And then the first Wraith comes running out of my clubhouse. He takes two steps forward before my bullet catches him in the forehead, sending him flying back into the door. He collapses, bleeding and gurgling. I don’t let myself feel anything at the sight of the dead man. It’s either the Wraiths or the Saints, and that ain’t a hard choice since the Wraiths killed my brother and tried to kill Selena, not to mention me. Two more Wraiths run out. I gather that the gunshots are hidden within the crackling of the fire since they look down at their fallen friend in confusion. Their confusion swiftly turns to death when I pull the trigger, a line of bullets cutting across both of them.

  Then the return fire starts.

  It comes from the windows, firing blindly into the dark. Bullets chip at the ground all around me, throwing up pieces of concrete like shrapnel. I duck my head and fire back, picking my shots carefully. My bullets crunch through glass and brick and flesh, killing three men from three windows, and when the bullets start again I just start firing again. When my rifle runs out of ammo I pick up my submachinegun and keep going, firing like a crazed man, not thinking, not feeling, just firing. I turn myself into a machine.

  When the fire begins to chew through the clubhouse, I know I have to move. Smoke fills the building, gathering outside the windows like steam from a sauna. I pick up my shotgun and run across the street, barrel aimed, senses honed. A man charges out of the building. I pump him in the chest. Two more men; two more corpses. I push into the building, checking the corners, shirt pulled up around my mouth because there’s so much smoke.

  When I reach the bar I run to Lion and drop my knife to him. He catches it in his clasped hands and cuts the ropes tying his wrists whilst I keep watch. Without saying anything, he goes around cutting the ropes of everybody else. When all the men are free, I turn to Lion. “Where the fuck is Brose?” I say, voice wheezing from the smoke.

  “He ran out the back with four men,” Lion says. “Boss … he said something about Selena’s mom.”

  “With me!” I roar. “Right now!”

  “Boss.”

  Lion and the men pick up whatever guns they can find and follow me. I kick through the door, the wood ash-black now, and charge into the night. He’s going to try and kill my woman. And it doesn’t even matter if he doesn’t know she’s here, because he knows about her mom, and he’ll take her mom hostage and … I grit my teeth at the thought. If he takes her mom hostage, we’ll be right back where we started. Brose will have all the leverage and I’ll be forced to call him sir again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that.

  I sprint toward my jeep, head down, and then change direction as I see Brose and his men veer toward the basketball court. I fire a shot after them, catching two of the men in the lower halves, their legs snatched from under them. My men fire more rounds, killing them. Then the man beside Brose falls.

  “Stop!” I roar, when only Brose remains, standing alone in the center of the court. His fancy outfit is in disarray, his jacket torn, and his cane nowhere to be seen. For a second, he looks like a kindly, lost old man. But then I remember Markus, and Selena, and me. I remember the years of fighting and death. I remember the pain and the misery.

  My men stop firing. Brose looks down at his dead, and then up at me. He smooths down his jacket and stands straight. “So this is it, is it?” he says, watching me coldly. “This is how the great war ends?”

  “There never was a great war,” I say, dropping my shotgun on the ground. “There was only you and your goddamn ego. We had a deal with your men. It seems like a damn long time ago now, but it was only a couple of days ago. They fired on us. They tried to kill us. You killed my brother. You think you’re bigger and better than a man, but the truth is you’re just a man, just a deranged old man with deranged appetites and a deranged sense of power. You were never the big bad wolf, Brose, and you never will be.”

  “Your brother deserved to die,” Brose says. “You’ll never get me to take that back.”

  “And you deserve to die, too,” I say, holding my hand out. “Knife.”

  Brose’s eyes go wide, watching as Lion steps forward and places the blade in my hand.

  “So you’re going to gut me, then?” Brose mumbles. Tears bead in his eyes, one sliding down his cheek, another clinging to his eyelashes. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

  “That’s it,” I say. “Any last words?”

  “I have a son!” Brose squeals. “His name is—James, and he’s a good boy. He’s only five and …”

  “Stop,” I say. “I reckon you’ve heard about how I let Slug go, and maybe you think I’m gonna go soft again. But if Slug was guilty, it was of being an asshole who trusted the wrong asshole. You killed my brother. You tried to kill my woman. Do you really think there’s any coming back from that?”

  “Just wait—”

  I leap forward and stab Brose in the neck. Blood spurts over my face, pissing down my chest, drenching me. He stumbles backward. I stab him again, falling on him like a wolverine, stabbing so fast that I don’t even aim. I stab his neck and his face and his chest and his shoulder and his hands. I stab until parts of him have turned into red ribbons. I stab until his body goes from defense spasms to death spasms, and then I stab him again. I see Markus, leaving me, turning away to his bike. I see Selena lying dead in that cell.

