“Say it again. Call him trash one more time.”
I watched the smoke from the cigar drift over the boy’s head, coating the only thing he had left of his mother. Caleb was on his knees in the dirt of the Oasis Truck Stop, his face burning red while the Vipers laughed. They thought he was just a stray, a kid they could kick to get a reaction out of me.
Vance leaned down, his Viper vest smelling of cheap bourbon and exhaust. He took a long drag and blew the cloud directly onto the scrap of lace Caleb was holding.
“Smells like she’s gone for good now, doesn’t it?” Vance sneered, looking around at his crew for approval.
The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of silence that happens right before a storm tears the roof off a house. I felt the weight of the .44 in my holster, but more than that, I felt the ghost of a wedding day eighteen years ago. That lace wasn’t just fabric. It was the hem of a veil that had been soaked in red on the day my life ended.
I didn’t think about the peace treaty. I didn’t think about the “Pope” or the war it would start. I just saw the way the boy clutched that lace, his knuckles white, and I knew.
I moved faster than a man my age should. The barrel of my gun was against Vance’s temple before he could even blink. The laughter stopped. The whole world stopped.
“That’s my blood you’re choking,” I whispered.
Vance’s eyes went wide as he realized the kid he’d been bullying wasn’t a nobody. He was the son of the Bishop.
Chapter 1
The heat in Tucumcari doesn’t just sit on you; it tries to get inside your bones. It’s a dry, aggressive weight that smells of baked asphalt and the slow rot of things the desert has already finished with. I sat on the bench outside the Oasis Truck Stop, my back against the corrugated tin wall, feeling the vibrations of the big rigs idling in the lot. To anyone passing by, I was just another aging biker in a dusty vest, a man who had spent too many years staring at the horizon.
But I wasn’t looking at the horizon. I was looking at the boy.
Caleb was seventeen, maybe eighteen, though he looked younger. He had the kind of thinness that comes from missing more meals than you eat, a bird-like fragility that didn’t belong in a place like this. He was wearing a gray hoodie that was three sizes too big, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms that looked like they’d snap in a stiff breeze. He was on his knees, scrubbing the grease off the side of a chrome-heavy chopper that belonged to the Vipers.
The Vipers were a rival MC, a collection of men who mistook cruelty for strength. They’d been hanging around the Oasis for three days, pushing their luck and testing the borders of the territory my club, the Saints of Mercy, had held since before the asphalt was laid.
Vance was the one leading the charge today. He was a wiry man with a face like a hatchet and a soul that seemed to feed on the discomfort of others. He stood over Caleb, a thick cigar clamped between his teeth, a beer in his left hand. Two other Vipers, Saint and Sinner’s counterparts in a much uglier world, stood behind him, smirking.
“You missed a spot, kid,” Vance said, his voice a rasping drawl. He kicked a spray of gravel toward Caleb’s bucket. “I don’t pay for half-assed work.”
Caleb didn’t look up. He didn’t have the luxury of pride. He just dipped his rag into the gray water and kept scrubbing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vance. I’ll get it.”
“You’ll get it when I say you’ve got it,” Vance snapped. He took a long pull of his beer and then poured the last inch of the warm dregs onto the back of Caleb’s neck.
I felt a twitch in my right hand, the one that usually rested on the hilt of my knife. I forced it to stay still. I was the Bishop. I ran my club like a parish, and a parish required order. Order meant not starting a war over a stray kid at a truck stop. But my eyes kept moving back to the boy’s neck, where the beer was dripping down into his hoodie.
Caleb reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, tarnished silver locket. He didn’t open it. He just held it, his thumb rubbing the surface as if it were a talisman. From the edge of the locket, a tiny scrap of white lace trailed out, dancing in the hot wind. It was stained, a dull brownish-red that I recognized instantly. It was the color of old grief.
“What you got there, Charity?” Vance asked, leaning down. He snatched the locket out of Caleb’s hand before the boy could react.
“Please,” Caleb said, his voice cracking. “It’s mine. It’s all I have.”
Vance dangled the locket by its broken chain, laughing. “Look at this piece of junk. What’s inside, kid? A picture of the dad who ran out on you? Or the mother who didn’t want you?”
“Give it back,” Caleb said, standing up. He was a foot shorter than Vance, and his legs were shaking, but he stood.
Vance’s expression shifted. The playfulness vanished, replaced by the cold, sharp edge of a bully who had been challenged. He stepped into Caleb’s space, his chest hitting the boy’s shoulder, forcing him back toward the bike.
“Get back on your knees,” Vance hissed.
Caleb didn’t move. He reached for the locket. Vance shoved him, hard. Caleb hit the gravel, his hands scraping against the stones. He didn’t cry out. He just looked up at Vance with a hollow, desperate kind of hunger.
Vance took a long, deliberate drag of his cigar. He held the smoke in for a moment, then leaned down until he was inches from Caleb’s face. He opened the locket, exposing the scrap of lace to the harsh New Mexico sun.
“Smells like a funeral, kid,” Vance said. Then he blew a thick, yellow cloud of smoke directly onto the lace, the ash falling onto the delicate fabric. “Just like whatever trash left this to you.”
The world went very quiet. I could hear the tick of the cooling engines and the distant call of a hawk. I could feel the heat rising off the pavement, but inside, I was a winter night in the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
I stood up. My boots made a slow, rhythmic crunch on the gravel. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to. I saw Deacon move out of the corner of my eye, his hand hovering near his hip, his face unreadable. He knew the look on my face. He knew what happened when the Bishop stopped preaching and started presiding.
Vance was too busy laughing with his friends to notice me until I was five feet away. When he finally looked up, the smirk didn’t leave his face immediately. He thought he was protected by the patch on his back.
“Bishop,” Vance said, his voice light. “Just teaching the help some manners. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is,” I said. My voice was low, a rumble that felt like it was coming from the ground itself. “I know that kid is on his knees, and you’re standing over him like you’ve earned the right.”
“He’s a prospect, Bishop. Or a mascot. Whatever you call the strays you pick up,” Vance said, his confidence wavering just a fraction as he saw the stillness in my eyes.
I looked down at Caleb. The boy was staring at the lace, his eyes wide and vacant. He looked like I had felt eighteen years ago, standing in the aisle of a small stone chapel while the woman I loved bled out onto her white silk dress.
