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“Cade, you were fucked up long before I came on the scene.” His grip on the rosary tightens. “You couldn’t be bothered to string a hundred words together for almost ten years. Nothing touched you. Not all the men wanting to be you or women dying to fuck you. Not the drugs or booze.”

He lifts the tungsten beads higher. “Nothing, except this. I had to keep you sane somehow.”

“So you found me a vocation,” I snark.

“It’s called a badge, and it’s the fine line separating you from prison or the grave. And it gave you exactly what you needed to heal. Vengeance.”

I tuck the beads back under my shirt. “Well, looks like I’m still healing—”

“It’s enough, Caden. Twenty-two fucking years is long enough for a tantrum.”

“A tantrum?” Heat rises in my throat. “Screw you,dad!”

“You are the most insolent bastard I’ve ever had the misfortune of raising.” His voice roughens with affection. “But also one with the biggest heart. Believe me when I say it’s time to stop, Son.”

Love wells up inside me despite everything. I’ve had three fathers, all of them twisted assholes, but only Phoenix ever had a clue what it meant to raise a son.

“You just want me here, riding with the brothers and calling the shots,” I growl, tasting bitterness on my tongue.

“Would that be such a bad thing? Look, you can’t undo what happened to your mother—”

“You think this is about Matilda?” I demand sharply.

“She was the one who started it, Cade.”

“It’s not just about her.” My fist clenches until my knuckles crack. “It’s about the evil men, too.”

The memories flood in, hot and toxic. “Look what they did to Kat.” Enslaved and molested for six years until I found her.

My throat tightens. “Look what they did to those sixteen thoroughly broken women in Philadelphia. And what Pascal Romano almost did to Maria, to little Victoria. To my own sister—your daughter, Phoenix.”

“What Clemenza Brando almost did to my woman.”

My eyes shut, chest squeezing painfully as I think of what could be happening to Luna right now if I hadn’t been in that club that night. She was a virgin, for fuck’s sake.

“What happens to the thousand other women who don’t have a deranged psychopath to burn down the world for them? This is a war that never ends.”

Phoenix sighs, “Yes, but soldiers retire.”

My laugh is hollow and sharp. “In caskets.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.” His voice softens. “There are people here who need you just as much.”

My jaw clenches, knowing where this is going. The answer, as ever, remains no. “There are dozens of local bikers who can step into your shoes, Phoenix.”

“None of them is the leader we need.” His eyes pin me in place. “You have a network of spies all over the country and beyond. The club—hell, the whole of Harmony, including the sheriff’s department—wants you back home. As Prez.”

Harmony calls to me, as much as I hate it. But home isn’t where you find peace. Home is where you face your demons.

I scoff, “They want me because they don’t know what I am.”

He shakes his head, a sad smile playing on his weathered face. “They know enough. You’re Thomas Quinn’s son. Jackson Pype’s son and Phoenix Kellan’s son. If that’s not enough to fuck a boy up, I don’t know what is.”

I can’t help but grin at that. He’s not wrong.

“Caden.” Phoenix’s voice pulls me back to the present, still painstakingly making his point. “Half the town owes you a favor.”

“They owe you too.”