“Hold still.” Jacinda used a cotton swab to dab antibiotic cream on her father’s forehead, then closed the gash with butterfly bandages. Simon had brought in a tool kit full of first aid supplies and then left, trapping them in Delaney’s office with a shaggy prospect she hadn’t known. Now, she knew he was called Fitz.

Fitz stood at the door, looking uncomfortable—but also stalwart. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t think she could overpower him and get her father out of here.

She didn’t want to. Apollo had taken all this heat on himself, and she couldn’t imagine what might make her abandon him now. Did they mean to kill him? She thought they might. Whatever it was, she would only make it worse by fighting now.

With the prospect standing right there, she couldn’t ask any of the hundred pressing questions she had for her father, and he wasn’t in a state to answer them, anyway. He sat at the end of the tattered sofa, swaying gently, occasionally muttering I’m sorry through his bloodied lips. He had a concussion, and it had knocked him loopy.

Once she had his open wounds tended and cleaned, she took an instant ice pack from the kit, snapped it to activate whatever weird chemicals made it work, and put it over his nose and most damaged eye. She lifted his hand and got him to hold it for himself. Then she packed up the supplies and sat beside him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Confusion had her brain fishtailing. She’d spent the afternoon fighting for her life, quite literally, and her father’s life, too. He’d been badly beaten. They’d been bound and surrounded by angry, armed men, and she’d watched while they’d argued about killing them. To protect the dark secrets of their crimes.

And yet, the prevailing emotion she felt was guilt. In that basement, under imminent threat of death, she’d come to fully believe what she’d always hoped to be true: the Bulls were fundamentally decent. They’d tied her to a chair. They’d beaten her father. Yet she understood.

The truth had been in Apollo’s arms when he’d knelt with her. It had been in the Bulls who’d gotten in Delaney’s way. These were not men who killed without conscience or cause. They were outlaws; they lived by a code that was different from the law of the land, but no less moral.

Her father had, with threatening intent, trespassed on their hallowed ground, and he’d broken the law to do it. He’d come into their home unwelcome, under false pretenses, to plant illegal recording devices. He’d launched an attack, and they were defending themselves against it.

They had every right to kill him. Every legal right to use deadly force against an intruder.

And yet, he was alive.

Her father had tried to dig into the black earth of the Brazen Bulls’ foundation, and Apollo had taken on that offense as his own. To save them.

“God, Dad. What a mess you made.”

“Need to protect you,” he mumbled.

“You didn’t protect anyone. You could have gotten me killed. And yourself. And what’s happening to Apollo right now? He protected me and you.”

He sighed noisily and went back to I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Two heavy thumps on the door made her jump and sit up straight. Fitz opened it, and Delaney stepped in. “Go talk to Simon. He’s gonna send you on a supply run.”

“You got it, Prez.” Fitz left. Delaney turned his desk chair around to face the sofa and sat down.

He nodded at her still-dazed father. “How’s he doin’?”

“Not so good. I think he needs a doctor.”

“We need to agree on a story, then. You got any ideas?”

“The truth. He broke in where he wasn’t welcome and got his ass handed to him.”

Delaney cocked up a corner of his mouth and tilted his head, and Jacinda saw that she’d surprised and impressed him—eased his mind a little, too. “That’s good. It’d be a help if nobody said where that place he broke into was.”

“I won’t,” her father answered. Jacinda turned her head and saw that he’d sat up and set the ice pack on his lap. He didn’t look clear, exactly, but he was paying attention. “I’m sorry.”

“Good. That’s good,” Delaney said. “I’m glad we can get on the same page so quick. Now, I’m gonna ask you to explain how this all came about, so I can get a real understanding of the trouble, and ask how you mean to handle it with Ms. Thompson.”

Jacinda opened her mouth, but her father spoke first, his voice full of jagged stones. “She’s a grieving mother who wants to make sense of her loss. Please leave her alone.”

A strange flicker passed through Delaney’s eyes, like a shadow. After a few seconds of contemplative quiet, he cocked his head and said, “Bill—can I call you Bill?” Her father nodded creakily, and he went on, “I don’t know what you think you know about us, but we are not in the business of getting innocent people killed. We’re not perfect, and we’ve made mistakes we can’t take back, but we don’t look to hurt innocents. We didn’t kill Patrice, and her mother’s not in any danger from us. I would like to neutralize her questions if I can, though. I’m asking you to help me figure that out.”

