1. Ink
Author’s note:
Hey everyone ❤️
Thank you so much for being here, I hope you’ll enjoy this story!!
Before you start reading, I would just like to mention a couple of things.
First of all, this story explores distressing themes, mainly child abuse. Please proceed with care and prioritize your well-being.
Secondly, this is the fifth story in the Broken Halos MC series. While you can read this story as a stand-alone, if you think you might want to read the first four stories too, I suggest you do that first, as there will be a lot of spoilers for them here. You can find the first 4 stories complete on my page:
1 - Broken Halos MC
2 - Broken Halos MC #2: Bruiser
3 - Broken Halos MC #3: Riot
4 - Broken Halos MC #4: Neon
If you want to stay up to date with the series or my other work, remember to follow - I post regularly what I’m working on, changes in publishing schedule and more ❤️
As always, please react, comment and review - it helps me so much! ❤️
Hugs!
- Bee
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The scent of green soap and antiseptic was the only thing that could clear the cobwebs from my head after a night at the clubhouse. At nine on the dot, I turned the sign on the front door to Open and watched the dust motes dance in the morning light filtering through the Seaview storefront.
Tuesday.
For a tattoo artist, a Tuesday morning was usually the graveyard shift of the week. But for me, it was the only day I didn’t have a calendar packed six months deep. Tuesdays were for the walk-ins, the impulse buys, and the strangers who wandered in off the street looking for a piece of something permanent.
I liked the unpredictability of it. The rest of my week was a rigid grid of appointments and club business, but Tuesday was a wildcard.
I walked to the back, flipping the switches on my power supply. The hum was a low, mechanical purr that settled deep in my bones. I’d been a patched member of the Broken Halos MC for five years now, with two years of prospecting before that. Seven years of my life dedicated to the cut on my back.
Back when I was still wearing a bottom rocker that said Prospect, the brothers used to get their work done at a shop across town. It was fine, but it wasn’t ours. Six months after I got my patch, I pitched the idea to Stone. A legit business, a way to wash some of the club’s less legal income through a clean register, and a home for the one skill I actually gave a damn about. He’d approved it before I’d even finished the sentence.
Since then, I’d spent my mornings here—four hours for the civilians, the “normals”—and my afternoons at the clubhouse or handling the brothers and their old ladies.
My mind drifted to the work I’d finished for Stone just yesterday. I’d spent three hours hunched over the Prez’s chest. The name Alexandra was already there, etched in a dark, thorny script that spanned the width of his collarbones, fierce and protective. Underneath it, I’d added Ava. I’d kept the lettering for his daughter delicate but strong—fine-lined silver-grey ink that looked like silk woven through the darker shadows of her mother’s name. It was a beautiful, heavy contrast: the woman who saved him and the child who completed him, anchored right over the heart of the most dangerous man I knew.
I grabbed a fresh sketchbook from the counter, flipping to a blank page. My fingers found a pencil instinctively.
Drawing was the only thing that hadn’t been ruined by the time I turned eighteen. My childhood was a blurred map of places I didn’t want to go back to and memories I’d buried under layers of scar tissue and ink. But my mother… she’d been the one to hand me the charcoal. She’d spent hours sitting on the floor with me, teaching me how to see the shadows, how to find the lines in the chaos. It was the only good thing she’s ever given me .
The bell over the door chimed, cutting through the silence.
I didn’t look up immediately, letting the pencil finish the curve of a petal I’d been shading. On Tuesdays, you never knew who was walking through that door. Could be a college kid looking for a tiny infinity symbol, or a veteran wanting to memorialize a fallen brother.
I closed the sketchbook, the heavy paper thudding shut. I put on my “shop face”—the easy, practiced humor I wore like armor—and stood up.
“Morning,” I said, my voice gravelly and low. “You’re early. What can I do for you?”
I looked up, the greeting dying in my throat as my heart performed a violent, rhythmic thud against my ribs.
She was standing by the glass-topped counter, clutching the strap of her bag like it was a lifeline. Her skin was a rich, warm bronze, glowing even in the clinical LED light of the shop. Her hair was a dark, tumbling waterfall of curls that caught the morning sun, and her eyes—wide and a little bit haunted—were the color of double-shot espresso.
She was breathtaking.
She was also a walking death warrant.
Jessica.
The name echoed in my head like a gunshot. I hadn’t seen her in five years, not since the night the world exploded at the clubhouse. I’d been a prospect then, just months away from my patch, running beer and cleaning bikes while she sat on Riot’s lap, laughing like she belonged with us. Then the truth had come out: she wasn’t just Riot’s girl; she was an undercover fed.
Cyber had been the one to find out. Riot threw her out into the rain with nothing but the clothes on her back and a warning that if he ever saw her again, the club wouldn’t be so merciful.
And yet, here she was.
“I... I saw the sign,” she said, her voice softer than I remembered, with a melodic lilt that made my skin itch. “For walk-ins?”
I blinked, trying to force my brain to function. My cut was hanging in the back office—safety regs meant I didn’t wear the heavy leather while tattooing—so I was just a guy in a black long-sleeved tee and a stained apron. My sleeves covered most of the club-specific ink on my arms.
Did she not recognize me? I’d been a shadow in the background back then, the “kid” who fetched the oil and the whiskey. My frame broader now, my face mapped with five more years of hard living.
“Yeah,” I managed, my voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. “Tuesdays are for walk-ins. What are you looking for?”
She stepped closer, a spark of genuine excitement cutting through her hesitation. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her bag. “I want something big. On my ribs, moving up to my collarbone. I want... I want it to represent a new beginning. Like, letting go of a version of myself that doesn’t exist anymore.”
She smoothed the paper on the counter. It was a rough sketch—beautifully conceptual. It depicted a realistic feminine silhouette near the bottom, her form beginning to blur and break apart at the edges. As the image moved upward, the silhouette dissolved completely into a flock of birds, their wings spread wide as they took flight toward the top of the page. It was a piece about shedding an old skin, about the weight of the past finally being lightened by the freedom of moving on.
It was a piece that would take hours. A piece I usually wouldn’t touch on a Tuesday.
But I couldn’t stop staring at her. I looked at the small, cracked-halo logo etched into the front window, then back at her. Had she really not noticed? Or was this a play? A fed coming back to the lion’s den?
But her hands were shaking. Just a little. This wasn’t a setup; it was a woman looking for a way to mark a change. And God, she was even more beautiful than I remembered.
The sensible part of my brain—the part that valued my patch and my life—told me to tell her I was busy. To tell her to get out before someone else from the club walked in to check the books.
Instead, I kicked my stool back and felt the words tumble out of my mouth before I could catch them.
“It’s a hell of a piece. If you’ve got the time, I’ve got the chair.” I gestured toward the back, my pulse leafing through my veins. “Right this way, gorgeous.”
The word slipped out, familiar and easy, and I saw her cheeks flush a deep, dusty rose. She nodded, giving me a small, shy smile that made me realize I was in a massive amount of trouble.
