“You won’t,” I promised. “But I’m going to take you to the living room, okay? So you don’t have to see… all of this.”
She didn’t move.
So I made a choice that felt strange in my hands.
I took off my cut.
My vest with the patches. The thing that tells the world don’t test this man. I folded it and wrapped it gently around her shoulders like a blanket.
Her eyes widened.
“It’s heavy,” she murmured, surprised.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s got a lot of history in it.”
She clutched it like armor.
And then, like a dam deciding it couldn’t hold anymore, she stepped into my chest and broke.
She sobbed so hard her whole body shook. A child’s grief is pure physics. It doesn’t perform. It just happens.
I held her carefully, like you hold something fragile you didn’t know you needed to protect.
Behind me, Reaper’s voice was steady. “We need to keep her awake. Sarah? Hey. Stay with me.”
Sarah groaned. Barely.
Meera heard it. Her head snapped up. “Mama?”
“Ambulance is five minutes out,” Gunner said.
Five minutes is a long time when you’re nine and the floor feels like it’s swallowing your mother.
So I kept Meera talking.
“Tell me about your mom,” I said quietly. “What does she like?”
Meera wiped her nose on my vest without thinking. “Pancakes,” she whispered. “On Sundays. She burns the first one on purpose.”
“On purpose?” I asked, even though I knew what she meant.
Meera nodded, a tiny smile flickering like a match in rain. “She says the first pancake is for the bad luck. Then the rest are good.”
I swallowed hard.
Because the first pancake had already burned tonight.
Chapter 3: Sirens, Fluorescent Lights, and the Look People Give Us
When the paramedics arrived, the house filled with brisk voices and medical terms. Sarah was stabilized, loaded onto a stretcher, and moved out into the night under flashing lights.
Meera tried to follow, frantic.
I scooped her up before she could run into the path of the stretcher. She weighed almost nothing. That’s what kills you about kids: how little they are, how huge their fear feels.
“You’re coming,” I told her. “You’re not getting left behind.”
“But the ambulance…” she stammered.
“We’ll follow,” I said. “Right behind.”
She looked at my motorcycle outside, then at me. “I’ve… I’ve never been on one.”
“It’s not a joyride,” I said gently. “But you’ll be safe. You’ll hold onto me. Understand?”
She nodded like she was signing a contract with her whole life.
We got her a spare helmet from Chains’s saddlebag. Too big, but better than nothing. I wrapped her in my cut again and settled her carefully in front of me, between my arms.
The ride to St. Helena’s Hospital was fast and cold, engines screaming through streets that slept like nothing in the world was wrong.
Meera’s small hands clung to my wrists.
At the hospital, we walked into fluorescent light and judgment.
The intake nurse froze when she saw us: four Hell’s Angels, road-dust and urgency, and a little girl wrapped in biker leather like it was a security blanket.
Her eyes flicked to the security phone.
I didn’t threaten. I didn’t posture. I simply said, calm as stone, “That child’s mother is in surgery. She’s staying with us until her family gets here.”
Meera looked up at the nurse, voice thin. “My aunt… I texted her but I got the number wrong.”
The nurse’s face changed. Not softened exactly, but recalibrated. Like the story rearranged her assumptions.
“All right,” she said, clearing her throat. “Come with me.”
We sat in a waiting room that smelled like disinfectant and anxiety. Plastic chairs bolted to the floor. A TV playing a game show nobody watched.
Meera curled into my lap like she’d been designed to fit there.
Reaper stood by the window, arms crossed, scanning the parking lot out of habit. Chains paced. Gunner filled out forms with handwriting that looked like it had fought wars.
Hours passed.
At one point Meera whispered, “Are you… are you bad guys?”
The question didn’t come with accusation. Just honest curiosity. A kid trying to label the world so it makes sense.
I looked down at her, at the dried blood still in the lines of her fingers.
“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes I’ve been the bad guy in somebody’s story. But tonight? Tonight I’m just… here.”
She blinked slowly.
Then she asked, “Why?”
Read more on next page
