Page 16 of Damron (Bloody Scythes MC #1)

Chapter ten

Carly

T he Bloody Scythes clubhouse looked different at night, which is to say it looked exactly the fucking same: a bad idea wrapped in cinderblocks, lit by one working neon and the perpetual blue glow of a flatscreen blaring SportsCenter reruns.

I didn’t belong there. I’d spent three years cultivating the kind of life where walking into a place like this would be cause for an ethics investigation or at least an urgent text from my PR handler.

But you can’t undo history, not when it’s tattooed into your skin and still bleeding under a hospital bandage.

Beneath the suits and political lingo, I knew this for sure—I was still a biker old lady.

part of me was okay with that, a part i would keep hidden for now.

I didn’t knock. I banged the heel of my hand on the battered green door and shoved it open so hard it bounced off the wall, dent deepening by half a millimeter.

A half-dozen heads turned at once, eyes flat and cold and ready to fuck me up or fuck me, depending on how many drinks they’d had.

I made it three steps into the stench of cigarettes and sweat before my knees threatened to mutiny.

I locked them, stood tall, and let the room get a good look at the senator out of uniform.

My blouse—Dior, in case anyone cared—was untucked, two buttons missing, and there was a dry line of blood running down my forearm where the bandage had slipped.

The slacks were ruined, one leg torn at the hem, dirt ground into the fabric.

I’d lost an earring and my left heel somewhere between the car and the parking lot.

My purse strap had snapped, so I clutched the whole thing in my fist like a brick.

It matched the way I held my phone in the other hand, screen lit up with the last threat I’d gotten before the cell towers dropped out.

If any of them recognized the shape of my life at that moment, none of them said a word.

At the table by the back wall, Damron St. James sat flanked by Nitro and three other patch-holders.

It looked like a war council: maps and burner phones and a bottle of whiskey open in the center, glasses only halfway filled because real men drank from the neck.

Nitro’s sleeve was rolled up, a bandage peeking out from underneath, and he had his fist planted in the center of the table like he meant to crush the wood.

Damron was all silent, eyes hooded and unreadable, fingers steepled on the tabletop as he listened to someone finish a story about a man who’d lost two fingers to a pipe bomb.

When I entered, the story died, the room shifting to a new kind of alert.

Nobody said my name. They didn’t have to.

I took a shaky breath and forced my way forward, the echo of my one working heel punctuating the silence.

The eyes that watched me were hungry, bored, or just curious to see if the senator would cry.

I didn’t give them the satisfaction, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I aimed the phone at Damron and waited until he looked up.

He didn’t blink. I slid the phone across the table.

He caught it, thumbed the screen, and scrolled without changing expression.

“Jesus Christ,” Nitro muttered, peering over his boss’s shoulder.

The other men leaned in, one after another, letting the light of the screen illuminate their faces.

The text messages were worse than garden-variety death threats.

There were photos, taken through a telephoto lens—one of me leaving the hospital that morning, another of my townhouse with the lights on at 2 am, another of my campaign manager at his daughter’s birthday party, three hours before he’d gone on TV to spin my latest disaster.

Under each photo, a message: “Tick tock,” or “See you soon, bitch,” or just a string of gun emojis.

I tried to pretend it was nothing, but I could feel my teeth start to chatter.

Damron slid the phone back. His face was a locked vault, but his eyes were moving, calculating. “You call your feds?” he asked, like he already knew the answer.

I nodded, then forced words out past the panic. “They lost him. He was at my house. He knows my routes, my people. I couldn’t go anywhere else.”

I heard someone snort behind me—maybe Slick, or Augustine, or Seneca or maybe one of the others—but I kept my focus on Damron.

He didn’t move. “Who else knows you’re here?”

“No one.” I lied by omission; the campaign manager was probably still pissing himself in the backseat of the Uber I’d ditched three blocks away.

He looked at Nitro, jerked his chin. “Clear the room.”

Nitro didn’t hesitate. He shot to his feet, downed what was left in his glass, and barked a single word: “Out.” It was all it took.

The other men grumbled, shuffled, but obeyed.

