Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
"And?" I hand the phone back to Mama Jo.
The kitchen falls silent. Five women watching me like I might shatter.
"And?" Brandy echoes, incredulous. "You're fucking famous. These are everywhere."
I smooth my hands down the front of my borrowed jeans. "I've been famous since I was three years old. My mother sold my childhood for followers. Marcus sold my image for votes." I touch my new tattoo, the raw letters spelling PROPERTY OF DEMON. "Why should I care anymore? Why should it bother me?” The words come out calm, almost peaceful. They taste like truth—the first real truth I've spoken in years.
"Where were you three hours ago, Brandy?" Mama Jo says, suspicion hardening her features as she turns toward Brandy.
Brandy's smug smile falters. "Don't look at me. I don't have access to the security feeds."
"You think I don't see you? Creeping around, trying to matter?" Mama Jo's voice is low, dangerous. Not the practiced calm of my mother's disappointment, but something wilder. Protective without possession. "This girl just got here, and you're already trying to burn her house down."
Brandy glances at me, waiting for tears or rage, finding neither. Her certainty cracks. "I didn't leak shit."
"Then who did?" Mama Jo demands.
I laugh softly. "Who cares? Does it matter?"
Mama Jo's face hardens. "Of course it matters. This is about Badlands, not just you."
I don't say anything back. I have nothing to say.
Mama Jo studies me for a long moment, then shakes her head like she doesn't understand me. "I'm taking this to Diesel. This is club business now." She moves toward the door, pausing beside me. "You know perfectly well this matters. Your mother would've had a crisis team on the phone."
"My mother would've been more worried about the lighting than my consent," I snap back.
Some of the women exhale. They make big eyes in my peripheral vision. They snicker.
Mama Jo leaves. And, like magic, the dining room empties quickly.
No one wants to be near the fallout.
I stand alone in the silence, feeling oddly weightless.
What's done is done. The photos are out there. The perfect Savannah Ashby is dead.
And somehow, I'm still breathing.
I need to find Legion.
I need to tell him I've finally chosen my side.
CHAPTER 3
I move through the clubhouse like I'm already dead. Eyes slide past me, conversations die, and I keep walking. No one speaks. No one touches.
Outside, the sun cuts low across the compound. The whole world laid bare from this vantage point—the Yellowstone River winding like an artery through the valley floor, Terry, Montana, the closest town, is a sad cluster of buildings looking like toys someone forgot to put away.
The Terry Badlands unfurl beyond like a violent dream, their twisted rock spires and clay formations rising from the earth like ancient bones. Wind and water have carved this landscape into something unnatural—ridges sharp as knife wounds, valleys deep as regrets, colors bleeding from rust-red to bone-white under the merciless sun. A terrain that's been tortured by time and elements, sculpted by pain into something both beautiful and wrong.
Something deep in my chest cavity vibrates in recognition, like my body knows its twin when it sees it. This land and me, we're made of the same broken stuff.
And this high up, I can see everything that matters and nothing I need.
I keep walking. My boots drag gravel with each step. The compound spreads around me—cinderblock buildings, chain-link fences topped with razor wire, outbuildings that started as storage and became whatever was needed. Ratchet's garage. The armory. The laundry room.
I pass the laundry building and notice a stack of spiral notebooks on the front desk. Small ones, pocket-sized. The kind you can hide. The kind that holds secrets.
I take one. And a pen. Both disappear into my pocket.
The brand on my chest throbs with each heartbeat. Infection or belonging, I can't tell the difference anymore.
Mercy. I need to find Mercy.
The guilt sits like lead in my stomach. I should have gone to her first after the vote. Before the drinks, and the dancing, and the tattooing. Before Colt. Before Destiny. Before the gun and the baby and the choice I had to make for the sake of the club, for Savannah, for my sanity...
I head toward the playground—a sad collection of rusted equipment where clubhouse kids sometimes hang out. It's where Mercy's been spending her days while I've been busy trying to keep us all alive.
She's there. But she's not alone.
Two boys. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Circling her like they're playing some game, but I know that look. I wore that look once, watching Savannah from across the church playground when we were kids. Before I knew what hunger was.
These boys are too young to understand the thing growing in them. But I'm not.
Fury bubbles up from somewhere deep and dark. Three days. I looked away for three fucking days, and already they're circling her. The world doesn't wait. It doesn't forgive. It doesn't give little girls time to be little girls.