d patched in after we’d made the change, after the days when retaliation was automatic.

Older guys—Tank, Bull, Razor—looked at me like I’d just suggested we sell the clubhouse and open a juice bar.

“Listen,” I said, raising my voice over the rising growl. “None of this is good. There isn’t a version where we walk away clean and happy. But we picked a road. We’ve been on it for years. We can’t just jump the guardrail because someone threw a brick through our windshield.”

Tank threw his hands up.

“Oh, so this is about your conscience now,” he spat. “Nice. Maybe you can knit a sweater out of it for Emma when she gets home.”

“Enough,” Saint snapped.

His voice cracked through the room like a whip.

“Both of you,” he said. “Tank’s right about one thing: we can’t let this slide. Knox is right about another: we can’t pretend we’re not the ones who decided to be better. I’m not going back to the man I was twenty years ago. But I’m not letting that kid think he can walk away from this either.”

He looked at me.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “I’m the one who answers for what we do. You got a problem with that, take it up with the patch you wear.”

He looked at Tank.

“And you,” he said. “I get that your fists are itching. They might get their chance. But not until my daughter is back in my house. Understood?”

Tank glared.

Under that glare, though, was something else.

Fear.

And respect.

He nodded.

“Understood,” he muttered.

Saint took a breath.

“The brutal part comes later,” he said quietly. “We earn it by not screwing up the rescue.”

After that, it was all movement.

Phones.

Maps.

Guns checked, then holstered.

Because for all my talk about not going back, we weren’t walking into an unknown warehouse unarmed.

We just weren’t going in eager to use anything.

By six p.m., the sun had dipped enough to throw long shadows through the industrial park.

Saint and I rolled up in his truck, an old black Chevy with more miles than most of our bikes. No club colors. Just two guys in jeans and plain jackets.

We parked where we could see the strip: four brick buildings stitched together like old scar tissue, loading docks facing the cracked asphalt, weeds pushing through the concrete.

The address Blaze had given us was in the middle.

A metal roll-up door half closed, a smaller side door beside it.

“I don’t like this,” Saint said quietly, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

“Me neither,” I said.

We both looked at the rearview mirror.

Tank’s Tahoe sat two blocks back, tucked behind an abandoned office building. Ghost and Jax had slipped onto the roof earlier, binoculars trained on the warehouse strip.

We had radios in our pockets, earpieces in.

We had backup.

But the short walk from the truck to the door might as well have been a mile.

“You ready?” I asked.

Saint’s jaw clenched.

“No,” he said. “But let’s go anyway.”

We stepped out of the truck.

The air smelled like old oil and river water.

Distant traffic hummed.

The warehouse block looked empty.

Too empty.

We walked toward the address.

I wanted to look up—toward the rooftops where our guys were—but I forced myself to keep my gaze straight ahead.

We passed one loading dock, then another.

At the third, Blaze stepped out.

He was exactly how I remembered: lanky, pale, buzz cut now dyed some unfortunate shade of orange. Gold chain. Cheap sneakers. Jacket too thin for the weather.

He held a beer in one hand.

A pistol hung from a holster at his hip, like a prop.

He spread his arms.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” he called, voice echoing off the brick. “Glad you could make it.”

Saint’s face didn’t twitch.

“You got something of mine,” he said.

“Temporary,” Blaze said. “If you play nice.”

He jerked his head toward the side door.

“She’s inside,” he said. “Little shaken up, but breathing. You’ll see.”

My chest tightened.

“Why her?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.

Blaze smirked.

“Because your people,” he said, “they love to talk about family. About how nothing matters more. I wanted to see if that was true. Wanted to see if the mighty Steel Saints could be made to… adjust their morals a little, if the stakes were right.”

His eyes glittered.

“Turns out,” he added, “you’re just like everybody else.”

Saint took a step forward.

“Careful,” I murmured.

His fingers flexed at his sides.

Blaze watched the movement, amused.

“Relax, old man,” he said. “You get your daddy-daughter reunion soon enough. But first, business. You see the load, you agree to move it, I give you the girl, we shake hands. Then we all go home and make money.”

