Chapter 2
665 Words
The Chairman lifted me into his arms.
They were still as steady as ever.
When I was seven and burning with fever, delirious in the middle of the night, those same arms carried me forty miles on a motorcycle to wake the only doctor in the neighboring town.
My throat tightened.
It's me.
Chairman, it's Vera.
But no sound came out.
He carried me into the corrugated metal shed behind the clubhouse.
I knew the place.
Chains and tools hung from the walls.
The things locked up in here usually weren't human.
My parents followed us inside.
"Remember," my father said quietly, "she's a thief we caught stealing."
"Keep her face covered."
"Make it clean. You'll be paid well."
The Chairman didn't even turn around.
Just a low grunt.
"Mm."
My heart sank.
Gray Wolf had handled jobs like this before.
That was why outsiders feared them.
He wouldn't ask questions.
He wouldn't uncover the face of some random thief.
Gray Wolf had rules.
No questions.
No attachments.
Cash exchanged hands.
Business concluded.
The Chairman created those rules himself.
He always said rules existed to keep people alive.
Break them once, and the whole town could pay the price.
How could he possibly know that tonight's job involved the child he'd carried home in his arms nineteen years ago?
I lay on the cold concrete floor listening to my father count money outside.
One stack.
Then another.
The price he'd put on disposing of his own daughter.
My heart sank lower and lower.
I had to make him understand.
Before it was too late.
Before he handed the knife to Old Blade.
Eventually my parents stepped outside for a smoke.
The Chairman finally crouched beside me and pulled the hood off.
The moment he saw my face, he frowned.
I knew what I looked like.
Blood across half my face.
Eyes swollen nearly shut.
Split lip.
Dried blood covering my chin.
Even I would've needed a few seconds to recognize myself in a mirror.
He stared.
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Like he was looking through frosted glass, trying to grasp something he couldn't quite reach.
I forced a tune from my ruined throat.
The song he'd sung to me for nineteen years.
The one about highways and home.
About a place where someone would always be waiting, no matter how far you wandered.
Whenever thunderstorms scared me as a kid, I'd crawl into his bed.
He'd hum that song while patting my back until I fell asleep.
Now my damaged voice mangled every note.
The Chairman froze.
Then he leaned closer.
His voice turned hoarse.
"Where'd you learn that tune?"
You taught me.
Chairman, you taught me.
Tears hit the concrete.
Then the door burst open.
My father stuck his head inside.
"What's taking so long?"
Without missing a beat, the Chairman pulled the hood back over my face and stood up.
"Checking the injuries," he said.
"Don't want her dying in my building. Makes a mess."
Panic surged through me.
While they talked at the doorway, I dipped my fingers into the blood beneath me and started drawing on the concrete.
A wolf.
Head raised.
Teeth bared.
The Gray Wolf emblem.
Old Blade had taught me how to draw it when I was a kid.
The same wolf printed on every club vest.
If they saw it.
If even one of them saw it.
But the pain made my hand shake uncontrollably.
The blood smeared into a meaningless mess.
My mother glanced back.
The second she spotted the dark red marks, her expression changed.
She stepped on them and ground them into the floor.
"What is this stupid girl trying to do now?"
The hood tightened around my head.
Darkness swallowed the world again.
And in that darkness, I heard the Chairman's boots.
One step.
Then another.
Growing farther away.
The man who would have fought the whole world for me.
Walking, step by step, toward a truth he didn't even know existed.
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