Page 43 of Sinner’s Torment

The clubhouse felt even emptier at night. Our footsteps echoed down the hallway, and the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry insects. Montana was already seated at the head of the table when we filed in, his face drawn and pale but his eyes burning with that familiar stubborn fire.

He didn’t wait for everyone to settle.

“I’m not agreeing to the patch-over,” he said flatly.

The room went still.

Mercy stiffened in his seat beside Montana, his jaw tightening. “Montana⁠—”

“I said no.” Montana’s voice was steel. “I’m not handing over my club to Reaper. I don’t give a fuck what the circumstances are.”

“Our circumstances,” Mercy said carefully, “are that we don’t have the numbers anymore. We don’t have the manpower to field off an attack if the Death Dogs come at us again. We’re sitting ducks, Montana. You know that.”

“Then we rebuild,” Montana shot back. “We recruit. We fortify. We do whatever the fuck we have to do, but we don’t bend the knee to that asshole.”

Fury sighed from across the table. “Montana, be reasonable⁠—”

“Reasonable?” Montana’s laugh was bitter. “You want me to be reasonable? I’ll burn this whole fucking clubhouse down before I hand over the keys to Reaper. That’s reasonable.”

Mercy took a deep breath, visibly trying to keep his composure. “This isn’t about pride. This is about survival. The Golden Skulls have the resources, the alliances, the infrastructure we need right now. Patching over doesn’t mean we disappear. It means we survive long enough to⁠—”

“To what?” Montana interrupted. “To become another chapter in Reaper’s empire? To lose everything my father built? Everything I’ve built?”

“It’s temporary,” Mercy insisted. “Once the Death Dogs are handled, once we’ve rebuilt our numbers⁠—”

“Nothing’s temporary in this world,” Montana said. “You know that as well as I do. Once we patch over, we’re done. The Soulless Sinners become a footnote in someone else’s story.”

The silence that followed was heavy, oppressive.

I understood Montana’s position. I did. The club was his legacy, his identity, the thing he’d devoted his entire life to. Asking him to give it up—even temporarily—was like asking him to cut off his own arm.

But Mercy was right too. We were vulnerable. Exposed. And the Death Dogs weren’t going to wait for us to get our shit together before they struck again.

Montana looked around the table, his gaze landing on each of us in turn. “I want suggestions. Real ones. Not this patch-over bullshit. How do we rebuild? How do we fortify? How do we make sure we’re ready when those fuckers come back?”

Vicious spoke first. “We need to reach out to our allies. The Bratva, the⁠—”

“Already done,” Montana said. “They’re providing security, but they’re not going to fight our war for us.”

“Then we recruit,” Payne offered. “Hit up the independent riders, the guys who’ve been sniffing around looking for a club.”

“That takes time,” Mercy said. “Time we don’t have.”

“Then we make time,” Montana snapped.

The door opened.

Shame walked in, casual as ever, and took a seat at the far end of the table. He didn’t apologize for being late. Didn’t explain where he’d been. Just settled into his chair and looked at Montana with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

I forgot about the patch-over.

Forgot about Montana’s stubbornness and Mercy’s logic and all the political bullshit that came with running a club.

“Did you find her?” I asked, my voice cutting through the tension.

Shame nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

Relief flooded through me, so intense it made my hands shake. “Where is she?”