Jacinda had a thought at once. “She’s broke. I don’t think she’s looking for a payout at all, and she might be offended, I don’t know. But she’s broke. Patrice’s uncle’s family is broke, too, even after the fundraiser. With the criminal case on Patrice’s death closed and the arson case officially cold, it wouldn’t look like a bribe if the club helped her out somehow. Maybe money would help.” She sat back again as doubt reared its head. “I don’t know. It might be a bad idea.”

Delaney considered that for a while. “You think you could get a feeling about it? Would you know how to do that?”

“Yeah. I can ask without bringing guilt into it.”

“That would be a great help, sweetheart. Thank you.” Delaney focused on her father again. “Bill, I want to end this meeting knowing you’re a friend to me and my club. What’re your feelings on that?”

He cleared his throat. “I was wrong to come into your private establishment to spy on you. I was wrong to go behind Jacinda’s back. We’re a team and I betrayed that. But I’m worried about her, mixed up here.” His battered eyes held on Delaney. “No offense intended, but your club’s reputation is violent. She’s my only child. I was trying to protect her. I need to protect her.”

“And if I tell you she’s under our protection, too, does that ease your mind?”

Her father didn’t answer for a long time. Before he did, he turned to her. “This is what you want? And you’re pregnant?”

Her answer, she gave immediately. “Yes, it’s what I want. I don’t know if I’m pregnant; it’s too early yet.” Jacinda realized that she’d made an important decision. “But if I am, I’ll keep it. I love Apollo, Dad. I want to have a family with him. And the Bulls are a big part of him. They’re family.”

Through the thin gap of his one semi-working eye, he regarded her seriously. Turning at last to Delaney, he held out his hand on a stiff arm. “Then we’re friends.”

“That’s good to hear.” Delaney shook, and seemed to be gentle about it, taking heed of her father’s injuries.

“What’s going to happen to Apollo?” She finally asked the question that had its claws buried in her frontal lobe. “What are you going to do?”

“That decision was made in our chapel, sweetheart. That’s our sanctified space. Not for you.”

“Please don’t kill him.”

“We’ve got no wish to kill him. What he did was bad, but for reasons we understand. What your father did was worse, and Apollo’s taken on that debt. He’s proved his loyalty, but the price has to be paid.”

She could tell that Delaney wasn’t talking about money now. They meant to take their ‘price’ out of Apollo’s body. “I want to be there when you do whatever it is you’re going to do.”

Delaney’s head was moving back and forth before she finished that sentence. “No, sweetheart, you do not. And it’s club business.”

That wasn’t good enough. “Please. I want—I need—to be there for him. The way he was for me. Please.”

Delaney studied her. She studied him right back. He wasn’t a physically imposing man—one of the shortest and slightest Bulls, only an inch or two taller than she, and into his sixties, she guessed—but there was something powerful about him, an intensity hovering around him like a force field, that made him intimidating as hell. Until he smiled; when he smiled, he seemed affable and at ease.

He wasn’t smiling now. But he finally answered, “You understand that you can’t interfere, and what you see can’t ever be spoken of beyond that circle?”

The thought of quietly watching Apollo suffer made her heart ache, but she nodded. “I do, yes. I will honor your trust.”

“That would be a very good idea, sweetheart. Okay. It’d be good for you to be there for him after, so okay. Go take your dad to get seen to, and be back for nine o’clock tonight. We’ll be at the station.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

One of the prospects drove them back to the office, and from there, Jacinda drove her dad to the emergency room. After a few hours spent mostly waiting, she drove her father home with a few dozen stitches, a reset nose, the concussion she’d known he had, and a prescription for Vicodin.

She pulled up to the curb before the house. Her mom’s Acura sat on the driveway, and the lights were on in the living room.

