This is it. The choice.
Tell the truth and risk everything I've built. Or lie and keep the past buried. Protect the fragile peace I've carved out over six years of trying to be better. Stay the hero a little longer. Keep the family I've built from burning because of the family I ran from.
My right hand flexes. The scar burns. Creed's voice echoes in my head:You're a Hound now, Tiny. Marked and bound. Forever.
"Spray paint," I hear myself say. The words come out steady, calm, like they're true. "Gang tags inside. It could be anyone. Los Demons sometimes run this far south. Could be independents marking new territory." The lie tastes like ash.
Dagger's eyes narrow. He doesn't believe me. Not fully. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way his gaze flicks from me to the warehouse and back.
"Could be," he echoes slowly, carefully. Testing the weight of my words like a man testing ice before stepping onto a frozen lake.
Trigger's already pulling up a sat map on his phone, fingers flying across the screen. "I'll flag it for Red. Have him run imaging on the area. Cross-reference with known gang activity."
"Good," I say, voice steadier than I feel. "Let's roll. Capone will want a full report."
Bones mounts up first, engine roaring to life. Then Trigger. Then Torch.
Dagger hesitates. He's still watching me, reading me, and I know, Iknow,he's caught the scent of something wrong. Dagger's got instincts like a hunting dog, and right now those instincts are telling him his Road Captain just lied to his face. He doesn't call me on it. Not here. Not in front of the others. He just nods once, slow and deliberate, and swings onto his bike. "Copy that, Cap."
We mount up. Engines roar to life, a symphony of chrome and fury. The warehouse shrinks in my mirrors as we ride north, swallowed by heat shimmer and distance.
But I can still see it. That mark. Creed's signature burned into my retinas like I stared at the sun too long.
And I can still feel the weight of the lie I just told. The first crack in the foundation of everything I've tried to become.
The desert flies past. Scrub brush. Faded highway signs. Miles of nothing punctuated by everything I'm trying to forget.
My right hand grips the throttle too tightly. The scar pulls, burns, screams.
Marked and bound,Creed's voice echoes in my memory.You're a Hound now, Tiny. Forever.
I twist the throttle harder, trying to outrun a ghost that's riding shotgun in my own head.
The wind tears at my cut, at my face, at everything I've built in six years of bleeding myself clean. But it doesn't blow away the memory. Doesn't cool the burn of the lie.
No one speaks until we reach open road again, engines roaring loud enough to drown out the thoughts that are beginning to eat away at me. The farther we ride, the harder it is to breathe.
When we clear the last checkpoint heading back north, Dagger pulls even with me. “You gonna tell me what that look was back there?”
“What look?” I swallow hard through the lie.
Dagger’s eyes narrow. “The one that said you just saw a ghost with your name on it.”
The engine hums under us. Sweat runs down my neck. I can’t meet his eyes.“Drop it, Dag.”
He looks at me for a second, then nods. “Fine. But don’t start locking us out. We’ve got your back.”
I want to believe him. I do. But there are things I can’t bring home, not even here.
By the time Los Angeles rises on the horizon. A skyline glittering like broken glass in the afternoon sun, I've told myself a dozen times that I made the right call.
The lie protects them. Keeps them safe. Buys me time to figure out what Creed wants, what Lattimer's planning, and how deep this goes.
The lie is strategic. Tactical. Necessary. But it still tastes like betrayal.
By the time we roll through the compound gates, the sun's bleeding into the horizon, orange and red like the world's on fire. The brothers are already gathering. Blayze at the porch rail, eyes tracking our approach. Torch is checking his bike with the careful attention of a man who's seen too much today. Red with his laptop balanced on a toolbox, screens glowing in the dying light.
And Capone is standing dead center of the lot, cigarette burning between two fingers, eyes tracking our approach like a predator counting prey. He doesn't move. Doesn't blink. Just watches us roll in with the stillness of a man who's already calculated every possible outcome and prepared for all of them.