Page 16 of Damron
“She thinks the law can’t save her,” Damron went on. “She thinks the Bloody Scythes can.”
“Maybe we should run a background check,” Slick said, and there was another ripple of laughter.
I felt the heat rising in my chest. I stepped forward, bare feet slapping the dirty tile. “You all know who I am,” I said. “You know what I survived. Don’t pretend I don’t belong here.”
Damron turned, circling, herding me like a wolf in front of a dozen hungry dogs. “You belonged here once,” he said. “But then you left. You wanted something cleaner, something softer. A life where you didn’t have to get blood under your nails.”
“Because all you know is blood,” I said, voice flat. “You’d rather die than compromise. Even if it meant losing everything.”
He stepped in, close enough that I could smell the whiskey and old gun oil on his breath. “At least I don’t lie to myself about who I am.”
I looked past him, at the faces of men I’d known for a decade. Some were hard, some just bored, but all of them waited for me to fail. Maybe I would have, if not for Nitro. He’d parked himself between me and the door, arms crossed, hand resting near his hip—a not-so-subtle reminder that if things went sideways, he’d handle it.
“Look,” I said, voice softer, “I know what I’m asking. But you’re the only one who can do it. You know how these people think. You know how to beat them.”
Damron laughed, a cruel edge to it. “You want my dirty hands to do your clean job. You want me to risk my club, my brothers, because your perfect world finally went to shit?”
I reached for his arm—just a brush, just enough to feel the tension coiled under his skin—but he jerked away like I’d burned him.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t act like you care now.”
I dropped my hand. My throat felt raw, but I forced the words out. “You think this is easy for me? I hated every second of leaving, but you made it impossible to stay.”
“Bullshit,” he said, voice cold. “You left because it was never enough for you. You needed an audience.”
“Maybe I did,” I said. “But you needed a war. Every day, every hour, like peace was just another word for weakness.” I nodded at the sign on the wall. “You needed brutality.”
He moved again, not pacing but circling, like a predator measuring the last distance to its prey. “You don’t know the first thing about weakness,” he said. “You want to talk about loss? I lost you. I lost the only thing that made any of this bearable.”
There it was. The room was quiet now, the silence so thick I could feel it in my teeth.
I stared at him, willing myself not to cry. “I need you, Damron,” I said. “Not the club. Not the muscle. Just you.”
For a long time, he said nothing. The silence stretched, and I saw Nitro’s hand inch closer to his holster. Not a threat—just muscle memory, just readiness.
Damron looked at me, and for a flicker of a second, the old pain was there. Then it was gone, locked up behind the steel of his eyes.
“You made your choice when you walked out that door,” he said, voice low but carrying. “You wanted to be a senator. You wanted to be clean. Well, go rely on the government you represent now.”
He gestured at the door—just a twitch of his hand, but final, absolute.
The rejection felt like a gunshot. I squared my shoulders, blinking hard. I shoved my feet into the heels, grabbed the purse off the table, and turned to go. The whole way out, I kept my head high and my face stone. I didn’t look back. I didn’t let them see me break. At the door, I heard glass clink. I glanced over myshoulder, just once. Damron had already turned away, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, his other hand gripping the bar so tight the knuckles were white.
Outside, the night was cold and mean.
“He’s mine, ya know.” The body belonging to the voice appeared from the shadows. The woman looked like an old lady—the biker old lady type.
“And you are?” I asked, unimpressed, though I understood where she was coming from. I’d been there once, pissing on my territory like a dog for a man I’d planned on spending my life with.
“Katie,” she said. She had her hand near the sheathed knife on her hip.
“Well, Katie, I have no interest in him other than having my ass protected until the election is over.”
“I see him anywhere near your ass, I’ll cut you.” She bumped my shoulder as she passed by, disappearing into the clubhouse. Yeah, it had all gone exactly to plan.
I stood in the parking lot, letting the wind dry my eyes, before I called a ride. My hands shook as I texted the campaign manager to tell him I was alive. When the car arrived, I slid into the back seat and told the driver to just keep going. I didn’t know where I was headed, only that it was somewhere other than here.
Chapter eight
