"Val wants to help," Asher says carefully, glancing toward Valentina beside me.
"No." The word comes out harder than I intended. "She stays back. I need to do this myself. She can't—" I stop, because finishing that sentence means admitting things I'm not ready to admit. That I need her to see me strong. That I can't bear the thought of her hands helping me like I'm an invalid. That I'm terrified she already sees me as broken beyond repair.
They get me into the chair. Asher and Zay working in practiced tandem, one on each side, lifting and pivoting and settling me into the seat with as much care as they can manage. The transition is still a blur of agony and nausea that makes my stomach lurch violently. By the time we reach the side door of the clubhouse, sweat is pouring down my face in rivulets, stinging my eyes, dripping off my jaw. My legs are dead weight—two lead pipes, two useless appendages hanging off the edge of the seat like they belong to someone else.
I focus on my left foot. I can press it against resistance now. Can move my ankles in both directions. Valentina's been running me through PT every day since I fired Rita for being too cautious, too slow, too willing to let me plateau instead of push. Val doesn't accept plateau. She pushes until I'm ready to murder her, and then she pushes harder. It's progress. Real progress. It's something.
The roar of voices hits me before the doors even open. It's the sound of a mob, hungry and restless and waiting for blood. Waiting to see if their president is a man or a ghost. Zay's hand catches the door handle, and he looks back at me one last time. There's something in his eyes—fear, maybe, or respect, or both.
"Last chance to call this off," he says quietly. "We can turn around right now. Go back. Figure out another way."
"Open the door, Zay."
The silence that follows the opening of those double doors is more violent than the noise was. It ripples back from the front like a shockwave, a physical wave of collective shock as sixty pairs of eyes land on me simultaneously. Some of them gasp. I hear it—the sharp intake of breath, the whispered curses, the "holy shit" that someone doesn't quite manage to suppress.
I'm not the ghost they expected. I'm not the corpse they'd half-convinced themselves I'd become. I'm a man in a wheelchair, yes—but I'm wearing the leather. I'm wearing the patch. I'm here. Present. Alive.
"Xavier," someone whispers, the name traveling through the room like wildfire.
I don't look at them. Not yet. I look straight ahead at the bar where Johnson and George are standing, drinks frozen halfway to their mouths. They look like they've seen a resurrection they didn't pray for, didn't want, feared more than welcomed.
Good.
"Asher. Up."
This is the part we rehearsed. The part that shouldn't be possible, that the doctors said would take months, that even Valentina looked doubtful about when I first told her what I was planning. The part that's going to hurt worse than anything I've ever done.
Asher and Zay move to my sides with military precision. They don't lift me—not obviously, not in a way anyone watching could point to. They provide the anchors, the stability points. I grab their shoulders, my fingers digging into the denim and leather hard enough to leave bruises, and I pull.
My spine shrieks. The nerves in my lower back fire like a thousand electrical shorts all at once, like someone's driving nails into my vertebrae one by one. I feel the skin on my forehead stretch with the force of my grimace, feel every muscle in my body trembling with effort. My legs are shaking violently, the metal braces hidden under my jeans locking my knees into place, doing the work my muscles can't.
But I'm standing. Not because I can. Not because it's easy or possible or anything close to sustainable.
Because I refuse to fall.
"I heard," I start, my voice low but carrying through the dead quiet like a bullet, "that some of you were worried about my health."
Johnson scoffs, but his eyes are darting toward the door, calculating escape routes. "X, we just—we were concerned, you know how it is?—"
"I heard," I cut him off, the volume of my voice rising, vibrating in the brace around my chest in a way that sends fresh spikes of pain through my ribs, "that there was talk of bylaws. Talk of 'incapacitated' leaders." I take a single, agonizing step forward. It isn't a walk. It's a lurch, a controlled fall, a shifting of weight that feels like my pelvis is being ground into dust between millstones. "Do I look incapacitated to you, Johnson?"
The room is suffocating. The heat from sixty bodies pressed into a space meant for thirty, the smoke hanging in the air like fog, the smell of fear and sweat and spilled beer—it's all pressing in on me, making it harder to breathe through the pain.
I see Valentina in my peripheral vision, a dark shape in the corner. She looks terrified, her hand pressed over her mouth. She knows I'm seconds away from collapsing. Knows this is unsustainable. Knows I'm burning through the last reserves of strength I have.
"The Vipers think we're weak," I roar, and the effort sends a fresh wave of agony through my chest that nearly blacks me out. My vision swims. I blink it back. "They think because I took a bullet, the Raiders are up for grabs. They think they can take ourterritory, our families, our pride." I scan the room, meeting eyes until they drop, until they can't hold my gaze. "Who here thinks they're right?"
Silence. Perfect, absolute silence.
"Good. Because I'm still the President of this club. And anyone who thinks a chair or a limp makes me less than the man who built this from nothing can step up right now and try to take this patch off my back."
I hold it. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Every second is a year of torture, an eternity of agony. My legs are starting to give—I can feel it in the way the braces are digging in differently, the way my balance is shifting. The phantom sensation of my knees buckling makes my stomach lurch with nausea.
I see George shift his weight, his eyes narrowing, calculating with cold precision the exact moment my strength will fail. Waiting like a vulture for me to fall. Not yet, you bastard. Not yet.
"One week," I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous rasp that I've perfected over years of commanding men.
"One week to get our protection rackets back in order. One week to show the Vipers that we don't just survive—we conquer. We take back what's ours and we make them bleed for ever thinking they could take it." I pause, let that sink in. "Dismissed."