“Mom is going to lose her shit. We can’t go in there until we figure out what we’re going to tell her.” Her father had brushed her off every time she’d tried to bring it up in the hospital, but it was driving Jacinda nuts. They could not tell her mother the truth about their afternoon at the Bulls’ clubhouse,

“Jaci, this is not the first time I’ve been beaten up on the job. We don’t need a big story. I only need to tell her I got made during surveillance. Which is the truth. She’ll fuss, and tell me how much she hates the work I do, and I’ll let her yell at me while she tucks me in on the sofa and pours me a scotch.” He reached over and patted her hand. “But you shouldn’t come in. If you do, you’ll get caught in her net. She’ll need to fuss over you, too, and lecture you about the work, and you won’t get back to Apollo in time.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

When she arrived back at the Bulls’ compound, Jacinda was surprised to see that the station was completely dark. She parked on the lot and checked her watch: ten minutes to nine. Confused and worried, she got out and walked to the pitch-black building.

About ten feet from the door, she realized that it wasn’t dark; she could see a thin seam of light at the edges of all the windows. They’d been covered with heavy black fabric, like blankets or something.

At the door, she could hear low, indeterminate noise coming from inside. She tried to go in, but it was locked. Not knowing what else to do, she knocked.

The door opened, and Apollo stood right there. His chest and feet were bare, and his belt hung open. His complexion had a waxy look, but his cheeks and neck were bright red; the flush spread over the top of his chest, too—the patchy high contrast of anxiety.

Why was he half dressed at the service station? What the fuck did they plan to do to him?

He blocked the door. “Baby, go home. I’ll call when I can.”

“No. Delaney said I could be here, and I’m here. Whatever’s about to happen, I’m not leaving you to face it alone.”

His grin seemed almost ghoulish. “No other way to face this but alone, J. I don’t want you to see it.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving, Apollo. I’ll stand out here, or in there, but I’m not leaving.” Laying her hand on his chest—his skin was clammy—she added, “Let me be here for you. If you can take what they’re going to do, I can take seeing it.”

He put his hand over hers and let out a choked gurgle that was probably intended to be a laugh. “We’ll see.”

He moved back, and she stepped up into the station. At the doorway to the bays, he stopped again and turned to her. “Jacinda. What’s gonna happen—I need you to let it happen. They gave me a choice. This is what I chose. You hear?”

“I hear. I won’t interfere. But what’s going to happen?”

“We call it a brazing. They’re gonna burn me.”

Her brain shorted and died out, and she could only gape at him for a second. The first feeling that came back online was shocked outrage. “What? That’s fucking barbaric! They’re your brothers! How—”

“Jacinda!” He grabbed her shoulders and gave her a brisk shake. She’d said she wouldn’t interfere.

Yet her mind still reeled at the horror he’d described in so few words. “O-okay. Jesus, baby.”

“They would have let me walk away. Do you understand? I chose this instead. I chose the club.”

She understood: he was showing his loyalty. They’d offered him a terrible choice: submit to excruciating pain or give up the club. In choosing the pain, he’d chosen the Bulls.

The ability to form words was lost in the foaming mass of horror and worry and love that her brain had become, so she only nodded. Apollo took her hand and led her into the bays.

All the Bulls were there, even the prospects; the wide space seemed full of black leather. But there was little sound, despite the men crowded together. They were solemn and silent, and Jacinda could see that none of them relished what they were about to do.

At Apollo’s bay, second from the door, a long metal box, without a top, sat on the floor under the lift, which had been raised to about four or five feet off the floor. The box bore a dreadful resemblance to a coffin. Inside were black lumps like evenly shaped stones, filling the space about halfway. Jacinda stared, unable to make sense of those black lumps.

And then she did. Charcoal briquettes. That coffin-shaped box was full of barbecue briquettes.

She squeezed Apollo’s hand. He couldn’t do this. This was nuts.

But he gave her something like a smile and kissed her fingers. Then he let her go. “Be strong, baby. Don’t get in the way. I love you.”

“I love you! Apollo—don’t do this. Please!”

He looked over her head and nodded. As he turned away and went to the circle of Bulls, Jacinda felt a woman’s hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t even noticed that another woman was here.

Willa, Rad’s old lady, hooked her arm around Jacinda’s. “I’ll stick with you, honey. Just lean on me when you need it.”

“Why are you here?” As she asked, she saw Apollo strip off his jeans and underwear, and then the chain and pendant she’d given him for this birthday. He stood near that awful fucking box, stark naked, surrounded by his so-called ‘brothers.’

“I’m a nurse. I handle as much of the club’s injuries as I can. I’m here to make sure he doesn’t get hurt beyond healing. Okay? There’ll be a lot of pain, but we’re gonna make sure he’ll be okay.”

