The knife pressed harder against Jason’s throat, drawing a thin line of blood that immediately turned cold in the night air.

Vargas leaned in close enough that Jason could smell him: whiskey, sweat, and something meaner, like rot that had learned how to talk. His grin was a cracked mirror.

“You think you’re a hero, street rat?” Vargas chuckled, the sound sharp and ugly. “You’re nothing. Just another piece of trash I’m going to throw away.”

Jason’s hands clenched around his stick.

Not a bat. Not a weapon you bought. Not a thing meant for hurting.

A piece of hickory scrap he’d turned into something he could trust.

It was slick tonight, his blood making the taped grip slippery, but he refused to let it fall. If he lost it, he lost the only promise he’d ever been able to keep.

Behind Vargas, three men in black vests and snake patches held a terrified little girl between them. Ten, maybe. Pink backpack with unicorns, straps twisted like she’d tried to wriggle free and couldn’t.

Her face was streaked with tears, but she wasn’t screaming anymore.

She’d gone quiet in that way kids go quiet when their fear has nowhere left to run.

Her eyes were locked on Jason’s.

Like she’d decided he was the last solid thing left in the world.

Jason tasted copper. His vision wobbled at the edges, like the alley was swaying.

“Get your hands off her,” he rasped.

Vargas barked a laugh and pushed the knife just enough to make Jason’s skin part.

“You got a mouth on you. That’s cute.”

Jason’s fingers tightened around the hickory.

Twelve hours earlier, his biggest worry had been finding a bench that wasn’t already claimed.

Now he was bleeding in a ruined lot with a cartel-trained psycho pressing steel to his throat, and a little girl about to be turned into leverage.

If Maya were still alive, she’d be ten this year.

The thought hit like a fist to the ribs.

Maya’s smile had been bright enough to make even foster-home walls look softer. She used to braid dandelions into chains and loop them around Jason’s wrist like he belonged to something good.

Then came the last placement. The last “family.” The last man who smiled too wide and looked too long.

Jason had reported it. Told the caseworker. Begged them to listen.

A week later, he’d come home and found Maya in the bathtub, an empty pill bottle on the tile, eight years old and convinced the world would not stop hurting.

The foster father said she’d been depressed.

The system believed him.

Jason didn’t.

Jason ran that same night, barefoot and shaking, because staying meant watching the lie get tucked into paperwork and filed away like it was neat.

He’d sworn something into the darkness.

If he ever saw another kid in danger, he wouldn’t wait for adults. He wouldn’t trust the system. He wouldn’t pray to the slow machinery of justice and hope it remembered to show up.

He’d handle it himself.

That’s what the stick was.

A promise carved into wood.

Vargas leaned closer, eyes glittering. “You hear that, boys? He’s got a stick and a speech.”

The men holding the girl snickered.

Jason’s knees trembled.

Then, from somewhere far away, a sound rose like thunder.

Low at first. A distant growl.

Then louder. Many engines. Not cars. Not sirens.

Harleys.

Dozens of them.

Maybe hundreds.

The roar rolled through the streets, not just noise but a warning written in vibration.

Vargas’s grin faltered.

“What the hell…” one of his men muttered.

Jason didn’t smile. Didn’t gloat.

He just breathed.

Vargas had no idea what he’d started.

No idea whose daughter he’d tried to take.

And absolutely no idea that the skinny kid bleeding on the pavement was about to become the most protected person in the entire criminal underworld.

A legend… with a wooden stick and a refusal to quit.

Twelve hours earlier, the alley behind Chin’s restaurant had been Jason’s dojo.

The dumpsters were his training dummies. The cracked pavement his mat.

He’d learned early that survival wasn’t about being the strongest.

It was about being the most willing.

The stick cut through the air with a satisfying whoosh as he practiced a diagonal slash, the kind he’d seen in a YouTube video on a library computer. He’d watched those videos with headphones he found in a bus seat, volume low, like learning was something you could get arrested for.

He’d shaped the wood with a broken piece of sandpaper from a construction site. Wrapped the handle in strips of old T-shirt so it wouldn’t slip when his hands sweated or bled.

It was roughly the length of a bokken, the practice swords from martial arts videos.

Jason had never stepped inside a dojo in his life.

But the streets taught their own curriculum.

A garbage bag spun as he struck it, sending it tumbling.

“Quack,” Jason muttered automatically, a dumb joke he’d made once and never stopped making. It helped. Humor was a little wall inside his head.

“You’re gonna break that bag. Somebody’s gonna be pissed.”

Jason spun, stick raised, then relaxed when he saw Tommy.

Tommy was twelve, maybe. Small, jittery, eyes always scanning like they were trying to outrun hunger.