I looked back at Vance. “That scrap of lace you just spat on. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s garbage,” Vance said, trying to regain his footing. He held it up again. “It’s—”
I didn’t let him finish. I moved with a clarity that felt like a gift from a god I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. My hand blurred as I drew the silver .44 from my holster. The weight of it was familiar, a comfort. I didn’t point it at his chest. I slammed the barrel directly into his temple, the metal clicking against his skull with a sickening thud.
Vance’s head jerked to the side. He froze, his eyes bulging. The locket slipped from his fingers, falling into the dust.
“Say it again,” I whispered, leaning in close enough to smell the stale beer on his breath. “Call it trash one more time. I want to hear the last words you ever speak.”
The two Vipers behind him reached for their belts. Deacon’s voice cut through the air like a whip. “Don’t. Unless you want to see how fast the Bishop can clear a room.”
Deacon was standing by his bike, his own weapon drawn and leveled at the two men. He looked bored, which made him infinitely more dangerous.
Vance was trembling now. The cigar fell from his mouth, rolling into the dirt. “Bishop… come on. It’s just a kid. It’s just a joke.”
“The joke’s over, Vance,” I said. I pulled back the hammer of the Magnum. The sound was loud in the afternoon heat, a final, mechanical judgment. “That lace came from a wedding veil. It belonged to a woman who died because men like you thought they could take whatever they wanted.”
I glanced at Caleb. He was looking at me now, not with fear, but with a terrifying kind of recognition.
“And that boy,” I said, my voice dropping even lower, vibrating against Vance’s skin. “He isn’t a stray. He isn’t a mascot.”
I reached down with my free hand and picked up the locket. I wiped the ash off the lace with my thumb, my heart hammering against my ribs. I looked at the boy, really looked at him—the shape of his jaw, the depth of his eyes, the way he carried his shoulders.
“That’s my blood you’re choking,” I said.
I shoved the barrel harder into Vance’s head, forcing him to his knees. Now he was the one in the dirt. Now he was the one looking up.
“Get out of here,” I said. “Tell the Pope that the Bishop is done with the treaty. Tell him I’ve found what he tried to bury.”
I didn’t lower the gun until the Vipers had scrambled onto their bikes and roared out of the lot, leaving a cloud of exhaust that tasted like penance.
I stood there for a long time, the Magnum heavy in my hand, watching the dust settle. Then, slowly, I turned to the boy. Caleb was still on his knees, watching me with an intensity that made me want to look away.
I held out the locket. My hand, the one that had been steady as a rock while I held a gun to a man’s head, was shaking.
“Caleb,” I said. It was the first time I’d used his name. It felt like a confession.
He reached out, his fingers brushing mine as he took the silver heart. “How did you know?” he whispered. “How did you know about the veil?”
I looked toward the highway, toward the shimmering heat where the Vipers had vanished. “Because I’m the one who bought it for her,” I said. “And I’m the one who failed to keep it white.”
Chapter 2
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart wasn’t a cathedral in the way people in the East thought of them. It was a low-slung building made of adobe and sun-bleached wood, tucked into a fold of the red hills twenty miles outside of town. It had been a mission once, then a ruin, and finally, it had become the home of the Saints of Mercy. We didn’t pray there much, but we kept the silence.
I rode back with Caleb on the pillion of my bike. He didn’t hold onto me; he held onto the sissy bar, his body stiff and distant. Every time we hit a bump in the road, I felt the ghost of his weight behind me, a reminder of eighteen years of a life I hadn’t known existed.
Deacon and the rest of the crew—Saint and Sinner—followed in a thunderous formation. We pulled into the courtyard, the dust swirling around us like incense.
“Deacon, get the perimeter set,” I said as I kicked the stand down. “The Vipers won’t take that truck stop mess lying down. Vance is a coward, but the Pope is a prideful man.”
Deacon nodded, his face grim. “He’ll send more than three guys next time, Bishop. You broke the seal.”
“The seal was already broken,” I said, looking at Caleb.
The boy climbed off the bike, his legs wobbly. He looked at the adobe walls, the iron crosses, and the rows of motorcycles lined up like warhorses. He looked like he wanted to run and like he had nowhere else to go.
“Come inside,” I said.
I led him into the main hall. It was cool inside, the thick walls holding the chill of the previous night. The air smelled of old wax, motor oil, and floor cleaner. At the far end, under a flickering neon light that formed a cross, sat Father Elias.
Elias wasn’t a priest of the Church anymore—they’d stripped him of his collar years ago for reasons he didn’t talk about—but he was the only man I trusted with my soul. He was seventy, with skin like a topographical map and eyes that saw through the leather vests and the scars.
“You brought a guest, Thorne,” Elias said, his voice a dry parchment rustle.
“I brought a ghost, Elias,” I replied.
I pointed to the bench. Caleb sat, huddled in his oversized hoodie. I walked over to the small altar we’d built in the corner, a place where we kept the names of the brothers we’d lost. In the center of that altar, under a glass dome, was a dried rose and a single photograph of a woman with dark hair and a smile that had been meant for another world.
“Caleb,” I said, not looking at him. “Show the Father the locket.”
The boy hesitated, then reached into his pocket. He laid the silver heart on the heavy oak table. Elias leaned forward, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He picked it up with hands that didn’t shake, despite his age. He opened it, his thumb catching on the scrap of lace.
The room went silent. Even the distant hum of the desert seemed to fade. Elias looked at the lace, then at the photo on the altar, then back at the boy.
“The lace is from Maria’s veil,” Elias whispered. It wasn’t a question. He had been the one standing at the altar eighteen years ago. He had been the one who tried to stem the flow of blood with his own robes.
“Vance blew smoke on it,” I said. My jaw ached from clenching it. “He treated it like trash.”
Elias closed the locket and handed it back to Caleb. “Where did you get this, son?”
Caleb looked at the floor. “My mother. Before she… before she was gone. She told me to keep it hidden. She said if I ever got into trouble I couldn’t get out of, I should look for the man with the silver cross on his vest.”
I felt a sharp, cold spike in my chest. “She told you that? When?”
“A long time ago,” Caleb said. “I was in the system for a while. Then I was on the street. I didn’t know who you were. I just knew the Vipers were looking for someone, and they said I had a debt to pay because of who my mother was.”
“What debt?” I stepped closer, the floorboards creaking under my boots.