“I don’t understand any of this! If they care about him, why do this?”

Willa’s attention shifted to the men around that terrible box. “I think to really understand, you’d have to be a man who’d be a Bull. From over here, being women who love men who’d be Bulls, we don’t have to understand that deep. We just have to love our men and know it’s important to them. It makes sense to them.”

Jacinda shook her head. That wasn’t enough.

Four of the biggest Bulls—Ox, Rad, Eight Ball, and Wally—bound Apollo with chains to the lift: each arm and each leg, so his body barely sagged from the four points of his bindings.

Delaney stepped up and set a paternal hand on Apollo’s shoulder. “You gotta be pretty quiet, son. You want a gag? No shame in it if you need it.”

“No, D. I’ll keep quiet.”

Delaney patted his shoulder and stepped back. He turned to the back wall and nodded, and the deep whine of hydraulics filled the space as the lift went up until it was above all their heads.

When it stopped, Delaney nodded again, and the ceiling seemed to roar; the fan had been turned on, and air moved subtly through the space, not a breeze but a lightness. He nodded a third time, this time to Simon, who squirted lighter fluid over the charcoals and set the box alight.

Almost instantly, the air was saturated with the sharp tang of accelerant. The flames rose up about three feet from the box; Apollo’s body was at least four feet from the highest spike of fire. That didn’t seem as awful as Jacinda had first imagined.

But then Delaney nodded yet again, and the lift whined into operation, lowering until the flames seemed almost to lick Apollo’s skin. He went tense, stretching out between his bonds, lifting his body up as much as he could.

“Time it,” Delaney said. Rad pushed a button on his watch. How long did Apollo have to stay like that?

“This is insane,” Jacinda whispered, clutching Willa with both hands. “They can’t do this! How can you let this happen?”

Willa wrapped her arm around her and held her closely, so closely that Jacinda wasn’t sure if she was supporting her or holding her back. “Turn away if you need to, honey.”

More than anything, she wanted to turn away. But she would not. She would be strong and look.

All the Bulls looked on as well, not one turning his head. They watched grimly as Apollo was tortured for the sin of protecting her. And her father—this was his fault above all.

Time became meaningless; it stretched out toward an empty horizon and never moved closer, like a dream of running in place. Jacinda stared at the horror before her, barely allowing herself to blink.

At first, Apollo seemed merely uncomfortable. Then his rigid stretch gave out and he began to fight his bonds, flexing and writhing, as if he were trying to give parts of his body relief. Then that no longer worked, and he began to shake. The chains rattled against the arms of the lift to which he was bound.

Finally, he began to scream. But he clenched his jaw down and screamed through sealed lips, muffling the sound but not the power of his pain. He made those desperate, agonizing, throat-destroying grunting shrieks with every exhale, sucking in charcoal fumes through his nose and screaming again.

Jacinda opened her mouth to shout at them to fucking stop when Rad yelled “TIME!”

“PULL HIM UP!” Delaney shouted.

The lift went up. Simon hit the box with a fire extinguisher.

Wearing heavy leather gloves against the heat, the same four who’d bound him to the lift unbound him and got him down, laying him face down on a canvas stretcher. Willa let go of Jacinda and ran over with an oxygen tank. Jacinda ran over as well and knelt beside the stretcher.

His skin was a dark, angry, terrifying red. Vast blisters were already rising on his shoulders, his ass, his calves. She couldn’t begin to imagine his pain.

He was conscious. He’d felt every second of that torment.

She wanted to touch him, but she was afraid any touch would hurt him. “Baby, I’m so sorry!”

“S’okay now,” he gasped through the oxygen mask. “Love you.”

“I love you so much!”

He groaned weakly when Ox and Rad picked up the stretcher. With Willa carrying the oxygen tank, they all made a somber parade back to the clubhouse.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

“I want to keep him doped up for a few days, until the worst of the pain is over. Burns this extensive, the pain would be maddening. But there’s no third degree damage. That’s good. If we stay vigilant, this’ll all heal. Minimal scarring, if he’s lucky.” Willa’s doctor friend pushed a syringe into Apollo’s IV line. “I’ll check in on him daily until we’ve got him off the drip, but otherwise, change his dressings twice a day, keep the antibiotics and morphine coming, and keep a sharp eye out for signs of infection. Don’t let him move much yet when he’s awake. Not too many people around, and nobody touches him who isn’t thoroughly scrubbed up and gloved. You know the drill, Willa.”

