Page 1 of Wings (Heavy Kings MC #5)
Wings
T he Harley rumbled between my thighs like thunder, a flash of chrome and the threat of violence.
Dawn crept across Ironridge's industrial district in shades of rust and diesel exhaust. My prosthetic clicked against the shift lever—a sound I'd never get used to, metal on metal where flesh should be.
It had been a long six ix months.
Six months of prospects runs, of swallowing pride, of proving I could still be useful with parts missing. Today the Heavy Kings decided if I earned my patch or went back to being another broken vet haunting the VA.
The Dyna Super Glide responded to every shift of weight, every minute throttle adjustment. I'd rebuilt her transmission twice, balanced her carbs until she purred. Bikes didn't care about your past. They just needed someone who spoke their language.
I cranked the throttle harder. The Harley surged forward, engine note climbing. Wind whipped past my helmet, but it couldn't blow away ghosts.
Nothing ever would.
Steel Avenue came up fast. The intersection with 42nd was always dicey—delivery trucks, tweakers who'd been up all night, kids late for school. I downshifted, prosthetic foot hovering over the rear brake.
The kid came out of nowhere. Skateboard wheels eating asphalt, earbuds in, hoodie up. He carved hard into the intersection without looking, directly into my path.
Time dilated the way it did in combat. Everything crystallized—the kid's Thrasher magazine sticker, the wear pattern on his Vans, the inevitable physics of our collision. I grabbed brake. Hard.
My prosthetic slipped.
Just a fraction of a second. Carbon fiber on rubber, no nerve feedback to tell me pressure. The foot peg shifted. My weight went wrong. The bike lurched.
Muscle memory saved us both. My right hand crushed the front brake while my left foot—my real foot—stomped the shifter down.
The Harley's rear wheel locked up, sliding sideways.
Rubber shrieked. The kid's eyes went wide behind scraggly bangs as two thousand pounds of American steel stopped inches from his board.
"What the fuck, asshole!" He flipped me off with both hands, kicked his board up, and rolled away like he hadn't almost become a statistic.
As he rolled out of view, something struck me. He looked so much like Alex.
I hadn’t seen my brother in years, but when I saw that skateboarder, it was like looking at a ghost. I sighed. Didn’t need ghosts this morning. Plus, Alex was alive—last I heard, anyway.
My hands shook inside my gloves. Not from adrenaline—I'd burned through my lifetime supply in Syria. This was something worse. Doubt.
The abandoned Texaco on Riverside beckoned like a confession booth. I pulled in, tires crunching over broken glass and weeds growing through asphalt cracks. The pumps stood like tombstones, prices frozen at $1.89 a gallon, back when the world made more sense.
Helmet off. Deep breaths. The morning air tasted like motor oil and broken promises.
Damn my prosthetic. One second of failure at the wrong moment, and that kid would be bleeding out while his mother got a phone call that destroyed her world.
Not only would it be the end of his life, it might as well be the end of mine.
The Heavy Kings were my last shot at finding another crew, another family. Doc had vouched for me. Duke saw something worth salvaging. Thor tolerated my presence because Duke ordered it. None of them needed a prospect who couldn't keep his bike upright when it mattered.
I strapped my helmet back on. The Harley fired on the first try, eager to run despite my failures. That's what I loved about machines—they didn't judge, didn't pity, didn't care about missing pieces. They just asked if you could do the job.
I pulled into King's Tavern at 0540 hours—twenty minutes early because punctuality was just another form of respect. The parking lot stood empty except for Duke and Thor's Harleys, chrome catching the first light like scattered coins.
Old habits died hard. I backed the Dyna precisely between the yellow lines, front wheel straight, keys in my left pocket where my dominant hand could reach them fast. Three tours in Syria had beaten tactical parking into my muscle memory. Always face your exit. Always be ready to move.
The morning carried that particular quiet of a city not quite awake—distant traffic on the interstate, the hum of industrial AC units, a dog barking somewhere in the residential streets beyond the warehouses.
My prosthetic made its familiar click-thunk rhythm across the asphalt. Most days I barely noticed it anymore.
Movement caught my peripheral vision. Mrs. Patel from the Mother India restaurant next door wrestled with her garbage bins, all four-foot-eleven of her versus industrial-sized waste containers that probably weighed more than she did.
Her pink housedress had seen better decades, and her orthopedic shoes scraped against the concrete as she struggled for leverage.
