Wyatt Reed spent three years mourning Cody. Three years keeping the “brotherhood” alive in a dusty Nevada town where memories are the only thing that don’t dry up.
He thought he knew what loyalty looked like. He thought he knew who he was protecting when he kept his mouth shut about that night in the parking lot.
But then he saw the way Leo looked at Clara. And he saw the way Clara didn’t look away.
Now, every time Wyatt picks up his tattoo machine, he isn’t just marking skin. He’s trying to figure out how to live in a house full of ghosts when the living are the ones doing all the haunting.
“Names are easy to ink,” Wyatt told the kid sitting in his chair. “It’s the skin underneath that rots.”
FULL STORY
Chapter 1
The needle made a sound like a trapped hornet, a steady, high-pitched buzz that filled the small space of the shop and drowned out the dry Nevada wind rattling the front window. Wyatt Reed kept his hand steady, the weight of the machine familiar and grounding. He was working on a piece of flash—a traditional rose on a kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty. The kid’s name was Tyler, and he was white-knuckling the arms of the chair, his skin pale under the shop’s fluorescent lights.
“Breath, Tyler,” Wyatt said, his voice low and raspy from years of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper whiskey. “You hold your breath, you’re gonna pass out, and then I gotta drag your ass to the sidewalk.”
The kid let out a jagged exhale. “Sorry, man. It’s just… it’s for my girlfriend. Jasmine. We’ve been together six months.”
Wyatt didn’t look up from the line work. He’d heard it a thousand times. Six months in a town like Pahrump felt like a lifetime to a kid with a fast car and a slow brain. “Six months is a heartbeat, kid. You sure you want her name in the ribbon? Laser removal costs ten times what I’m charging you, and it feels like a cigarette being put out on your soul.”
“She’s the one, Wyatt. I’m telling you. She’s different.”
Wyatt wiped away a bead of blood and excess ink with a paper towel. He looked at the kid then—really looked at him. Tyler had that wide-eyed, desperate hope that hadn’t been kicked out of him yet. It was a look Wyatt vaguely remembered seeing in the mirror a decade ago, back when Cody was still alive and the world didn’t feel like a series of debts he couldn’t pay.
“They’re all different until they aren’t,” Wyatt muttered. He dipped the needle into the ink cap.
The shop, Iron & Ink, was a narrow slice of a building sandwiched between a shuttered laundromat and a dive bar called The Rusty Bolt. It smelled of green soap, stencil fluid, and the faint, metallic tang of blood. It was Wyatt’s sanctuary, the only place where the rules made sense. You pay the price, you get the mark. Everything was visible. Everything was on the surface.
The bell above the door chimed, and a gust of heat followed. Wyatt didn’t turn. He knew the step. Heavy, confident, the sound of boots that expected the floor to hold.
“Hey, Wyatt. You busy?”
It was Leo. Cody’s younger brother. The “prince” of their local MC chapter, though Wyatt had stopped wearing his own vest two years ago. Leo was wearing a clean white t-shirt that showed off his gym-pressed biceps and a pair of expensive sunglasses tucked into his collar. He looked like the hero of a story Cody never got to finish.
“Working,” Wyatt said, his eyes fixed on the rose.
“I can see that. Just wanted to check in. The memorial run is Saturday. You coming?”
Wyatt felt a tightening in his chest. Every year, they rode out to the spot where Cody had been taken down in a crossfire that shouldn’t have involved him. Every year, Leo gave a speech about brotherhood and sacrifice, and every year, Wyatt felt like he was suffocating under the weight of it.
“I got appointments, Leo.”
“Cancel ’em. It’s for Cody. Your best friend. My brother. The club expects to see you there, Wyatt. People are starting to talk about how you’ve gone ghost on us.”
Wyatt stopped the machine. The silence that followed was heavy. Tyler, the kid in the chair, looked between the two men, sensing the sudden drop in temperature.
“I’ll think about it,” Wyatt said.