  When I’m done, I collapse to the side, panting heavily and lying on my back, looking up at the stars. The sky is clear tonight, the stars beautiful. The smell of blood surrounds me, the taste of blood strong on my tongue. I stretch my arms out and just keep watching the sky, waiting for the stars to fall to mark this moment. Something should mark it. My brother’s killer is dead. The Wraiths are dead. The Saints are the biggest club in Austin. A big moment.

  And yet most of all I think about Selena and how I want to be with her right now. How I want to hold her and kiss her. How I wish she was here to tell me everything is okay.

  Then Lion leans over and looks down at me. “Boss?” he says.

  “Lion,” I reply.

  “You all right down there?”

  “The guns,” I say, cogs turning in my mind. “And the money! Goddamn, Lion, tell me you have the guns and the—”

  “We do, boss.” Timmy peers down at me. “We grabbed them before we followed you out. No worries. Everything’s safe.”

  “You’re a good man, Timmy,” I say. “Both of you are good men. Help me up, will you?”

  Lion gives me his hand. I grab him by the wrist and he pulls me to my feet. Timmy holds one of the duffle bags in his hand, and the others rest on the floor near the men. I take the bag from Timmy and go to the men, and then unzip all of the bags.

  “Spread out the cash and the guns,” I say. “Equal share to all patched members.”

  “Boss.”

  I walk to the front of the men, wad of cash in one hand and weapon in the other. “Listen to me, fellas,” I say. “I know it looked for a while there like I was selling you down the river, but you gotta know there was a plan.” I peel the tracker off the pistol. “We were meant to get these back right away …” I explain to them about Whisper and the plan. “But sometimes plans don’t go to plan. If I’ve learned anything these past couple’a days, it’s that.” Sometimes plans don’t go to plans: sometimes a woman a man meets to fuck and have a fun night with turns into a woman he cannot live without, sometimes a woman who he thought was just going to be some fun turns into everything for him.

  “What now, boss?” Lion asks, squinting at the clubhouse, fire lighting his face up.

  “We rebuild,” I say. “Call the police and the fire office, get them to rule it an accident, get in touch with the insurance people, and don’t let them fuck us around. You know what to do with the bodies. In the meantime, we’ll use the basketball court for any meetings. It’s business as usual, except for the clubhouse. All right?”

  “Boss. And where’re you going?”

  “I’ve got a lady to see,” I say.

  I walk down the street, the blood drying to my skin now, sticking to my cheeks and my forehead and my lips and my chin, my neck and my knuckles and the backs of my hand. I feel light and yet heavy; I feel heavy because I always dreamed I’d feel light the day I killed Brose. I guess some part of me believed that when I killed Brose, Markus would come back to life, and even if I knew that was complete horseshit it didn’t stop some hopeful part of me believing it. But Brose is dead and the clubhouse is burning and nothing has changed except that there’s fire in my heart now, too. A blazing fire which wasn’t there before. The chance at a life. And I’m alive, I remind myself. I got through this alive.

  I spot Whisper’s old junk car a few yards back from mine. I wonder how she was so damn good at following me, and then decide it’s because that’s what she wanted to do. She set her mind to it and so it happened. That’s Selena, I’m swiftly learning. When she wants something, she knows how to go after it. Maybe it pisses me off when I’m trying to save her. But I wouldn’t change it.

  I crouch down so she can’t see me, and then creep up to the car. I knock on the door, hard, twice. Inside the car she lets out a yelp and leaps up, hands over her face. When she sees that it’s me her lips curl for a moment, and then she kicks the car door open and runs at me, hands flailing. “You monster!” she snaps. “You animal! You beast! What’s the matter with you? What the hell is the matter with you? You’re an animal! You’re an absolute animal!”

  “I think you already said that,” I say, catching her hands and restraining her. She goes at me with her knee. I twist my body, blocking her, and then bring my face close to hers. “You don’t want to get in the habit of repeating yourself, ma’am. Listening to you the first time around is torture enough.”

  “You’re a pig,” she says, and then loses control of herself and kisses me.

  I kiss her back, letting her hands go and moving my hands down her body, grabbing her legs and her ass and pressing her against me, hard. She moans through the kiss, and then disentangles herself. “We need to get you cleaned up,” she says, wiping her mouth. “I want you, not Brose’s blood.”

  “Fair enough.” I step back.

  “And that is Brose’s blood, right?”

  “It is,” I confirm. “The Gentleman is dead. He’s never going to capture or torture or kill anybody ever again. It’s strange, though, ’cause …” I tell her about thinking my brother would come back to life.

  “I understand,” she says. “I guess we always believe in fairytales. even when we live in a horror story.”

  I nod, and then lead her to the jeep. “We’ll take this one,” I say. “I’ll reimburse Whisper for the junker. Knowing him, he’ll charge me double.”

  “Can we make a stop on the way?” Selena asks, climbing into the car.

  “The hospital?”

  “The hospital.”

