Page 18 of Tater
Eagle frowned. “You think she was done with you?
“It means she thought she was saving us. Heard us talking, took it personal, went out alone.” he sat the chain on the table; the metal clinked against the wood. “She wasn’t wrong to think we were divided.”
Brick leaned forward. “We’re not divided, Prez.”
“Not yet,” he said. “But a war with the Hades Hellhounds will test that.”
Eagle crossed his arms. “If it was one of ours that sold her out, I’ll gut him myself.”
“You won’t have to,” Tater said. “That’s my job.”
The air went still. Outside, thunder rolled again—far off, but closer than before.
Later, after the room was emptied and the orders were given, Tater sat alone with the bottle.
The candlelight flickered across the map spread out on the table. County lines. Highway cuts. The trail where they found her marked in red.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her in that clearing—fire crawling over her arms, rain turning to steam. Beautiful and terrifying. Theirs’s.
The burner phone buzzed. Another video notification.
Tater played it once. Same footage. Same mocking skull watermark.
They were daring him.
He killed the screen and stared at the chain in his hand. The gold was warped, a single link bent out of shape by heat. He rubbed it between his fingers until it bit into his palm.
“You touched the wrong dragon,” Tater said to no one.
The room didn’t echo. It didn’t need to.
Tomorrow, we ride.
CHAPTER 7
Blood Oath
The dawn came in dirty.
Low clouds bruised purple over the horizon, light bleeding through diesel haze. The clubhouse lot glittered with rainwater and oil, a mirror of all the ghosts waiting in it. Twenty-three bikes lined up neat as rifles, pipes ticking in the cool air. Every one of them wore the crown-skull. Every one of them was his’s to lose.
Eagle stood by the gate, checking mags and radios. Mouse passed out rags to wipe visors. The rest just stared at him, waiting for the signal.
Tater wasn’t the loudest Bastard; He never needed to be. When he walked out onto the concrete, helmets came off. Boots straightened. The world got real quiet.
“Brothers,” he said, voice carrying without trying. “You all saw the video.”
A few nods. No one spoke.
“The Hades Hellhounds thought it’d scare us,” he went on. “They thought we’d hide behind the bar and pray the fire didn’t come back. They forgot what patch we wear.”
Someone laughed, short and mean.
“They came for one of ours,” he said. “That’s all the reason we need.”
Eagle moved up beside me, his eyes dark under the brim of his cap. “Tell ‘em what it is, Prez.”
“This is a blood oath,” Tater said. “No one runs. No one talks. No one touches our own without paying the debt in skin and blood.”