Leo stepped closer, leaning against the counter where Wyatt kept his sketches. He picked up a drawing Wyatt had been working on late the night before—a charcoal piece, not a tattoo design. It was a portrait of a woman’s face, half-hidden in shadow, her expression one of exhaustion and something that looked like mourning.
“This Clara?” Leo asked, his voice softening.
“Put it down, Leo.”
“It’s good. You always had the eye. She okay? I haven’t seen her around the house lately.”
“She’s fine. Just tired. The diner’s been running her ragged.”
Leo nodded, his gaze lingering on the drawing for a second too long. There was a look in his eyes—a flick of something that wasn’t quite pity and wasn’t quite concern. It was a look of possession. Wyatt felt a coldness settle in his gut, a familiar gnawing he’d been trying to ignore for months.
“Tell her I said hi,” Leo said, straightening up. “And Saturday, Wyatt. Be there. Don’t make me come find you.”
He turned and walked out, the bell chiming again as if nothing had happened. Wyatt sat there for a long moment, the machine heavy in his hand.
“Who was that?” Tyler asked, his voice small.
“A ghost,” Wyatt said. He clicked the machine back on. “Let’s finish this rose, kid. You’ve got a name to live up to.”
He worked in silence for the next hour, his mind racing. He thought about the night Cody died—the smell of asphalt and cordite, the way the desert stars looked so indifferent to the screaming. He thought about the way Leo had stepped into Cody’s boots, taking over the house, the leadership, the legacy. And he thought about the way Clara had started staying up late, staring out the window at the highway, her phone always face down on the nightstand.
When Tyler finally left, his neck wrapped in Saran Wrap and his wallet lighter, Wyatt locked the front door. He didn’t turn off the lights. He went to the back room, a cramped space filled with old bike parts and half-finished canvases.
In the corner, covered by an old tarp, was the piece he hadn’t shown anyone. He pulled the tarp back. It wasn’t a tattoo design. It was a painting—oil on wood. It depicted a sidecar, empty and rusted, sitting in a field of dead sagebrush. In the background, two figures stood by a black truck. One was tall and broad-shouldered, the other smaller, leaner. They weren’t touching, but the space between them was charged, a bridge of unspoken things.
Wyatt touched the wet paint on the woman’s dress. He’d seen them three weeks ago. He’d been coming back from a supply run in Vegas, his bike running hot, when he’d seen Leo’s truck pulled over on a dirt road miles from anywhere. He’d slowed down, thinking there was trouble. Then he’d seen her. Clara. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t fighting. She was just standing there, looking at Leo like he was the only thing keeping her from drifting off into the desert.
He hadn’t stopped. He’d twisted the throttle and roared past, praying they hadn’t seen him. He’d spent the last twenty days pretending he hadn’t seen the way Leo’s hand had hovered near her waist, or the way Clara had tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear—a gesture she only did when she was nervous. Or when she was in love.
He sat down on a milk crate and put his head in his hands. The smell of the shop—the ink and the soap—suddenly felt like a tomb. He was thirty-five years old, his back ached from leaning over chairs, his lungs were stained with smoke, and his heart was a map of places he could no longer go.
He thought about the kid, Tyler. Jasmine. He wondered how long it would take for the kid to realize that names don’t mean anything. That loyalty is just a word people use to keep you quiet while they take what they want.
The phone on the counter buzzed. A text from Clara. Working late again. Don’t wait up for dinner.
Wyatt didn’t reply. He picked up a charcoal stick and turned back to the drawing Leo had admired. With a few sharp, violent strokes, he blacked out the woman’s eyes.
He didn’t know how to fix his life, but he knew how to destroy a portrait. He spent the rest of the night in the back room, the wind howling outside, trying to draw the sound of a secret breaking.
Chapter 2
The Saturday morning sun was a brutal, unblinking eye over the Nevada desert. It turned the chrome on the rows of parked Harleys into blinding mirrors and made the smell of hot oil and exhaust hang heavy in the air. The memorial run always started at the clubhouse—a low-slung cinderblock building on the edge of town that had seen more fights and funerals than it had parties.
