Page 23 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Candace

The weight of it all sinks into my bones, concrete-heavy, suffocating, inescapable. The kind that settles in your marrow and makes even breathing feel like betrayal. But it’s not despair that rises next. It’s fury. Pure, blistering rage that ignites every nerve ending, a match to gasoline.

My breath hitches, sharp and ragged, a single note of defiance rising inside me.

My ribs tighten with the force of it, lungs coiling, bracing for war.

I grab the baseball bat from beside my bed, my fingers curling tight around the grip.

Wood against skin. Cold. Familiar. The varnish slicks against my palms, biting into the soft flesh, a reminder of every time I’ve picked it up and done nothing.

I swing it once, twice slicing the air, mimicking Harley Quinn on a warpath.

Not for show. For war. The wind shrieks as it cuts around me, a low hum in my ears.

The handle bites into my palms. Grounding.

The first chord of a song I’ve played before but never finished.

The vibration travels up my forearms, settles behind my teeth.

I storm into the hallway, heart thudding, footsteps silent against the cold floor, headed straight for the door I’ve avoided more times than I can count.

My father’s door is always locked. As if that could keep me out now.

I lift my leg and kick. The door shudders, cracks, splinters apart as though it’s been waiting for this reckoning.

Wood groans, begging to be let go. Satisfaction hums in my chest, a battle drum.

I taste blood in the back of my throat; it’s metallic, hot.

I don’t know if it’s from biting my cheek or from something deeper unraveling.

A hum vibrates low in my throat before I can stop it. Not a tune. A pulse. A war beat. My war beat.

His room is dark. Lifeless. Sparse. Cold air clings to the walls, steeped in old secrets. But the dresser stands as a tombstone; the last relic of her. He always said the dresser was hers. Called it an heirloom. The only thing she left behind when she died.

I used to run my fingers across it when I was little, hoping it would help me remember her. It never did. All it ever held was silence. Just as he does.

Except sometimes, in the quiet, I’d make up songs about her. Whisper them to the wood grain. Stupid. Childish. But it was the only way to speak to someone who was never coming back.

I swing.

The mirror shatters with a scream of glass, shards raining down in a storm of glitter. My arms, cheek, and knuckles sting from getting sliced, but I don’t stop. I don’t care. Let it cut me. Let it bleed.

I want this room to bleed.

The lamp is next. Then the side table. The picture frame. The bat becomes an extension of my body; furious and alive. Each crash is a percussion hit. A drumbeat. A rebellion.

Then I see it.

A photo.

My dad, younger. His arm is around a pale-haired woman whose belly is stretched with me. Her. Blonde like me, but her eyes are glacier cold. There’s no warmth in that picture. No joy. No love.

Just absence.

A lyric forms in my head. “Born from absence, not from grace.” I swallow it down. No paper. No pen. Just rage.

I bring the bat down. The glass splits. The frame breaks in two. I don’t want her looking at me. Not anymore. Let her stay frozen in that photo. Let her rot there.

By the time I stop, my arms are trembling and the room is wrecked. Chaos in every direction. The air is thick with dust, with blood, with the coppery tang of rage turned feral.

It feels like the end of a song that never had a chorus. Just verses full of screaming.

I stumble back, dazed, and the bat slips from my grip. It hits the floor with a clatter, bouncing once before tumbling down the stairs. Even it wants to leave this place behind.

I slide down the hallway wall, my back scraping drywall, legs folding beneath me.

My breath punches out of me in sharp bursts.

Everything’s buzzing—numb and sharp at once.

A wasp hive under my skin. The scream rips out before I can stop it.

Raw. Feral. It tears through my throat and echoes through the house, full of every emotion I never let myself feel.

My chest caves. It’s a drumhead pulled too tight, ready to split.

Then… I’m empty.

I wake to voices. Distant. Muffled. As if I’m underwater. There’s pressure behind my eyes, as though I cried in my sleep. My mouth tastes of ash.

The floor beneath me is cold. My limbs ache. Not from sleep, but from rage. My palms sting, tiny glass slivers biting into my skin. Every nerve ending feels seared raw.

Then I hear it. His voice. My father’s.

“She’s asleep in the hallway. She found out I took money from her,” he says, voice sharp and low. “You need to get up there now before she wakes up.”

What? My blood runs cold.

“Alright. Here’s five grand now. We’ll give you twenty percent once she’s sold.”

Sold?

The word pierces through the haze, sharp as a blade. My stomach lurches, bile rising fast.

I hold my breath, pressing against the wall as footsteps shift below. One of them laughs, the sound cruel and slick. He’s got an accent—indiscernible, but wrong. The kind of voice that leaves bruises behind.

“Will anyone miss her?”

“I’ll just tell people she finally left town.”

That one cuts. It sinks deep. The final line of a song that was never meant to end this way. Is that really all I am to him now? Something to be explained away? A burden to unload? After everything?

I inch down the stairs, weight on the balls of my feet, every step rehearsed in my mind as if it were a kata I’ve trained for my whole life. Quiet. Efficient. Focused. The bat might be gone, but I am not.

Coach Tompkins used to say, “Predict. Then strike.”

I peek around the corner and see them. Two men. One built as solid as a fucking wall. The other, leaner but mean-looking, pacing with a cigarette between his lips. Smoke coils around him, a threat in motion.

My breath turns razor-sharp, slicing in and out of my lungs as I press against the wall, waiting. I count the seconds between footsteps, gauging weight and stride. The heavy bastard’s coming up alone. Mistake number one.

He hits the landing. Now .

I pivot out from the corner in a tight, clean motion—one I’ve drilled into my body a thousand times—and strike before he can register I’m there.