He jerked his thumb toward the roll-up door.

“Let’s go,” he said.

He walked toward it, expecting us to follow.

Saint looked at me.

It was one of those looks where ten conversations happen in the space of a heartbeat.

You trust this?

No.

We have a choice?

Also no.

We walked.

Inside, the warehouse was dim and smelled like dust, old pallets, and something chemical under that.

A few bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, throwing dull yellow pools of light across the concrete floor.

Crates and boxes sat stacked against one wall.

Blaze gestured proudly.

“Product,” he said. “You move this, you move more. We’re talking a new era. The club like yours, the supplier like me? Untouchable.”

I didn’t look too closely at the boxes.

I didn’t need to know what was in them to hate him.

I needed to know where Emma was.

Blaze must have seen it in my face.

He smirked.

“Relax,” he said. “Family first, right? She’s over there.”

He pointed toward a smaller room built into the corner, a sort of office with a window that looked out into the main warehouse.

Curtains covered the glass.

Saint took a step toward it.

Blaze held up a hand.

“Ah ah,” he said. “Not without me.”

He walked ahead, keys jingling in his hand.

When he unlocked the office door and swung it open, I held my breath.

Emma sat on a metal chair, hands bound to its arms, duct tape still across her mouth.

Her eyes flashed when she saw us.

Anger.

Relief.

Fear.

“Mmmph,” she said, jerking against the restraints.

Saint’s face broke.

“Baby,” he whispered.

Blaze stepped in front of him.

“Not yet,” he said. “You can see she’s alive. That’s proof, yeah? Now let’s talk price.”

“Price?” I repeated, incredulous.

“You think I went to all this trouble for free?” he asked. “You want her walking out of here, you give me your word. One load. Untouched. No skimming. You use your trucks, your routes, your safety net, and I get my cut.”

He held out his hand.

“I get your word, we cut her loose,” he said. “Nobody else has to know how close Steel Saints came to being my delivery boys.”

I looked at his hand.

At Emma.

At Saint.

Saint’s jaw was clenched so tight a vein stood out in his neck.

He looked like if Blaze didn’t move his hand soon, he might bite it.

“You think my word means anything to you?” Saint asked quietly. “You stole my kid. You think whatever I say right now isn’t a lie?”

Blaze blinked.

It was the first time he’d seemed genuinely surprised since we walked in.

“Hey,” he said, a little laugh in his voice. “Hey, no need to get dramatic. I’m just talking business.”

“This isn’t business,” Saint said. “This is family.”

For a second, something like confusion flickered across Blaze’s face.

As if that word meant something fuzzy to him.

Not nails-hard.

Not carved into bone.

Then it passed.

“This is leverage,” he said. “And I’m using it. You going to stand there and watch me cut her loose with no promise at all? I mean, you could try to take me, sure, but you don’t know what triggers I’ve got set. What friends are outside. What timers are ticking. You sure you want to test that?”

He smiled, teeth too white.

He thought he held all the cards.

He thought we were cornered.

He didn’t know he’d already lost.

Tank’s voice crackled softly in my ear.

“One heat signature on the east wall,” he murmured. “Two more on the west. Rooftop looks clear. You got three outside the north door, one smoking, two talking. We’re in position.”

Blaze took a step toward Saint, still holding out his hand.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Be reasonable. You don’t want your girl getting hurt. You don’t want your club’s reputation getting trashed because you were too proud to make a simple deal. Just say yes.”

Saint’s eyes slid to me for a fraction of a second.

It was all we needed.

“Yes,” he said.

The word tasted like ash, but it bought us seconds.

“We’ll move your load,” he said. “One time. You let Emma go, we’ll talk details.”

Blaze’s grin widened.

“I knew you’d see it my way,” he said.

His shoulders relaxed.

His hand dropped.

He turned toward Emma, keys jingling.

In that tiny gap between what he thought was victory and what was actually coming, I moved.

My hand dipped to my waistband.

Pulled the pistol I’d kept pressed against my lower back.

I didn’t point it at his head.

I pointed it at his thigh.

Fired once.

