Page 19 of Monk

“Kill him.”

Every head in the room turned toward the back wall.

Whisper.

The big, stoic enforcer who rarely spoke unless he had something worth saying. He stood with his arms crossed, his expression carved from stone, his dark eyes fixed on Kansas.

“This club has a dark past,” Whisper said, his voice low and steady. “A stain we can’t get rid of. It will only get worse if we let Pence live. We need to draw a line in the sand, let the biker world know we mean business.”

Kansas flinched as if he’d been struck.

“Whisper’s right, Prez,” Trigger said, his voice rough with emotion. He was sitting a few seats down from me, his hands clenched into fists on the table. “You know my history. Lost my own sister to leukemia. There was nothing I could do to save her, but this.” He gestured sharply. “This is something Icando. What if it were Hellraiser?”

Kansas’ face went white.

Hellraiser. Kali’s daughter. The little girl Kansas had taken as his own when he married her mother.

“You know damn well I love that little girl,” Trigger continued, his voice breaking. “I would tear apart the motherfucker with my own hands. I hate this as much as you, but Pence is a hill I refuse to die on. He needs to die.”

I felt the words build in my chest before I could choke them back.

“My sister’s not much older than Alice is now,” I said, my voice flat and cold.

Every eye turned to me.

I met Kansas’ gaze and didn’t blink.

“If it were her,” I continued, each word deliberate, “the fucker would already be dead.”

Kansas’ expression crumpled.

I didn’t look away. Didn’t soften. Didn’t give him an inch. Because this wasn’t about loyalty. It wasn’t about brotherhood or the bonds we’d forged through blood and fire.

This was about a line in the sand.

This was about the kind of men we were, and the kind of monsters we refused to become.

“I hunted down and killed a man’s family before I killed him, just because he was responsible for my wife’s death and my unborn son’s,” Blackjack added, his voice quiet but steady. “I’d do no less for any child.”

“We all would, Prez,” Widow said, his tone firm. “The question is, would you?”

The challenge hung in the air like a noose.

Kansas stood frozen, his back to us, staring out the window at the dry Oklahoma landscape. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

I could see the war raging inside him.

To kill Pence was to become the very thing he had spent years trying to distance the club from. To spare him was to invite chaos. To paint a target on the back of every Diamondback brother and watch as the biker world tore us apart.

There was no good choice. Only bad ones. And worse ones.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.

I watched Kansas’ reflection in the window—the way his jaw worked, the way his chest rose and fell with each hard breath. He looked like a man standing at the lip of something black and bottomless, knowing whatever he chose was going to swallow part of him whole.

He was about to speak.

I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands unclenched slightly.