Page 52 of The Bastard's Lily
I grip the armrest tighter while he works, the low rumble of his voice a mix of fury and control. By the time we turn onto the dirt road that leads to my cabin, he’s already lined up coverage like a military op. The dark outline of his Harley waits in the driveway where he left it last night.
He reaches across the console and catches my hand before he can shift into park. “I love you, Calla. More than I can say. Grimm is at the school and won’t let anything happen to our kid. More guys are on the way and will watch your cabin too.”
The truck rolls to a stop in front of the cabin. Rook is out before I can reach for the handle, the night’s anger still flickering under his skin. He comes around to my side, pulls the door open, and draws me against him. For a moment, everything else—Scorpions, ambush, black sedans—disappears beneath the weight of his arms.
“I love you,” he murmurs again, rough and certain, before pressing a slow kiss to my mouth. It tastes like smoke and coffee and the kind of promise you don’t have to say twice.
“I love you,” I whisper back.
When he finally lets me go, the mountain air feels colder. I climb into the driver’s seat, start the engine, and glance over to where his Harley waits at the edge of the drive.
Rook swings a leg over the bike, visor up long enough to meet my eyes. “I’m behind you all the way.”
I nod, throat tight, and ease the truck down the gravel road. In the side mirror, his headlight flares to life, a steady beam cutting through the morning fog. All the way into town, the sound of his engine rides just behind me, low and relentless, a living reminder I’m not alone. Even when the prison’s gray towers rise out of the pines, that rumble stays with me, a heartbeat I can follow home.
Thesun’sbarelyclearedthe treeline when I roll into the clubhouse lot, but my head’s still back at the school. That black sedan. Those tinted windows. Watching my kid like we’re all fair game.
The engines from the morning rides are long cooled, but the place is already alive—brothers tuning bikes, coffee burning in the pot, the low buzz of business as usual. It grates. Nothing about today is usual.
I slam the door behind me; the sound cracking through the chatter. The room stutters quiet, every eye swinging my way. They can feel it—the storm under my kutte. Someone at the pool table doesn’t catch the warning fast enough.
“Maybe if you kept your old lady and the kid out of club business,” the new prospect mutters, loud enough for every ear. “Wouldn’t be our problem.”
The words slice clean through the air.
I’m across the room before the cue ball stops rolling. “Say that again,” I growl, voice low but sharp enough to cut steel.
The kid straightens, jaw tight like he thinks the patch on his back makes him ten feet tall. A heavier shadow drops between us—Boar, the club’s Sergeant-at-Arms, big enough to blot out the daylight pouring through the windows. His scarred knuckles flex once.
“You know the rules,” Boar rumbles, voice like gravel sliding down a chute. “You run your mouth, you settle it in the pit.”
The old boiler room, every brother knows it. Concrete floor, steel pipes, and the ghosts of a hundred fights still clinging to the walls. I bled down there the first month I wore a kutte. My fists itch. My pulse spikes.
“Fine by me,” I say, eyes never leaving the prospect. “Let’s go.”
Boar jerks his chin toward the stairwell, the room parting like a tide around us. Sunlight from the high windows spills across the steps, but the air already smells like rust and old blood. Daylight or not, the pit’s waiting. And I’m more than ready to teach a lesson.
Boar’s massive hand clamps on the kid’s shoulder before he can edge toward the door. “Move,” Boar growls. “You started it. You finish it.”
“I—hey, I didn’t mean—” the prospect stammers, eyes darting from Boar to me and back. “It was just a joke.”
Boar leans in, voice low and deadly. “We don’t joke about family. You know the rules.”
The room goes quiet enough to hear the ceiling fan tick. Brothers step back, opening a path to the stairwell that leads to the old boiler room. Sunlight spills through the grimy windows, bright and unforgiving, but the air down there always feels like midnight.
He hesitates. Boar gives him a shove, hard enough that his boots scrape the wood floor. “Pit,” Boar snaps. “Now.”
The three of us head for the stairs: Boar in back like a wall of muscle, the prospect in the middle, me on his heels. The iron steps groan under our weight, the smell of rust and old sweat rising as we descend.
The prospect glances over his shoulder, panic flashing across his face. “Look, man, I don’t—”
“Too late,” Boar cuts him off, voice a low rumble that fills the narrow stairwell. “You opened your mouth. You bleed it out or you live with it forever.”
The boiler room waits below—concrete floor scarred with old fights, light slicing in through broken windows. My pulse kicks harder, not from nerves but from the need to finish what hestarted. I crack my knuckles, step onto the cold cement, and let the door clang shut behind us.
Boar shuts the heavy door behind us, the clang echoing off the concrete like a gunshot. Only three of us down here—no crowd, no brothers leaning on the rails. Just the smell of rust, old sweat, and the faint drip of water somewhere in the dark.
The prospect hesitates in the center of the floor, eyes flicking to the cracked lightbulb swinging overhead. His knuckles are white around nothing.
