Maddox

She was gone. I felt it the moment I got back.

I didn’t have to look in her room or search the house for her.

Tracy had done the smart thing. She’d ended it. There was no fight, no drama; it was over. I felt it more than saw it.

The house was dark. The life that she’d brought was gone. I made my way to Sarge. He was asleep.

I walked into Olivia’s room and sat with her.

This house was going to return to the way it had been before Tracy came. And we deserved it to.

Sarge and I had a past and it wasn’t up to Tracy to atone for. It felt like someone had piled heave stones on my chest. Olivia looked smaller to me today. Her cheekbones were more prominent. I wondered how long she would live in this middle ground between life and death.

I had been living in that same middle ground. Tracy had broken me out of it and I wouldn’t go back. Even if she was gone, I needed to move forward.

Tracy had shown me that and so had Sarge.

I had to re-join my life. Even without Tracy.

I didn’t want to be in the house tonight. It was too big and too empty.

The third floor, which had been my cave, had too many memories now of Tracy.

I wanted to be at the club. I needed to be surrounded by my brothers. I knew I could never leave The Dark Saints. They’d waited until I could come back, whole, if not completely healed.

It was up to me to shoulder what I could of the fight with The Hawks that I had made worse.

I drove to the club. It was the one thing I felt good about in one emotional fucking day. It was where I was supposed to be.

When I got to the MC, I was greeted with hugs, handshakes, fist bumps, and nods. I wasn’t just a member of The Dark Saints, I was an officer and my dad was an OG.

I had been on the outside, a self-imposed exile, and it hadn’t served me. It had made things worse. It was as Sarge said. The MC needed me, sure, but I needed them more.

I had blocked them out long enough. I had handled Jonesy C with my dad, but in the end, the MC had helped us finish the job.

This was my life. The Saints were as much a part of me as Olivia was.

For the first time in almost a year, I sat down at the table for Church. Bear was at the head of the table, E.Z., the veep, to his right. Kade, Benz, Chase, Axle, Zig, they were all there.

“Good to have you back,” Bear said before he pounded the gavel. E.Z. snorted at me. I didn’t expect any different there.

“First up, all in favor of patching Toby in, say eye.”

“Eye.” It was unanimous. I wondered when Fitzie’s turn was. It had to be soon. He’d come through the other day, big.

“Next order of business, Benz, you have something on the petty crime?”

“Yeah, Jen thinks it’s Hawks,” Benz said, and everyone’s temper rose a notch. There’d been muggings, robberies, vandalism on the rise. The stuff The Saints was supposed to help squash was getting worse. Petty crime was on the minds of the people of Port Az. The exact same type of crime that had gotten Tracy that first day she’d worked at The Castle.

Hawks? I was surprised.

“The thugs I ran off didn’t have colors, no patches. No faces. Why does she think it’s Hawks?” I asked.

“She got a print from a knife used at an ATM robbery. Matches to one of their low-level guys from Laredo. Then another witness got a partial plate. That plat was traced to a stolen vehicle out Laredo too.”

“So why are they doing all this without the colors? If they want to start a war, why the masks? Why hide?” Kade asked. Kade had added his own fuel to the fire that was blazing between The Hawks and us.

“They’re trying to destabilize Port Az and undermine us. If The Saints aren’t the saviors anymore, maybe The Hawks can be? That’s their game,” Axle piped up. It was a good theory of why The Hawks were anonymously fucking with Port Az instead of doing it openly like usual.

The bigger plan from The Devil’s Hawks came into focus. They wanted us to look weak.

“Yep. Good a theory as any. I say we fucking do the same in Laredo but with full colors flying. Let ‘em know we won’t take this shit.”

E.Z. was always the first to want to war.

“I say we meet. Give them a warning before we open up a war.”

Axle’s suggestion was my preference.

“Let’s put it to a vote. All in favor of going to Laredo and causing some shit?”

Nearly half the hands rose. E.Z. shot daggers with his eyes at the rest of us who didn’t agree with him.

“All in favor of opening a parlay?”

Everyone else, including me, voted for opening a discussion. I would have been on the other side of this, just a month ago. Fuck it. Go to war. But today, I knew it would put lives on the line. Lives of people I cared about. The vote was probably 60-40 to talk not fight. That balance, though, was precarious.

We voted on a few other pieces of business. I had been keeping up on revenue streams and for the first time in a long time gave a report in person instead of via an envelope carried by Fitzie.

It was good, familiar, and the connection to the world I needed.

As the meeting broke up, Bear asked me to hang back.

“How’s Sarge?”

“He’s okay. The other day nearly did him in.”

“That’s cleaned up, no heat will come from the cops. But The Hawks are another story. They’ll lay that on us soon. They’ve got no body, but they know their guy is fucking gone.”

“I’m sorry for that. Sarge, well, he’s not so sorry. He was the asshole that gunned Olivia.”

“Yeah? Except he wasn’t. Benz’s Old Lady, you know her, right? Jen?”

“Yeah.” I felt a cold stab coming before it landed.

“Your guy, Jonesy C, he was verifiably in the joint when it happened.”

Bear laid the information at my feet. I had never gotten that information. I had never verified where Jonesy C was when the shooting went down. I’d acted immediately after he’d fucked with Tracy, and now, I was at the beginning again.

“I told Sarge it was him. I was sure it was him.”

“Oh, he was an evil fucking cocksucker. You did the universe a favor. But I want this personal revenge shit to stop. Only the officers know what’s what. We’ll keep it that way if you can keep your shit together. No one, I mean no one, wants Sarge to take a fall. So as far as anyone knows, it didn’t happen. And if it did, it was for Olivia.”

“Yep.” I nodded and promised Bear I’d cool it on my vendetta. Inside I was roiling with conflict. Who had pulled the trigger? Nothing I’d done had avenged my sister. I wanted to pull my hair out at the roots in that moment.

“Listen to me. We’re trying to stave off a war. You ask your Dad what that’s like. It’s why he’s not at this table anymore. You cool it. We move on The Hawks as a club, when we decide the time is right, not to handle your personal bullshit. And I’m going to keep this off book, but in exchange, you stay on my side with this war vote. Until I tell you different.” I swallowed hard.

“Yep.”

“You keep your mouth shut, support me no matter what, and Sarge stays in the clear with this Jonesy shit.”

There was always a price to pay. Always.

I walked out of Church with no idea what would come next. Killing Jonesy C hadn’t done a thing to avenge Olivia. Every lead I’d received had turned up cold.

And I was going to do exactly as Bear said. He was right; no one wanted to see Sarge pay for killing Jonesy, least of all me.

I walked into the bar and grabbed a beer.

“Hey.” Kade came up to me.

“Hey.”

“Good to have you back, man.”

“Yeah. I missed it. Some of it.”

“Talked to my Old Lady, looks like Tracy’s going to be sticking around. Harlow was pretty happy about that.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they were talking earlier, and Harlow gave her Old Lady 101. We’re in trouble when those two team up,” Kade said and laughed.

A sinking feeling gripped my chest.

“She was gone, she left. I thought I’d scared her away.”

“What?”

“I came here thinking she was done with me. That she’d moved on.”

“Literally the last thing Harlow told me was that Tracy was excited to tell you she was staying.”

“Kade.”

“Yeah? You look as pale as Sarge all of a sudden.” He put a firm hand on my shoulder.

“I think something’s very fucking wrong.”