My front hand slices through the air and drives into his throat with a textbook ridge-hand strike.

The impact lands with a sickening crunch.

He chokes, clutching at his neck, eyes bulging.

I follow up without hesitation. My back leg pivots smoothly, core twisting as I plant and launch a snapping side kick into his knee. I feel the joint bend where it shouldn’t. He crumples forward with a wheeze. I seize the moment—my heel slams up into his nose with brutal precision.

Cartilage gives way beneath the strike. Blood erupts in a sudden gush. The sound of the break echoes through the hallway, a cymbal crash. Sharp. Final. He howls and stumbles back, arms flailing, crashing into the hallway wall with a thud.

“Motherfu—!”

The second man lunges up the stairs, but I’m already moving.

I plant my feet, shift my weight, and grab the bigger guy by the shoulders.

With a controlled twist of my hips, I redirect his momentum, hurling his off-balance body directly into his partner.

The two of them collapse in a mess of limbs and curses.

I bolt for the front door, every step powered by sheer adrenaline. My lungs burn. My muscles scream. The hallway blurs. Locked. Fucking course it is.

Before I can spin back, a white-hot explosion of pain slams into the back of my skull. My vision flashes white. I pitch forward, catching myself on the doorframe as the world tilts violently sideways.

“Fuck! She broke my fucking nose!” the bigger one wails behind me.

Footsteps thunder. Arms clamp around me from behind, locking mine to my sides in a crushing bear-hug. His sweat slicks my skin, sour and burning.

Too slow.

I drop my weight instantly, shifting my center of gravity and widening my stance. He wasn’t expecting a trained counter.

Then I snap my head back. My skull collides with his chin, jarring him just long enough.

Predict. Strike.

R olling my shoulders forward before twisting hard, I break his grip as I slam my elbow into his ribs. Once, twice, again—each hit sharper and more precise than the last. Bone meets bone. He gasps, grip faltering.

I hook my foot behind his ankle and sweep. The second man—leaner, faster—crashes down, felled by the momentum, his head cracking against the hardwood with a hollow thunk.

I don’t hesitate. I sprint for the kitchen, lungs burning.

I don’t need strength; I need angles. Momentum. Timing. And I’ve trained my whole life for moments this intense, even if I never thought I’d use it this way.

Not in my own damn house.

The back door hangs open. Wide and gaping, a taunt. He ran.

Of course he did. Left the damn door open to the world. Just the way he always left me open. Unprotected. Unseen. Unloved.

But I don’t even get to breathe. A line of fire whips around my throat—tight, sudden, choking. Rawhide. Leather. A fucking belt. My knees buckle.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” the voice snarls against my ear, the stink of cigarettes and something sour curling in my nose. “She’ll have to find someone else.”

She? Who the hell is she?

It doesn’t matter. Because I’m not dying this way. I’m not going out in my father’s kitchen with a belt around my neck, strung up and forgotten, some discarded stray.

My vision starts to fray at the edges, black spots swimming. Every instinct screams survive, but my muscles are sluggish and screaming for air. My fingers claw at the leather, and my nails dig in. It’s too tight. Too high.

Breathe. Center. Strike.

Coach Tompkins’ voice barrels through my skull, sharp and clean, snapping through my thoughts with the crispness of a gi in the air.

I twist my hips, throw all my weight backward, and slam us into the wall.

We hit with a bone-rattling crash. The drywall gives with a crunch.

His grip falters; not completely, but just enough for me to suck in a breath

My fingers fly, desperate and blind, scrabbling over the kitchen counter.

Smooth plastic. A spoon. Useless.

Then—Ceramic.

My hand closes around a mug, one of the old ones we never threw out. It’s heavy. Solid. I swing.

The mug smashes into his temple with a sickening crack. His scream is sharp, guttural. He reels, lurching sideways, as one hand clamps over the blood now pouring down his face.

I don’t wait to see how bad the damage is. I run.

The door slams against the siding as I hurl myself through it.

The night air punches me in the face. It’s humid, sharp, and laced with gasoline and panic.

My shoes slam against the wooden steps, then hit gravel, each jagged rock biting through the soles as if trying to drag me down. But I don’t stop.

The world blurs around me as darkness presses in on all sides.

The night air is a slap to the face, cold and biting, slicing through the sweat and blood drying on my skin.

Every breath scrapes sharp as broken glass in my throat.

My body screams—throbbing ribs, bruised muscles, skin slick with pain—but I don’t stop.

And there he is.

My father.

Straddling his bike as if he’s out for a casual fucking joyride. Helmet on. Ready to vanish into the shadows.

As if he didn’t just try to sell me for five grand and a shrug. As if I meant nothing.

Something inside me ruptures. Snaps.

My vision tunnels, heart pounding with the rhythm of a war drum in my ears. Rage floods every vein, thick and molten, burning through the exhaustion and fear.

I charge.

He turns his head just in time for my fist to crash into his jaw. Bone and cartilage crack beneath the impact. His head whips to the side, body buckling. He hits the pavement hard, a choked grunt escaping him before he goes still.

Good. Let him hurt. Let him feel even a sliver of what I’ve carried.

I don’t hesitate. I swing my leg over the bike—his bike, now mine. My fingers tremble, sticky with blood, but they wrap around the throttle as if they were made for it. The engine growls to life beneath me, loud and alive.

Gravel sprays behind me as I peel out, the back tire screaming across the asphalt. Wind tears at my face, stinging the cuts on my cheeks. My ribs ache with every inhale, my legs shake from the adrenaline crash, but I don’t let up.

I’m barely holding on. But I don’t care.

I ride. To the club. To Malachi. To someone who might actually fight for me. To someone who might actually choose me.