Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1 - Rez
The Motel Bar has two rules:
One: you pay for what you do—drinks, gambling, whatever. Cash or blood.
Two: you finish what you start. Don’t swing unless you plan to end the fight.
’Cause if you don’t, we will.
The man whose throat I’m squeezing didn’t seem to think those rules applied to him.
“Two choices.” I pin him to the wall and squeeze. Blood trickles from his nose, his eye already swelling shut. “Money or the Pit. Your ass will pay one way or another.”
“I… please, I—”
Rider wanders over. “You good?”
“No.” I snap. “I’m bored. This fucker”—I bounce his skull off the plaster. —“is taking too long.
“Maybe he wants you to decide for him. Maybe he knows it gets your cock hard to boss people around.”
“Nah. He ain’t my type.” I leer at the man as he starts to piss himself. “You want him?”
Rider tilts his head, pretending to think. Rider’s married, would never cheat—but these fuckers don’t know that. Sometimes he likes to fuck with them. We think it’s hilarious—always funny to see a homophobic asshole lose their shit.
“No.” Rider shakes his head. “Cash or blood.”
“I…but—” the man blubbers.
“Blood it is.”
“No, I can pay, I just need—”
“Too fucking late.”
He claws at my hand as I drag him from the bar, down the side steps and toward the Pit.
Judge, our Prez, bought this shit-hole motel a few years back. Had the rooms fixed into decent apartments for the brothers, plus a clubhouse, gym, armory—all that shit. That’s two hundred yards to my left, behind a ten-foot iron fence that no one but Last Aegis MC members cross.
The old Denny’s in the parking lot? We turned it into the Motel Bar.
The pool? We turned it into the Pit.
The roar hits me the moment I step outside. Didn’t take much to make it an arena—cracked concrete, chain-link, rigged lights glaring down. Benches ring it, nothing fancy. People don’t come here for comfort. They come to scream and watch others bleed.
At one end we’ve got cages welded from steel pipe, tall as dog kennels. That’s where we hold people—some willing, some not—until it’s their turn to play gladiator. Blitz, our Sergeant-at-Arms, runs the games. When he thinks they’re ready he yanks one out by the scruff and tosses him down the ladder into the Pit.
They fight until one yields. Loser comes up, next goes down. Make it through five rounds and you get a night of free drinks. Die and we burn your body in the back. The in-between—well, we’ll dump your body off the property. Fuckers are on their own from there.
I shove the man—sobbing, reeking of piss and whiskey—into an empty cage. He hits the bench with a wet thump, shoulders heaving, still pleading. I give the gate a hard slam; the clang echoes across the yard, clean and final.
Blitz catches my eye from his perch above the Pit, gives quick nod. He’s got one boot on the edge, watching two drunk dickheads trade sloppy swings ten feet below him. One gets lucky and connects. The other staggers, his head slamming into the side of the pool with a crunch. Blood sprays over the cracked tile. The man drops.
The crowd counts to ten. Dude doesn’t move.
“Bring him up!” Blitz yells. Crow jumps down, presses two fingers to the man’s neck, shrugs, then hauls him up. Blitz watches, then gestures. Gator unlocks one of the cages, grabs another man, and shoves him toward the ladder.
I head back inside just in time to see Rider break some asshole’s hand for grabbing at a waitress. Clean snap. The man howls, crumples to his knees, fingers at the wrong angle. The regulars laugh. They know the rules.
Rider doesn’t say a word—just fists a handful of greasy hair and drags the guy through the door, across the parking lot, and past the Edge. That’s the line painted in our lot. Cross it and you’re off our property. He tosses the drunk onto the asphalt like trash. “Want your bike back?” Rider says, flat as a gunshot. “Five hundred. Cash.”
The man blubbers, spits, cusses, threatens. Rider doesn’t flinch.
Hard to take a sloppy drunk seriously when you survived being a POW in the Middle East, and escaped by cutting your way out.
Rider leaves him in the dirt, bleeding and broke. His bike will stay in our lock-up until he shows up with the cash.
I leave Rider to it and sweep the floor, checking in on the girls.
We got five of them running drinks tonight. They get paid well, keep their tips, and every last one knows we’ve got their backs.
They aren’t club whores, and they aren’t Old Ladies. They belong to Last Aegis MC in one way only: no one touches our girls. Not unless they want to be carried out—or worst—like the bastard Rider just dumped.
Most of ’em have been here for years. I’ve hooked up with a few—always their choice—but I haven’t recently. Just not that same. Maybe I’m getting old.
Or maybe I’m turning into my brother.
I glance across the room. Judge leans against the bar like carved stone, calm where the rest of us vibrate sharp and restless. Kate’s perched on the stool beside him, legs crossed neat, cool as a queen in denim. Club Prez and his Old Lady. She’s got more pull with the club than most Old Ladies. We like it that way.
The night slides on. Music pounding, glasses clinking, the stink of sweat and spilled liquor clinging to the air. I drift between the tables, a shadow keeping score. Break up a fight by cracking a few ribs. Leave one guy unconscious in the parking lot for getting handsy with a waitress. Take a few more to the Pit. Check with Blitz. So far, we only got one dead tonight, but Gator’s got that handled.
Hours pass easy, a slow burn that makes you itch for something real.