“Mind your business, Tom.”

“Just saying,” Tommy kicked a pebble. “Chin’s nephew got jumped. Three guys. Took his phone, his shoes, everything. Heard you should get a real weapon.”

Jason glanced down at the hickory.

“This is real enough.”

Tommy frowned. “A knife’s better.”

Jason didn’t answer at first.

A knife meant getting close. A knife meant crossing a line where you had to accept the warmth of someone else’s blood on your hands.

Jason had done a lot to survive.

But he wasn’t ready for that.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

“A stick gives me reach,” he said finally. “And it’s legal. It’s just wood.”

Tommy shrugged. “You coming to the shelter? Meatloaf tonight.”

Jason’s stomach tightened, almost offended by the offer.

Shelters were crowded. Crowds meant predators. Predators meant you were always one bad nap away from waking up lighter than you went to sleep.

“Maybe,” Jason lied.

Tommy wandered off.

Jason kept training.

Fifty strikes. Fifty blocks. Fifty thrusts.

His shoulders screamed. His arms burned.

Pain was weakness leaving the body, he told himself. He didn’t know who invented that quote, but he wished they’d lived one week on the streets and tried to say it without laughing.

By sunset, the sky was orange-purple, like bruises on a beautiful face.

Time to find somewhere to sleep.

Jason headed for the park bench near the playground. Far enough from the lights to avoid police attention, close enough to the street to feel less like he’d disappear without sound.

He walked with his head up.

Street kids who looked like victims got treated like victims.

He’d learned to project a don’t-touch-me aura even though he was skinny as a rail and probably couldn’t intimidate a third grader.

The stick helped.

Crazy kid with a stick. Better not risk it.

He was halfway to the park when he saw her.

Ten years old. Pink backpack. Unicorns.

Clean clothes. New shoes.

The kind of kid who had a home.

She stood at an ice cream truck bouncing on her toes while a big guy in a leather vest ordered two cones.

Bodyguard, Jason thought immediately. Not a dad. Not a brother. Too rigid. Too alert.

Jason should have kept walking.

But something made his skin prickle.

A black van parked across the street. Engine running. Windows tinted.

The driver hadn’t moved in twenty minutes.

Jason crossed the street and sat on a bench about thirty feet away, stick across his lap. He pretended to be occupied with a broken iPhone, screen cracked beyond repair, but good enough to look busy.

The girl took her ice cream and started walking toward a black SUV.

The van door slid open.

Three men burst out like the street itself had spat them into existence.

Ski masks. One had a taser gun. One had a pistol. One had a cloth bag.

The bodyguard reached for his waist.

The taser hit him in the chest.

Fifty thousand volts dropped him like his bones had suddenly decided to quit.

He hit the pavement, convulsing, ice cream splattering across the sidewalk.

The girl screamed.

People scattered.

This wasn’t a neighborhood where witnesses lived long.

The man with the bag grabbed the girl and dragged her toward the van.

She fought, kicking and biting, but she was ten and he was grown, and the world is unfair in very specific ways.

Jason stood up.

Everything in him screamed run.

These weren’t drunks. These were professionals. Organized crime.

Getting involved was suicide.

But Maya’s face rose in his mind like a ghost refusing to stay down.

Not again.

Jason ran toward them.

The man with the taser saw him coming and laughed.

A skinny street kid with a stick.

Pathetic.

Jason raised the hickory like a baseball bat and swung with everything his starved body could give.

The stick connected with the man’s kneecap.

The sound was a wet crack, like a branch snapping in winter.

The laughter stopped, replaced by a scream.

The leg buckled sideways at an angle legs weren’t meant to bend.

Jason’s stomach lurched.

He’d never broken someone before.

It felt horrible.

And also, in a dark corner of his heart, it felt like justice with a heartbeat.

The gunman swung the pistol toward Jason.

Jason jabbed the stick forward like a spear and caught him in the solar plexus.

The gunman folded, wheezing, air punched out of him.

Two down.

The third man had the girl halfway to the van. He drew a serrated knife and pointed it at Jason.

“Back off, kid, or I’ll gut you.”

Jason kept coming.

The knife slashed. Jason blocked, but the blade bit into the wood, carving a deep groove.

They grappled.

Jason was smaller, weaker, but street fights weren’t clean. He stomped the man’s foot. Headbutted his nose and felt cartilage crunch. Bit the hand holding the knife and tasted blood and dirt.

The man screamed and dropped the girl.

She bolted toward the SUV, where her bodyguard was starting to recover.

A fist slammed into Jason’s ribs.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Pain exploded through him.

His breath vanished.