Wyatt stood by his bike, a 1998 Dyna that he’d rebuilt three times since Cody’s death. He felt out of place. He wasn’t wearing his colors, just a faded black t-shirt and jeans that were stained with ink. The other men, his former brothers, looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and a strange, distant respect. He was the one who had been there when the lights went out. He was the one who had held Cody’s head as the life leaked out of him.
“You look like you’re attending a wake for a guy you didn’t like,” a voice said behind him.
Wyatt turned. It was Miller, an older biker with a beard like steel wool and hands that were mostly scar tissue. Miller had been around since Cody’s father ran the club. He was the only one who didn’t buy into Leo’s polished version of the brotherhood.
“Maybe I am,” Wyatt said.
Miller spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt. “Leo’s putting on a hell of a show today. Got a new plaque and everything. Says he wants to ‘reclaim the honor’ of the Reed name. Funny thing to say, considering Cody never lost it.”
Wyatt looked toward the clubhouse porch. Leo was standing there, surrounded by the younger guys, laughing and slapping backs. He looked like a politician. He looked like a man who didn’t have a care in the world, certainly not a man who was sleeping with his dead brother’s best friend’s wife.
“Where’s Clara?” Miller asked, squinting at Wyatt.
“She’s home. Didn’t feel up to it.”
“Probably for the best. This ain’t a place for women today. Too much testosterone and bad memories.”
The engines started to roar, a rhythmic thunder that vibrated in Wyatt’s teeth. He mounted his bike, the heat of the seat soaking into his jeans. He followed the pack as they pulled out onto the highway, a long black ribbon of steel and noise cutting through the tan-and-gray landscape.
The spot where Cody died was a nondescript stretch of road near a closed-down gas station. There were no trees, no shade, just a small white cross staked into the gravel and a pile of sun-bleached plastic flowers. The pack pulled over, the silence that followed the engine cut-offs feeling more violent than the noise.
Leo stepped to the front, removing his helmet. He looked out over the group, his expression shifting into a practiced mask of grief.
“Three years,” Leo began, his voice carrying clearly in the still air. “Three years since we lost a brother, a leader, and a friend. Cody wasn’t just my blood. He was the heart of this club. He died protecting our territory, protecting our way of life.”
Wyatt stared at the white cross. Protecting our territory. That wasn’t what happened. Cody had been there to buy a bike part from a guy who turned out to be a nervous informant for a rival crew. Cody had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in a spray of bullets meant for someone else. There was no honor in it. Just a lot of blood and a pair of eyes that had looked at Wyatt with terrifying confusion in the last few seconds of their life.
“And as we stand here today,” Leo continued, his voice rising, “we remember that loyalty is the only thing that matters. We take care of our own. We protect the family Cody left behind.”
Wyatt felt a surge of heat that had nothing to do with the sun. He looked at Leo—really looked at him. He saw the expensive watch on Leo’s wrist, the way he stood with a confidence that felt unearned. He thought about the text messages he’d found on Clara’s old tablet two nights ago—deleted messages that still lived in the cloud, words of longing and secret meetings at a motel in Tonopah.
I need to see you. Wyatt’s at the shop until ten. Meet me behind the barn.
The words had burned into Wyatt’s brain, a tattoo he couldn’t laser off.
“Wyatt?” Leo said, snapping him back to the present. “You want to say a few words? You were there. You were his right hand.”
The crowd turned to Wyatt. He felt the weight of fifty pairs of eyes. He felt the dust in his throat. He looked at the white cross, then at Leo.
“Cody didn’t like speeches,” Wyatt said, his voice flat. “He liked riding. He liked the quiet. I think we’ve done enough talking.”
The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on. Leo’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Always the man of few words, Wyatt. But we know what’s in your heart.”
Leo stepped forward and hugged Wyatt. It was a brief, performative gesture, but as he pulled away, he leaned in close to Wyatt’s ear.