  “Of course we can. Probably better if I stay in the car, though. Might want to look a little more presentable before meeting my lady’s momma.”

  “Your lady.” She strokes my arm. “That makes me go tingly all over.”

  “Normally I’d vomit in my mouth at the word ‘tingly,’ but do you know what?” I start the engine. “It makes me a little tingly as well.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Selena

  “How’ve you been?” Mom asks.

  “Um …” I giggle, not sure where to start. How do I tell her what’s happened since I left this hospital the last time? So I won’t, I decide. There’s no reason to delve deeply into any of that. There’s no reason to unburden myself on her. “I’m sorry I missed our meetings.”

  “That’s okay,” Mom says. “I actually have some news.” A small smile plays at her lips. It’s the first time in months I’ve seen her smile like that. She still looks deflated, and dying—she still looks like a woman with cancer—but the smile uplifts her. It makes her face, if only for a moment, young again.

  “What is it?” I ask, excitement rising in my voice. “Mom?”

  “The insurance came through!” Mom squeals, and then falls back into a coughing fit.

  I sit with her, holding her hand, stroking it, and dabbing at her mouth with tissue. “When do you start treatment?” I ask.

  “In the next couple of days.” She rolls her eyes, grinning mischievously. “That’s if I don’t die in the next couple of days!”

  “Mom!” I snap. “Don’t say things like that.”

  “Wouldn’t that be funny, though, dear? All this excitement and then …”

  “I’ll kill you myself if you keep saying things like that,” I say. “I mean it.”

  “What about you, dear?” Mom asks.

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t talk to me as if I don’t know my own daughter! You’ve been on a date, or found a man, or something. I can tell. You’re all giddy.”

  “Giddy,” I repeat, wondering if it can be true.

  “Yes, giddy!” Mom exclaims. “Did my speech light a fire in your belly? Did you go out there and search for a baby-daddy?”

  “You’re like a kid today,” I tell her.

  “I feel sixteen again,” Mom says, smiling. “But I don’t remember being this tired at sixteen.” She leans back. “I’ll have a nap now. And you’ll go and see your man. But Selena?”

  “Yes.”

  Life flares in her eyes for a moment. “He’s not like Clint, is he? He’s like not that awful man?”

  “He’s nothing like Clint,” I tell her. “I was scared of that at first. I was worried that he’d turn violent, or mean. I didn’t want to share anything with him. But we’ve shared. We probably know each other better than we know anybody else. Except for you, I suppose.”

  “You met this man a few days ago?” Mom says in wonder. “It sounds like you met him a few years ago. It really must be something special.”

  “Something special.” I nod, smiling. “I guess that’s one way to put it. I’m thrilled about the insurance company, Mom. Really thrilled.”

  “Let’s hope we can keep death back for a few more months.”

  I sit with her until she falls asleep and then leave the hospital, thinking about how I felt the last time I left. I was full of rage and urgency, full of fear with my mind twisted. Now I feel almost peaceful, which is odd considering everything that’s happened. Fear pricks me; I know I’ll lose sleep over the next few weeks over this mad few days. But right now I’m able to savor the after-taste of survival. We made it.

  “We made it!” I squeal as I drag Dante into my apartment. “Let me introduce you to my abode.”

  “Abode,” Dante mutters. “I reckon my vocabulary is gonna triple being with you.”

  “Do you want to take a shower?” I ask. “There’s a supermarket down the street and I can get you some new clothes.”

  “All right. Sounds good.” He wonders over to the couch and picks up a book from the armrest. “Far From the Madding Crowd.” He flicks through it. “This is … complicated. How do you read this stuff?”

  “Practice,” I say. “I tell you what. You teach me how to ride a motorbike and I’ll teach you how to read difficult nineteenth-century literature.”

  He smiles. “All right then, ma’am. Sounds fair to me. I’m gonna take that shower.”

  “Let me get you some fresh towels.”

  I get the towels for him and then make a quick run to the store, buying some jeans, underwear, and T-shirts. When I return to the apartment, Dante is sitting on the couch with a towel tied around his waist, reading the fifth page of the book. “What happens to this Farmer Oak fella, then?”

  “You’ll have to read it to find out,” I tell him. “I got you some clothes.”

  He stands up, letting the towel fall from his waist. “Who said I need clothes?”

  I look at his body, at the sculpted muscles, the immense power. My heartbeat gets faster and my pussy aches. It aches with the urgency of withheld desire. I suspect that if things hadn’t gone haywire we would’ve spent these last few days doing nothing but making love. I watch as his cock gets hard. I’m not even doing anything sexy, just staring at him, and his massive cock gets rock-hard for me. I step forward and place my hand on my chest, closing my eyes and savoring the feeling.

  “You’re like wood,” I say. I push down on him. “There’s no give at all.”

  “Open your eyes,” Dante says in a commanding tone.