But he didn’t drop the stick.

He swung blind.

Something connected. The man’s head.

A dull thunk. The man staggered.

Jason should have run then.

But the gunman was back up, raising his pistol, eyes wild.

Jason threw himself at him, using the stick like a staff, shoving it crosswise into the man’s throat.

They went down in a tangle.

The gun fired.

Deafening.

Jason’s ears rang like church bells.

He didn’t know if he’d been shot. Everything already hurt too much to tell.

The gunman climbed on top, hands squeezing Jason’s throat.

Jason’s vision tunneled.

Black spots danced.

His fingers scrabbled across the pavement and found a shard of broken glass from a discarded beer bottle.

He drove it into the man’s thigh.

The grip loosened.

Jason sucked in a desperate breath and shoved him off.

Then he swung the stick one more time.

It connected with the side of the man’s head with a sound like a hammer hitting a melon.

The man stopped moving.

Jason tried to stand.

His legs didn’t agree.

He dropped to his knees, gasping, bleeding from cuts he didn’t remember earning.

The van engine revved. The driver was trying to escape.

Jason lurched up, grabbed the stick, and threw it like a javelin.

It tumbled through the air and smashed into the windshield, spiderwebbing the glass.

The van swerved, clipped a parked car, and sped away.

The girl was safe.

Her bodyguard was hauling her into the SUV, checking her for injuries.

Jason stood in the middle of the street and thought, I did it.

Then darkness folded over him like a blanket thrown by a cruel god.

The last thing he heard was engines.

Harleys.

A lot of them.

Getting closer.

When Jason opened his eyes, the world was sideways and blurry.

He was on pavement, staring at a gutter. Blood pooled beneath him. His blood. Someone else’s. It didn’t matter. It was all red when it hit concrete.

Boots stepped into view.

Motorcycle boots. Scuffed leather. Steel toes.

“Holy shit,” a man’s voice said, deep and gravelly. “Kid’s still breathing.”

“Get Sophie in the car now,” another voice barked.

Older. Commanding. Authority in every syllable.

Jason tried to turn his head. Couldn’t.

Hands rolled him onto his back.

He tried to protest, but it came out as a wet cough and blood spattered his lips.

A face loomed over him.

A man in his forties with a gray beard and eyes like winter steel. He wore a leather vest with patches.

IRON WOLVES MC across the back.

PRESIDENT on the front.

Jason didn’t know his name yet.

But he’d never forget that face.

“Easy, son,” the man said, voice surprisingly gentle as he checked Jason’s wounds. “What the hell were you thinking?”

A younger voice called out, “Boss, we got three Viper Kings down. Two alive, one questionable.”

“Bag the vipers,” the gray-bearded man snapped. “We’ll question them later.”

He looked back down at Jason. “You hear me, kid? Stay with me.”

Jason’s hand twitched toward where his stick should have been.

The man seemed to understand instinctively.

“Someone get that stick,” he barked. “Careful. Evidence… and hell, it’s a weapon of war at this point.”

Jason felt himself being lifted.

Not a stretcher. Too improvised.

A leather jacket spread between arms. A makeshift cradle.

“We’re taking him to the clubhouse,” the president said.

“Boss, he needs a hospital,” someone argued.

“Hospital asks too many questions,” the president said, voice hardening. “Doc can handle this.”

Jason tried to fight it, but his body had already made its decision.

He drifted in and out as the world turned into vibration: motorcycles, speed, the roar of engines.

Somewhere nearby, the girl’s sobs.

“Is he going to die, Daddy?”

The president’s voice softened. “Not if I can help it, baby. He saved you.”

Jason tried to speak. To say it was okay. To say this was what he was supposed to do.

To tell Maya, wherever she was, that he finally kept the promise.

But darkness took him again.

This time, he let it.

He woke in pieces.

First, softness under him. Not concrete. Not cardboard.

A mattress.

Sheets that smelled like detergent, like someone believed in clean beginnings.

Then sound. Voices murmuring. Medical equipment beeping. The distant rumble of motorcycles.

Finally, sight.

A white ceiling with recessed lights.

Jason tried to sit up and pain exploded through his torso like a railroad spike.

He gasped and collapsed back.

“Whoa, whoa,” a calm voice said. “Easy there, warrior.”

A man in blue scrubs appeared in his peripheral vision. Late fifties, gray ponytail, eyes that had seen too much blood to be impressed by it.

“You’ve got seventeen stitches in your side,” the man said matter-of-factly, “twelve in your left arm, eight in your right, and a concussion that probably scrambled your brains like cheap eggs. Stay down.”

“Where…” Jason croaked. “Where am I?”