“You need to lighten up, brother,” Leo whispered. “People are starting to think you’re holding a grudge. And we both know what happens to guys who can’t let go.”
Wyatt didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He watched Leo walk back to his bike, the golden boy of the desert, and he realized that the brotherhood was a lie. It was a fence built to keep the truth out and the secrets in.
The ride back was faster, more aggressive. Wyatt stayed at the back, the dust from the other bikes coating his face. When they reached the clubhouse, the beer started flowing, and the music was cranked up. Wyatt didn’t stay. He turned his bike toward home, a small, sagging house on the outskirts of town that felt more like a waiting room than a residence.
He found Clara in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of cold coffee. She looked up when he walked in, her eyes rimmed with red.
“How was it?” she asked.
“Hot. Loud. Leo gave a speech.”
Wyatt pulled a beer from the fridge and sat across from her. He didn’t open it. He just felt the cold glass against his palm.
“He called me today,” Clara said quietly.
“Who? Leo?”
“Yeah. He wanted to make sure I was okay. He said you looked… off. At the memorial.”
Wyatt laughed, a dry, hollow sound. “He’s a real saint, isn’t he? Always looking out for everybody.”
Clara flinched. She looked down at her coffee. “He’s Cody’s brother, Wyatt. He’s trying to help.”
“Is that what he’s doing, Clara? Helping?”
He wanted to say it then. He wanted to throw the tablet on the table and watch the color drain from her face. He wanted to scream until his lungs gave out. But he looked at her—at the way her shoulders were hunched, the way she looked like a person who was already halfway underwater—and he couldn’t do it. Not yet.
“I’m going to the shop,” Wyatt said, standing up.
“It’s Saturday night, Wyatt. You’ve been working twelve-hour days all week.”
“The work is the only thing that doesn’t lie to me, Clara.”
He walked out before she could respond. He rode back to Iron & Ink, locked himself inside, and turned on the tattoo machine. He didn’t have an appointment. He just needed the sound.
He sat in his chair and looked at his own arm. There was a space on his forearm, near the elbow, that was still blank skin. He picked up the needle, dipped it in black ink, and began to tattoo himself. No stencil. No plan. Just a series of jagged, intersecting lines that looked like a bird trapped in a cage.
The pain was sharp and immediate, a localized fire that pushed everything else out of his mind. He worked until his arm was a bloody mess of black ink, until the sun started to creep over the horizon, and until he finally, for one brief moment, felt like he was the one in control of the damage.
Chapter 3
Sunday morning in Pahrump always felt like a hangover, even if you hadn’t been drinking. The air was stagnant, and the only sound was the occasional rattle of a screen door or the hum of an air conditioner struggling against the rising heat. Wyatt woke up on the couch in the back room of the shop, his forearm throbbing under a makeshift bandage of paper towels and duct tape.
He sat up, the room spinning for a second. The painting of the sidecar was still there, leaning against the wall, watching him. He felt a sudden, violent urge to put his foot through it. Instead, he got up, splashed some cold water on his face in the tiny, grime-streaked bathroom, and started a pot of coffee.
There was a knock on the front door. Not the rhythmic thud of a customer, but a soft, hesitant tapping.
Wyatt walked to the front and peered through the glass. It was Clara. She was wearing a sundress he hadn’t seen in years, her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She looked like the woman he’d married ten years ago, back when they were both convinced that a small town and a steady job were all they needed to be happy.
He unlocked the door. “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t come home,” she said. She stepped inside, her eyes scanning the shop. She landed on the bloody paper towels in the trash can. “Wyatt, your arm. What did you do?”
“Just practicing,” he said, pulling his sleeve down. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine for months. You’re like a ghost in our own house.”
She sat down in the client chair—the same chair Tyler had sat in. She looked small in it, dwarfed by the heavy leather and the surrounding wall of flash art.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Wyatt felt a cold pit form in his stomach. This was it. The confession. The “I’m sorry, but…” speech that would end everything. He leaned against his workbench, his hands gripping the edge so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Talk then,” he said.