“They said I belonged to the Pope,” Caleb said, his voice trembling. “They said I was a ‘legacy.’ They were going to prospect me. But not like you guys. They wanted me to do things… they said I had to prove I wasn’t like my father.”
I sat down across from him, the weight of my vest feeling like lead. “Your mother was Maria Valdez. She was the Pope’s daughter.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “She never spoke his name. She just called him the Old Man. She was scared of him until the day she vanished.”
I looked at Elias. The old man’s eyes were full of a terrible kind of pity.
“He knew,” I said, the realization washing over me like acid. “The Pope knew she was pregnant. That’s why he ordered the hit. It wasn’t just about the territory or the fact that I was a rival. He wanted to wipe the slate clean. He wanted to kill the child.”
“But she survived the church,” Elias said softly. “The bullet hit her high. We thought… Thorne, we all thought she was gone. The hospital said she didn’t make it. The funeral was closed-casket.”
I stood up so fast I knocked my chair over. The sound echoed through the hall like a gunshot. “They lied. He took her. He hid her away until the boy was born, and then he let her rot while he waited for the boy to be old enough to use.”
I looked at Caleb. He was watching me with those wide, dark eyes—Maria’s eyes. He wasn’t just a boy. He was the evidence of a crime that had been compounding for nearly two decades. Every day I had spent grieving, every night I had spent wondering why God had let her die at the altar, had been a lie manufactured by a man who called himself the Pope.
“He was selling you,” I said, my voice shaking with a rage I couldn’t contain. “He was going to bring you into his club as a prospect so he could break you. He wanted to turn my son into a Viper.”
Caleb flinched at the word son. It was too heavy for him, too sudden. He clutched the locket so hard his knuckles turned white. “I don’t know who you are,” he whispered. “I just know you didn’t let that man hit me.”
“I’m the man who should have been there,” I said. I walked over to him and knelt in the dust of the floor, bringing myself level with his eyes. “I’m the man who’s going to make sure no one ever puts you on your knees again.”
I reached out, wanting to touch his shoulder, but I stopped. My hands were covered in the callouses of a thousand miles and the stains of things I’d had to do to survive. I was a man of violence. And looking at Caleb, I saw the one thing I feared most: that he would inherit it.
“Elias, take him to the back,” I said, standing up. “Give him something to eat. Real food. And find him some clothes that aren’t a target.”
“Where are you going, Thorne?” Elias asked.
“I need to talk to my brothers,” I said. “We have a pilgrimage to plan.”
I walked out into the courtyard. Deacon, Saint, and Sinner were waiting by the bikes. They looked like statues carved from shadow.
“The boy is mine,” I said, my voice carrying across the yard.
Saint, a man with a scarred face and a quiet disposition, nodded. “We figured that out when you didn’t kill Vance on the spot, Bishop. You were thinking too hard for it to be anything else.”
“The Pope lied to us for eighteen years,” I said. “He told me Maria was dead. He hid my son in the shadows so he could grow him like a crop of weeds. He was going to sell him into the Vipers.”
Sinner spat into the dirt. “That’s a holy war, Bishop. You know what happens if we cross that line. The peace has held since the wedding. If we go after the Pope, the whole state burns.”
“Then let it burn,” I said. I looked at the silver cross on my vest, then at the chapel doors where Caleb had disappeared. “I spent eighteen years thinking I was a widower. It turns out I’ve just been a man who didn’t know how to protect what was his. I’m not making that mistake twice.”
“What’s the move?” Deacon asked, his hand already on his ignition.
“We don’t go for the compound yet,” I said. “We go to the source. I need to see the man who signed the death certificate.”
“Dr. Aris?” Deacon frowned. “He’s been the Vipers’ doctor since the seventies. He won’t talk.”
“He’ll talk,” I said, climbing onto my bike. “I’m not the Bishop today. I’m just a father who’s eighteen years late for a conversation.”
I kicked the engine to life. The roar of the Harley filled the courtyard, drowning out the wind and the whispers of the ghosts. I didn’t look back at the chapel. I couldn’t. Not until I had the truth, all of it, and a way to make the Pope pay for every second of the life he had stolen from me.
Chapter 3
The clinic was a squat, windowless building on the outskirts of Fort Sumner, sitting alone amidst a graveyard of rusted farm equipment. It didn’t have a sign, but everyone in the county knew that if you had a wound you couldn’t explain to the sheriff, you went to see Aris.
We arrived just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, turning the sky into a bruised purple. I left Saint and Sinner outside to watch the road. Deacon followed me to the door, his presence a silent, looming threat.
I didn’t knock. I kicked the door open.
The waiting room was empty, smelling of Pine-Sol and old cigarettes. A fan whirred overhead, wobbling on its mount. From the back, a man’s voice called out, “I told you, I’m closed for the night. Come back tomorrow.”
I walked through the swinging doors into the exam area. Dr. Aris was sitting at a cluttered desk, his back to us. He was a small man, his hair a frantic halo of white, his shoulders slumped under a stained lab coat.
“I said I’m closed,” he repeated, turning his chair around.
He stopped mid-sentence when he saw the “Bishop” patch. He looked at me, then at Deacon, and then at the silver .44 I had tucked into my waistband. He didn’t look surprised; he looked tired. He looked like a man who had been waiting for a debt to be collected for a very long time.
“Thorne,” he said, his voice thin. “I figured you’d find your way here eventually. Word travels fast from the Oasis.”
“Then you know why I’m here,” I said. I pulled up a stool and sat across from him, my knees nearly touching his. “I want to talk about Maria Valdez.”
Aris sighed, a long, rattling sound. He reached for a pack of cigarettes on his desk, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t get one out. Deacon stepped forward, took the pack, lit a cigarette, and handed it to him.
“Thank you,” Aris whispered. He took a long drag, the smoke curling around his wrinkled face. “Eighteen years. I kept the records. I knew the Pope was playing a dangerous game, but a man doesn’t say no to him and keep his hands.”
“You told me she died,” I said. I leaned in, my voice vibrating with the pressure of a decade and a half of grief. “I held her hand in the ambulance. You told me she went into arrest in the OR. You told me there was nothing you could do.”
“She did go into arrest,” Aris said, looking at the wall. “But we brought her back. She was strong, Thorne. Stronger than any woman I’ve ever seen. But before she could even open her eyes, the Pope was in the room. He had two men with him. They didn’t ask me to lie. They told me I would.”