The sound in the small room was deafening.

His scream was worse.

He dropped.

His leg buckled, blood blooming through his jeans.

Saint surged forward.

Grabbed the falling pistol from Blaze’s belt.

Kicked it across the floor.

“Now,” he barked into his collar.

Tank’s voice crackled.

“We’re on,” he said.

Outside, the sound of boots on gravel.

Shouts.

Doors slamming open.

Blaze writhed on the floor, clutching his leg.

“You said—” he gasped. “You said—”

“I said we’d move your load,” Saint said, kneeling beside him.

His voice was calm now.

Terrifyingly calm.

“I lied.”

He ripped the duct tape from Emma’s mouth.

She winced.

“Dad,” she rasped.

He cupped her face for half a second.

“Hey,” he whispered. “You okay?”

“I will be if you stop talking to this idiot and get me out of here,” she muttered.

That was Saint’s kid.

I cut the cord on her wrists with the knife I kept strapped to my boot.

Her fingers flexed, white with circulation rushing back.

Outside, shouts.

“Get down!”

“Hands where I can see them!”

“Don’t move!”

We’d told the guys: nonlethal if you can help it. Take them down, tie them up, leave them breathing.

I heard thumps.

A crash.

A muffled curse.

We’d see how well they listened.

Blaze groaned.

“You’re dead,” he gasped, blood pooling under his leg. “You and your whole… club. You think this is over? You think—”

Saint stood.

He stared down at Blaze.

“We’re not dead,” he said. “We’re not going to be. You, on the other hand…”

He looked at me.

I shook my head.

He sighed.

“Call the ambulance,” he said.

“What?” Blaze wheezed. “You shooting me and then calling me a ride?”

Saint’s eyes hardened.

“Far as anyone knows,” he said, “we walked in here, we saw you with a kid tied up, and you shot yourself in the leg trying to run. We’re just innocent citizens who happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“You expect me to back that story?” Blaze spat.

“Don’t care what you do,” I said. “We’ve got cameras outside, Blaze. We’ve got your texts. We’ve got your friends in zip ties. You’re going to be too busy explaining that to the law to worry about us.”

“You’re not going to finish him?” Tank demanded over the radio.

Everyone had heard Saint.

Everyone knew what that meant.

“We’re not bodies anymore,” Saint said.

His voice was low, but we all heard it.

“We’re better than that,” he continued. “If law can handle this, we let them. If they can’t…”

He paused.

“Then we handle whatever comes,” he said. “But we’re not starting that.”

Tank muttered something under his breath.

But he didn’t argue.

I pulled out my phone.

Dialed 911.

“Penrose County dispatch,” a woman’s voice answered. “What’s your emergency?”

“This is Noah Knox,” I said, using my real name.

I almost never did that when I called.

“We’re at the old Riverside warehouse strip,” I said. “We just found a young woman tied up, looks like a hostage situation gone bad. And a guy who shot himself in the leg while trying to keep us from leaving.”

There was a pause.

“Did you say… shot himself?” the dispatcher asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Real sad.”

I didn’t feel bad about the lie.

Not for a second.

She took the details.

Said units were on their way.

I hung up.

Saint was helping Emma to her feet.

She stumbled once.

He caught her.

“Easy,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. “Just…” Her legs shook. “They gave me something. At first. I think. Everything’s fuzzy.”

My jaw clenched.

“You going to walk?” I asked.

“Can you?” Saint added.

Emma lifted her chin.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m not being carried out of here like some damsel. I walk.”

That was definitely Saint’s kid.

We led her out into the warehouse.

Three of Blaze’s guys lay facedown on the concrete, hands zip-tied behind their backs, Tank standing over them with a satisfied look on his face.

“No broken bones?” I asked.

“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Might have headaches. Maybe some bruised egos.”

Outside, sirens wailed.

“Showtime,” Wally said.

We’d made the call to use them.

Now we were going to see if they played their part.

When the police rolled up, guns drawn, lights painting the brick in red and blue, we made a point of being where we needed to be.

Weapons holstered.

Hands visible.

No colors.

