Chapter 3

Jacquelyn POV:

The heavy oak door of the Clubhouse chapel muffled my footsteps as I stepped inside. The air was thick with the stale stench of expensive cigars and old money built on dirty road business. This was Church—the one room in the Reilly Choppers Clubhouse where only full-patch members had the right to sit, speak, and vote.

Martha Reilly sat at the head of the long wooden table, a bone china teacup resting in her wrinkled hands. She was the founder's widow—Club Mother. No Patch, no vote, but decades of club politics had given her a voice that could make or break a man's standing. She didn't look up immediately, letting the silence hang like a threat.

Jamir and Hillary had already taken their places. Hillary stood submissively behind Martha's left shoulder, gently massaging the old woman's neck, while Jamir sat at the table, his VP patch clearly visible on his cut, his jaw set in a smug grin.

Martha set her teacup down with a sharp clink against the saucer.

"I hear you caused a scene in the lower bays, Jackie," Martha said, her voice dry, aristocratic, and thoroughly condescending. "Tearing off your rocker? Demanding money? Who gave a stray orphan the right to throw tantrums under my roof?"

I stopped in the center of the room, standing straight, my hands resting loosely at my sides.

"It wasn't a tantrum, Martha. It was an official notice of severance."

Martha's hand slammed down on the armrest.

"Insolent! If the Reilly family hadn't offered you a roof when your father's garage burned to the ground, you would have been rotting in a ditch. You owe every breath you take to our name!"

"Mother is right," Jamir piped up from the table, leaning back with an easy smirk. "Jackie, apologize to Hillary, pour mother her tea, and I'll consider letting you keep your room in the back."

I didn't waste a breath on Jamir. I reached into my jacket pocket—past the patents I'd taken from the safe, touching the cold insurance policy I'd spent months scavenging from the garage's medical waste—and pulled out a sealed glass specimen vial filled with pale blue liquid. I tossed it onto the polished mahogany table.

The glass vial rolled to a stop right against Martha's china saucer.

Hillary's hands froze on Martha's shoulders. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like a corpse.

"Why don't you ask your brave little field medic what this is?" I asked, looking directly at Hillary.

Jamir frowned, leaning forward. "What the hell is that supposed to be? Hillary saved six brothers with her trauma kits on the highway!"

"She didn't save them," I said calmly. "She injected them with a banned central-nervous-system stimulant to mask acute hemorrhagic shock. It creates a temporary surge of energy while burning out their internal organs from the inside out."

I pulled a folded lab analysis from my pocket—the result of a risky, off-the-books favor I'd called in at the exchange weeks ago—and slapped it over the vial.

"Black-market chemical breakdown, certified by the downtown medical exchange. It has Hillary's supply requisition batch number stamped right on the header."

Martha's arrogant expression shattered. The Reilly shop might have run dirty weapons, but peddling banned neuro-stimulants inside coalition territory wasn't just a charter violation—it was a Mayhem-level offense. A capital crime inside the club.

"She's lying!" Hillary dropped to her knees beside Martha's chair, weeping uncontrollably. "Mother Reilly, she's framing me! She faked those papers because she hates me!"

"You vicious bitch!" Jamir roared, leaping up from the table.

He lunged across the rug, his fingers clawing straight for my throat.

I didn't flinch. As his weight shifted forward, I pivoted on my left heel, slipping inside his reach. My right hand dropped to my utility belt and whipped the heavy brass wrench from its holster in a seamless arc.

The solid metal caught Jamir squarely on his extended right elbow joint.

A sickening crunch echoed through the chapel.

Jamir let out a high-pitched shriek, clutching his shattered elbow as he collapsed to the floor, writhing in agony.

"Jamir!" Martha screamed, rising from her chair, her jewelry rattling. "You dare shed Reilly blood in my house? Guards!"

The door burst open. But it wasn't Martha's guards who stepped in first.

It was Rook—the club's Sergeant at Arms. He took one look at Jamir writhing on the floor, Hillary cowering in the corner, and me standing over them with a wrench in my hand.

"What the hell happened here?" he demanded.

I wiped a speck of grease from the wrench against my pants. "He lunged at me. I defended myself. Ask the Club Mother—she saw all of it."

Rook's eyes flicked to Martha. The old woman's jaw tightened. She could lie, but Rook wasn't just any member—he was the club's enforcer. He could read guilt on a face better than a priest.

"He swung first," Martha admitted through gritted teeth. "But she broke his elbow."

"Self-defense," I said flatly. "I told him in the garage—don't touch me. He didn't listen."

Rook studied me for a long moment, then looked down at Jamir. "You drew on an Old Lady. In Church. After you brought an unpatched Sweetbutt into a closed meeting. You're lucky she didn't do worse."

Jamir's face twisted with rage and humiliation, but he said nothing. Even he knew Rook was right.

Rook turned to Hillary. "And you. There's a vial on that table with your batch number on it. You're going to stay right here until we get a full vote."

Hillary's eyes went wide with panic. "A vote? On what?"

"Mayhem," Rook said coldly. "If what's in that vial is real, you're done. And anyone who covered for you—" his gaze landed on Jamir, "—is going to have a lot of explaining to do at the next Church."

Jamir went dead pale. In an outlaw club, mismanaging brother funds was one thing. But covering for someone who poisoned your own brothers? That was a betrayal the club would never forgive.

His VP patch suddenly looked a lot less secure.

He swallowed hard, his voice suddenly losing all its edge.

"Jackie... we don't need to burn the house down over this. We built this place together."

"Three days," I said, cutting him off. "Three point six million in my private account within seventy-two hours—the club's legal debt to me, paid in full. And the formal severance contract signed with no contest."

Martha clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. She looked at her screaming son on the floor, then at the damning papers on the table.

"Fine. You'll have your paperwork. Now destroy that report."

"You get the originals when the wire clears," I said.

Rook stepped aside to let me pass. He didn't say a word, but I could feel his eyes on my back. He was already calculating what this meant for the club—and for Jamir's future as VP.

I turned on my heel and walked out of Church, the heavy thud of my boots drowning out Jamir's pathetic whimpers. As I crossed the threshold into the long corridor, I caught the faint whisper of Martha giving a rushed, venomous order to the armed guard by the door.

I slid my hand down to the surgical scalpel in my boot. The old woman wasn't going to let me walk out of the compound that easily.