Phoenix

3 - On the wrong side

Nitro

The Shadow Falcons clubhouse never smelled like home. It smells like oil and old sweat and the kind of stale beer that had been poured and re‑poured until it forgot what it once was.

Neon light buzzes over the bar scarred with cigarette burns. Pool cues lean like bored soldiers. The walls are papered with faded flyers and the kind of trophies men keep to remind themselves they were once dangerous.

I walk in and feel the room measure me the way it always does—like a man who doesn’t belong. I don’t belong here; I never did. But anger and frustration pushed me to join these bastards before I could think straight. I learned to wear that look. It fits me now like a second skin.

I barely speak to anyone here, and they don’t bother with me. They give me orders; I carry them out, but I’m not one of them, not really. I never have been, and I never will be. I know that, and so do they.

I’m here now because Bono called the meeting. Every member must attend by order of our club President. He sits at the head of the long table like a king who’d stolen his crown. He’s loud enough to fill the room without shouting, the kind of man who uses volume as a weapon. Around him are the usual faces: men with names you don’t ask about twice, men who have been in fights that left them with stories and scars and a taste for more.

I take a seat near the back, where the light is dim, and the smoke hangs like a curtain. My hands are steady because they have to be. The military taught me how to steady a rifle and steady my breathing when the world was trying to tear itself apart. It hadn’t taught me how to steady the guilt that lives in my chest.

Bono clears his throat, and the room leans in.

“We’re making a move,” he says. “We’re joining with the Snakes’ Henchmen.”

A ripple goes through the room like a bad joke. My back straightens. Someone laughs, sharp and nervous. The air changes fast, like the room just smelled blood.

“Why the Snakes?” a voice demands. “We don’t need them.”

Bullshit. Every club would kill to unite with Snakes Henchmen MC. Their club is massive and runs through most of the damn country. They have Draven Vidal behind them. They’re a wealthy club with a lot of pull around here. Shadow Falcons are a small club with thirty members. Sure, they’re violent bastards who push drugs and prostitution, which I didn’t know about until after I joined, but that doesn’t mean anything.

There’s more to this than meets the eye. I know there is. I grew up around the Snakes, so I know how they work. They don’t push drugs or prostitution. In fact, they fight against it.

So, what the hell is going on here?

Bono’s smile is a blade. “We don’t need them. We want them. They’ve got reach. They’ve got muscle. They’ve got—” He pauses, and the silence hangs like a warning. “They’ve got friends who can open doors we can’t.”

He’s right. They do. But that kind of power could swallow us whole if it turns against us, and that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

“Friends?” Spook, VP, scoffs. “You mean the mob.”

Bono shrugs like it’s a detail. “Call it what you want. They’ve got power. With Don Vidal behind us as he is with them, we’d be unstoppable. We get power. We get protection. We get a slice of the pie. And if we don’t take it, we lose our chance.”

A man at the table—big, tattooed, the kind of man who thinks threats are currency—slams his fist down. “You’re playing with fire, Prez. The Snakes don’t make alliances for free. If this goes bad, they’ll come at us hard, and we won’t survive it.”

“They don’t make them at all,” Wack—yes, that’s the stupid name he chose for himself—snaps. “They take what they want. Whose fuckin.g idea was this? Because I can’t see Jett coming to you with this.”

Bono shrugs. “He didn’t. I spoke to him.”

Men start arguing amongst themselves. None of them agree with this, and the noise builds fast. They all know what could happen if we go through with it. But Bono is out of his mind and listens to no one.

I keep my face neutral. I learned to keep my face neutral in places where a twitch could get you killed. But inside, my head is a riot. I remember Phoenix’s laugh, the way she’d punched me for leaving, the way she’d spat my name like it was a curse.

I remember the night I left for the military without saying goodbye, the way her fist had found my jaw after my return, and the way I’d deserved every bruise. I remember thinking I could charm my way back into her life when I came home. I’d been wrong. She’d made sure of that.

Sure, I finally wore her down, fucke.d her stupid, and made sure she craves my touch every damn day. But that doesn’t mean anything. Phoenix will never be mine again, not the way I want her to be. But I can’t stay away from her. She’s my drug, and I will never get enough.

I’d joined the Falcons to spite her. That’s the honest truth. She wouldn’t even look at me, and it was driving me crazy. I thought being in the same orbit would make her notice me and forgive me. Instead, it had made me complicit in things I didn’t want to be.

The Falcons are not a club of men who keep to themselves. They’re loud, crude, and violent in a way that makes my stomach turn. I’d seen the worst of what men do when they have nothing to lose. The military had shown me the world’s cruelty in a different uniform; the Falcons showed me cruelty in a leather jacket.

