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I’d been gone five years. There were new members, people I didn’t know, and the club had seemed uneasy behind all the congratulations and back slapping I’d gotten when Daya dropped me off.

I assumed it was all part of settling back in, that things would get more comfortable once I’d been home longer. It wasn’t like being an ex-con was unusual for the Blades.

But I wasn’t taking any chances.

We left my room and walked down the hall that ran the length of the second floor. There was another one just like it, on the first floor, both lined with rooms, each with a private bathroom, and thank christ for that because I’d had enough of sharing a bathroom to last a lifetime.

Some of the bedroom doors were open — either empty or occupied by various tattooed, inked dudes, some with beards — and I was hit with a wave of cognitive dissonance, the setupsimilar to prison except instead of small rooms filled with metal bunks and exposed toilets, the rooms had nice furniture, big-screen TVs, and high-end computer setups.

I always thought it was funny how many people assumed bikers were poor. The Blades were rich as fuck thanks to our various enterprises, including but not limited to drugs, gunrunning, even construction — there was a fuck ton of money in copper piping, not to mention kickbacks from contractors.

And we owned shit — gas stations and liquor stores, car dealerships and strip clubs, all kinds of things to launder our money. Plus, the land value of the compound alone was in the millions.

The Blades could thank my father for that one, since he was the one who’d made the initial investment back when he’d been president. He’d left me a lot of money when he died and I’d added to the sum in the two years before I went to prison.

Beyond a few indulgences, I’d just never had much use for it.

We lived the way we did — in the old summer camp in the woods, cut off from the rest of the world unless we wanted to hang out at Screamin’ Syds or beat someone’s face in at the Orpheum — not because we had to but because we liked it.

Wolf and Otis were silent as we made our way down the hall. They’d always liked it here too.

We passed Tiny, a huge guy a few years older than us with a beard already starting to go gray and his arms brandishing tattoos.

“Sup, dude?” he said.

I tipped my head. “All good.”

It went like that — a series of nods and greetings, some of them more than a little awkward — as we made our way to one of the stairwells that flanked either end of the building and descended to the first floor.

We exited the stairwell and walked through the door that had been propped open to the cool night air.

Fuck. It felt good just to walk outside, just to breathe air laced with dirt and pine, to hear the sound of the Blackwell Creek running through the trees surrounding the compound.

We passed the second dorm building and my stomach grumbled as I caught a whiff of cooking meat. I wondered if Pinky and the kitchen crew were making beef stroganoff.

I loved Pinky’s beef stroganoff.

Bikes were parked against the rec building — Harleys and Triumphs and even a few old Victorys — like it was a diner on some forgotten interstate.

I felt a little pang as we headed for the woods, people calling out, congratulating me on being home. Unease aside, it was nice, but I didn’t have any family, not by blood.

Wolf and Otis were my family, and once upon a time, Blake Hammond had been my family too.

We stepped into the trees and started down the trail leading to the garage. The river was closer now, the sound of the rushing water good cover for our conversation.

“I know you’re not suggesting we meet her.” I didn’t need to say Daisy’s name. We were always talking about Daisy, always fucking thinking about her.

She was a fucking sickness I couldn’t shake. One that was going to kill me eventually.

“We should see what she has to say,” Wolf said, whacking at some low-hanging branches with a stick he’d picked up along the way.

He always looked at home in the woods, probably because Daya had been taking him out since he was a kid, showing him which berries he could eat and shit. It was something she’d been taught by her native grandfather and she wanted Wolf to be in touch with his lineage.

I’d always been a little jealous of Wolf’s relationship with his mom, the way she tried to keep him connected to her, to his ancestors. There wasn’t a single soul in the world connecting me to anything.

I barely remembered my own mother.

“Why?” The huge concrete garage loomed through the trees. I had no idea what the rich-kid summer camp had used it for (cases of champagne? pallets of caviar?) but it was where the Blades stored our cars and extra bikes. “We did our part.”