Page 2 of Wings (Heavy Kings MC #5)

Thor leaned forward, ice-blue eyes narrowing. "So you stopped."

"Yes, sir."

"In Serpent territory. Alone. At night." Each word dropped like a hammer on an anvil. "Exposing yourself, your bike, and potentially club routes to enemy surveillance."

"With respect, sir, I assessed the tactical situation first." I kept my eyes fixed on the Heavy Kings emblem carved into the wall behind Duke's head. "No Serpent activity visible. Multiple egress routes available. The greater risk was leaving civilians stranded in hostile territory."

"Tell us what happened," Duke ordered, his expression unreadable as carved stone.

"Radiator hose had split. Common failure on that model Sienna.

I carry basic repair supplies—electrical tape, zip ties, JB Weld.

Temporary fix took twelve minutes." I remembered Rosa Delgado's tears, the way she'd clutched her rosary while Miguel held a flashlight with shaking hands.

"The kids were wearing St. Mary's Elementary uniforms. That's three blocks from King's Tavern. Our neighborhood, our people."

"Our people when it's convenient," Thor growled. "What if it had been a setup? Serpents love using civilians as bait."

"Then I would have handled it." The words came out harder than intended.

I moderated my tone. "Sir, our code says we protect the innocent.

Those kids—Maria and Carlos, ages eight and six—they didn't choose to break down in Serpent territory.

They were scared. Their parents were scared. I couldn't ride past that."

Tyson spoke for the first time, his voice calm but probing. "And after the repair?"

"I escorted them to the I-5 onramp. Made sure they were clear of Serpent territory before breaking off." I allowed myself a small smile. "Miguel tried to pay me. I told him Heavy Kings don't charge for protecting our own."

Duke made a note. "Speaking of payment—let's discuss your military service. Three tours, Night Stalkers. Bronze Star with V device. Tell us about the mission that earned it."

The chapel suddenly felt too small. My chest tightened. Here it came—the part where they dug into the hero narrative and found the broken truth underneath.

"Classified, sir. But the basics—" I forced breath into my lungs. "Medical evacuation under fire. Provincial governor's daughter caught in an ambush. We inserted despite heavy RPG presence."

Don't think about the sound. Don't think about Jorge's hand reaching for me as his guts spilled out.

"Successfully extracted the principal and her security detail. Took casualties on exfil."

"Casualties." Duke's tone suggested he knew exactly what that sanitized word covered. "Your crew."

The names lined up in my mind like headstones. "Specialist Rodriguez. Sergeant Turner. Specialist Ramirez." Jorge, who'd joined on his eighteenth birthday to pay for his sister's college. Who'd shown me pictures of his newborn nephew the morning he died. "Good men, sir."

"And you blame yourself." Not a question. Tyson watched me with eyes that saw too much.

"I was crew chief. Their lives were my responsibility." My prosthetic throbbed with phantom pain. "I failed them."

"By getting hit with an RPG?" Thor's voice held something that might have been understanding. "That's not failure, prospect. That's war."

"I understand that intellectually, sir. Still working on believing it."

"Fair enough." Duke closed the folder. "Anything else you want us to know?" He asked, his expression still unreadable as a poker player holding pocket aces or total garbage.

A hundred things crowded my throat. That I'd die before I failed another brother. That I needed this—not just wanted but needed with the desperate hunger of a drowning man for air. That the Heavy Kings were my last shot at being part of something bigger than my own ghosts.

"No, sir. My record speaks for itself."

"Yes," Duke said slowly. "It does."

They dismissed me to the main bar but not from the building—purgatory with beer taps and classic rock bleeding from blown speakers. I needed something to do with my hands before they started shaking, so I found an empty table and began field-stripping my Glock 19.

The weapon came apart like poetry. Magazine out, press-checked to confirm empty chamber, slide locked back.

The takedown lever rotated with practiced ease.

Slide forward and off, recoil spring assembly free, barrel sliding out smooth as silk.

Each component hit the table in precise order—the same way I'd done it a thousand times in Syria, in VA parking lots, in my apartment when sleep wouldn't come.

The familiar ritual steadied my nerves. Cleaning rod through the barrel, patches coming away grey with residue. The sharp smell of Hoppes No. 9 solvent cut through the bar's atmosphere of stale beer and leather.

Some guys meditated.

Some prayed.