“Leo wants to sell the house. Cody’s house.”
Wyatt blinked. That wasn’t what he expected. “What do you mean, sell it? It’s been in their family for forty years.”
“He says the club needs the money. He says it’s too much for him to maintain alone. He wants to move into that new development on the north side.”
“The north side? That’s suburban hell, Clara. Leo hates the north side.”
“He says he needs a fresh start. He offered to let us move in with him. Into a bigger place. He said we could save money, maybe get you a better shop in a better part of town.”
The room seemed to tilt. Wyatt looked at his wife, searching for some sign of the betrayal he knew was there. She looked earnest. She looked hopeful. And for a second, he wondered if she was even in on the plan, or if Leo was playing her just as hard as he was playing Wyatt.
“You want to move in with Leo?” Wyatt asked, his voice dangerously low.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just telling you what he said. He’s family, Wyatt. He’s trying to look out for us.”
“He’s not family,” Wyatt snapped. “He’s a parasite. He’s been living off Cody’s ghost since the day we buried him.”
Clara stood up, her face flushing. “Why do you hate him so much? He’s the only one who stayed. Everyone else drifted away after Cody died, but Leo stayed. He helped us with the mortgage when the shop was slow. He helped me when you were too locked in your own head to even speak to me.”
“He helped you?” Wyatt stepped closer, the smell of her perfume—something floral and cheap—filling his senses. “Is that what you call it? Help?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I saw the truck, Clara. Three weeks ago. On the Old Vegas road. I saw you and him.”
The silence that followed was absolute. A car passed by outside, the sound of its engine fading into the distance. Clara didn’t move. She didn’t blink. Then, slowly, she sat back down. The hope in her face vanished, replaced by a weary, gray mask of resignation.
“We weren’t… nothing happened that day,” she whispered.
“Does it matter? You’re meeting him in secret. You’re texting him behind my back. My best friend’s brother, Clara. Of all the people in this godforsaken state, you picked him?”
“He understands,” she said, her voice rising. “He understands what it’s like to lose Cody. You? You just shut down. You turned into a stone, Wyatt. I’ve been living in a house with a statue for three years. Leo… he talks to me. He remembers things. He makes me feel like I’m still alive.”
“By lying to me? By pretending to be my ‘brother’ while he’s trying to get into your bed?”
“He’s not trying to get into my bed! It hasn’t… we haven’t done that.”
“But you wanted to. Don’t lie to me, Clara. I’ve spent my life looking at people’s skin. I know when someone is lying. I can see it in the way you breathe.”
Clara started to cry—not a loud, dramatic sob, but a quiet, steady stream of tears that looked like they’d been waiting a long time to fall. “I’m so tired, Wyatt. I’m so lonely. I just wanted someone to look at me without seeing a reminder of a dead man.”
Wyatt felt a surge of guilt, sharp and painful. He knew she was right. He had shut down. He had retreated into the ink and the chrome, leaving her to navigate the wreckage of their life alone. But the betrayal was still there, a jagged piece of glass in his throat.
“So what now?” he asked. “You want to move in with him? You want to be the new queen of the MC?”
“I don’t know what I want. I just know I can’t keep doing this.”
She stood up and walked toward the door. She stopped with her hand on the knob, her back to him.
“Leo’s coming by the shop tomorrow,” she said. “To talk about the house. He doesn’t know you saw us. He thinks everything is fine.”
“Everything isn’t fine.”
“I know,” she said. She opened the door and stepped out into the heat. “I know.”
Wyatt watched her walk to her car and drive away. He felt a strange sense of relief, as if a fever had finally broken. The secret was out, or at least a version of it. But the relief was quickly replaced by a cold, hard anger.
He went to the back room and looked at the painting again. He picked up a brush and a tube of crimson oil paint. He didn’t paint over the figures. He painted a thin, red line connecting them—a tether that looked like a vein, or a fuse.