“Where did he take her?”
“A private clinic in Juárez. He kept her there until the boy was born. He told her you were dead, too. He told her the Saints had been wiped out in retaliation for the wedding.”
The room seemed to tilt. I reached out and grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself. “He told her I was dead?”
“It was the only way to keep her quiet,” Aris said. “But Maria… she was smart. She realized the lie. After the boy was born, she escaped. I don’t know how, but she got across the border. She disappeared into the system. The Pope searched for her for years, but she was like a ghost.”
“And the boy?”
“She kept him with her. Until she couldn’t anymore. I heard she got sick, a few years back. Real sick. That’s when the Vipers finally caught the scent. They couldn’t find her, but they found the kid. They’ve been watching him, waiting for him to get old enough to bring in. The Pope wanted his grandson, Thorne. But he wanted him broken. He wanted to make sure the boy never knew who his real father was.”
I felt a wave of nausea. The cruelty of it was breathtaking. It wasn’t just a hit; it was a slow-motion execution of a family’s soul. The Pope hadn’t just taken my wife; he had taken her hope, and then he had tried to take our son’s future.
“Where is she buried?” I asked. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, someone far away.
“She’s not,” Aris said, finally meeting my eyes. “She died in a hospice in Albuquerque three months ago. No name. Just a Jane Doe. The Pope made sure of that. But she left something for the boy. She knew the Vipers were closing in.”
“The locket,” I said.
“And the lace,” Aris added. “She kept that scrap of her veil all those years. She told me once, when I saw her in Juárez, that as long as she had a piece of that day, she was still yours. She wasn’t his daughter anymore. She was your wife.”
I closed my eyes. For eighteen years, I had walked this earth feeling half-empty, believing the universe had simply been cruel. I had built a club around the idea of “mercy” because I thought I was the only one who knew what it felt like to have none. But Maria had been out there. She had been fighting, surviving, and holding onto a piece of a ruined wedding veil while I sat in a chapel and pretended to be a priest.
“You should have told me,” I said, opening my eyes. “You should have found a way.”
“And then what?” Aris asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “You would have ridden into Juárez and died. The boy would have been raised by the Pope from day one. At least this way, he had her for a while. At least this way, he’s still himself.”
“He’s on his knees scrubbing chrome for the men who killed his mother,” I spat. “He’s not himself. He’s a victim.”
“Then change it,” Aris said. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy manila envelope. “The Pope is hosting a ‘Coronation’ tonight at the Vipers’ compound. He’s going to announce his successor. He thinks he’s won. He thinks you’re still the broken man who hides in a church.”
I took the envelope. Inside were photos, maps, and a list of names. It was a dossier of every Viper who had been in the chapel that day.
“Why are you giving me this?” I asked.
“Because I’m tired of being afraid,” Aris said. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “And because Maria deserved better than a Jane Doe grave.”
I stood up and looked at Deacon. He was already checking the action on his sidearm. He didn’t need to be told.
“We ride back to the Cathedral,” I said. “We gather the flock.”
We left Aris sitting in his dark office, a small man lost in the smoke of his own regrets. As we rode back through the desert, the moon rose, large and pale, casting a silver light over the sagebrush. I felt a strange sense of calm. The weight was still there, but it had shifted. It wasn’t the weight of grief anymore. It was the weight of a weapon being leveled.
When we got back to the Cathedral, the courtyard was full of bikes. Word had spread. Every Saint of Mercy within a hundred miles was there, their leather vests gleaming in the moonlight. Saint and Sinner were standing by the gate, their faces set in grim lines.
I walked into the hall. Caleb was sitting by the fire, wearing a clean shirt Father Elias had found for him. He looked up as I entered, and for the first time, he didn’t look away.
“Caleb,” I said. I walked over and sat next to him. “I spoke to the man who lied to me.”
The boy didn’t say anything. He just watched me, waiting.
“Your mother didn’t die at the church,” I said. “She fought for you. She kept you safe for seventeen years while a very powerful man tried to find you. She never forgot who you were, and she never forgot me.”
I reached out and placed my hand on his shoulder. This time, I didn’t pull back. “The man who did this, the man who calls himself the Pope… he’s your grandfather. But he’s not your family.”
“I know,” Caleb whispered. “He came to see me once, when I was in the home. He told me I had a dark heart. He told me the only way to save myself was to serve him.”
“He was wrong,” I said. “The only thing in your heart is her. And me. And we’re going to go tell him that.”
“Are we going to fight?” Caleb asked. There was fear in his voice, but there was something else, too. A spark of the Bishop’s fire.
“No,” I said, standing up and looking at the rows of armed men waiting in the courtyard. “We’re going to hold a service. And by the time it’s over, the Pope is going to wish he had let us stay in our church.”
I turned to Deacon. “Gear up. We leave at midnight.”
As I walked out to my bike, I felt the scrap of lace in my pocket. It was small, light, and carried the weight of a thousand sins. I looked at the silver cross on my vest and realized for the first time that I wasn’t a priest because I was holy. I was a priest because I knew exactly how much blood it took to wash a soul clean.
Chapter 4
The Vipers’ compound was a fortress of corrugated metal and chain-link fence, nestled into a canyon where the shadows stayed long even in the heat of the day. It was a place built on the paranoia of a man who knew he had earned his enemies. Tonight, the gates were open, guarded by men with long guns and cold eyes, welcoming the surrounding chapters for the Pope’s “Coronation.”
We watched from a ridge a half-mile away. The Saints of Mercy were a sea of black leather and silent engines. I stood at the front, the wind whipping my hair, the Magnum heavy against my hip. Caleb stood beside me. I’d given him a vest—no patches yet, just plain black leather—and a pair of heavy boots. He looked like a shadow of the man I used to be.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, looking down at him. “You can stay here with Elias.”
Caleb shook his head. He was holding the locket in his hand, his thumb working the silver surface. “He tried to make me think I was nothing. I want him to see that I’m yours.”
I felt a surge of something that wasn’t quite pride and wasn’t quite fear. It was the terrifying realization that I was responsible for this boy’s soul. If I led him into this fire, I was the one who would have to pull him out.
“Deacon,” I said.