“Iron Wolves clubhouse,” the man said. “I’m Doc. Not a real doctor. But I’ve patched up enough bar fights and bullet wounds to fake it convincingly.”

Jason tried to process that.

Motorcycle club. Not cops. Not hospital.

Sophie. The girl.

“She’s physically unharmed,” Doc said, reading Jason’s panic like it was written on his forehead. “Traumatized, sure. But alive because of you.”

Jason swallowed, throat aching.

“You want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?” Doc asked.

Jason stared at the ceiling, eyes burning. “Couldn’t let them take her.”

“Most people would’ve called the cops.”

“Cops are slow,” Jason rasped.

Doc huffed a humorless laugh. “Fair point.”

A door opened.

The gray-bearded man stepped in, presence filling the room like storm clouds. Six-foot-three, heavy muscle, scars that looked like memories carved into skin.

Leather vest. Patches. Power.

Doc nodded. “He’s stable. Stubborn. Asking about his stick.”

The man’s eyes shifted, and for a moment, something like respect flickered.

“Jason, right?” he said.

Jason nodded. He’d forgotten he even had an ID.

“I’m Cain Vult,” the man said. “President of the Iron Wolves Motorcycle Club.”

Jason held still, afraid that if he moved too fast, the pain would swallow him.

“The girl you saved,” Cain continued, voice tight around the edges, “Sophie. She’s my daughter. My only child.”

Jason’s chest tightened. “She’s okay?”

Cain nodded once. A small movement that somehow carried the weight of a mountain.

“What you did,” Cain said, “there aren’t words. You put yourself between armed kidnappers and my kid. You fought them off with a goddamn stick.”

He reached into his vest and pulled something out.

Jason’s stick.

Except it wasn’t.

The hickory had snapped during the fight. But someone had repaired it, bound the break with silver wire, reinforced it with metal bands. The grip was wrapped in new cloth, black and soft.

Along its length, etched in careful script, were words:

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something else is more important.

Below that, the Iron Wolves logo: a snarling wolf with chains like a collar.

At the base, a small metal plate: Property of Jason’s Stick. Iron Wolves MC.

Jason’s hands shook as he took it.

It was heavier now. Balanced. Stronger where it had been broken.

Just like him.

“I’m not… in your club,” Jason managed.

“Not yet,” Cain agreed. “You’re fifteen. Prospect age is sixteen. But that doesn’t matter.”

Cain’s voice turned to steel.

“As of today, you’re under Iron Wolves protection. Anyone messes with you, they mess with us.”

Jason stared at him, breath hitching.

“You saved my daughter,” Cain said. “That makes you family.”

Family.

The word hit Jason like a punch, soft and brutal.

He hadn’t had family since Maya.

Hadn’t dared to hope for it.

Cain stood, like he couldn’t stay too close to gratitude without it turning into something dangerous.

“Rest,” he ordered. “Heal. When you’re ready, we’ll talk about your future.”

He paused at the door.

“And Jason… thank you. I can never repay that debt, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”

When the door closed, Jason lay there holding the repaired stick and cried silently into clean sheets.

Not because he was weak.

Because he’d been strong for too long with no one to catch him when he finally cracked.

The Iron Wolves clubhouse wasn’t what Jason expected.

He’d imagined a dingy bar, neon signs, bad beer, worse choices.

Instead it was a fortress: a converted warehouse with reinforced walls, security cameras, armed guards, and an order to the chaos that made it feel like a place built for war and survival.

His room was sparse but clean.

And someone had left him clothes.

New jeans. T-shirts. A hoodie. Socks. Underwear.

Jason stared at them like they were artifacts from another universe.

On day four, Doc moved him out of the medical bay and into the second-floor hallway lined with motorcycles and photographs.

Cain with a baby Sophie on his shoulder, both smiling. Members with their families. Men who looked like monsters holding toddlers like they were fragile glass.

Jason didn’t know what to do with that contradiction.

A knock came at his door.

“Come in,” Jason called.

Sophie entered, carrying a tray with a sandwich and a glass of milk.

She looked tiny framed by the heavy door.

“Hi,” she said shyly. “Daddy said I could bring you lunch if I wanted… if that’s okay.”

Jason sat up carefully. “Yeah. That’s okay.”

She set the tray down and perched on the chair, hands folded.

Up close, her steel-gray eyes were softer than Cain’s. A warmth that made Jason’s throat tighten.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she blurted. “For saving me. I was so scared. And then you were there.”

Jason picked up the sandwich.

Peanut butter and jelly, cut into triangles.

He hadn’t eaten like this in… he couldn’t remember.

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said gently.

“But I do,” Sophie insisted. “Most people ran away. I saw them.”

