Chapter 1
The wind in Chicago doesn’t just blow; it carves. It’s a jagged blade of ice that sweeps off Lake Michigan, slicing through wool coats and skin until it finds the bone. Tonight, the bone was cold.
I sat in “The Rusty Link,” a dive bar on the edge of Cicero where the air smelled like stale beer and broken dreams. I was nursing a neat bourbon, watching the neon sign flicker like a dying pulse. They call me “Saint” Nick. Not because I’m holy, but because I’m the guy you call to bury the sins. I’m the fixer for the Iron Saints MC. If a brother gets caught with a body, I make it vanish. If the books don’t match, I find the missing numbers.
My phone buzzed against the scarred wood of the bar. One text.
“They got him. Warehouse 4. It’s done.”
I took a slow sip of the bourbon. It burned, but it didn’t touch the frost in my chest. “Him” was Elias. My younger brother. My only blood. He was the golden boy who’d traded his potential for a needle and a gambling debt that could fund a small war.
For years, the Iron Saints—specifically the Club President, “Pops” Miller—had looked at Elias as a liability. And because I protected Elias, I was seen as a man with a divided heart. In this life, a divided heart gets you buried in a shallow grave.
I needed to prove my absolute loyalty. I needed to move up. I needed a seat at the table that didn’t come with a “maybe.” So, I had orchestrated a little drama. I’d paid a local Russian crew—guys who owed me favors—to “kidnap” Elias over his debts. I would “rescue” him, eliminate the “threat,” and look like the hero who put the Club’s interests over his own blood’s stupidity.
The door of the bar swung open, bringing a gust of snow and Jax, the club’s enforcer. Jax was six-foot-four of muscle and bad intentions. He hated me because I used my brain more than my fists.
“Nick,” Jax barked, his voice like gravel in a blender. “Pops wants you. Now. It’s about your brother.”
I put the glass down. My heart didn’t skip a beat. I’d practiced this. “What about him?”
“The Russians,” Jax said, a sick grin spreading across his face. “They sent a finger to the clubhouse. They want fifty grand, or the rest of him comes back in a trash bag.”
My stomach did a slow, sickening roll. A finger? That wasn’t the deal. I’d told the Russians to scare him, maybe rough him up. But no permanent damage.
“Let’s go,” I said, my voice steady even as a cold sweat broke out under my leather cut.
As we walked out into the biting Chicago night, I realized the game had changed. I had set a fire to stay warm, but the wind was shifting, and I was starting to smell my own skin burning.
Chapter 2
The Iron Saints clubhouse was a converted warehouse that felt more like a fortress. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of motor oil, cigarette smoke, and the heavy, electric tension of men preparing for violence.
Pops Miller sat at the head of the long oak table, his silver hair slicked back, his eyes like two pieces of flint. On the table, sitting on a greasy napkin, was a severed pinky finger. I recognized the jagged scar on the knuckle. Elias had gotten that when we were kids, trying to jump a fence in the South Side.
“Nick,” Pops said, his voice deceptively soft. “You’ve spent ten years telling me your brother isn’t a liability. You told me he was under control.”
“He is,” I lied, my throat tight.
“This doesn’t look like control.” Pops flicked the napkin. “This looks like a mess. And the Iron Saints don’t pay for other people’s messes. The Russians claim he owes them for a shipment that went missing. A shipment he was supposed to be watching.”
That was the lie I’d planted. I’d told the Russians to claim Elias stole from them. It was supposed to be a ruse to let me “handle” it internally. But they were playing their own game now.
“I’ll fix it, Pops,” I said. “I’ll go to Warehouse 4. I’ll get him back and I’ll settle the debt. On my own.”
“No,” Jax stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. “Pops thinks you’re too close to this. I’m going with you. To make sure the ‘Saint’ doesn’t let his halo get in the way of Club business. If the kid is a thief, we don’t bring him back. We finish what the Russians started.”