He spent the rest of the day cleaning the shop. He scrubbed the floors until they shone. He organized his needles, his tubes, his inks. He wiped down every surface until the place smelled of bleach and order.
That evening, the kid, Tyler, came back. He looked worse than he had on Friday. He had a black eye and a split lip, and he was shaking.
“Wyatt,” he said, his voice trembling. “I need… I need you to cover it.”
“The rose?”
“The name. Jasmine. I need it gone.”
Wyatt didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He could see the shame and the hurt radiating off the kid like heat from a radiator. He pointed to the chair.
“Sit down, Tyler.”
“Can you do it? Can you make it look like it was never there?”
Wyatt picked up his machine. “No. I can’t make it like it was never there. I can only put something else over it. Something darker. Something that covers the mark.”
“Do it,” the kid said. “I don’t care what it is. Just get her name off me.”
Wyatt started the machine. As he began to work, he realized that he was doing more than just helping a kid cover a mistake. He was preparing. He was practicing for the moment he would have to do the same thing to his own life.
“It’s gonna hurt,” Wyatt said.
“Good,” the kid replied.
Wyatt nodded. He understood. Sometimes the pain was the only way you knew you were still the one holding the needle.
Chapter 4
Monday morning arrived with a sky the color of a bruised plum. Wyatt was at the shop early, long before the sun had a chance to burn through the haze. He sat behind the counter, a cup of bitter coffee in his hand, watching the dust motes dance in the light. He was waiting.
Leo didn’t disappoint. He pulled up in his black Silverado at exactly ten o’clock, parking sideways across two spots like he owned the pavement. He climbed out, adjusted his sunglasses, and strolled into the shop with the easy gait of a man who had never faced a consequence he couldn’t charm his way out of.
“Mornin’, Wyatt,” Leo said, his voice booming in the quiet shop. “You look like you stayed up all night again. You gotta stop burning the candle at both ends, man. It’s bad for the brand.”
Wyatt didn’t move. “The brand is fine, Leo. What do you want?”
Leo leaned against the counter, his presence taking up too much space. “Clara tell you about the house? I figure it’s time we put that old place to rest. Get you guys into something nicer. Something closer to the action.”
“We’re fine where we are.”
“Come on, Wyatt. That shack is falling apart. Roof’s leaking, the wiring is a fire hazard. Cody would’ve wanted better for you. For Clara.”
Wyatt set his coffee cup down with a deliberate click. “Don’t talk about what Cody would’ve wanted. You don’t get to use his name to sell a house he built with his own hands.”
Leo’s smile faltered, just for a second. “Hey, I’m just trying to help family. No need to get defensive.”
“Is that what you were doing on the Old Vegas road three weeks ago? Helping family?”
The silence that followed was different from the one with Clara. This one was sharp. It had teeth. Leo didn’t flinch, but his body went still—the stillness of a predator that had just realized it was being watched.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leo said quietly.
“I saw you. I saw the truck. I saw her. You want to tell me what kind of ‘help’ requires meeting in the middle of the desert in the middle of the day?”
Leo took off his sunglasses. His eyes were hard, devoid of the friendly “brotherhood” mask he usually wore. “We were talking, Wyatt. She was upset. She called me because you weren’t there. As usual.”
“She’s my wife, Leo. Not your reclamation project.”
“She’s a woman who’s been grieving for three years while her husband plays with ink and pretends the world stopped turning when his friend died. She needed someone to listen. I listened.”
Wyatt stood up. He was shorter than Leo, but he was built of wire and old scars. He felt a vibration in his hands—the phantom buzz of the machine.
“You’re a liar,” Wyatt said. “You’ve been eyeing her since the funeral. You think because you took Cody’s vest and his bike, you get to take his best friend’s life, too?”
Leo laughed, a short, sharp sound. “You think you’re so noble, don’t you? The silent martyr. The one who held him while he died. But you didn’t tell the club the truth, did you, Wyatt? You didn’t tell them how Cody actually died.”