Just concerned citizens who’d followed a bad tip and stumbled into something ugly.

Blaze, pale from blood loss, stared as the officers swarmed in.

“You can’t just—” he started, then cut himself off when he saw our faces.

We didn’t see each other as friends.

We didn’t see each other as enemies.

We saw each other as pieces on a board.

For once, we’d stacked it in our favor.

The cops separated us.

Took statements.

Emma sat in the back of an ambulance, a blanket around her shoulders, sipping water while a paramedic checked her vitals. Saint hovered nearby.

I gave the simplest version of events: we got a tip Blaze was holding someone here, we came to check, we found Emma, Blaze panicked, shot himself, we called 911.

“It’s technically true,” Wally muttered later. “You just left out the part where he panicked because you shot him first.”

“The important part is they found him holding a hostage,” I said. “That’s what matters. That’s what sticks.”

Word spread.

It didn’t take long.

Blaze was charged with kidnapping, unlawful restraint, and a host of other things they found in the warehouse.

His guy on the east wall, the one we’d found with a duffel bag half packed, ratted him out immediately.

The DA, hungry for a win, took the case personally.

They made sure the charges were stacked like bricks.

We fed them everything we had.

Texts.

Photos.

Names.

Routes.

We kept our faces straight when they asked how we’d gotten that intel.

“Community involvement,” Saint said dryly. “We hear things.”

They picked up Blaze’s suppliers.

His biggest clients.

His cousin who’d been holding cash.

His girlfriend who’d been letting him use her car.

His world crumbled.

It was brutal, in its way.

Not the kind of brutal some of the brothers had wanted.

No fists.

No buried bodies.

Just… consequences.

Slow.

Legal.

Suffocating.

He glared at us in court when we sat in the back, watching.

“You did this,” he mouthed once, eyes on Saint.

Saint didn’t flinch.

“You did this,” he mouthed back.

Blaze’s lawyer tried to spin it.

Tried to claim we’d set him up.

Tried to paint us as the real criminals.

His client had nothing to do with the kidnapping, he argued. He’d stumbled in, tried to help, gotten shot for his trouble.

The texts disagreed.

So did Emma’s testimony.

She stood in that courtroom, her blue streak growing out now, her hands steady on the Bible when they asked her to swear to tell the truth.

He’d grabbed her outside the corner store, she said.

He’d pressed something against her side.

She’d smelled gasoline and cigarettes.

He’d pushed her into a car she didn’t recognize.

He’d tied her hands in that chair.

He’d laughed.

He’d told her, “You’re going to help your daddy remember who he used to be.”

When she said that last part, Blaze’s jaw clenched.

Our whole row of brothers went very, very still.

The prosecutor asked her if she was scared.

She said yes.

He asked her what kept her from breaking.

She looked at her dad.

Then at me.

Then at the patch on the front of my cut.

“The club,” she said simply. “I knew they’d come.”

Something in my chest tightened.

We’d come.

We’d gotten her.

We hadn’t crossed the line we’d drawn for ourselves.

We’d found a way to be brutal without being monsters.

It wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t clean.

There were still brothers who thought we’d gone soft.

Still whispers in the county about “those Saints boys getting tangled up in some mess with that dealer.”

Still nights when I woke up sweating, heart pounding, hearing sirens and Blaze’s mocking voice.

But there was also this: Emma back at the clubhouse, rolling her eyes at us and yelling at Tank for leaving oil streaks on the kitchen floor.

Saint laughing for real again, not just out of obligation.

The club stronger, somehow, for having walked through that fire together.

That argument in the clubhouse—the one where Tank and I had nearly come to blows over what “loyalty” looked like—had felt, for a moment, like a fracture that might not heal.

We’d seen the edge.

We’d looked at it.

We’d stepped back.

Some of the older guys still struggled.

“Used to be, we’d scratch this itch a different way,” Bull muttered one night, watching the news where Blaze’s sentencing played out. “Man snatches a kid, he doesn’t get a trial.”

“Used to be, we buried a lot of things we didn’t want to talk about,” Saint said. “That doesn’t mean it was better.”

