Page 21 of Gonzo’s Grudge (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Dreadnought, NC #1)

Gonzo

T he text landed like a round in my chest.

I know who you really are now. I won’t be a pawn in your game anymore.

Blue bubble. Delivered.

Oh the blow was definitely delivered. I stared until the words blurred and the world narrowed to the width of that screen.

The roar in my ears wasn’t my bike. It was blood finding places to pound where fists couldn’t.

I hit call before my brain caught up. Straight to voicemail. I called again. Same.

A third time and I forced myself to stop. Men like me didn’t beg into empty lines.

I typed:

Where are you?

The bubble remained without a read response or delivery notification.

I waited.

No response.

I typed:

Tell me who came to you.

Again nothing.

I typed:

I’m not who he told you I am. I’m a lot of fucked up, but whatever you were told, I’m not it. Don’t shut me out.

Green bubble. Failed to deliver.

Had she turned the phone off? Did she cancel her number already? Who got to her? The questions hit me like a semi-automatic handgun one after another in rapid succession.

The garage around me went quiet in that mean way that says nothing’s actually quiet. A ratchet ticked somewhere, someone’s radio bled a country song through a wall, and my brothers’ voices from the main room were smoke on the air. None of it got through the damn blue bubble message.

“Gonzo?” Burn’s voice from the doorway. “You okay, Prez?”

I didn’t speak.

“You okay?” he repeated.

“No.”

I pocketed the phone, walked past him, shoved through the clubhouse and into daylight. The sky was October-glass blue and cold enough at the edges to sting when you breathe wrong. I breathed wrong the whole way to the bike.

The Harley-Davidson fired up like the faithful bitch she was, and I pointed her toward campus without telling anyone where the hell I was going because everybody already knew.

Students moved in herds that afternoon—backpacks thumping, earbuds in, laughter careless.

I parked in visitor spillover like I owned it and took the footpath past the statue of a founder who looked like he’d never punched anything harder than biscuit dough.

I didn’t know which class she’d have; I knew where she normally emerged.

After the window of time came and went, it was evident she didn’t attend class today.

That was enough.

I knew where she lived not far from campus.

That was my next direction. Luckily for me, she lived in a high security campus owned apartment complex.

Meaning it was treated similarly to a dorm to optimize the safety of the residents.

This also meant a paper trail with a log of people coming and going and visitors.

I was determined to get to the bottom of this.

The apartment desk had a kid behind it with a lanyard and a thick pair of glasses. “Sir, you can’t?—”

“I can,” I said. “And I am.”

“Only residents and registered guests past the lobby.” He swallowed like he’d just heard himself say it. “That’s… policy.”

I leaned on the counter, not touching him, but close enough for him to smell road and a morning that went bad. “You know a resident named IvaLeigh Walsh?”

He looked at his screen. He wasn’t supposed to. He did anyway. “She signed out. Says ‘home.’ This morning.”

“When?”

“An hour ago? Maybe two.”

“Who signed in earlier?”

“Sir—”

“Who was in this building today going to her apartment?”

His eyes snuck to the visitor sheet and then away. “I can’t say?—”

I looked to the sheet in front of him. The name I expected was written there clear as day. “You just did,” I explained, and put a hundred on the counter. “You didn’t see me.”

“What?” His eyes went wider at the bill than they had at the leather cut. “I—uh—didn’t see you.”

“Good man.”

I took the stairs two at a time anyway. Policy is a door; most doors open if you’re willing to lean.

Her hall stank like popcorn and aerosol perfume. I didn’t knock. I didn’t need to. The door to her room was propped with a shoe and Darla—I’d met her once, bright and lacquered—stood in the middle of a hurricane of laundry and makeup like a queen in a kingdom of plastic.

She saw me and rolled her eyes. “You can’t be in here.”

“Wasn’t asking.”

She put her hands on her hips. “She’s not here.”

“I know,” I said. “Tell me where she went.”

“Home.” She shrugged, hair flipping with the move. “Said she needed a break.”

“What did he tell her?”

Darla’s smirk was a thing that wanted to be a shield and failed at it. “Who?”

“Stanley.”

Her chin jerked back. “You think I’m gonna help you? The way you rolled in here and mixed her up in the head worse than I did fucking her ex-boyfriend in her bed.”

I let that hit. I deserved it. This would be the bitch’s only pass. “I asked you what he said.”

Darla looked at me a long, long beat and then away, like she couldn’t stand me and couldn’t stand herself for what she was about to do.

“He sat in that chair,” she said, flinging a wrist toward her desk.