God, the woman I still love with everything I am is far more dangerous than any man here. She’s a damn serial killer with no shit.s to give. But she’s a fuckin.g addictive Goddess. Nothing Phoenix ever did would make me stop loving her. I’m going crazy without her, and I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Bono’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “This is a good move. We expand. We get contracts. We get muscle. We get respect.”

“Respect?” someone snorts. “You mean we sell out.”

Bono’s eyes find mine for a second, and I feel the weight of that look like a hand on my throat. He doesn’t know my history with the Snakes. He doesn’t know the names I’d grown up with. He doesn’t know the way Phoenix could make a man feel like he’d been stripped bare. I keep my mouth shut because he doesn’t need to know anything. I know he’d use it against me one day if he did, and I would never let that happen. Phoenix can take care of herself; I have no doubt about that. I’ve seen her beat a man twice her size half to death. But she’s the woman I love, and I wouldn’t do a damn thing to put her in danger. If he found out, he could use her against me.

“Prez,” I say, because the room needs a voice that isn’t just bravado. “You sure about this? The Snakes—”

“They’re a force,” Bono interrupts, not giving a shi.t what I have to say. “We align with a force, we become a force.”

“You’re aligning with people who have ties to the Vidals,” I say. “That’s not a line you cross without thinking, Prez. One wrong move, and the Snakes could wipe us all out, if the Vidals don’t first. That’s the threat here.”

A ripple of unease moves through the room. Bono’s jaw tightens. “You got a problem with this, Nitro?”

I could say a hundred things. I could tell him about Phoenix and the way she’d looked at me the night I left, the way she’d used her fists to tell me I’d lost my chance. I could tell him about the military and the things I’d seen—men broken in ways that never healed, the way a man’s hands could become instruments of survival and then instruments of regret. I could tell him that aligning with the Snakes means aligning with a machine that doesn’t care who it crushes. The words crowd my throat, but I keep them there, because saying them would change everything.

But I don’t. I’d learned the hard way that speaking up in the wrong room gets you a different kind of wound. I’d learned that silence can be a shield. I’d learned that sometimes the only way to survive is to be invisible until the storm passes.

“No problem,” I say instead. “If the Prez wants it, we do it.”

Bono’s smile returns like a practiced thing. “That’s the spirit. We move fast. We show strength. We take what’s ours.”

The meeting breaks into the usual noise—plans, logistics, who’ll ride where, who’ll meet who. Men argue about territory like they’re discussing a game. I listen and let the words wash over me. I know the Snakes. I know their loyalty. I know their reach. I know the price of crossing them, and I know how fast this could turn deadly. And now that price feels closer.

They have a plan to end this club. There’s no way the Snakes would align with the Falcons for any other reason. There’s just no way. Getting caught up in this is certain death; I can feel it coming faster now.

When the meeting breaks, men spill into the night, engines roaring to life. I stay behind, nursing a beer that’s gone warm. The clubhouse hums with the aftertaste of decisions made and consequences ignored.

I think of Phoenix—her laugh, her spit, the way she’d told me she’d kill any man who humiliated her. I think of the secret she keeps, the one that would blow everything apart if it ever came out. I keep the same secret because I won’t hurt her. Never again.

I feel like a coward for joining the Falcons to spite her. It was the stupidest thing I could have done. I feel like a coward for staying silent now. But cowardice and survival are cousins. I’d learned to tell them apart by the way they make my hands shake.

Bono claps me on the shoulder as he passes. “You good, Nitro?”

“Yeah,” I say. The lie slides out easy. “I’m good.”

He walks away, already talking to someone else about the next move. The night outside smells of rain and oil and the city’s tired neon. I finish my beer and stand, the chair scraping like a small complaint.

I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this damn curse of a club anymore either. But I’d made choices. I’d left. I’d come back. I’d joined the wrong side because my head was a mess and my heart was a wound. Now I have to live with it, and the next blow is already coming.

I step out into the night and let the rain find me. It washes the smoke from my jacket and the grit from my skin. It doesn’t wash the guilt. It doesn’t wash the memory of her fist or the sound of her laugh. It doesn’t wash the knowledge that Bono is playing with fire and that the Snakes could burn this whole town down if the deal goes wrong.

I light a cigarette and watch the ember glow like a small, stubborn star. I’d made a promise to myself the night I joined the Falcons: when the time came, I’d make sure I wasn’t around for the fallout, whatever that may have been. I’d be gone before the flames reached me.

But promises are fragile things. The city is small. Loyalties are tangled. And when the world starts to burn, you find out what you’re really made of.

I take a long drag and let the smoke curl into the night. The club’s neon buzzes behind me. Somewhere, a bike roars. Phoenix’s name is a ghost in my mouth—an apology I’d never learned how to say properly.

I walk away from the clubhouse and into the dark, thinking about how you can join a war to spite a woman and end up fighting for your life.