Page 25

Danny

The days bled together, each one bringing a fresh wave of Dr. Walker’s relentless probing. We covered everything—my parents’ deaths, the raw, agonizing grief I still felt, the electrifying first sight of Dante, even the mundane details of my childhood. She left no stone unturned, yet a wall remained impenetrable whenever she touched upon the Biker Federation.

It wasn’t a simple unwillingness to speak. It was a terrifying compulsion to silence, a knot of fear and loyalty that tightened in my gut.

I knew Dante’s frustration—and Dr. Walker’s—mirrored my own impotent rage. The information stored in my head was a venomous serpent coiled around my heart, and revealing it felt like suicide.

By the fifth day, they didn’t come alone.

Bane’s presence, and the cold fury in his eyes, was enough to ignite my fury.

“Talk,” Bane snarled, the command a physical blow.

“I can’t!” I shouted. My words ripped through me, a desperate, futile attempt at maintaining control. “You can’t order me around. I don’t work for you.”

A chilling calm settled over Bane’s face as a familiar voice cut through the air when Bane placed his phone on the table, and Reaper’s name blazed on the screen, confirming my worst fear.

My loyalty, the bedrock of my being, was being brutally tested.

The club was my family, my lifeblood, but revealing its secrets felt like betraying everyone I had ever sworn to protect, including myself.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

This was worse than any physical beating.

“No, but you do work for me.” Reaper’s voice, amplified through the phone, was a cold judgment. The room stilled. “Your head’s a mess and you can’t do your fucking job if you don’t talk. So, what the hell is the holdup?”

“It’s club business,” I insisted, my voice tight. “Dr. Walker wants me to discuss club matters.”

The conflict was unbearable.

My gut screamed that betraying the club was akin to selling my soul, yet my own sanity and perhaps my very life hung in the balance. The choice was a poisoned chalice.

“Then fucking tell her!” Reaper roared, his voice a tremor through the phone. “Sypher, I’ve got enough on my plate. Everyone’s doing their part. Get that stick out of your ass and do yours.” He paused, then addressed Dr. Walker, “Yo, Doc. Patient confidentiality?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice steady. “As long as he doesn’t tell me about anything he is planning to do in the future, nothing said here will go further.”

“Good enough for me. Start talking, kid. Now!” Reaper’s order cut the silence like a knife before the connection ended.

The weight of Reaper’s command, the blatant disregard for my internal struggle, crushed me.

My moral compass spun wildly. I was being forced to choose between my fiercely held loyalty and the preservation of my own sanity. The choice was agonizingly clear, yet each option felt like a devastating failure.

My mouth opened, not in defiance, but in a surrender to the inevitable unraveling because I fucking knew with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that what I was about to tell her, the consequences would be far-reaching and devastating.

“Fine, I’ll talk, but only to Dr. Walker. No one else can be in the house.”

The second I agreed, Dr. Walker took control, and before I knew it, Dante, Nav and Bane left the house, leaving the two of us alone.

An icy dread seeped into my bones, colder than the steel I usually carried. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable since... since that night. The memory flashed, a searing image of my betrayal and blood, a night I’d vowed to forget, a vow I’d already broken by agreeing to this.

I still wasn’t happy about what I was about to do, but even I knew to challenge a direct order from Reaper was suicide. His word was law, but my conscience was a screaming rebel, a traitorous whisper in the back of my mind.

This felt different, dirtier.

This wasn’t about loyalty to the Golden Skulls; this was about something... personal.

Something Reaper wouldn’t understand, something I desperately wanted to keep buried.

“Alright, Danny, why don’t we start with something simple? You are a brother in the Golden Skulls. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” My voice was a thin rasp, betraying the tremor in my hands.

“When did you patch into the club?”

“I was born Golden, Doc. My dad was the President of the Tennessee Chapter. But I didn’t officially get my cut until I was in college.”

“I thought as long as you were in school, the clubs couldn’t touch you?”

I nodded. “There’s an exception to every rule, Doc, and I’m that exception.”

Each word felt like a razor blade twisting in my gut.

“How so?”

“Because I’ve been doing things for the clubs since I was sixteen.”