Wyatt felt the air leave the room. “What are you talking about?”
“I know about the deal, Wyatt. I know Cody was there to flip on the Kings. He wasn’t buying a part. He was meeting a federal agent. He was going to sell us out to save his own skin because he was scared of doing time for that warehouse job.”
“That’s a lie,” Wyatt hissed.
“Is it? I found the burner phone, Wyatt. I found the messages. Cody was a rat. And you knew, didn’t you? You were there to help him. You were going to run with him.”
Wyatt’s head throbbed. He remembered the night in the parking lot. He remembered Cody whispering something into his ear—something about getting out, about a way away from all this. Wyatt had thought he meant leaving the state, starting a new shop. He hadn’t known about the feds. Or had he? Had he just chosen not to hear it?
“I didn’t know,” Wyatt said, though his voice sounded hollow to his own ears.
“It doesn’t matter if you knew,” Leo said, stepping closer, his voice a low snarl. “What matters is that the club thinks he died a hero. They think he died for the patch. If they found out the truth—if they found out their golden boy was a snitch—they’d dig him up just to spit on him. And they’d do worse to the guy who covered for him.”
Leo poked a finger into Wyatt’s chest. “So here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to agree to sell the house. You’re going to move into the new place. And you’re going to keep your mouth shut about me and Clara. Because if you don’t, I’ll tell the club everything. I’ll burn Cody’s name to the ground, and I’ll make sure you’re right there in the fire with him.”
Wyatt looked at Leo’s finger, then up at his face. He saw the triumph there, the petty, cruel satisfaction of a man who had finally found the leverage he needed.
“Get out of my shop,” Wyatt said.
“Think about it, Wyatt. You’ve got forty-eight hours. The realtor is coming by on Wednesday. Be there. With a smile.”
Leo put his sunglasses back on and walked out. The door slammed, the glass rattling in the frame.
Wyatt sat back down. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He thought about Cody. Cody, who had been like a brother. Cody, who might have been a snitch. Does it change the way he died? Does it change the way the blood felt on Wyatt’s hands?
He went to the back room and pulled the tarp off the painting. The red line he’d painted yesterday—the tether between the two figures—looked like a wound. He realized then that Leo wasn’t just sleeping with Clara to hurt Wyatt. He was doing it to own the one thing Wyatt had left that was untainted by the club.
He picked up a scraper and started to peel the paint away. Not the whole thing, just the faces. He scraped until there was nothing left but the raw wood underneath.
He spent the rest of the day in a daze. He turned away two walk-ins, telling them the shop was closed for maintenance. He sat in the dark, the only light coming from the neon sign in the window—a flickering red OPEN that felt like a lie.
He thought about the brotherhood. He thought about the men who rode with them, the men who would kill or die for a patch that was built on a foundation of secrets and betrayal. He thought about Clara, sitting in their leaking house, waiting for a man who wasn’t there.
He realized he had a choice. He could keep the secret, save Cody’s “honor,” and live the rest of his life as a puppet in Leo’s theater. Or he could burn it all down.
He looked at his phone. He had a contact saved from three years ago—the detective who had worked Cody’s case. A man named Miller, no relation to the old biker.
Wyatt’s finger hovered over the call button. If he called, the truth would come out. Not just about the shooting, but about Leo’s involvement in the warehouse job—the job Cody was supposedly snitching on. Wyatt knew Leo had been the one who set it up. He knew Leo had been the one who pushed Cody into the line of fire.
He didn’t make the call. Not yet.
He picked up his tattoo machine instead. He had one more thing to draw. He pulled a fresh piece of paper onto the counter and started to sketch. It wasn’t a rose. it wasn’t a portrait. It was a map of the desert, with a single, black x marking a spot on the Old Vegas road.
Underneath, he wrote three words: The truth hurts.
He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He had forty-eight hours. And for the first time in three years, Wyatt Reed knew exactly what he was going to do with the needle.
