Page 16 of Property of Chaos

CHAOS

I’ve forgottenhow peaceful it can be. To stand alone. To remove yourself from the crowd.

To get back to nature.

I let my fingers drift over the seedheads as I walk through the field closest to the farmhouse. Marianna advised against coming back here until the deal was final, but nobody lives in the fucking place—what harm can it do? When else will I get time without the noise and activity of a thriving club to plan what our future looks like?

I left the madness of a typical weekend at the clubhouse behind and rode out the gate, not sure where I wanted to go—I just needed to be away from the noise. But the damn woman from the cafe kept flickering in my mind, and before I knew it, here I am, waist-deep in overgrown grass while I stare at her house and try to work out what the fuck the opportunity of a new home will bring for us.

Do we continue down the same road we’ve always traveled, or do we take the opportunity to pursue more traditional and legal avenues of income?

Would the brothers accept a balance of the two?

I close my fist around the seeds, stripping a stem of its life as I move. The tiny beads bite against the roughened skin of my palm, tumbling free when I span my fingers wide.

The moon is full tonight; its white light catches the studs on my jacket as I move. I tip my head back and stop walking, focusing on the mild breeze that caresses my face like a long-lost lover. It’s nice—the delicate touch. The wind isn’t so kind when she’s beating at your face at seventy miles an hour.

Twelve years, I’ve officially dedicated my life to the club, and it’s only in the last two that I have questioned the rules and traditions I adopted with eager ease in those early years. All I wanted to do was please my father. All he wanted to do was shape me into a better version of himself.

Given how my momma cries when she sees me these days, I’d say he succeeded. Except there’s one trait of his that I’ll never adopt.

You couldn’t pay me enough to turncoat on my brothers in the club.

Unlike my father, my soul isn’t for sale.

I sigh and drop my head forward, bringing both hands to knit my fingers at my nape. Buying this property is a fresh start. It’s a step away from the fucking microscope of criticism we’ve faced the past few years being located in an urban center. The Kings of Anarchy had co-existed with the good folk of Temperance for decades before the scales of justice shifted.

Fifteen years old and nothing to do with our club. But all the citizens saw was a kid in a leather jacket tangled in a wire fence, his motorbike in three pieces down the narrow sealed road.

He wouldn’t have idolized the lifestyle if it weren’t for us, they’d said.

He wouldn’t have felt he had anything to prove without our presence on the streets.

He would have been a good kid, focused on his studies and attending church every Sunday, if not for our insignia being visible on his walk to and from school every day.

They can blame us all they like, but nothing changes the truth—that kid’s decisions had nothing to do with the Kings. It more likely had everything to do with the white-collared fuckers who bullied him at school for being the good kid. Likely had a shit ton to do with the rise of toy bikers on TikTok glorifying the lifestyle. With the testosterone-fueled teenage need to make the girls turn their heads when he rode past on a Friday night.

If the kid had come to us, he would have still ended up on the wrong side of the law, but at least he’d be alive, supported, and with a brethren of men who’d teach him the right way—the safe way—to do things.

But no. Judge us at face value, please. Because that’ll protect your boys while they become men.

“Fuck!” I holler the word into the night, my voice echoing off the nearby tree line.

I took the presidency because I wanted to use the fucking club to do better. I wanted to do everything my fathershouldhave done. I saw how a tight-knit unit of loyal men and women could instigate change in the community. But all that’s happened is our fucking world caught fire, fanned by the flames of the winds of change.

My gaze lifts to the distant light of the cottage as I tug a pack of smokes from my jacket pocket. It’s well after midnight, and my latest side-quest is still awake. I pop a stick between my lips and repocket the packet. A lighter turns in my palm as I gauge how far away her place is. Did she hear me just now? Was the light on before? Or did I wake her?

I duck my head, light the smoke, and then start toward her house.Fuck it.Might as well get something done while I’m here. As soon as I leave, there’ll be no hiding my presence. Nineteen-hundred ccs of growling horses tend to wake the dead at this hour of the night.

The grass swishes against my jeans and jacket as I move, my boots crunching the debris on the ground below. I slow as I near the road, minimizing the noise. No shadows move through the light, no flicker of a TV. Either she’s in bed with the light on, or worse, she’s fallen asleep before checking that the house is secure.

Hands on the top wire of the fence, I press down. The thin metal creaks through the staples at the posts, and I wince, smoke from the burning cigarette curling into my eye.Whole thing’s gone to shit already.I should call it quits and pick another night to do recon, but something urges me to keep going. I lift my leg and set a boot to the wire, launching myself over the fence line.

Her light clicks off.

I freeze on the roadside, exposed in the shorter grass with my goddamn cigarette burning a beacon in the night. I draw back two large lungfuls and then drop the fucker to the ground, crushing it beneath my boot. There’s no point going about this shit half-cocked, so I tug my phone out and set that fucker to silent as well before I venture across the road. The gravel crunches beneath my stiff soles no matter how lightly I tread. I take three enormous strides to limit how many times my feet hit the ground and pause when I reach her side of the road.

No car in the short driveway. Nothing parked out back from what I can see.

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