Page 24 of Damron (Bloody Scythes MC #1)

I felt a chill. “He’s making a play. Not just for me—he wants the whole state.”

“Wants it bad enough to go to war,” Damron said.

They talked in that clipped shorthand, trading names and codenames and past beefs that left me feeling like a tourist in my own life.

For a second, I wondered if I’d ever really known Damron, or if I’d just loved the outlaw in him because it was easier than loving the parts of myself I’d tried to run away from.

“Giammati’s got the money and the muscle,” I said. “What do we have?”

Damron and Nitro exchanged a look. “We’ve got us,” Nitro said. “And we don’t lose. Not when it matters.”

There was a strange comfort in that, even though it sounded like pure MC bullshit. I looked at the photo again, at the way Giammati stood with his arms around two men who would slit his throat for a nickel, and wondered what the price on my own life was these days.

“Next steps?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

Damron was already moving, stowing the evidence, eyes on the street. “We hit them first. We hit them hard. No warning, no PR. Just a message.”

Nitro grinned, showing a mouthful of bad teeth. “That’s more like it, Prez.”

I felt the old thrill, the one that had drawn me to this world in the first place—the idea that sometimes you could punch back, even if it broke your knuckles. I followed them down the alley, the night suddenly sharp with solutions.

If Giammati wanted a war, he’d get one.

###

The clock over my stove read 2:23 a.m., and the world outside was dead quiet except for the occasional siren threading its way through the city.

Inside my apartment, the only sound was the clink of glass against glass as Damron poured another two fingers of whiskey into a mug that still had traces of ramen flavor in the bottom.

The coffee table was a graveyard of takeout: cold lo mein, a pizza box with two slices left, a bag of fries that had gone limp and congealed into a single salty brick.

I’d traded my silk robe for sweatpants and a T-shirt, but the makeup from the rally was still caked along my jaw, like the night’s armor hadn’t quite come off.

We’d spent the first hour after the meeting in silence, each of us staked out at opposite ends of the couch, pretending that the TV’s low volume and the endless flicker of cable news were enough to drown out the day.

When the bottle was half-empty, the conversation started to thaw.

Not the way normal people talked—never about weather or sports or the things you could say without needing a lawyer—but the language of two people who knew exactly how to wound each other, and did it anyway because that was safer than admitting what was actually wrong.

“I still don’t get it,” I said, staring at the ripples in my drink. “Giammati could’ve just run a smear campaign. Instead, he decides to cozy up with the one crew that’s made a career out of trying to kill you. How do you even broker that?”

“You don’t. You let them take a few teeth, then you smile and hope you’ve got enough left to chew what’s coming.”

He sat forward, elbows on his knees, the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up to reveal the mess of tattoos and scars that mapped out every fight he’d ever lost. For a second, I caught him watching me, like he was trying to memorize the slope of my face for an eventual police sketch.

“Maybe he thinks it’s leverage,” I said. “Or maybe he wants to see me sweat before the debate.”

Damron shrugged. “Politicians are like that. Never happy with just a win. Always gotta twist the knife.”

A silence stretched out, then snapped. He poured another round, this time splashing more on the table than in the glass. I couldn’t tell if his hands were unsteady or if he just didn’t give a shit about the mess. My own hands were curled tight, knuckles white, nails bitten down to the quick.

“Remember the first time you brought me to a club meet?” I asked, uncoiling just enough to let myself lean back.

He almost smiled. “You mean the time you called the SAA a ‘human tire fire’ and then drank him under the table?”

“That’s the one,” I said, letting the memory hang between us. “I thought they were going to bury me in the desert.”

He laughed—real, this time—and the sound was better than any whiskey I’d ever tasted. “You didn’t scare easy. That’s what I liked about you.”

I wanted to say, “That’s what I liked about you, too,” but the words got stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Instead, I took a slow sip and stared out the window, letting the city lights blur.

We drifted back to business. The bank transfers, the photos, the growing list of enemies.

But as the bottle emptied, the tone shifted.

We started to mirror each other—him slouched deeper into the couch, me drawing circles on the condensation ring left by my glass.

When I reached for the pizza box, our hands brushed, and instead of pulling away, he let his hand rest there, warm and solid, like he was staking a claim.

“You ever wonder,” I said, not sure where I was going, “if we could’ve made it work without all the—” I waved a hand at the air, “—blood and fire and bullshit?”

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it. “Not a day goes by.”

I felt the campaign mask slip, just a little. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the whiskey, or the way the apartment had started to feel like a bunker built for two. But for the first time in months, I let myself be something other than bulletproof.

“Then why did you let me go?” I said. It sounded petulant, even to my own ears, but I didn’t care.

He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the whiskey on his breath. “You know damn well why.”

The air between us went tight. He put his hand on my cheek, rough and sure, and for a second I was convinced he was going to kiss me.

I wanted him to. I wanted to let the world burn down around us, just for a night.

I felt my pulse jackhammer against my ribs, the adrenaline mixing with whatever was left of the old love and making my head spin.

But just as his lips brushed mine, his phone screamed from the coffee table—an emergency alert, the one only the club used when shit was about to hit the fan.

He jerked back, grabbed the phone, and thumbed the screen. His face went pale, then hard. “We’ve got a problem,” he said, voice stripped of all softness.

I looked at him, at the man who’d ruined and rebuilt me more times than I could count.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him, or maybe just let him hold me for one more second.

But instead I squared my shoulders, wiped my eyes, and reached for my own phone.

Because that was who we were now. Not lovers.

Not even friends. Just two people waiting for the next disaster, and hoping to make it out alive.

The next day would be worse. It always was.