My pulse hammered against my ribs. If Jax went, he’d see the Russians. He’d see they weren’t actually trying to kill me. He’d see the strings I’d been pulling.
“He’s my brother, Jax,” I said, leaning into the role. “I deserve the first shot.”
“You deserve to prove you’re one of us,” Pops countered. “Take Jax. Take the van. Bring me a resolution, Nick. Not an excuse.”
We drove through the slushy streets in silence. Jax kept checking his Glock, a predatory hum vibrating in his chest. I stared out the window at the passing streetlights, thinking about the day our mother died. She’d made me swear to look after Elias. “He’s got a soft heart, Nick. Don’t let the world harden it.”
I’d failed her a long time ago. I’d hardened my own heart to survive, and now I was using my brother’s life as a chess piece.
We pulled up to the industrial district near the shipping canal. Warehouse 4 was a rotted tooth of a building, surrounded by rusted chain-link fence.
“I’ll go in the back,” I suggested. “You take the front.”
“Nice try,” Jax sneered. “We go in together. Door to door.”
We moved through the shadows. The cold was so intense it felt like the air was shattering. We reached the side entrance. I kicked it open, gun drawn, praying to a God I didn’t believe in that the Russians had the sense to keep their mouths shut.
Inside, the lights were harsh. Elias was tied to a metal chair in the center of the room. He looked pathetic—beaten, shivering, his hand wrapped in a bloody rag. Standing over him was Viktor, a man I’d shared many drinks with.
Viktor looked at me, then at Jax. He saw the “cut” on Jax’s back and his eyes narrowed. He knew the plan didn’t involve an enforcer.
“Nick,” Viktor called out, his Russian accent thick as mud. “You’re late. The price just went up.”
“Shut up, Viktor,” I snapped, trying to signal him with my eyes. “Where’s the money Elias took?”
Elias looked up, his eyes puffed shut. “Nick? Nick, help me… I didn’t take anything. I swear! They’re lying!”
“Shut up, kid!” Jax roared, stepping into the light.
Viktor laughed, a cold, dry sound. He looked at me and winked—a small, subtle gesture that felt like a death sentence. “Your brother is a bad liar, Nick. Just like you.”
My heart stopped. Jax’s head turned slowly toward me.
“What’s he mean by that, Saint?” Jax whispered.
Chapter 3
The air in the warehouse turned into lead. I could hear the drip of a leaky pipe somewhere in the darkness, rhythmic and mocking.
“He’s trying to get in your head, Jax,” I said, my gun still trained on Viktor, though my aim was shaking. “He’s a Russian. They lie for breakfast. Move in and grab Elias.”
Jax didn’t move. He was a brute, but he had the survival instincts of a street dog. He could smell the rot in the room. “Viktor, right? Why’d you call him Nick? Most people call him Saint.”
Viktor stepped forward, sensing the rift. He wasn’t happy about the extra heat Jax brought, and he was clearly looking for a way to leverage the situation. “I call him Nick because we are old friends. We had a deal, didn’t we, Nicky? You bring the brother, I play the boogeyman, and you get your promotion.”
Elias let out a choked sob. “Nick? What is he talking about?”
“He’s lying!” I screamed, the sound echoing off the corrugated metal walls. I fired a shot—not at Viktor, but into the floor near his feet. “Get back!”
“Whoa!” Viktor ducked, his own men pulling their weapons from the shadows. “You’re shooting at me now? After I cut off a finger for your little play-act?”
Jax’s gun didn’t point at the Russians anymore. It pointed at me.
“You set this up,” Jax said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal register. “You put the Club in a position to go to war with the Russians for a promotion? You sold out your own blood to look like a hero?”
“Jax, listen to me—”
“I’m listening to the sound of a dead man talking,” Jax growled.
Suddenly, the warehouse doors burst open. It wasn’t more bikers. It was the blue and red strobe of police lights reflecting off the snow outside.
“CPD! Drop the weapons!”
It was a setup within a setup. I looked at the door and saw Detective Vance, the dirty cop who worked both the MC and the Russians. He walked in with his hands in his pockets, a smug grin on his face.