“Ready, Bishop,” the big man rumbled. He had a shotgun slung over his shoulder and a belt full of shells. “The brothers are itching. Eighteen years of ‘mercy’ is a long time for men like us.”
“This isn’t a massacre,” I said, my voice carrying back to the front ranks. “We’re going in for the Pope. If anyone stands between us and him, that’s their choice. But I want the Old Man alive. I want him to see what his ‘legacy’ looks like.”
I climbed onto my bike and kicked it over. The sound was a thunderclap, echoed instantly by fifty other engines. We didn’t approach quietly. We didn’t sneak. We rode down that canyon road like the Four Horsemen, our headlights cutting through the dust, the roar of our pipes announcing the end of the peace treaty.
The guards at the gate didn’t even have time to raise their rifles. We rode through them, the sheer momentum of the pack forcing them back. We swerved into the central courtyard, a wide expanse of dirt surrounded by trailers and a large wooden stage where the Pope was standing.
The “Coronation” was in full swing. There were barrels of beer, roaring fires, and at least a hundred Vipers in their green-and-gold colors. When we skidded to a halt, the music stopped. The laughter died. A hundred hands went to a hundred waistbands.
I didn’t wait for them to move. I rode my bike straight to the foot of the stage, the tires spitting gravel. I killed the engine and stood up, my boots hitting the ground with a heavy, final sound.
The Pope was an old man, older than Elias, but he carried his age like a weapon. He was dressed in a white leather vest—a mocking inversion of my own—and a Stetson that shaded eyes as cold as a snake’s. He held a silver-headed cane in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.
“Bishop Thorne,” the Pope said, his voice a cultured rasp that didn’t belong in this dirt. “You’re late for the party. And you’ve brought quite a congregation.”
“The party’s over, Arthur,” I said, using his real name. The word felt like an insult in this place. “I’ve come to collect what you stole.”
The Pope chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. “I haven’t stolen anything that didn’t belong to me by right of blood. This territory, this club… it’s all mine.”
“I’m not talking about the dirt,” I said. I reached back and pulled Caleb forward. The boy stumbled slightly but caught himself, standing tall under the glare of the Vipers’ lights. “I’m talking about my son.”
A murmur went through the crowd. The Vipers looked at Caleb, then at me, then at the Pope. The logic of the world was shifting beneath their feet.
The Pope’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Caleb with a mixture of contempt and a strange, flickering fear. “The boy is a Valdez. He carries my name. He was meant to lead this club into the next generation.”
“He carries his mother’s heart,” I said. “And he carries my name. And you… you’re just a man who lied to a grieving husband and a dying woman because you were too small to handle the truth.”
“I did what was necessary to protect my daughter from a life of filth!” the Pope shouted, his voice cracking. He gestured to the surrounding bikers. “Look at this! This is power! This is what I offered her!”
“You offered her a grave,” I said. I stepped onto the first stair of the stage. A dozen Vipers moved forward, their guns drawn. Behind me, the Saints of Mercy did the same. The air was electric, a single twitch away from a bloodbath.
“Stop,” Caleb said.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it had a clarity that cut through the tension. He stepped past me, walking up the stairs until he was ten feet from the Pope. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the locket. He held it up, the scrap of lace fluttering in the wind.
“My mother told me that this was the only holy thing she ever saw,” Caleb said, his voice steady. “She said it was the part of her that you couldn’t touch. She kept it in Juárez. She kept it in the shelters. She kept it when she was dying.”
He looked the Pope in the eye. “She didn’t want your power. She wanted his mercy.”
The Pope stared at the lace, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He raised his cane, the silver head glinting. “She was a traitor! And you’re a mistake!”
He swung the cane at Caleb. I didn’t think. I lunged forward, catching the heavy wood in my left hand. The impact sent a jar of pain up my arm, but I didn’t let go. I wrenched the cane out of his hand and threw it into the dirt.
I grabbed the Pope by the collar of his white vest and slammed him back against the wooden post of the stage. The whiskey glass shattered on the floorboards.
“Look at him,” I hissed, my face inches from his. “Look at the ‘mistake’ you tried to bury.”
The Vipers were surging forward now. Vance, his head bandaged from where I’d hit him at the truck stop, was leading the charge, a knife in his hand.
“Kill them!” the Pope screamed. “Kill them all!”
A gunshot rang out—not from me, and not from the Pope. It came from the back of the crowd. Deacon had fired a round into the air, the roar of the shotgun commanding silence.
“The next one goes into the barrels!” Deacon yelled. “And we all go up in a ball of fire! Sit down!”
The Vipers hesitated. They were bikers, not martyrs. They looked at the massive Saint presence, then at the shattered man on the stage, and then at the boy holding a piece of a wedding veil. The myth of the Pope’s absolute power was crumbling.
I turned back to the Pope. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the scrap of lace Caleb had given me back at the Cathedral. I held it in front of his face.
“This is the last thing you’ll ever see of her,” I said. “I’m taking my son home. And you… you’re going to stay here in this hole you’ve dug for yourself. No one is coming for your coronation, Arthur. The Saints are taking the highway. The Vipers are done.”
I let go of him, and he slumped to the floor, a pathetic, broken old man in a white vest that was already stained with dirt.
I turned to Caleb. He was shaking, the adrenaline finally fading, but he didn’t look like a victim anymore. He looked like a man who had seen the monster and realized it was just a man.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We walked down the stairs, through the parting sea of green and gold. The Vipers didn’t move. They watched us with a mixture of awe and resentment. We reached our bikes, and I helped Caleb onto the back.
As we rode out of the canyon, I looked back once. The fires were still burning, but the compound looked smaller, darker. The war wasn’t over—the Pope would try to retaliate, and the highway would still be dangerous—but the secret was out. The lie had lost its teeth.
We rode back toward the Cathedral, the cool night air washing the smell of the compound off us. I felt Caleb’s hands finally grip my waist, not out of fear, but for the first time, as a son holding onto his father.
I looked at the horizon, where the first hint of dawn was beginning to touch the red hills. I still had the locket in my pocket. I still had the scars of eighteen years of silence. But as the wind whipped past us, I realized that the Bishop didn’t need a church to find grace. He just needed someone to protect.
I stopped the bike at the edge of the ridge overlooking our home. The Cathedral sat silent in the twilight, a sanctuary waiting for its people.