The pool table crowd, the woman behind the bar, even the prospects cleaning ashtrays—they all filed out, eyeing me like a new addition to the menu.

Damron waited until the last body was gone, then stood and came around the table, boots heavy on the tile.

I’d forgotten how big he was. Or maybe I’d just minimized it in my memory, the way you minimize the size of a fire after you barely escape the burn.

He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and there were new lines around his eyes, but the presence was the same: total, absolute, built for violence.

He stopped a foot from me. Close enough to smell the gun oil and the sour tang of adrenaline leaking from my pores.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, and reached for my arm.

I jerked away. “It’s nothing. I just—I just need to be somewhere safe for a few hours. After that, I’ll be out of your life again. Promise.”

His expression didn’t change, but I saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth—the precursor to a sneer, or maybe a smile. “You really think this is just a couple of threats? You think you’re gonna sleep it off in the back room?”

The words hit harder than I expected. I tried to stand taller, but my body wouldn’t listen. “You always said you’d help if I needed it. That’s all this is, Damron. I need help.”

He stepped forward, cutting the gap to nothing. “Help, or a shield? ’Cause I don’t see you bringing the feds, the State Troopers, or that band of Ivy League dipshits you call a campaign staff.”

“I’m not here for politics,” I spat, and it sounded so sad and broken that I almost laughed. “I’m here because I don’t want to die.”

For a moment, the mask dropped. He let out a breath, slow and deliberate, and ran a hand over his buzzed scalp. “Fine,” he said. He grabbed a napkin off the table, wrapped it around my bleeding arm, then squeezed tight enough to make me gasp. “Hold that. We’re leaving.”

“Where—”

He cut me off. “Somewhere they won’t find us. You still trust me to pick?”

I nodded, trying not to wince as he yanked my purse out of my grip, slinging it over his own shoulder like it weighed nothing.

He motioned toward the door, but before I could move, he did something that caught me completely off guard: he put his hand—rough, scarred, familiar—on the small of my back and guided me forward.

It wasn’t sexual, wasn’t even gentle. It was a reflex, a muscle memory.

For half a second, I let myself lean into it.

Outside, the night was full of wind and the distant whine of police sirens.

The parking lot was a graveyard of bikes, most of them black-on-black and chromed within an inch of their lives.

Damron walked me straight to the only Harley in the lot that looked like it could eat the others for breakfast. He pulled a helmet from the seat, shoved it into my hands, and didn’t say a word as he swung a leg over the bike.

I managed to get the helmet on, even though the world was spinning like a bad carnival ride.

He fired up the engine, the noise drowning out everything but the hammering in my chest. I climbed onto the back, arms circling his waist, fingers digging into the leather of his cut.

For a second, I felt safe. Then he kicked the bike into gear and we tore out of the lot, leaving the clubhouse and every ghost in it behind.

###

The ride was like getting shot out of a cannon and praying you remembered to pack a parachute.

I’d always been good at hiding fear—public speaking, live debates, even that time a protester lobbed a dead rat onto my campaign stage.

But there’s no faking it when you’re glued to the back of a Harley at ninety miles an hour, your thighs locked around the man you once promised to love until the world caved in.

If he decided to throw me off the back, I would understand why.

The city lights vanished in the rearview before I could catch my breath.

We tore past the dying strip malls and gas stations with bulletproof glass, then hit open road so fast my stomach tried to climb out through my throat.

The wind was ice water in my lungs. I dug my hands into Damron’s leather cut, fingers finding the old ridge of a knife scar just above his hip.

I’d stitched that wound myself once, with a sewing kit and a bottle of Wild Turkey, the night before our wedding.

That was another lifetime, one where I still believed in happy endings.

He didn’t talk. Just gunned the throttle and let the Harley scream.

I clung, pressed in so tight it was like I was trying to fuse our spines.

He must’ve felt it, the way my nails bit into him every time he shifted gears, but he didn’t slow down.

Didn’t say a word. When I started to shiver—part cold, part adrenaline, part the memory of blood soaking through my shirt—he reached back with one hand, found my knee, and squeezed.

Not a comfort. More of a command: Hold on. Don’t fall.

I held on.