“Yeah, I do. Thanks, Josh.”

“I’m here for you. Do I want to know how this happened?”

“You know the answer to that, doc.” Rad said from the corner of the room.

They were on the second floor of the clubhouse, in one of the rooms the Bulls called ‘crash pads.’ Instead of taking Apollo to a hospital where he fucking belonged, they’d called a doctor in. One willing to administer controlled substances off the books and leave said controlled substances for amateurs to administer in his absence. Amateurs and Willa.

The doctor was either a very good or a very well-paid friend of the club.

“Yeah, I do.” He sighed and packed up his medical bag. “Okay. Call me if he spikes a fever. Willa, you should stay with him tonight, so there’s somebody who knows what to do if he looks like he’s going into shock.”

“I plan to. I don’t think anybody’s leaving tonight.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Jacinda wouldn’t leave the room, so Ox carried one of the recliners up from the party room and wedged it into what remained of the floor space. She curled up in it and watched Apollo sleep, deep under a soothing blanket of morphine. He lay on his belly, naked except for the burn bandages that covered him from calves to shoulders.

Her mind couldn’t accept what had happened. How he’d chosen this, how his brothers had done it, had stood and watched his pain, how she had let it happen, had stood and looked on while he’d writhed and screamed, mindful of the noise even in his agony. Now, all the Bulls were concerned for him and gentle with her, as if what had happened had been beyond their control.

He’d done this for her. For her and her father. He lived in a world in which this was an acceptable way to balance a ledger. And now she lived in that world, too.

Lying beneath her horror and disbelief was something more unsettling, something that rose up while she rested in that recliner and watched his beautiful, flushed face as he slept away his suffering. There was a part of her that understood. A part of her that recognized an inherent safety in this way of life. A man who would choose a test so barbaric when the option to walk away unhurt had been available was a man whose loyalty was beyond reproach.

A man who would offer himself up for such pain to save someone else was the best man she’d ever known in her life. She thought of Blake, who’d served her up to a horror, who’d actually set the scene of it, to try to save himself, and she thanked whatever god had sent Apollo into the world and into her life.

It didn’t matter what the Bulls had done, or what they would do. She had faith in Apollo, and he was a Bull. End of story.

He moaned hoarsely, and Jacinda sat up, watching, worried. He moaned again. Then he began to tremble—his whole body all at once. Before she could get to her feet, he shook so hard the bed rattled against the wall. She jumped to the door and tore it open. “WILLA! WILLA! HELP!”

Though it was deep in the night, the thunder of feet below told her that most, if not all, of the club was still awake. Willa came flying up the stairs, with Delaney and Maverick, and the rest of them, trailing behind her. She ran past the door to the bathroom first, and Jacinda thought she’d leap from her skin waiting for the nurse to wash her goddamn hands.

But then she was done, and she came back to the room. With purposeful speed, Willa snapped on a pair of gloves. She checked his vitals while Apollo moaned and quaked. “Shh, honey. I know,” she crooned, “I’m gonna make it better.” The room was shadowed by the crowd of bikers standing in the hallway, filling the open doorway, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Rad, close the door and leave us be. I’ll update everybody when I’m done.”

Rad nodded tersely and did as he was told. Then Willa turned to Jacinda. “He’s breaking through the morphine a little early,” she said, flipping open the medical case on the little dresser. “He’s not feverish, and his vitals are stable, so this is probably the pain. I’m going to give him a little bump to get him to the next full dose.” She filled a syringe from a small glass bottle and injected it into his IV line.

Apollo calmed and went all the way back under within a few seconds.

The crisis behind them, tears swelled in Jacinda’s chest and burst forth, and she collapsed onto the recliner and put her face in her hands, sobbing so hard she was nearly choking.

She’d spent ten years cultivating control over her emotions as well as her body. And she’d broken down twice in the past day.

Willa came over and crouched before the recliner. She took Jacinda’s hands in her own. The latex over hers felt strange to touch. “He’s going to get through this, Jacinda. I promise. We’ll get him through.”