The Biker's Regret: The Enemy I Became.

Not over this

(Noah)

I heard the knock and already knew it was her before I opened the door.

Brianna had a particular way of knocking. Two quick hits, close together, like she didn't want to wait and wasn't going to pretend otherwise. I had known that knock for five years, ever since her brother Dante became my VP and she started showing up at club events like she had always belonged there. She had a way of making herself at home everywhere she went. It was a Ford family trait.

I pulled the door open.

She was standing there with a coffee cup in her hand and a smile that told me she had already decided how this visit was going to go. Brianna was not someone who showed up without a reason. She always had one.

"You didn't answer my calls," she said.

"I was busy."

"You're always busy." She walked past me into the apartment without waiting to be invited. "Dante's been trying to reach you all day."

"I know," I said. "I'll call him."

"He said it's important."

"Everything is important to Dante," I said. "That's why he's my VP."

She set her cup on the kitchen counter and turned to look at me. "This is different. He said it's Iron Cross."

That got my attention in a way nothing else had all day. I moved to the other side of the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water and waited for the rest.

"That's all he told me," Brianna said. "He didn't want to say more over the phone. He's at the compound."

"I'll reach out to him," I said.

She nodded. That was the thing about Brianna. She delivered what she came to deliver and she did not push past it. She knew the line between club business and the rest and she had never once crossed it in five years.

"I ran into your new neighbor in the elevator," she said, and her voice shifted into something more casual. "She seems nice."

There it was.

I did not say anything.

"Pretty too," she said. "Very put together. She said she just moved in a couple of days ago."

"She did," I said.

"You know her."

It wasn't a question.

"We went to school together," I said.

"High school?"

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "She walked off that elevator like she owned the building. That kind of confidence either comes from money or from going through something hard and coming out the other side."

I did not say anything to that.

"Which one is she?"

"Both," I said.

Brianna looked at me. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, which was unusual for her. Brianna Ford did not often run out of things to say.

She picked up her bag from the chair near the door. She was not staying. She had come to deliver two things. The message from Dante and whatever she had picked up in that elevator. Both delivered.

"She seems like she matters," she said at the door. Not mean about it. Just honest.

"Take care, Bri."

She smiled. Not the warm one she kept for strangers. The real one, smaller and a little tired around the edges. "You too," she said and walked out.

I closed the door and stood in the quiet.

I called Dante.

He picked up on the first ring. "Prez. I've been trying to reach you."

"I know. Talk to me."

"Not over the phone," he said. "I need you to see what I have in person. Can you come in tonight?"

"I'll be there in an hour. Pull everyone in."

"Yes sir," he said. "I'll have them ready."

I put the phone down and stood there for a moment.

Iron Cross had been quiet for six weeks. That kind of quiet from them never meant nothing. It meant they were moving somewhere they didn't want us to see and when they moved like that the noise that came after was never small. I had kept this club standing through things that would have finished other MCs and I had done it by never letting the quiet fool me. Six weeks was too long and Dante knew the difference between something that could wait and something that couldn't. If he was saying in person then it was the second kind.

I thought about this morning. The way Reese had looked at me outside her office with her voice saying one thing and her eyes saying something else entirely. The way she had told me to leave her alone like she had practiced it first. She had meant it and she had not meant it and I had been reading her long enough to know the difference.

She was not over this.

Neither was I.

But the club needed me and that came first. It had always come first and every man who wore that patch knew it. That was the deal I had made when I took over and I had never once walked away from it.

I grabbed my jacket and my keys and went out.

I did not knock on her door. Pushing was how you closed doors you needed open and I had already made that mistake with her once. What I had said this morning was enough for now. She knew where I stood.

The rest was up to her.

I took the elevator down and went to my bike. The street moved around me the way it always did, the city going through its business without caring about anything happening four floors up.

I started the bike and pulled out and headed to the compound.

Whatever Iron Cross was planning I was going to walk into that room and handle it the way I handled everything. Directly and without leaving anything to chance.

But somewhere between the building and the highway I let myself think about her for a little while longer.

Just until the city swallowed everything behind me.