But the motherfucker hasn’t met me yet.
TWENTY-NINE
CALEB
Today’s the day,and now we’re finally here.Hereis a dive bar forty miles west of nowhere with sticky floors and bad lighting.
We’re sitting across the table from the man of the hour, Silas’s brother, the president of the notorious Lonestar Kings.
Senior sits stone-faced while his lawyer skims our documents. He’s not the theatrical monster I expected.
Early sixties, silver hair, face carved with deep lines. He looks eerily like Silas—if Silas had made different choices starting at eighteen. But maybe this man is the answer as to why Silas’s life was always so hard.
I count the seconds and scour the scene.
It’s been eleven minutes since we sat down.
Isaak’s men are positioned. Torres sits beside us at the long table, briefcase beside her chair.
Z, the motherfucker, is standing broken and vacant over by the bar. Not a threat. Moving on.
Twelve other men in MC cuts lounge around the bar, several clustered around the pool table, others at bar stools, others standing guard at the door.
All of their eyes on us.
I flatten my right hand on the tabletop. My left hand finds Harper’s thigh under the table, and I can feel every ounce of tension she’s carrying through my palm—her quadriceps are rigid as steel cable. She’s vibrating with that specific quality of controlled stillness that means she’s here, present, and holding it together through sheer force of will.
I’m not quite sure how my life got here, but I always said that if I ever got another chance with Harper, I’d follow her to hell and back.
Still, Bruiser’s face when we said goodbye is going to live in my chest for a long time. God, it killed me. It was like he was trying to be brave, but his eyes were still asking,are you sure you’re coming back?
I promised him we’d be back by dinnertime. Harper kissed his forehead twice, which told me everything about how scared she was under the calm.
I can’t stop running the math on whether we made the right call.
Isaak agreed it’s better to get this done now while we’re in control of the board, before the Kings can think up a way to fuck us over.
We want them malleable, not desperate. The logic is sound. The logic has been sound every time I’ve run it in my head since we left Domhnall’s house.
But logic and a nine-year-old asking if you’re coming back are two very different equations, and only one of them makes my hands shake.
I keep my hand there on Harper’s thigh. Not necessarily to soothe, but just so she knows I’m here. Fully present with her.
We ran this scenario a thousand times with Isaak’s team, but actually being in this West Texas bar is different from simulations. Another of Isaak’s men hovers at Harper’s back with instructions to cover her at all costs. A deep scar runs diagonally across his face.
It’s forty-two feet from our table to the emergency exit. The door opens outward—I confirmed when we came in.
Six strides for me, eight for Harper.
Assuming no obstacles.
The jukebox is playing Merle Haggard. Something about a man who got everything he wanted and still lost it. The irony feels deliberate, like West Texas itself has opinions about the people living on it.
Senior has been watching Harper since we sat down with the expression of a man who’s waited a long time for this moment.
“Sweet girl,” he finally says, as if he hasn’t kept us in hostage silence for almost fifteen minutes. His eyes warm with affection, a smile cracks his harsh face when he looks at Harper. “At last. I’ve waited so long to meet you.”
Harper doesn’t react.