“We have work to do, Caleb,” I said, my voice soft.
“I know,” he replied. “But I’m not going back to the truck stop.”
“No,” I said, looking at the silver cross on my vest. “From now on, you only ride with the Saints.”
We sat there for a moment, watching the sun rise over New Mexico, two men built from the same blood and the same ruined lace, finally heading home.
Chapter 5
The adrenaline didn’t leave my system all at once; it drained away slowly, like oil leaking from a cracked casing, leaving me cold and brittle in the midnight air of the Cathedral courtyard. We had ridden back from the Vipers’ canyon in a tight, defensive knot, the roar of fifty engines serving as a warning to any green-and-gold shadow that might have been lurking in the sagebrush. But once the gates of the mission swung shut and the kickstands clicked down, the silence that rushed in was heavier than the noise.
I watched Caleb climb off the back of my bike. He moved like an old man, his joints stiff, his gaze fixed on the dirt beneath his boots. He didn’t look at the brothers who were slapping each other on the back or checking their weapons. He didn’t look at the adobe walls that offered him a sanctuary he hadn’t asked for. He just stood there, his hands still hooked in front of him as if he were still gripping my waist.
“Caleb,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel being crushed.
He didn’t answer. He just turned and walked toward the chapel, his oversized hoodie swallowing his frame. He looked small—too small to be the center of a war that had been brewing for eighteen years.
Deacon approached me, pulling off his leather gloves. His face was a mask of soot and sweat, but his eyes were sharp. “The perimeter is set, Bishop. Saint and Sinner are on the ridge with the long guns. If the Pope sends a scouting party, they won’t make it to the gate.”
“He won’t send scouts, Deacon,” I said, leaning against the hot chrome of my Harley. “Arthur doesn’t do anything halfway. He’s sitting in that canyon right now, looking at the mess I made of his stage, and he’s realizing that the only way he keeps his club is if he puts my head on a spike. He’s gathering everyone. The whole damn charter.”
“Then we call in the out-of-state chapters,” Deacon said, his hand straying to the knife on his belt. “If this is the end of the treaty, we don’t fight it with fifty men. We fight it with five hundred.”
I looked at the chapel doors where Caleb had disappeared. “I didn’t start this to expand the territory, Deacon. I started it to get my son back. If I bring five hundred men into this county, the feds will be on us before the first shot is fired. We’d be handing the Pope exactly what he wants—a reason for the world to wipe us both out.”
“So what’s the move? We just sit here and wait for the hammer to fall?”
“We wait for the boy to breathe,” I said. “Go get some coffee. Tell the brothers to stay sharp, but keep the noise down. This is still a church, even if we’re the ones in the pews.”
I walked into the refectory, a long, low-ceilinged room with a scarred oak table that had seen a century of meals. Father Elias was there, stirring a pot of something that smelled like onions and cheap beef. Caleb was sitting at the far end of the table, his head resting in his hands. He hadn’t touched the glass of water in front of him.
I sat down two seats away from him, giving him space. The wood of the table was cool against my forearms. I realized my hands were covered in the dust of the Vipers’ compound, the gray silt of the canyon etched into my skin.
“You did well tonight,” I said quietly.
Caleb didn’t look up. “He called me a mistake. In front of everyone.”
“He’s a liar, Caleb. He’s been a liar since before you were born. He said that because he’s afraid of you. You’re the only thing in this world he can’t control, and that makes you the most dangerous thing he’s ever seen.”
“I don’t feel dangerous,” Caleb whispered. He finally looked at me, and I saw the residue of the truck stop in his eyes—the shame of being on his knees, the fear of the smoke. “I feel like I’m still back there. At the Oasis. Waiting for Vance to kick the bucket again.”
That was the problem with trauma. It didn’t care about the victory. You could win the fight, you could humiliate the bully, but the body remembered the coldness of the dirt.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice firm.
He looked.
“That shame you’re feeling? It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the man who put you there. You carried that lace for seventeen years. You kept her memory alive when I didn’t even know I had a memory to keep. You’re the strongest person in this room, Caleb. Including me. Especially me.”
Elias set a bowl of stew in front of the boy and another in front of me. He didn’t say a word, just squeezed my shoulder with a hand that felt like old parchment.
“Eat,” Elias said. “The body cannot hold the soul if the stomach is empty.”
Caleb took a hesitant bite. I watched him, realizing that I had no idea how to be a father. I knew how to lead men, how to maintain a bike, and how to read the tension in a room, but I didn’t know how to talk to a boy who had spent his life being told he was nothing.
The silence was broken by a sudden, sharp crack from outside.
I was on my feet before the sound had even finished echoing. My hand was on my .44, my thumb flicking the safety. I looked at Caleb, who had frozen, his spoon halfway to his mouth.
“Stay here,” I barked.
I ran out into the courtyard. The air was filled with the smell of cordite. One of the floodlights near the gate had been shattered, and a black SUV was roaring away down the dirt road, its tires kicking up a massive cloud of dust.
Deacon was already at the gate, his shotgun leveled. “Drive-by! Nobody’s hit, but they took out the light.”
“It’s a message,” I said, squinting into the darkness. “They’re testing the response time.”
“I’ll take a team and hunt them down,” Sinner said, stepping forward, his face twisted in a snarl.
“No,” I said. “That’s what they want. They want us to split up, to chase ghosts in the desert while they hit the main gate. Everyone back inside the perimeter. Now.”
I walked back into the refectory, my heart hammering. Caleb was standing by the window, his face pale in the dim light.
“They’re coming back, aren’t they?” he asked.
“Not tonight,” I said, though I didn’t know if I was lying. “They’re just rattling the cage.”
I walked over to the table and picked up the silver locket that Caleb had left sitting there. I looked at the scrap of lace—Maria’s lace. It was stained and worn, but it was the only piece of truth we had left.
“I need to tell you about your mother,” I said, sitting back down. “Not the version the Pope told you. The real one.”
Caleb sat. The fear in his eyes was still there, but curiosity was starting to bridge the gap.
“She was nineteen when I met her,” I began, my voice softening as the memories surged up. “She was the Pope’s daughter, but she used to sneak out of the compound to work at a clinic in the valley. She hated the club life. She hated the noise and the posturing. She used to say that people only wore leather because they were afraid of their own skin.”
I saw a ghost of a smile on Caleb’s face.