The things I’d done to protect those I loved, things that directly contradicted everything I claimed to stand for. Things I would never forgive myself for, regardless of the outcome.

“What kind of things?” Dr. Walker’s question was a calm invitation, and I knew, with sickening certainty, that answering her would be the worst mistake of my life.

Looking at the Doc, I asked, “Have you ever done things knowing it would alter everyone’s life?”

Dr. Walker’s eyes sharpened with interest. Her gaze unwavering. “And what kinds of things are those, Danny?” Her voice was gentle, but there was an underlying steel to it, a determination to extract the truth.

I swallowed. My throat dry as I grappled with the choice before me. I could feel the weight of Reaper’s command, the unspoken threat that hung in the air. Betraying the club felt like signing my death warrant, but defying Reaper was equally dangerous. I was trapped between the loyalty I’d sworn and the need to unburden my soul.

“I... I did whatever was necessary to protect my family and the club,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “I made choices that... that I’m not proud of.”

“Choices that led you here, to this moment,” Dr. Walker said, her tone understanding. “It’s important to acknowledge those choices, Danny. They’re a part of who you are, and understanding them will help us unravel the complexities of your mind.” Her words were like a lifeline, offering a chance at redemption, at making sense of the chaos within me.

“My job is about secrets, Doc. Finding them and keeping them buried deep, and I’m damn good at what I do. For years, I’ve been searching, learning everything I could to help my club stop a war that started long before I was ever born. When I learned the truth, put the pieces together, I made a choice that had dire consequences, and now that choice is about to bite me in the ass.”

“How so?”

“Because when I tell Dante what I know, he will fucking leave, take our daughter, and I will never see them again.”

“It is clear Dante loves you very much. Revealing these secrets could strengthen an already solid bond further. Sometimes the truth can be freeing, Danny.”

I smirked, shaking my head. “In my line of work, Doc, the truth will get you killed.”

“I know little about the inner workings of biker clubs, only what I have read about and what I have observed at the clubhouse. What I do know is the mind. And I know that keeping this information bottled up inside of you will eat away at you until nothing’s left. Danny, do you know why psychologists and psychiatrists are called shrinks? Despite the amount of important knowledge contained in our brain, there are also pockets of emptiness. Within that emptiness is where we store fear, doubt, anger. All the unresolved trauma we accumulate in our lifetime. My job is to help you shrink those empty spaces. To remove the trauma that puts a burden on the important knowledge. Let me help you navigate that trauma, Danny. I can handle anything you throw at me.”

“You sure about that, Doc?” I challenged.

The woman nodded. “Try me.”

Taking a deep breath, I smiled. “Alright. You grew up in Diamond Creek. At sixteen, your parents died in a car accident. Instead of being put into the system, the local sheriff agreed to let you stay in your family home until you graduated. After high school, you got your BA and MA at the University of Oklahoma and graduated at the top of your class. Though you are a general psychologist, you are also board-certified in dissociative disorders. In fact, you did your dissertation online through Johns Hopkins University during the lockdown under Dr. Stephen Thomas, who by the way is a club brother in Disturbed. You are PhD-certified in both specialties. You work out of your home, seeing clients online, rather than in an office.”

“All of that is public knowledge, Danny.”

Leaning forward, I smirked. “And what if I was to tell you that your parents didn’t just die in a car accident? What if I was to tell you that someone ran them off the road that night because your parents saw something they weren’t supposed to see, and that the person who killed them is still walking around in Diamond Creek today?”

Sitting up, Haizley gasped. “What are you saying, Danny?”

“I’m saying I’m damn good at what I do, Haizley. I have to be. I know everything about everyone. I was here before, back in November, with Dante and our daughter. I researched everyone in Diamond Creek, not just the club brothers. I have a photographic and eidetic memory. It’s all there inside my head, just waiting for someone to pluck it out. Are you sure you’re ready to jump down the rabbit hole, because once you do, there is no going back?”

For the first time since I met Dr. Haizley Walker, she seemed unsure of herself.

The chill in the room wasn’t just from the air conditioning; it was the icy dread radiating off me. I hadn’t meant to terrorize her, this woman, Haizley. But she needed to grasp the brutal reality of my life, the razor’s edge I walked. My world wasn’t a game. It was a bloodbath, a constant struggle for survival, and just my voice, whispering her name, would paint a target on her back. One word in the wrong ear and my clients—predators, all of them—wouldn’t hesitate to tear her apart to get to me.

