Page 8 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Malachi

The parking lot outside the club is packed; a sea of bikes gleam under the streetlights.

No surprise for a Saturday night. We do what we can to keep up appearances, to make the place seem like any other motorcycle club.

Yeah, we do illegal shit. But it’s not mindless chaos.

In our eyes, everything we do serves a purpose—a greater good.

We don’t move for power or greed. We move to protect what the law forgets, to take care of the ones who fall through the cracks. It’s not clean. But it’s ours.

The scent of gasoline and smoke hangs heavy in the summer air, clinging to the denim and leather, second nature by now.

Cigarette embers blink in the dark, scattered sparks floating through the shadows, and laughter echoes sharp off concrete walls—hollow, too loud.

I breathe it in anyway. It’s the smell of loyalty. Of weight I chose to carry.

Victor Valentine steps out of the club, his boots crunching against the pavement as he heads toward his bike.

But he stops when he sees me. His gaze sharpens, assessing, before a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.

He’s proof of what we do in the name of that greater good.

To this day, he has no idea his ex-wife is rotting in the ground—courtesy of us.

After what she put him through, after the hell she made him live, she didn’t deserve to breathe.

There’s a flicker of something when I look at him. Pride maybe. Or the ghost of justification. The kind that settles in your chest when you’ve crossed a line and convinced yourself the world’s better for it.

“Malachi,” he greets, nodding in my direction. “Good fight?”

I drag a hand through my beard, making a mental note to trim it later. “Yeah. Knocked Beau out cold with a chokehold.”

Victor lets out a low whistle, shaking his head. “Damn. Arden, Leo, and I wanna come watch you one weekend. But we gotta wait. I need to be sure about Donovan’s whereabouts first.”

My jaw tightens at the name, muscles bunching beneath my skin, tension wound tight and ready to snap.

Fucking Donovan. The man ruled this city as if he were a fucking tyrant before we drove him out.

But now? He’s slithered back, hunting for something.

Or someone. Victor’s goddaughter who happens to be Donovan’s stepdaughter.

A pulse kicks at my temple. Not from fear; Donovan doesn’t get that from me. But anticipation. Rage with nowhere to land yet. The kind that settles in the bones and waits for the order to crack.

The obsession that bastard has with her isn’t just sick, it’s dangerous. If he really is back in town, he won’t be for long.

“I’ve got guys keeping an eye out,” I tell him, voice low, firm. “If he’s here, we’ll find him.”

Victor nods, satisfied, then swings a leg over his bike.

He throws up a casual wave before roaring off into the night.

But my mind stays locked on Donovan and the wreckage he left behind years ago.

If I get to him first, I won’t just hand him over to Victor.

I want answers. And I want them before I break him.

As I head inside, my mind lingers on the ride over from Candace’s place.

The wind had screamed past us on the ride back, the roar deafening, the engine vibrating under me with the force of thunder.

But even with all that noise, I kept catching something softer.

A sound that didn’t belong to the road. Maybe it was nothing.

Just a breath, a hum, a melody she wasn’t even aware of.

As if her mind drifted somewhere else when the world got too loud, and music was the only way through it.

The kind of sound people make when they’re barely holding it together, not with words, but with rhythm.

That hum—barely there, fragile as smoke—lodged itself in my chest, sharp and persistent, a damn splinter.

I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to notice.

But it’s there now, echoing in the back of my skull, a memory I can’t place.

She doesn’t even like me. Barely tolerates me.

Still, she bet on me. That should’ve meant nothing.

Should’ve been a fluke. But it felt tethered to something deeper.

I can’t stop thinking about the way she put money on me as if it was no big deal.

She barely knows me, barely tolerates me, but she bet on me.

Why? Out of desperation? Or something else?

That thought sticks, a thorn under my skin, dragging up questions I don’t have answers to.

I shouldn’t care. But I do. That pisses me off more than anything.

I’ve buried better feelings for less. Yet she’s still in my head, wearing that quiet defiance with the sharpness of a crown.

As soon as I push open the club doors, the noise hits me hard. Booming bass, rowdy laughter, and the sharp crack of pool balls colliding. A few whistles cut through the chaos as I step inside, and I shake my head, smirking.