“Leg over the knee like he was posing for a magazine. He told her she was a toy you were using because of her dad. He told her her dad’s got secrets, and he keeps them.

He told her to run. Paris, Rome—like he was travel agent to the damned. ”

“Did she cry?”

Darla squared up, defensive. “She went silent.”

“You done?” Darla asked. “Because I have class. And a life, by the way.”

“You got a boyfriend?”

“None of your business.”

“If he comes around IvaLeigh again, he’ll meet me.”

“That a threat?”

“A promise.”

“You’re exhausting,” she said, but her eyes told me she understood the difference.

I left without slamming the door. Slammed doors are for men with witnesses.

On the way out, I called Waverly. She picked up on the first ring. “Talk to me.”

“Hampton Stanley visited IvaLeigh Walsh on campus,” I said. “Pulled a chair up in her room like it was his parlor.”

“I’ll get the campus visitor logs,” she said. “And their security footage. Public university, public records. If they balk, I’ll threaten to call the attorney general’s office.”

“Do it quiet,” I ordered. “I don’t want him knowing we know.”

“Parallel construction,” she reminded me. “I remember they all build up and fall down together.” She paused. “You okay?”

“No,” I shared. “I lost control of the situation.”

“Want me to reach out to her? Woman to woman?”

“She turned her phone off after she texted me.”

“Ah.” Waverly exhaled, measured. “Okay. We stand by.”

“Not too far by,” I shared. “I don’t trust her old man not to weaponize concern as a way to manipulate. Putting Shanks on a soft eye at their place. No contact. No leaning on the glass.”

“Copy.”

I hung up and called Burn. “I want proof he was in that apartment. Waverly’s on that. We have to move on Hampton now, he lit the fuse today going to IvaLeigh.”

“You’ll have it,” he said. “Also, I pulled a wire on a janitor at city hall. Hampton’s safe got opened two nights ago.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know yet. But something moved, because the inventory the night before was one more folder than it was last night.”

“I don’t want quiet movement,” I commanded. “I want him pinned to the fucking wall.”

“You’ll get him,” Burn said. “But you need to breathe long enough for me to bring the nails.”

I killed the call and stood in the parking lot letting cold air sand down the heat under my skin. Somewhere on campus, a bell tower chimed the hour like that meant anything. Time flexed and snapped back. I got on the bike and pointed it toward a house with shutters and a study behind a pretty gate.

I didn’t ring the bell. I never do.

I watched from the curb long enough to see a curtain twitch and a silhouette move and thought about knocking anyway. Then I pictured her mother’s hands shaking as she set down coffee and her father’s face when he realized the storm at his door came from Hampton Stanley after all.

I turned and twisted my throttle, pulling away. Not because I didn’t want to crash through. Because sometimes keeping someone safe looks like staying where you don’t want to.

The clubhouse was already buzzing when I rolled up.

Word moves faster than a bullet in a family like ours.

By the time I hit the vault for church, they were all there: Burn with a laptop and a folder he shouldn’t have had, Pull with a legal pad fat with notes from Waverly, Loco restless as a dog that’s supposed to heel.

I paced around the table and looked at my brothers. “He went to her. He told her I was using her. He told her that her old man belongs to him. She’s home. She turned her phone off. She’ll be safe there for now.”

Burn didn’t say I told you so . He never does. He clicked a key. A still frame from a security camera filled the screen: apartment lobby, front desk, Hampton Stanley in a suit leaner than his soul, signing the visitor log like good manners were the same as permission.

Pull slid me a printed copy of the log, the name H.

Stanley in a hand that belonged to a man who thought his signature mattered more than his word.

I had glanced at the paper and recognized it in an instant, taking it in as face in this moment cut a little deeper.

“Time in, 3:14 p.m. Time out, 3:48 p.m. He was there long enough to poison a room.”

“Any campus cops with him?” I asked.

“Nope,” Burn stated. “Just his own shadow. He thinks he is the cops.”

Loco cracked his knuckles. “We gonna pay him a visit?”

“No.” I put the word down heavily. Loco settled. “Not like that. Not yet.”

“What then?” Loco asked, eyes flat as a lake.

“We tighten the noose,” I explained. “Waverly pushes the requests in the legal ways. Burn keeps the pipeline hot. Dippy sits on the bank VP’s wife.

Shanks—remains soft eye on IvaLeigh’s parents’ place.

Anyone other than family approaches, I want to know.

No contact. Nobody breathes on her unless I say so. ”

Nods around the table. Purpose is a meal; you can feel a room eat when you serve it.