She hadn't seen me yet. I could walk past, mind my own business, focus on the vote waiting inside the tavern. That's what most prospects would do—keep their heads down, avoid complications.
But I'd watched my mother struggle with heavy loads for too many years to walk past now.
"Ma'am, let me help with those."
Mrs. Patel startled, nearly dropping the recycling bin. Her eyes went wide when she saw my prospect cut—the bottom rocker that marked me as not-quite-Heavy-Kings, dangerous enough to fear but not enough to respect. Her knuckles whitened on the bin's handle.
"I'm fine," she said in accented English, tugging harder at the container that clearly wasn't budging. "No help needed."
"Please." I kept my hands visible, moved slow like approaching a spooked horse. "My mother would skin me alive if she knew I walked past without offering."
Something in my voice—maybe the mention of my mom—made her shoulders relax a fraction. She studied my face with eyes that had seen seventy years of hard work and harder choices.
"You're the one." Her expression shifted. "The soldier who fixed my grandson's bicycle last month. Dinesh. Red Schwinn with the broken chain."
I remembered. Kid couldn't have been more than eight, crying on the sidewalk over his busted ride while his grandmother tried to console him in rapid Hindi. Twenty minutes with my toolkit, and he'd ridden away grinning. No charge, despite Mrs. Patel trying to stuff bills in my pocket.
"Just needed a new master link," I said, taking the recycling bin's weight. Christ, no wonder she struggled. Thing was loaded with glass bottles and aluminum cans, probably sixty pounds easy. "How's Dinesh doing?"
"Good. Very good. He tells everyone about the nice soldier who saved his bicycle.
" She watched me reorganize her bins—recycling closest to the alley for easier access, garbage positioned where she could use the wall for leverage, compost bin elevated on a wooden pallet I found behind the dumpster to reduce the lifting distance.
"You're different," she announced, like she'd solved a puzzle that had been bothering her. "Not like the others who come here."
Heat crept up my neck. "We're not all bad, ma'am."
"Hmm." The sound contained decades of judgment, softened by what might have been approval. "Wait here."
She disappeared into the restaurant's back entrance, leaving me standing among the reorganized bins like I'd been summoned for inspection. Through the kitchen window, I caught glimpses of industrial woks and steam tables already prepped for the lunch rush.
Mrs. Patel returned carrying a brown paper bag spotted with grease. The smell hit me—green chilli and garlic and comforting pastry.
"Samosa. For luck," she pressed the bag into my hands, brooking no argument. "Important day, yes? I see how you check your watch, how you stand so straight. Military standing. Important day needs good breakfast."
"Mrs. Patel, I can't—"
"You can. You will." Her fingers were surprisingly strong as she closed my hands around the bag.
It felt like a blessing. When was the last time someone had made me breakfast? Not grabbed from a drive-through or microwaved from frozen, but actually made with care?
"Thank you," I managed through the tightness in my throat.
She patted my arm. "Good luck!"
The chapel smelled like brotherhood—leather, gun oil, and cigarette smoke. I stood to attention while Duke, Thor, and Tyson arranged themselves behind the carved oak table like a tribunal of fate.
Standing still was its own kind of torture.
Movement I could handle—riding, walking, even running with the blade attachment.
But standing? That's when the prosthetic reminded me it wasn't really part of me.
The socket pressed against scar tissue. Phantom pain crawled up nerves that didn't exist anymore.
My weight shifted imperceptibly, trying to find that sweet spot where carbon fiber pretended to be flesh and bone.
Duke opened a manila folder thick with incident reports, ride assessments, and whatever intelligence they'd gathered on Gabriel Moreno, prospect. His steel-blue eyes scanned pages with the intensity of a commander reviewing battle plans.
"Tell us about the Delgado family incident."
Straight to it, then. No warmup, no small talk. I respected that.
"Three nights ago, 2247 hours. I was returning from the Eugene run via Route 27." My voice came out steady, clipped to military brevity. "Spotted a disabled vehicle approximately two miles inside Serpent territory. White minivan, hazards on, hood up."
The memory crystallized with perfect clarity. The van listing to one side—blown tire or suspension. Steam rising from the engine compartment. Two small faces pressed against the rear window, eyes wide with the particular fear children have when their parents can't fix something.
"Protocol says keep riding in hostile territory," I continued. "But I recognized the occupants. Miguel Delgado, his wife Rosa, their kids. They run the corner market on Hawthorne. Heavy Kings territory."