“She was the one who taught me that mercy isn’t weakness,” I continued. “I was just a soldier back then. A trigger-puller for the Saints. She looked at me and didn’t see a biker. She saw a man who was hiding behind a vest. On our wedding day… she was so happy. She thought we were going to be free.”
I paused, the image of the chapel aisle flashing before my eyes. The white dress turning red. The way the light had left her eyes.
“The Pope didn’t just want me dead,” I said. “He wanted to punish her for choosing a different life. He wanted to prove that she couldn’t escape him. But she did, Caleb. She escaped him even after the bullet hit her. She lived for you. Every day she was in Juárez, every day she was hiding in the shadows, she was winning. She won eighteen years of life that he tried to take.”
Caleb reached out and took the locket from my hand. He held it to his chest, his eyes closing. “She used to tell me stories about a king in a silver castle. She said he was waiting for us. I thought she was just making things up to make the shelters feel better.”
“I was no king,” I said, a bitter taste in my mouth. “And this is no castle. But I’m here now.”
“What happens if they win?” Caleb asked, opening his eyes. “If the Pope comes here with all those men?”
I looked at the adobe walls, at the crosses on the walls, and at the brothers waiting outside. I thought about the peace treaty I’d kept for nearly two decades, a peace built on a lie.
“He won’t win,” I said. “Because he’s fighting for a name. I’m fighting for a son. And in this desert, that’s the only thing that matters.”
I spent the rest of the night in the garage, working on my bike. It was the only way I knew how to process the pressure. I tore down the carburetor, cleaned the needles, and reassembled it with a precision that bordered on the obsessive. Deacon joined me halfway through, leaning against the workbench and lighting a cigarette.
“You’re thinking about the final stand,” Deacon said.
“I’m thinking about the residue,” I replied, not looking up from the wrench. “Even if we win, Deacon, what does it do to the boy? He’s seen me put a gun to a man’s head twice in twenty-four hours. He’s seen the Vipers’ blood on the stage. I wanted to give him a father, not a warlord.”
“You’re giving him a choice,” Deacon said. “Before you showed up at that truck stop, he didn’t have one. He was a piece of property. Now, he’s a man with a future. Even if that future has a few scars on it.”
“I just don’t want him to end up like us, Deacon. I don’t want him to look in the mirror at fifty and see a list of dead men instead of a face.”
“Then finish it,” Deacon said. “End the Pope. Not for the club. Not for the territory. End him so the boy never has to look over his shoulder again.”
I tightened the last bolt on the carb and stood up, wiping the grease from my hands. The sun was just starting to touch the edge of the sky, a thin line of fire over the hills.
“Gather the brothers,” I said. “We’re not waiting for them to come to us. We’re going to end the dynasty tonight.”
I walked back to the chapel. Caleb was asleep on one of the benches, wrapped in a blanket Father Elias had provided. He looked peaceful, his breathing steady, the locket still clutched in his hand. I stood there for a long time, watching him, realizing that for eighteen years, I had been a man without a purpose. I had been a Bishop without a god.
But as the light filled the room, touching the white lace that poked out of the silver heart, I knew exactly what I had to do. I was going to take the Saints of Mercy into the heart of the Vipers’ nest, and I was going to burn the Pope’s legacy to the ground. Not for revenge. Not for Maria. But so that the boy on the bench could finally wake up in a world where he was free to be whoever he wanted to be.
I knelt beside him and whispered a prayer I hadn’t used since I was a child. It wasn’t a prayer for safety, or for victory. It was a prayer for the boy to forget the smell of the smoke and the feel of the dirt. Then, I stood up, buckled my vest, and walked out to meet the dawn.
Chapter 6
The final ride didn’t feel like a war march; it felt like a funeral procession for a world that was already dead. We left the Cathedral at dusk, fifty bikes moving in a low-frequency hum that seemed to vibrate the very air. We didn’t use sirens, and we didn’t shout. We just rode, a river of black leather flowing toward the canyon where the Pope waited in his iron palace.
I had Caleb on the back again. I’d given him a helmet this time, a heavy piece of gear that hid his face and shielded him from the wind. I didn’t want him to see the violence that was coming, but I couldn’t leave him behind. The Cathedral was no longer a sanctuary; if we failed, the Vipers would burn it to the ground. The only safe place for him was with me.
We reached the mouth of the canyon just as the last of the light vanished. The Vipers had reinforced the gate. Two flatbed trucks were parked across the road, and the ridge was lined with men. They were waiting for us.
I pulled the Harley to a stop a hundred yards from the barrier. The Saints formed a line behind me, our headlights cutting through the dust like searchlights.
“Bishop!” a voice called from the trucks. It was Vance. He was standing on the bed of one of the flatbeds, a megaphone in his hand. “The Pope says you have one chance! Give us the boy, and you can ride back to your church! Otherwise, no one leaves this canyon!”
I didn’t use a megaphone. I just stood up, my voice carrying in the still canyon air. “Vance! Tell the Pope I’ve brought his penance! And tell him I’m not here to talk!”
I looked at Deacon. He nodded. He pulled a heavy flare gun from his vest and fired it into the air.
That was the signal.
From the ridges above the Vipers, a second group of riders appeared—the out-of-state chapters we’d contacted through the night. They hadn’t come for the territory; they’d come because the word had spread that a brother’s son was in danger. The Vipers were suddenly caught in a pincer.
The canyon exploded into noise. The Vipers on the ridge turned to face the new threat, and I kicked my bike into gear.
“Hold on!” I shouted to Caleb.
I throttled the Harley, the engine screaming as I raced toward the gap between the trucks. Deacon was beside me, his shotgun booming, clearing the path of any man brave enough to stand in the way. We hit the barrier at sixty miles an hour, my bike leaping through a narrow opening as the wooden crates the Vipers had piled up shattered like glass.
We were inside.
The compound was a chaos of muzzle flashes and shouting men. I didn’t stop to fight the rank-and-file. I had one target. I rode straight for the main building, a reinforced structure of stone and steel where the green-and-gold flag flew highest.
I skidded to a halt at the base of the stairs. I helped Caleb off the bike and shoved him behind a low stone wall. “Stay down! Don’t move until I come for you!”
“Dad!” Caleb shouted. It was the first time he’d used the word. It hit me harder than any bullet ever could.