By the time I circle back to the bar, Judge and Kate are gone. No surprise—they don’t waste hours babysitting the floor. If he’s not here, he’s handling business.
That’s when Rider slides in beside me, grin crooked. “You’re wanted.”
I toss back a shot of rum. “By who?”
“Judge. Backroom.”
The backroom. Not his office – that’s on the other side of the iron fence. This one is just a closed space behind the bar, sound-proof, with a table scarred up from knives, a few chairs, and chains bolted to the wall in case we need to talk with more than our words.
I roll my shoulders, let the tension crack out of them, and head that way. Whatever’s waiting back there, it ain’t gonna be boring.
I close the door; the bar shaves down to a dull thrum — music and laughing swallowed by drywall.
Judge sits at the scarred table, facing the door. Kate lounges on the arm of his chair, hip hooked, the kind of calm that feels like a predator in wait. Light from the overhead strips across his jaw; he’s all cut stone and slow breathing.
The man in the other chair looks smaller up close. Joe Walker. Owns Walker’s Garage—one of the best motorcycle garages in the nation. About 30 miles up the highway from us. Lines etched in his face from hard work over too many hard years. He smells of oil and cigarette smoke and the hot, sour sweat.
“Walker.” I nod.
He nods back, brief. I glance at Judge. “What’s going on?”
Judge tips one shoulder toward the man.
Joe’s folded in on himself, one hand rubbing at an old knuckle scar. He’s scared. Not the rattled kind you get from getting jumped. The kind that sits under the ribs and tastes like poison.
“I got trouble,” Joe says. Voice rough as gravel. “Come to make a deal.”
My eyebrow lifts. Joe’s not a gambler. He drinks, sure, but he ain’t careless.
Judge says, “Tell him what you told me.”
Joe exhales slow, like it’s a thing he’s been holding for years. “Fuera 23.”
Something low in my chest tightens. Fuera 23. Small but mean. They traffic more than drugs. Kids. Girls. Slaves for cash. They like to brand their products, burn the logo into the skin, cruel for fun. I can taste bile.
“They… I’ve been doing work for them, fixing their bikes to carry their loads.”
“The fuck?” I grab the front of his shirt and haul him to his feet, slamming him against the wall. His head bounces against the brick. “You took their dirty money?”
“They never paid me.” Joe swallows. “They threatened me, said they would take my daughter.”
My stomach drops when he says it. I didn’t know Joe had a daughter. Don’t think any of us did. Judge, maybe. Fucker always knows shit like that.
“What changed?” I ask, shoving back into the chair. He lands with a grunt.
Joe shifts, glancing at Judge, then back at me.
“I’m dying. Cancer. Ain’t got much time.” His voice cracks, small. “When I’m gone, they’ll come after my Jessie-girl. So I come to ask—if I sign over my garage to you, will you watch out for my daughter? Keep her safe?”
I flick my eyes to Judge. Walker’s is a national-rep motorcycle shop. That’s a clean piece of real estate. Place like that—fuck—money laundering, station on the smuggling route, storage of shit we needed hidden. I can see Kate already calculating the possibilities.
“Where’s your daughter now?” Judge asks.
“She works up in Stafford, for the Highway Patrol,” Joe says, hopeful and unsure.
“Your daughter's a fucking cop?” My voice raises at the words.
Kate gives a short, sharp chuckle.
Joe waves his hands, almost frantic to correct himself. “No, no—she’s just a mechanic. Works on their bikes.”
“She know?” Judge asks.
Joe looks at the floor, his fingers worrying the hem of his sleeve. “No. Was gonna tell her. Ask her to run the shop, tell her I was going to get treatment.”
Judge’s fingers drum the tabletop once, twice. Kate’s hand slides from his arm to rest over his shoulders.
Judge looks at me then, slow. No theatrics. “What do you think, Rez?”
My mouth tastes like rum and old cigarettes and something sharper. I swallow. “Depends. It’s a good deal—so long as it doesn’t get us into a war.”
“Look, I know I ain’t got much. But I’ve done solid work for you guys over the years.” He glances between us, voice hardening. “And I ain’t stupid. I know about the rescues.”
Judge’s face goes tight. The air in the room chills like someone opened a freezer.
Joe holds up his hand. “I don’t know the details. But I know what you do—what you really do. I kept my mouth shut and did more than you paid for, kept your bikes running, ’cause you were doing good.”
“You threatening us?” Judge asks; the tone makes Joe flinch.
“No,” Joe says, drawing his shoulders back. “I’m telling you why I come to you first. Why I trust you to take care of her.”
He breathes once, shuddering.
“I ain’t been the best father. Didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Her ma ran off a few weeks after she was born, and I—fuck—I was a kid, trying to figure out what to do with a baby girl. But”—he pauses, like he’s trying to control something—“she’s the only thing I got that’s worth a damn. Whatever I got, you can have it—long as you promise to protect her. Protect my Jessie-girl.”
He rubs his denim sleeve over his face. We pretend not to notice the damp gathering in his eyes.
Outside, the bar keeps laughing and betting and bleeding; inside, a man’s life is being signed away for a promise.
Judge looks at Kate, then me.
His eyes, hard and unreadable, settle back on Joe. “We have a deal.”