Bull grunted.

Didn’t argue.

A week after Blaze got thirty years without parole, Tank showed up at my doorstep with a six-pack and a sheepish look on his face.

“You got a minute?” he asked.

I stepped out onto the porch.

We sat on the steps.

Cracked the cans.

Listened to the crickets.

Finally, he said, “I still think we should’ve done more.”

“I know,” I said.

He took a swig.

“But…” he added slowly, “I can’t argue with the result. Kid’s in a box. Blaze is in a cage. We’re not burying anybody. That’s… something.”

“It’s everything,” I said quietly. “You think sixteen-year-old me thought I’d be sitting on a porch, talking about how proud I am we didn’t kill someone?”

Tank huffed a laugh.

“Sixteen-year-old you was a punk,” he said.

“You’re not wrong,” I said.

He was quiet for a second.

Then, awkwardly, “You did good, Vice.”

I glanced at him.

“Say that again?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes.

“Don’t push it,” he muttered.

But his mouth twitched.

I raised my can.

“To Emma,” I said. “And to her making sure we never forget she’s watching.”

He raised his own.

“To Emma,” he echoed.

We clinked.

Drank.

A week later, Emma walked into the shop office while I was knee-deep in parts inventory.

“You know he’s going to get out someday, right?” she said.

I looked up.

“Who?” I asked, even though I knew.

“Blaze,” she said. “Or someone like him. Or worse. There’s always another idiot.”

“Then we’ll be ready,” I said.

“You think law’s always going to have your back like this?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I think we got lucky. I think we did our part to make sure they couldn’t look away. And I think next time, we handle that too. Case by case.”

She studied me.

“You’re not going soft, are you?” she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice.

I snorted.

“Ask Tank,” I said. “He’ll tell you how ‘soft’ I was when I put a bullet through Blaze’s leg.”

She smiled.

“I heard about that,” she said. “Pretty brutal.”

I thought about the word.

About what it had meant for us, before.

About what it might mean now.

“Brutal’s different when you’ve got something to lose,” I said. “You’ll understand that more than anyone.”

She tilted her head.

“You think I’m going to wear a patch someday,” she said.

It wasn’t really a question.

I smiled.

“I think you already do,” I said. “Just not on your back.”

She touched her chest.

Right over where a small, silver charm hung from a chain—two intertwined S’s, the club’s mark, a gift from Saint on her sixteenth birthday.

Her fingers curled around it.

“Good,” she said. “Because if anyone else ever tries what he did…”

Her eyes flashed.

“They won’t get the legal version,” she said.

I chuckled.

“Hopefully, they’ll be smart enough not to try,” I said.

She shrugged.

“People like that aren’t smart,” she said. “They’re just loud.”

She wasn’t wrong.

That’s the thing about guys like Blaze: they think making a bold move is the same as making a smart one.

They think grabbing someone’s family member proves they’re fearless.

They don’t understand it proves something else: that they don’t have anything of their own anyone would risk that much for.

The club isn’t perfect.

We’re loud.

We’re messy.

We argue like brothers—which means sometimes we’re one word away from swinging.

But when it counted, we did something I didn’t know we could.

We were brutal without being blind.

We hit back without losing ourselves.

We chose a hard road and stayed on it, even when it meant trusting a system we’d spent years distrusting.

Even when it meant walking into a warehouse with our hands tied by our own rules.

Even when it meant some of the guys looked at me like I’d cut their teeth dull.

I’ll take that.

Every time.

Because at the end of the day, when I see Emma walk into the clubhouse, roll her eyes at Tank, steal a fry off my plate, and drop onto the couch next to Saint like she owns the place?

It reminds me why we did it that way.

Why we argued the way we did.

Why we fought like hell in that room before we ever set foot in Blaze’s.

Because sometimes, the most brutal thing you can do isn’t what you do to the enemy.

It’s what you do to your own worst instincts.

You grab them by the throat.

You throw them to the ground.

And you make damn sure your family walks out.

On their feet.

With their heads high.

No apologies.

Just the roar of engines and the knowledge that when someone came for one of ours, we answered.