“I’m coming back!” I yelled over the roar of the battle.
I turned and ran up the stairs, my .44 drawn. Two Vipers intercepted me at the door. I didn’t waste time with words. I used the butt of the Magnum to break the first one’s jaw and fired a round into the second one’s shoulder. They went down, and I kicked the heavy steel door open.
The interior was quiet, a stark contrast to the war outside. The air was thick with the smell of expensive cigars and old leather. At the far end of the room, sitting in a high-backed chair that looked like a throne, was the Pope.
He was alone. He didn’t have a gun in his hand, just a glass of whiskey and a look of profound, weary disappointment.
“You’re a very persistent man, Thorne,” the Pope said, not moving. “Most men would have been content with the church I gave them.”
“You didn’t give me anything, Arthur,” I said, walking toward him, my boots echoing on the concrete floor. “You stole eighteen years of my life. You stole a mother from a boy. And you tried to turn my son into a shadow of yourself.”
The Pope looked at his drink. “I tried to save him. Maria was weak. She couldn’t handle the reality of this world. I thought if I brought him here, if I broke him early, he’d be strong enough to survive.”
“Strength isn’t what you have, Arthur,” I said, stopping five feet away. I leveled the Magnum at his heart. “Strength is what you protect. And you’ve never protected anything but your own pride.”
“So what now? You kill me in cold blood? In front of your club? That’s not very ‘Bishop’ of you.”
“I’m not the Bishop tonight,” I said. “I’m just a man closing a debt.”
I saw a movement in the shadows behind the Pope’s chair. Vance stepped out, his face twisted in a mask of desperation. He had a small submachine gun in his hands.
“Drop it, Bishop!” Vance screamed. “Drop it or I’ll cut you in half!”
I didn’t drop the gun. I didn’t even flinch. I looked Vance in the eye. “You really want to die for a man who calls you ‘the help,’ Vance? You think he cares if you live or die tonight?”
Vance’s hands were shaking. He looked at the Pope, then at me. “He’s my President! He’s—”
“He’s a ghost,” I said. “Look around you. His club is burning. His men are running. He’s sitting here waiting for the end because he’s too old to fight his own wars.”
The Pope didn’t look at Vance. He just stared at me. “Do it, Vance. Kill him.”
Vance hesitated. In that second of doubt, the door behind me burst open. Caleb was there. He wasn’t supposed to be, but he was. He was holding a heavy iron wrench he’d found in the garage, his face set in a line of grim determination.
“Leave him alone!” Caleb shouted.
Vance turned the gun toward the boy.
Everything went into slow motion. I felt the weight of the .44 in my hand, the tension in my trigger finger. I saw Maria’s eyes in the boy’s face, and I saw the darkness of the Pope’s legacy in the barrel of Vance’s gun.
I fired.
The bullet caught Vance in the chest before he could pull the trigger. He collapsed backward, the submachine gun clattering to the floor.
Silence rushed back into the room.
I looked at the Pope. He was staring at Vance’s body, his face suddenly very old and very small. The myth of his power had finally evaporated, leaving nothing but a man in a white vest sitting in a dark room.
I walked over to the Pope. I didn’t fire again. I reached out and grabbed him by the front of his vest, hauling him out of his chair. I dragged him toward the door, my grip like iron.
“What are you doing?” the Pope gasped, his feet dragging on the floor.
“I’m showing you the end of the world,” I said.
I dragged him out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard. The battle was over. The Vipers were being disarmed, their vests stripped from their backs. The Saints of Mercy held the canyon.
I shoved the Pope against the railing. “Look at them, Arthur. Look at the men you spent fifty years building. They’re nothing. They’re just people who are glad it’s over.”
I turned to the crowd below. “Saints! The Pope is done! The Vipers are dissolved! Any man who wants to ride out of here alive leaves his patches in the dirt! Now!”
One by one, the Vipers dropped their green-and-gold vests. It was a silent, humiliating surrender, a sea of discarded leather forming a pile in the center of the courtyard.
I looked back at the Pope. He was weeping now—not out of sorrow, but out of the sheer, crushing weight of his own failure.
“You should have killed me,” he whispered.
“No,” I said, letting go of his vest. “I want you to live. I want you to spend the rest of your days in a small room somewhere, knowing that your name is gone. Knowing that the only thing you left behind was a boy who hates you.”
I walked back to Caleb, who was standing by the door. I took the wrench from his hand and tossed it aside. I pulled him into a hug, my arms shaking, my heart finally starting to slow down.
“You’re okay,” I whispered. “It’s over.”
We walked down the stairs together, passing the pile of green-and-gold leather. We didn’t look back at the balcony. We didn’t look back at the canyon.
We rode out of the Vipers’ nest as the sun began to rise, a pale, clean light washing over the red hills. We reached the Cathedral an hour later. The gates were open, and Father Elias was standing in the courtyard, his hands folded in prayer.
I helped Caleb off the bike. He looked at the mission walls, at the crosses, and at the brothers who were finally relaxing. He looked like he had finally found his breath.
“Caleb,” I said, pulling the locket from my pocket. I handed it to him. “This belongs in the chapel. Next to her photo.”
The boy took the locket. He walked into the hall and placed it on the altar, right next to the dried rose and the picture of Maria. He stood there for a long time, his head bowed.
I walked over to Elias. “The peace treaty is gone, Elias. But the war is over.”
“And what now, Thorne?” the old man asked.
“Now we build something that isn’t a church of scars,” I said. “We build a home.”
I walked back outside and sat on the bench where I had spent so many years staring at the horizon. But I wasn’t looking at the distance anymore. I was looking at my son, who was walking out of the chapel to join me.
He sat down next to me, his shoulder brushing mine. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. The desert was quiet, the air was clear, and for the first time in eighteen years, the Bishop had nothing left to confess.
The weight was gone. The residue of the smoke and the dirt had been washed away by the dawn. I looked at the silver cross on my vest and realized it wasn’t a symbol of suffering anymore. It was just a piece of metal.
I reached up and unpinned the cross, holding it in my palm for a moment before dropping it into the dust.
“Let’s go inside, Caleb,” I said. “I think it’s time we learned how to be a family.”
We walked into the Cathedral together, the doors closing behind us, leaving the ghosts of the highway to the wind and the sand. The story of the Bishop was over. The story of the father was just beginning.
