Page 57 of Riot’s Revenge

The kid went pale immediately, his head shaking wildly from side to side.

Shadow stepped in fast, gripping my wrist hard enough to force me to let go. “The fuck are you doing?” he asked.

I shoved the prospect away. “He’s careless.”

“He’s young.”

I walked off before the conversation could keep going.

The anger and fighting got worse after that. Not club business, just me losing patience faster. One guy from a neighboring charter made a joke during cards and I bloodied his mouth before he finished the sentence.

Nobody called me out directly afterward, but people watched.

Shadow cornered me outside the garages a few nights later while rain drizzled steadily across the lot. “You done acting like an asshole?” he asked.

I lit a cigarette to get out of answering.

“You look rough.”

“I’m fine.” I took another drag and stared out over the parking lot. Bikes lined the fence beneath yellow security lights while music thumped faintly from inside the clubhouse.

“You still seeing that nurse?” Shadow asked.

“No, but you already know that, right?”

“You trying to?”

“She won’t answer me.”

Shadow nodded slowly. “I heard you cheated on her?”

The bluntness irritated me immediately. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then explain it.”

I rubbed a hand over my mouth. “That thing with Brandi didn’t mean anything.”

Shadow waited.

I frowned harder. “Maria knew what it was.”

“You sure about that?”

The question annoyed me enough that I looked over sharply. “We weren’t married.”

Shadow laughed under his breath. “Boy,” he said, “that girl practically lived in your pocket.”

I looked away again while rain rolled steadily off the clubhouse roof beside us.

“You gave her keys,” Shadow continued. “Moved her into your apartment. Stopped bringing women around. Started looking at her like she hung the damn moon.”

“I never said we were exclusive.”

Shadow went quiet for a moment before asking, “Were you?”

I opened my mouth and stopped, because the answer should’ve been easy. Yet, I stood there thinking about Maria sleeping in my bed, studying at my kitchen counter, patching up brothers at the clubhouse while everybody treated her like she already belonged there.

I hadn’t looked at another woman properly in months before Brandi. Not really.