Kyle’s already got a beer waiting for me at the bar. Good prospect. Knows to anticipate, not ask. “How’d the fight go?” he asks as I take a long swig.

“I won.” The words come easy, matter-of-fact, as if I hadn’t just spent the last hour beating a man bloody. No need to elaborate. Kyle, to his credit, knows better than to push.

James, however, doesn’t. “That was his way of getting you to talk,” he says, stepping up beside me, his tone edged with amusement.

I grunt, jaw ticking. Always testing me, that one. Not in a bad way. Just enough to remind me I’m not the only one who sees the rot coming before it spreads.

I cut him a look but don’t bother responding. James has been here since this charter was nothing more than an idea in Cornelius’ head. He was vice president when the old man ran things, the natural choice to take over after his death. But he turned it down. Said he didn’t want the weight of it.

Now, he serves as our Wise Man; the club’s conscience, the one who sees patterns in chaos and steadies us when the road turns. If Knox is the strategist and Nash is the blade, James is the compass.

I used to think I didn’t need a compass. Thought rage was enough. Then I buried Cornelius. Watched my bloodline disappear in the space of one night. And I started listening.

I take another drink, forcing down the memories that try to surface. The blood. The betrayal. How everything unraveled the night Cornelius died and my brother and sister disappeared. Like fate had decided to gut me all in one blow.

James doesn’t push. He never does. Instead, he settles into his usual role; the one everyone goes to when they need advice. The only one prospects don’t have to wait for permission to speak to.

Unlike the rest of us, he actually gives a damn about their feelings.

That used to bother me until I realized most of us wouldn’t have made it past the first year without him.

I take another long pull from my beer, letting the cold bitterness settle as my gaze drifts over the crowd. It lands on Darla. Fuck . Her grin is all teeth, sharp and predatory, and I regret looking her way immediately. Not tonight.

I turn back to James, shutting her out. “You know what Kyle wanted to talk to me about?” My fingers tap against the bar, signaling for another round. Without a word, Kyle takes my empty bottle and replaces it with a fresh one.

James exhales slowly, peeling at the label on his own bottle before finally answering. “Yep.” He reaches inside his cut and pulls out a handful of receipts, laying them in front of me as if he’s losing a bad hand of poker.

I frown, tension threading down the back of my neck. Something’s off. The air’s shifted. I can feel it in my gut. It’s the same feeling I get before a storm breaks loose.

I frown, picking them up and flipping through them. “What am I looking at?” Bar tabs. Stacks of them. None over fifty bucks, but together? It adds up.

“Kyle took those to East last week, let him know what’s going on,” James says, nodding toward Easton, who’s across the bar, deep in conversation with some blonde.

At James’ wave, East scowls but shoves off the bar, pushing the girl away with a smirk.

He runs a hand through his brown hair as he makes his way over, pausing just long enough to wink at another woman who gives him a slow, knowing smile.

Classic East. He’s never been one to pass up an opportunity.

But the moment he reaches us, his eyes drop to the receipts. His smirk vanishes, replaced by a faint tightening around his jaw. Darkness bleeds into his expression, and when he exhales, it comes out as a low growl. “Fuck.”

He snatches the receipts off the bar, flipping through them as if hoping the numbers will change. They don’t. “We need a meeting.”

That single sentence drops heavily in my stomach. A weight that never comes without consequence.

“Yeah?” I lean against the bar, taking another swig. “How about you start by telling me what the hell’s going on?”

His voice drops to a near whisper. “Kyle brought these to me last week. They’re all Chuck’s.”

My grip tightens around the bottle, knuckles going white. My gaze flickers toward the other side of the bar, where Chuck sits nursing a drink, oblivious. A muscle in my jaw twitches, restraint warring with fury. I don’t even glance in his direction. If I do, I won’t be able to hold back.

Then her voice slices through the static in my head—soft, steady, impossible to ignore. You only see what you want to see.

Is this what she meant? The quiet rot under our noses?

Chuck, unraveling in plain sight while I convinced myself everything was fine?

While I told myself I had control? She knew.

Covered for him. Stood there, proud and small while burning with something I couldn’t name.

Maybe this is why. Maybe this is what’s been eating her alive while we all looked the other way. And maybe I let myself look away, too.

“How many months?”

East exhales, bracing himself. “Three.”