Page 51 of Sinner’s Torment

Except for the back corner.

Except for what I’d hidden there decades ago and never touched since.

I walked past the workbench, past the shelves of paint cans and fertilizer bags, past all the trappings of my legitimate life, until I reached the far corner where shadows pooled thick and impenetrable.

The tarp was exactly where I’d left it, covered in dust and cobwebs and years of deliberate neglect. Gray and weathered and forgotten by everyone except me.

I reached for it, my fingers closing around the rough fabric.

Then I yanked it off in one violent motion, letting it fall to the floor in a heap.

And there it was.

My bike.

A 1982 Harley-Davidson Road King, black as sin and twice as deadly. Custom exhaust. Forward controls. Ape hangers that rose like the horns of some ancient beast. The Silver Shadows logo was still visible on the tank despite the years of dust—the silver and chrome winged bike that had seen too much death.

I stood there staring at it, my chest tight, my hands curling into fists at my sides. This machine had carried me through the best and worst years of my life. Had been there when I earned my patch. When I became VP. When I rode beside my brothers, men I would have died for, brothers who would have died for me.

Brothers who’d thrown me to the fucking wolves the second it became convenient.

The memories came flooding back whether I wanted them or not.

The federal agent’s body. The blood. The sirens. The way Titan had looked at me with his cold, calculating eyes and said, “Someone has to take the fall, Hex. Someone has to protect the club.”

And I’d done it. Because that was what brothers did. That was what the patch meant. That was what I’d sworn an oath to uphold.

I’d taken the fall. Pled guilty to manslaughter. Accepted the twenty-five-to-life sentence without protest. Walked into that prison with my head high and my mouth shut, believing—believing—that the club would be there when I got out. That they’d honor the sacrifice I was making.

Five years.

Five years in a six-by-eight cell. Five years of violence and degradation and soul-crushing monotony. Five years of nothing. No mail, no calls, no packages, no visits.

And then the truth came out.

Not through official channels. Not through lawyers or appeals, or any legitimate process.

Through a fucking rumor.

A whisper that made its way through the prison grapevine, carried by a transfer from another facility who’d heard it from a guard who’d heard it from someone on the outside.

The federal agent hadn’t been killed by accident. Hadn’t been collateral damage in a deal gone wrong.

He’d been executed.

By Titan’s piece-of-shit son, Stone.

Because the agent caught the little fucker in a gun-running operation on the side and became a liability that needed to be eliminated. Instead of coming to the club, Stone got antsy and killed the man, and then Titan used me to cover it up because he couldn’t handle his own fucking son. That motherfucker let me rot in prison for a crime his piece-of-shit kid committed.

All to protect the brat’s ass.

I got out five years later on a technicality my lawyer found buried in the prosecution’s case. Walked out of that prison with nothing but the clothes on my back and a rage so deep it felt like drowning.

I went straight to the Little Rock clubhouse. Walked through those doors like the ghost of everything they’d tried to bury, and I beat Stone within an inch of his life.

Would have killed him if the brothers hadn’t pulled me off. Would have painted the clubhouse floor with his blood and not felt a moment’s regret.

But they stopped me.