Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
The room is silent now, every brother’s eyes on me. Waiting. Measuring.
My hands shake. My jaw aches from clenching. My heart feels like it’s splitting open.
I want to tear the walls down. I want to scream until the roof caves in. I want to demand they all get the fuck out of my way so I can run to her, find her, hold her, fix her.
But somewhere under all the rage, the truth digs in.
If I go alone, I’ll die. And she’ll still be there, without me, maybe worse off than before. I drop my face into my hands and drag them down, forcing myself to breathe.
Crunch’s voice is steady. “She’s in deep, brother. But we can get her out. Together.”
I lift my head, lock eyes with him. “If anything happens to her because we sat here talking instead of moving, I’ll never forgive you.”
Crunch nods once. A silent understanding between us. “Then let’s not waste another second.”
The table erupts again, voices rising—questions, logistics, strategy. I don’t hear most of it. My mind’s already with her, picturing her alone, scared, hurting, doing whatever it takes for another hit.
Every part of me screams to run, to ride, to find her right now. But for once, I force myself to stay seated. To let my brothers plan.
Because they’re right.
She’s my heart. My soul. My everything.
And if I’m gonna drag her back from the edge, I’ll need every one of them at my side.
Still, the rage simmers. The guilt burns.
And I swear to God, if I find the motherfuckers who put her there, I’ll show them what it means when you take something that belongs to Tommy Boy Oleander.
They tell you there’s a change before any storm, a way the air gets heavy, like a room that hasn't breathed in a while. I feel that in my chest. It’s the whole house gone quiet, like somebody pulled the plug on the world and left me standing with my hands out.
Crunch called sermon. The whole lot showed up. We heard the truth in the room and the world tilted. Jami out there, deep in someone else’s teeth. Selling herself to feed a habit that wasn’t hers to keep. Ezra Rivera marked her from childhood and even dead the man still fucks with her. The thought of it makes bile burn the back of my throat the way cheap whiskey did when I was younger and thought anything could fix me.
We don’t go into territory to roam around. We don’t throw our weight around unless it’s neat, planned, and the club says so. But the club is my family and she’s mine, and the way those two things collided tonight — Crunch standing there, telling the room she was out on the street — I felt a part of me die slowly. Not because I don’t trust them to take care of her, but because this is mine to handle. I’ve been so caught up in letting her go because she asked me to, I failed to keep watch on her.
I failed her.
Now we’re in the lead-up. The pause before we move. It’s the worst part, because my head does what my hands can’t, it paints scenarios. I sit in the lot and watch the brothers come in. Red with that same heavy stride, Tripp calm like he’s already cataloging the pros and cons, Tank’s shadow across the gravel like a warning. Karma shows up too, quiet as a threat, and when the man with that name speaks, even the hardest of us keep our mouths closed.
“You boys ready?” Karma asks, not bothering to look at me first. He looks at Crunch, who looks back like a man who’s seen the worst and keeps walking anyway.
“We go together,” Crunch says. No dramatic flourish. Just a statement like a nail through two boards. “We don’t separate. We get in. We pull her out. We get out. We don’t play hero.”
There’s talk then. Rules to call. Votes to take.
I sit in the back of the room, fingers counting the grain in the table until my nails hurt. Idle time. It’s useless. Everything’s useless without her. But useless isn’t a way to live, and it’s not the way for a man who made promises.
“Tommy,” Red says finally, voice like gravel. “You good to not go in half-cocked?”
“You know me,” I answer. My voice is smaller than I mean it to be. “I don’t half-step. But I’ll listen.”
Tank folds his arms. “This isn’t about whether you’re violent or not. It’s about making sure the fallout doesn’t eat the club. If there’s a tie to another crew that runs deeper than Pamlico,” He motions toward Karma. “Then we need to know before we move.”
Karma’s face doesn’t change. “We got chatter. Boys handling shit are small time, but they came from old money. Times have changed and rather than get real jobs, they invested what they had from some dead great granddaddy into pussy and drugs. Link looked into it, looks like just a street crew, how deep things run with a supplier, maybe someone who launders things through legit fronts, that is where I think our problem lies. Could be a snake with a dozen heads.”