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“I think he ain’t as human as he pretends.Man’s evil and evil invites sick company.”

That thought hasn’t left my spine since.

I inhale deep and swing off the bike.The fog curls around my boots, thick as wool.This whole damn town feels cold lately.Not weather-cold—bone-cold.The kind that seeps into the places you don’t talk about.

And Sophie.Shit.

She cornered me before sunrise, rage under her skin like a fever.

“She’s still here,” she snapped.

“Becki hasn’t left the cell.”

“I don’t care where she is.You said she’d be gone.”

She’s right.I did say that.But the longer this missing-girl mess grows teeth, the more I see the truth.Keeping Becki locked up is safer than sending her back into the Reverend’s waiting arms.

I didn’t tell Sophie that.

Didn’t tell her I could smell real fear on Becki.The kind you don’t fake.

And now Sophie can’t look at me without thinking I’m choosing someone else.

Maybe I am.

Maybe the past claws deeper than I want to admit.

Because truth is, I remember too much.

The cemetery has always been a fucked-up kind of sanctuary.Before the club.Before power.Before my name meant anything.Back when I was still Hudson, and she was just Becki Crowley with bare feet and a stolen flask.

She used to sit beside me under the angel statue, reading psalms like secrets, not scripture.Whispered questions about the stars like she believed I knew how to answer them.

We fucked in the graveyard too many times to count.

One night, before I patched in, she lit a candle between us.Read a verse about vengeance in a voice that trembled like it wasn’t fear, but excitement.

Then she leaned close enough I felt her breath slide down my neck.“Hudson.”

No one but Sophie calls me that now.

“Someday, Daddy will pay.”

Taking a swig of bourbon from the flask, I shake the memory off and move toward the gravestones.Fog snakes around the stones.The air hums, static, faint, wrong.The ground feels too soft beneath my boots.

Then something crouched behind a tombstone snaps its head toward me.

Tall.Ragged.Skin pale like moonlit bone.Eyes glowing like a dying coal.We stare at each other, the fog thickening between us.Then the thing flickers, gone in a blink.

No footsteps.No rustle.Just absence.

My heart slams high into my throat.My knife’s already drawn, and I didn’t even feel myself pull it.

“Son of a bitch,” I whisper to the empty graves.

Too much bourbon.

Returning to the clubhouse, unease hits like a punch.