Page 31 of Cold Bastard
“Hello?” My voice, small and pathetic, was swallowed by the vast, silent night. My hand, already fumbling in my backpack, tightened around the familiar, comforting weight of the pepper spray. A foolish, futile gesture, I knew, against whatever this place held. “BrotherDocs?” I tried again, the words catching in my throat. “I’m here. I’m sorry about—”
“You’re late.”
The voice, a low rumble that vibrated in my bones, came from directly behind me. I spun, heart leaping into my throat with a desperate, panicked beat. And then I saw him. He emerged from the inky blackness pooling beneath the tree line, a silhouette against the dim, bruised sky. For a suspended moment, the world outside ceased to exist. There was only him.
He was beautiful. Not pretty. Not handsome in a way that promised comfort or safety. Beautiful in the way a knife was beautiful. Sharp. Dangerous. Lethal. He was tall, easily topping six feet six, with a lean, muscular frame that screamed of restrained power, of violence held just beneath the surface. Dark hair, a spill of midnight, brushed his collar and curtained his eyes. His jawline was so sharp, so perfectly sculpted, it looked as though it could cleave glass. And his eyes. God, his eyes. They were dark, so profoundly dark, and held a chilling, assessing glint, as if they could peel back the layers of my carefullyconstructed façade and expose every single lie I had ever woven. He wore a battered leather cut, the patches a blur in the gloom, hinting at a history I was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of.
Then he smiled. It was a slow, unfolding thing, a predator’s baring of teeth. It was the kind of smile that sent a primal alarm screaming through me, urging me to flee, to disappear into the shadows. Yet, a treacherous, unwanted warmth bloomed in my chest, a dangerous curiosity that warred with my instinct for survival. It was a smile that promised either ruin or ecstasy, and the worst part was, I couldn’t tell which I craved more. I had promised myself I would never again be drawn to this kind of darkness, that I had learned my lesson. Yet here I stood, mesmerized, my breath catching, my fingers still clutched around the pepper spray, a weapon I suddenly felt utterly powerless to wield against the intoxicating terror he inspired. This was a choice I didn’t want to make, to be so utterly undone by someone so clearly designed to break me, yet a part of me, a part I had long suppressed, leaned into the danger, yearning for the very destruction I had sworn to escape.
“You stole from me,” he said, his voice smooth and low, like whiskey and smoke. “And I’m here to collect your debt.”
His words didn’t make sense at first.Stole? From him?What?My mind reeled, a frantic, desperate search for a misplaced item, a forgotten loan, anything to explain his bizarre accusation. A surge of indignant anger, so familiar to me, rose in my chest. This man was mistaken, completely and utterly. I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him he had the wrong person, that I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then I saw his patch. The one on his leather cut.
Saw it clearly as I saw my life flash before my eyes. A kaleidoscope of my carefully constructed world shattered. The insignia was a symbol I had been trained from birth to avoid.
Now, it was a brand seared into my vision.
“You’re—” My voice cracked, a pathetic squeak of disbelief and dawning horror. “You’re a...”
His smile widened, a predator’s baring of teeth. “Guilty.”
No. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. Every fiber of my being screamed denial. My breath hitched, a ragged sound in the suddenly still air. This was a nightmare, a cruel twist of fate designed to dismantle everything I stood for. My instinct, honed by years of self-preservation, was to flee. I took a step back, my hand tightening on the pepper spray in my bag, a pathetic defense against the storm I suddenly felt bearing down on me. I had to protect myself. But how? How could I protect myself from a truth so devastating?
“I didn’t know,” I blurted, the words tumbling out in a desperate bid for leniency, for a way out of this impossible situation. My moral compass, not that I really had one, felt like it was spinning wildly. I was well versed in facing consequences, but this... this was a consequence I never could have imagined, a consequence that would stain me irrevocably. “I have the money.”
“You better have the fucking money,” he threatened, taking a step forward, his gaze pinning me in place. His sheer presence was an oppressive force, crushing any lingering hope of reason. “All seventy-five million dollars that wasn’t yours to take.”
The ground seemed to tilt beneath me.
Seventy-five million dollars. The number was an abstract concept before, a phantom sum I gambled with in a moment of desperate recklessness. Now, it was a concrete weight, a crushing indictment.
The Brotherhood.
The money belonged to the Brotherhood.
I stole seventy-five-million dollars from the Brotherhood of Bastards.
The name itself was a sneering insult, a promise of retribution.
I had known Michael dealt with some unsavory people, that he was well connected. Knew he had ties to dangerous people. I rationalized it, told myself it was a necessary evil, a way to achieve a greater good, a way to finally escape the suffocating mediocrity of my life. But I thought, I hoped, it was just local crime. Drug dealers. Maybe some organized crime outfit in Rapid City. Something I could, perhaps, even justify to myself. Something that wouldn’t require me to confront the darker aspects of my own character.
Not just any MC.
The Brotherhood of fucking Bastards.
The irony was a bitter pill, a poison I was forced to swallow. My desire for freedom had led me to this precipice. I had traded what miniscule integrity I had for a fleeting sense of control, and now the bill had come due. My carefully constructed façade of righteousness was crumbling, revealing a core of something I was terrified to acknowledge: a capacity for deception, for theft, for aligning myself with the very darkness I always vowed to oppose. The choice I had made, to take the money, was no longer a single act but a defining moment that had branded me. And now, I had to choose again, a choice that would shatter what little remained of my self-respect, or face a fate far worse.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered, my voice catching, a pathetic squeak that I instantly regretted. “I swear, I didn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He grinned as he moved toward me with a slow, predatory grace. “You took what wasn’t yours. And now you owe us.”
I turned to run, and that was when I saw them.
All of them. Men. Stepping out of the darkness. From behind the building. From the tree line. From places I hadn’t seen in the shadows.
All of them were wearing cuts.
All of them watched me.
