“Don’t let me see you in here again, Tavin. You have a chance out there now. Don’t fuck it up.” I looked at the warden of the prison I was about to walk out of with stoic eyes. I could see the clear skies, the green of the trees, and took a deep breath.

Independence lay just through that door, freedom from the stink of prison, and the ability to do just whatever the hell I wanted to was only three feet away.

“Yeah, I’ll do my best, warden.” I flexed my jaw and turned back to the door, my gaze locked on the sight I’d waited so long to see.

I couldn’t move, though. I knew at any minute I’d be called back, that some last-minute phone call would bring me back into the cells that had kept me locked away for so long. I’d hear my name, or they’d do their favorite dehumanization trick and call me inmate, and that would be it. I’d be back in this fucking hole forever.

“Go, on boy. We aren’t going to call you back.” I looked back at the warden in shock. How did he know?

“You aren’t the first inmate to be released. Go on now, get son, while the getting is good.” The warden, a tall, burly man that none of us fucked with gave me a shooing motion, and I took the first step out of the prison and into freedom.

I felt energy rush through me after that first step and quickened my pace. Out. Get out before they change their minds!

I wanted to leave the prison far behind me, along with the guards, and all of the other inmates too. I had no idea what to do when I got outside, I had a packet with a bus ticket and direction on how to get to the station, but what then? I wanted to celebrate, get drunk and eat everything I wanted, I wanted to fuck, and sleep without the sound of thousand other men waking me up. That wasn’t going to happen though.

Mainly because I was Tavin Mueller, a common criminal, a jewel thief, and life wasn’t easy on anybody that had a record like mine. No, my life was fucked, no matter what the warden had to say, no matter how hard I’d studied to earn a GED and a diploma in IT while I was inside, nobody hired thieves and I had that stamp on my record, whether I deserved it or not.

I walked out of the prison parking lot, feeling the hot sun on my face as I exited the prison gates. I knew the hot beams of sunlight would turn my dark hair into a prism of fire and light, but didn’t care, I had to figure out where I was going to go.

I knew one thing for certain, not even the sun’s killing heat couldn’t penetrate the cold hard steel of my blue eyes. There was nothing in this world that could warm them. The one thing that could have warmed them was long gone.

Annamaria, the memory of her kept me sane as I spent hours locked in a cell. Her memory still made my body ache for her touch.

I’d been in prison for five years and there’s only been two thing that kept me from losing my shit, the motorcycle my dad left me, made by his own two hands, and Annamaria.

The only real wrench in my plans was the fact that Annamaria was the reason I was in jail and she’d married the man that had orchestrated it all. I would never get her back now, she was out of my reach.

I started to turn at the exit to the parking lot when a man in a classic Chevy Nova, kitted out to the nines, got out of the car and came towards me.

“You Tavin?” The gruff man in full biker gear, down to the requisite beard down to his belt buckle asked me. My kind of people.

“I might be, who wants to know?”

“Annamaria sent me. She said to take the car, get your bike, and get out of town. She doesn’t want to see you, she just wants you to disappear. Got it?” The man’s hard eyes pierced even the darkness of his sunglasses and I knew, somewhere on his body, I’d find a gun that would silence any protests I might have made.

“Sure, man, I understand.” I didn’t let it show, how the words hit me like an avalanche, I just kept my cool and gave him the same glacial stare.

“Of course, man. Hop in.” He turned back to the car and got in.

I could see the prison tats on his knuckles as he drove silently, and kept my mouth shut. No volunteering information, no pleasantries. This guy had done hard time, and he wasn’t afraid of going back, I could sense it on him. You come to know these things after five years in a prison.

The man didn’t seem to be so set on quiet, though.

“Look man, I know the deal, I know your past. You were put in prison by my employer, and I know how that can eat at you. You don’t have many opportunities in life now because of him, but let me make a suggestion?” The man drove without ever taking his eyes off the road.

“It’s a free country.” I wasn’t going to say much more than that.

“Take the money that she-devil you used to call a girlfriend put in your saddlebags and fuck off out of this place. You won’t get any peace if you stick around.”

“That’s the plan.” I promised, not letting my thoughts penetrate to my face. “Get the fuck out and leave this hellhole behind.”

“She used to be sweet, that girl of yours. Now? Now she’s worse than some of the men I’ve worked for in my past. You know she was in on that setup, right?” Still not taking his eyes off of the road, the biker dropped that bomb on me like it wouldn’t cause World War III.

No, I hadn’t known that. Ice water trickled through my veins, turning my body to a block of ice. The only sign I’d heard was the way my fist clenched uncontrollably. I stared out of the window, my jaw harder than ever.

