Page 51 of Priest

The thought loops in my head as I shut the door to my office and lean back against it for a second longer than I should. The noise from the main room stays muted on the other side: low voices, boots on concrete, chairs scraping into place.

They’re waiting.

Church doesn’t look much different from the rest of the clubhouse. Same brick walls soaked in years of smoke and sweat. Same low amber light that keeps the shadows honest. Same smell of old leather and gun oil, with the faint trace of whiskey that never quite leaves the wood no matter how hard you scrub.

The table sits dead center, scarred oak and heavier than it looks, built after we bought this place because Church deserved more than a folding table and borrowed chairs. Graves helped haul the wood in. Rook sanded it down. Deacon carved the first Saints cross into the underside before the stain was dry, and Nomad burned our patch into the center: hooded skull, wings, halo, chains, No Absolution because every man in this room understood what it meant to drag something holy out of hell and make it ours. Since then, knives have nicked it, glasses have left rings, and fists have come down hard enough to make the room go quiet. Men have sat here deciding what kind of club we were going to be, and what kind we’d rather burn down than become.

There’s no wasted space. No extra chairs. You sit here because you’ve earned it, or because you’re about to.

The walls tell the real story. Photographs line the brick in uneven rows, not trophies or glory shots, just proof. Men in uniform, younger than they should’ve been, faces still carrying softness beneath the damage they’d tried to outrun. The service took some of that softness overseas. The rest had already been stripped from them long before they signed their names.

Group photos from deployments. Grainy phone pictures taken in places that don’t exist on maps. Then newer ones: patch ceremonies, clubhouse rebuilds, weddings that weren’t extravagant but were real. Kids perched on shoulders. Women leaning into men who look like they’d burn the world down before they let it touch what’s theirs.

Family.

Not the kind you’re born into. The kind you choose.

Behind Ghost’s usual seat, a flat-screen is mounted into the wall, cables hidden clean and deliberate. That screen has seen things most men would rather die than look at twice. Maps with red lines drawn through them. Bank flows that end lives quietly. Surveillance stills with faces frozen long enough to decide their fate. Names spoken once, remembered forever, then erased.

Tonight, his chair is empty, but the screen is alive. A dark feed. His name in the corner. No face because Ghost hates giving the world more of himself than it’s earned.

I step to the head of the table and let my hands rest flat on the wood. I don’t sit yet. I look at my officers instead.

Not positions.

Men.

Men I bled with. Men I dragged out of hell, and who dragged me right back out with them. Each of them carries a past that tried to make him meaner than he was born to be. Bad clubs. Worse parents. Houses where love came with a price or never showed up at all. They left because staying meant becoming something they hated. They enlisted because structure made sense. Because orders were cleaner than chaos. Because a uniform was safer than the colors they were born under.

Somewhere between deployments and body bags, they became brothers.

Somewhere after that, they chose me.

I let the silence stretch because this is Church, and whatever I say next is going to change things.

Graves sits to my left, posture straight, hands folded like he’s already weighing sentences that haven’t been spoken yet. His shaved head gleams under the light, scars on his forearms pale against dark ink. He learned discipline before he learned mercy. He learned fairness because he saw what happened without it. Graves joined me because I promised him order, and then I gave him a place where order didn’t have to mean cruelty.

Nomad leans back two chairs down, one boot hooked around a rung, eyes scanning the room like he’s mapping exits even now. Calm as still water, never fully still underneath it. He spent too much of his life moving before anything could catch him. Now he keeps our roads safe enough for families to sleep while we ride them.

Ledger sits across from me, glasses perched low, fingers resting near a leather notebook he doesn’t open unless he has to. You’d never guess by looking at him that he’s dismantled empires with spreadsheets and silence. He came to Saints because I told him money doesn’t get to be god here, and he believed me enough to make sure it never did.

Ink sits quiet, sharp eyes catching everything. Tattoos crawl up his neck, sleeves inked with stories he never tells. He remembers things other men forget: dates, patterns, inconsistencies. He joined because I never asked him to explain who he was. I just gave him a place to be it safely.

Rook fills the far end of the table, massive and still, hands folded like a weapon waiting to be used. Violence came easy to him once because the world made sure it did. Now it comes only when there’s a reason. He trusts me with that leash, and I’ve never forgotten what that costs a man like him.

Ghost’s voice comes through the speaker, low and dry. “You starin’ at us for a reason, or are we doing a feelings circle now?”

A few mouths twitch.

Mine almost does.

Even now, even with Deacon in a hospital bed, these men know how to breathe around the dark. That matters. It’s part of why we survived long enough to build this place.

Every one of them walked away from something rotten. Clubs that used fear instead of loyalty. Families that mistook pain for love. Men who wore patches like permission slips to ruin whoever stood too close.

They didn’t follow me because I was loud.

They followed me because I was different.