I liked Haizley. God, how I liked her. Sharp as a tack, the best damn therapist I’d ever encountered, a beacon of calm in my storm-tossed sea. But she had to understand. Associating with me was a death sentence.

The tightening of her jaw, the way her shoulders squared, the steel glinting in her eyes as she met my gaze... I knew she’d made her choice.

Her voice, low and unwavering, sliced through the suffocating silence. “I understand the risks, Danny. Your world isn’t some fairy tale. But I’m here to help, and I won’t be intimidated. I’m not afraid of your truth, your darkness. We all carry burdens, Danny. We all fight our demons. What you can’t seem to grasp is you don’t have to fight alone.” The scent of her perfume—something clean and sharp, a defiant contrast to the miasma of my life—hung in the air.

I saw it then, in her eyes, a mirror of the ruthless strength I’d seen in the eyes of the men I rode with, the men who lived and died by the barrel of a gun.

“Alright, Doc,” I rasped, the relief of a physical wave washing away years of suffocating silence. “You asked for it.”

I leaned back, the leather of the chair creaking under my weight, a counterpoint to the tremor in my hands. “It started years ago... when I was sixteen....”

My confession poured out of me, a torrent of buried pain and regret. Each word was a blow, each memory a fresh wound, but with each syllable, a knot untied itself in my gut. The air, thick with the weight of my secrets, began to lighten. The darkness within me, given a voice, no longer felt like a suffocating blanket, but a storm that finally began to break, leaving behind, for the first time in a lifetime, a sliver that grew into a glimmer... of hope.

“Danny,” Haizley carefully said, leaning forward in her chair. “You can’t keep this to yourself. It’s eating you from the inside out. You need to forgive yourself. You are only one man with the weight of the world on your shoulders. With everything you’ve said, I’m surprised you are still sane.”

A bitter laugh caught in my throat. Sane? The word felt like a cruel joke. My sanity was a fragile thing, a thin veneer over the gnawing terror that had become my constant companion.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice, Danny.” Haizley’s words hung in the air, heavy with a truth I desperately wanted to deny. The truth was a venomous serpent, coiled tight within my gut, its fangs poised to strike. Because my truth was far more complicated, far more brutal.

I’d chosen to protect them, yes, but at what cost? The memory of the act, the cold calculation, the violation of everything I once held dear—it haunted me. It was a choice I’d made to save them, but one that poisoned my soul. I knew she was right, but the weight of my secrets was a burden I had borne for so long, it had become a part of me, a grotesque appendage I couldn’t sever.

“I know, Haizley. I know I need to let it out, but it’s not that simple. If I tell him, if I tell anyone, it could change everything. It could ruin lives.” My voice cracked.

It wouldn’t ruin lives, not entirely. It would just... redistribute the damage. Shift the burden from my shoulders to theirs. A selfish, cowardly calculation that went against everything I professed to believe in: honesty, fairness, justice.

The image of Dante’s face, trusting and open, flashed before my eyes. To betray that trust, to shatter his carefully constructed world... The thought was a physical blow. It was the ultimate betrayal, not just of him, but of the idealized version of myself I had striven to maintain. The man I wanted to be, the man I needed to be for Dante, wouldn’t have done what I did. That man wouldn’t have made this choice, wouldn’t have let fear dictate his actions, wouldn’t have sacrificed his own integrity.

Haizley reached out and placed her hand on mine, her eyes soft with understanding.

“Danny, you don’t have to carry this alone anymore. You’ve shouldered this burden for too long, and it’s time to let it go. You have to trust that the truth will set you free, even if it’s painful. And I’m here for you, no matter what.” Her words were a lifeline, but my fear was a tidal wave, threatening to pull me under.

Taking a deep breath, I whispered, “I know... I’m just scared, Haizley. Scared of what it might do to us, to everything Dante and I have built... scared of what it reveals about me.”

The truth was far more terrifying than any consequence because it showed me the ugly, compromised truth of who I had become—and I didn’t know if I could face that reflection.