Annamaria had been in on that shit? Somehow, I wasn’t shocked. I took the man at his word, that was the code in our world. You didn’t lie to a man just out of prison, you didn’t lie to a fellow biker, unless he was in a rival gang that you had beef with. I didn’t have beef with this guy, so I trusted his word.

“Well, stay quiet if you want, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of this place, and forget her. She’d probably make your dick fall of from freezing if you did manage to get near her.” He adjusted himself in his pants as if just thinking about her made his own dick hurt in a bad way, made a face of disgust, and put on his brake at a stop sign. “That piece isn’t good for anybody anymore.”

I wanted revenge now. She’d planned this with that asshole?

Yeah, I could do a few more years in prison for that shit. The man dropped me off at my old house, now standing with a collapsed roof, five years’ worth of overgrown weeds, and a decided air of abandonment. There’d been nobody to care of the house my parents left me when they died in a car accident when I was 19, so now, it was falling in on itself. I went to the back, found the garage, and pushed open the door.

Somebody had tuned it up, filled the tank, and made sure it ran before leaving the saddlebags full of cash. I took the money out, put it in the same leather jacket I’d walked into prison wearing, and started up the bike with the kick starter. I drove out of town for a couple of miles, and turned off at a dirt road. Going up a mile I found the cabin my grandparents were obviously maintaining. It was the same as I remembered, and I knew they must be alive somewhere, if it was being cared for.

They hadn’t visited me in prison, they’d wrote off the grandson that couldn’t stay out of trouble. The only grandson they had, but that shit didn’t matter. I was a criminal to them, convicted by my peers. The fact I’d never robbed anyone didn’t matter, the courts convicted me, and I lost everything that mattered.

It seems the woman that had kept my cold prison nights warm was to blame for that. I was going out to seek my revenge.

I waited until it was dark, and then I drove out to their house. I knew they’d still be in the mansion Marcus Winston III had inherited. The preppy asshole from high school wouldn’t let that little nugget out of his hands, not for any amount of money. It reminded him too much of how important he was in our shithole, rundown town.

I walked for a half a mile, not wanting anyone to know I was there. I had murder in my heart, but when I saw the face of the woman I’d once loved, I knew she’d exacted her own revenge on herself. Through a living room window, I saw her, out of shape with a cruel twist to her aged mouth, her hair dyed a garish blond, misery in every line on her face. She’d tanned so often, and lived such a hard life, she looked 20 years older than she was.

I didn’t need to do anything. I turned to leave and that’s when things got really fucked up.

“Hey, she was right! He did show up!” Shots rang out of the darkness and I started to run, feet clad in bike boots pounding behind me.

I’d kept fit in prison, exercising in my cell every single day until my body was hard, toned, and ready for anything. I ran with ease and made it to my back just as I heard the engines of other bikes revving. She must have a crew there. Her husband had always been into drugs, and dealing drugs, and I had to guess he still was. From what the biker said earlier, she was no better, so I’m sure they’d kept a full armory in case I did show up with revenge in mind.

Shots hit the pavement before me as I sped away, opening the throttle on the only bike I’ve ever owned. I knew it like I knew the back of my hand and pushed her as hard as she’d go. Noise exploded from the pipes and my old bike surged ahead, keeping me out of range of the bullets still going off behind me. I wove through the darkness, through the backroads, and headed into town, aiming for safety.

The gunshots stopped as we sped through the town that barely had one stop-light and I let myself relax for a minute. Thinking quick, I knew that I had to get out of town, as far away as I could. Maybe once I left the lights of town the men behind me would give up. I sped through that one stop light and headed out on a county road, hoping to lose the assholes behind me, but they kept coming. I had a full tank of gas, though, and a will to live. I’d get my revenge, one way or another, if I got out of the mess I currently found myself in.

I was well out of town, but the men were still behind me. I saw a light up ahead, a light I didn’t remember but who knew what had been built on this stretch of highway since I went to prison? I was aiming for that, hoping a public place would scare the fuckers with guns off, but they just started shooting again as I slowed down.

I felt a bullet slice through my arm, and one through my hip, and lost control of the bike. I was glad I’d taken the seconds it cost me to throw my helmet on when I found my head suddenly bouncing off of asphalt. I heard the scraping destruction of my only possession behind me, felt the impact as my head bounced one more time, and then lost all contact with the world. I knew death waited for me in that darkness, and my only thought before the world disappeared was how much I wished I was dragging Annamaria into death with me.