“Evening, boys,” Vance said. “Pops called me. Said there might be some unauthorized business going on tonight. Seems he didn’t trust his ‘Saint’ as much as you thought, Nick.”
Pops had played me. He’d known all along. He’d sent Jax as bait and Vance as the hammer. In the MC, loyalty isn’t earned; it’s tested through fire. And I had just walked right into the furnace.
“Kill them all,” Jax yelled, turning his gun toward the Russians.
The warehouse erupted into chaos. Gunfire shredded the air. I dove behind a stack of wooden pallets, my mind racing. I looked over at Elias. He was still tied to the chair, screaming, caught in the crossfire of a war I had started.
I had a choice. I could run out the back, disappear into the Chicago night, and leave my brother to die for my sins. Or I could try to be the hero I’d pretended to be.
I looked at the exit. Then I looked at Elias.
“I’m coming, kid!” I yelled, lunging through the hail of bullets.
Chapter 4
The noise was deafening. The smell of cordite and ozone filled my lungs as I crawled across the oil-stained floor. Bullets sparked off the metal legs of the chair where Elias sat.
“Nick! Get away from me!” Elias screamed. His face was a mask of betrayal far worse than the physical pain of his missing finger. “You did this! You gave them my name!”
“I was trying to save us both, Elias!” I shouted, reaching him and fumbling with the zip-ties on his wrists. My hands were slick with his blood. “I thought I could control them!”
“You don’t control anything!” he sobbed.
I sliced through the plastic. “Run! Out the side door, through the canal pipes! Go!”
I pushed him toward the shadows just as Jax emerged from behind a forklift, his face smeared with grease and blood. He’d taken a hit to the shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice. He looked like a demon rising from the pits of Cicero.
“Saint!” Jax roared. “Pops wants your head on the table!”
Jax fired. I rolled behind a rusted engine block, the rounds thudding into the heavy iron. I returned fire, three shots, suppressed and clinical. One caught Jax in the thigh, sending him down to one knee.
Across the room, the Russians and the cops were in a full-blown execution. Vance wasn’t there to make arrests; he was there to clean the slate for Pops. He was picking off Viktor’s men with the cold precision of a man who’d done this a thousand times.
I saw Elias reach the side door, but he stopped. He looked back at me, his eyes wide. Behind me, Viktor had crawled out from the debris, a jagged piece of metal in his hand, aiming for my back.
“Nick, look out!” Elias yelled.
It was the old Elias. The kid who couldn’t help but care.
I spun around, kicking Viktor in the chest and sending him sprawling. I didn’t finish him. I didn’t have time. I grabbed a discarded submachine gun from a fallen Russian and laid down a cover fire that forced Jax and Vance to take cover.
“Go, Elias! Now!”
He disappeared into the night. I followed a second later, diving out into the sub-zero wind. The cold hit me like a physical blow. I ran toward the canal, my boots crunching on the frozen slush.
I reached the bridge, my breath coming in ragged gasps that turned to steam in the air. I looked back at the warehouse. It was quiet now. The screaming had stopped.
I found Elias huddled under the concrete pilings of the bridge, shivering so hard his teeth were chattering. He looked at me, and for a second, we were seven and ten again, hiding from our father’s belt in the basement of our old house.
“Is it over?” he whispered.
“No,” I said, looking at the black, icy water of the canal. “It’s just starting. Pops won’t stop until we’re both under the ice.”
“Why, Nick?” Elias stood up, his voice cracking. “I would have died for you. I thought you were the only good thing I had left.”
“I did it for the Club,” I said, the lie tasting like ash. “But I did it for you, too. I wanted a seat at the table so I could protect you forever. I wanted to be untouchable.”
“You’re a monster,” he said softly.
“Maybe,” I replied. “But I’m the monster that’s going to get you out of Chicago.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a burner phone. I had one more card to play. A secret even Pops didn’t know.