I maintained weapons.

"Shit, prospect, you do that blindfolded?"

Dex materialized from the shadows near the pool table, full patch member with the easy confidence of someone who'd earned his place years ago. Grey threaded through his beard, and his knuckles bore the scars of settled business.

"Just keeping her ready, brother." I ran a brass brush through the barrel, counting strokes. "Weapon maintenance is—"

"Warrior maintenance, yeah, I heard that speech before." But Dex grinned, settling across from me with the careful movements of a man whose back had seen too many miles. "My squad leader used to say the same thing. Fallujah, '04. You?"

"Helmand, Kandahar. Three tours." I kept my focus on the Glock, wiping down the slide with practiced motions. "You?"

"Two in Iraq, one in the Stan. Marine Corps, Force Recon." He watched me reassemble the weapon with professional interest. "That why you carry the 19? Military habit?"

"Muscle memory." The slide clicked back into place with satisfying precision. "Trained with it, deployed with it. Figured if it kept me alive over there . . ."

"It'll keep you alive here." Dex nodded like I'd passed some test I didn't know I was taking. "Smart thinking. Though the threats here don't usually announce themselves with AK fire."

"No," I agreed, press-checking the reassembled weapon before holstering it. "Here they smile first."

Dex's laugh had edges. "Now you're learning."

As he left, for some reason, my mind flashed back to the skateboarder, and then, my brother.

I wondered where he was crashing these days. Coming down from whatever cocktail kept him vertical through another night of proving his worth to men who saw him as expendable. He'd be chewing his lip raw, pupils dilated, that manic energy that meant he was between fixes.

We'd learned to shoot together at sixteen.

Mom worked three jobs that summer—hospital cafeteria, cleaning offices, weekend shifts at the nursing home—just to pay for lessons at Ironridge Tactical.

She'd grown up in a rough neighborhood in Denver, understood that her boys needed to know how to protect themselves.

"Discipline and respect for consequences," she'd said, driving us to that first lesson in her ancient Corolla held together with duct tape and industrial strength prayer. "You learn what these can do, you learn to never use them unless you have no choice."

Alex and I had soaked up the instruction differently. I fell in love with the precision, the clear rules, the way following procedure led to predictable results. Put rounds on target by controlling breath, stance, trigger squeeze. Simple. Clean. Reliable.

Alex, on the other hand, adored the power.

The way the range master's eyes tracked him with new wariness.

The weight of potential violence in his hands.

He was naturally gifted—better groups than mine, faster draws, instinctive understanding of angles and movement.

But he treated it all like a video game, something to win rather than respect.

"Consequences are for people who get caught," he'd told me after we'd both shot perfect scores on the qualification test. Sixteen years old and already choosing his path.

"Prospect Moreno."

Duke's voice cut through the bar noise like a drill sergeant's. I looked up to find him standing in the chapel doorway, backlit by the fluorescents inside. Thor and Tyson flanked him, their expressions unreadable as carved totems.

"Back in here."

Moreno. Not Wings, the nickname I'd earned through months of prospect work. Not Gabriel, which would suggest familiarity. Just Moreno—military crisp, professionally distant. The kind of name you used for someone you were about to dismiss or promote.

I walked back into the chapel. The door closed behind me with the finality of a round chambering. Time to learn if different was what they needed, or just another word for not enough.

One month.

One month to prove myself.

My apartment squatted above Rosario's Auto Parts like an afterthought, all exposed pipes and windows that rattled when the industrial AC units kicked on. Home sweet home for eight hundred a month, utilities included if you didn't mind the constant mechanical symphony.

I dead-bolted the door and immediately started shedding the day. Prospect cut hung on its designated hook. Boots aligned against the wall. Keys in the ceramic bowl my mother made in some long-ago pottery class, its lopsided shape a reminder that even Maria Moreno wasn't perfect at everything.

The prosthetic came off last. Always last, because once it was off, I was done moving for a while. I collapsed onto my secondhand couch—Army surplus store special that had probably seen action in Desert Storm—and worked the release mechanisms with practiced efficiency.

Sweet Christ, the relief. Like taking off boots after a twenty-mile ruck march.

I massaged the residual limb, fingers working around scars that mapped trauma in raised white lines.

The stump throbbed in time with my heartbeat, phantom pain crawling up neural pathways that remembered what used to be there.