Page 49 of Bram

He grinned, the smile half gone by the time he turned.

“Sniper’s gonna love that shit.”

“Fucking sons, man.”

Behind me, Trace and his crew were dragging bodies out of the house, stacking them neat by the fence. Sniper was talking to one of the women, voice low, trying to get a name or a number. She wouldn’t look at him.

I took a knee on the dirt, let the pain settle. My hands were shaking now, but I kept them low, out of sight. Maybe I was getting too old for this shit. I thought about Julie, the way she’d looked at me before we left, a yearning in her eyes for me to return. I wanted to return. I wanted to finally start my life over with a woman who trusted I could keep her safe. With a woman I could wake up next to and see her smile on a good day and see her scowl on a bad day. That was the thing with being a biker’s old lady: there were usually more bad days than good, but what fucking fun it was to survive those bad days.

From this angle, you could see the compound in its entirety. A ruined house, a bullet-scarred garage, a fence that barely held back the world. A dozen men on the ground, none of them mine.

It was a good start.

When the others were done, I got up, checked my side, and walked to the far end of the compound. Sniper and Trace stood by the gate, weapons cradled, both breathing the cold air like they’d just run a marathon.

“You did good,” I said. My voice came out rough, but it didn’t matter.

Sniper nodded, face unreadable. “You’re fucking bleeding, old man. Let me look at it.”

“Touch me, and I’ll take my belt to your ass the way I did when you were a kid,” I said.

Trace looked at me, then away. “I wouldn’t do that. I think he likes that shit.”

“Shut the fuck up, Trace,” Sniper said and walked away

I shrugged. “What the fuck was that all about?”

Trace chuckled. “You don’t want to know. I’m sorry, I know.

Kodiak joined us, wiping his hands on his jeans. “What’s next?”

I looked at the sky, already turning from black to pale blue, then back at the men.

“We hold it,” I said. “We let the others come to us.”

I walked back to the main house. The floor was silent. I checked every room, every closet, every crawlspace. There were no more Scorpions.

I found a quiet corner, sat down, and let myself feel the damage for the first time. The pain was like a hot stone pressed into my ribs, every heartbeat pulsing a new line of blood into the shirt. I tore off a strip of curtain and wrapped it around my middle, cinched it tight until my vision spotted. Then I leaned my head against the cool block wall and listened to the aftermath.

You could hear Trace’s voice outside, shouting orders, telling his crew to strip the guns and dump the bodies in a pile. Kodiak was talking to someone on the radio, giving a casualty report. Rusty sat on the front stoop, face up to the sky, eyes closed, blood drying black on his shoulder and chest.

Sniper found me, eventually. He knelt next to the wall, voice low.

“You all right?”

“Give me a minute,” I said.

He nodded, then sat down next to me, the way he used to when he was a boy, after a fight at school.

“Remember when I broke my hand on that asshole’s face?” he said.

I laughed. It hurt, but I did it anyway. “You cried for two days.”

He grinned. “You told me it was good to feel pain. Said it made the job real.”

I closed my eyes, let the sound of the generator and the crackle of radios wash over me.

“It’s real now, isn’t it?” he said.