Jason didn’t argue. There was no point.

“Daddy says you’re gonna live here now,” she said. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” Jason admitted. “Maybe for a while.”

“I hope you do,” Sophie said quickly. “Then we can be friends. I don’t have many.”

Her voice dipped. “Daddy says it’s not safe for me to go to regular school because of his work. I have a tutor. It gets lonely.”

Jason swallowed.

“I know what lonely feels like,” he said.

Sophie smiled, gap-toothed, and Jason almost flinched because the smile looked like Maya’s.

The universe had a cruel sense of symmetry.

“Can I visit again tomorrow?” she asked.

“Sure,” Jason said.

After she left, Jason lay back and stared at the ceiling.

The stick leaned against the wall, silver bands catching the light.

He traced the engraving with his fingertips.

Courage is not the absence of fear…

He’d been terrified.

He’d done it anyway.

Maybe that was all courage ever was: fear, and a decision.

The days found a rhythm.

Mornings were quiet. Afternoons buzzed with activity: bikes repaired, chrome polished, men moving like a hive that could turn into an army in under a minute.

Doc checked on Jason twice a day.

“You heal fast,” Doc said on day five while removing stitches. “Good genetics. Still too skinny. We’re putting meat on those bones.”

Jason actually laughed.

It sounded wrong coming out of him, like a sound he’d forgotten he was allowed to make.

That night, Cain brought men to meet him.

A parade of leather and tattoos filled his small room.

“This is Hammer,” Cain said, gesturing to a mountain of a man with a beard like a weapon. “Road captain. Tank. Sergeant-at-arms. Bones. Reaper. Ghost. Diesel. Chains. Smoke.”

Each man nodded.

None of them looked at Jason like he was a stray dog.

They looked at him like he was… respected.

Hammer stepped forward first. “Kid. I’ve been in this club twenty years. More fights than I can count. I’ve never seen anything like what you did.”

Tank grunted. “Crazy brave.”

Bones, older with reading glasses, cleared his throat and held out a smaller leather vest.

Not a full cut. But made from the same material.

Iron Wolves logo on the back.

On the front: a single patch shaped like a stick.

“It’s not membership,” Cain said. “You’re too young. But it’s a mark of respect.”

Jason’s hands trembled as he put it on.

It fit like it had been waiting.

“There’s a ceremony,” Cain added. “Road names are voted on.”

Jason frowned. “Road name?”

The men grinned.

“Stick,” Reaper said simply.

“Because you walked into hell with a piece of wood and came out dragging monsters,” Hammer added.

The laughter that followed wasn’t mocking.

It was warm.

It felt like the beginning of belonging.

After the men left, Cain stayed behind.

His face was tired in a way Jason recognized. The exhaustion of someone who never gets to be weak.

“We’re going after the Viper Kings,” Cain said quietly. “For what they tried to do to Sophie, it’s going to get ugly.”

“Good,” Jason said before he could stop himself.

Cain’s eyebrows rose. “Good?”

“They went after a kid,” Jason said, voice flat. “They deserve what they get.”

Cain studied him, then exhaled. “They do. But you need to understand… violence costs something. It changes you. Makes you harder. I don’t want that for you if I can help it.”

Jason’s laugh was bitter. “I’m already hard.”

Cain didn’t disagree.

Two days later, Cain called Jason into his office.

Maps. Files. Surveillance photos.

A man with cold eyes and a snake tattoo coiling up his neck stared up from the paper.

“Vargas,” Cain said. “Leader. Former cartel enforcer. Drug network. Trying to muscle into our territory.”

Jason’s jaw clenched.

“Why are you showing me this?” he asked.

“Because you deserve to know who tried to take Sophie,” Cain said. “And because we’re hitting them in three days.”

Jason’s heart kicked.

“I want to come.”

Cain’s answer was immediate. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re fifteen. Still healing. And I’m not putting a kid in the middle of a gang war.”

“I’m not a kid,” Jason snapped. “I’m the guy who saved your daughter.”

Cain’s expression hardened.

“Don’t pull that card with me,” he said. “I’m grateful. But gratitude doesn’t mean I let you throw your life away.”

“It’s not revenge,” Jason said. “It’s justice.”

Cain laughed once, bitter. “Kid, what we’re about to do has nothing to do with justice. It’s retaliation.”

Jason stared at the photo of Vargas.

“If you won’t let me come,” he said slowly, “bring me one of his teeth.”

Cain blinked, then laughed, surprised.

“You’re a vicious little bastard,” he said.

Jason’s mouth twitched. “Learned from the best.”

Cain waved him off, but his eyes softened. “Go rest. And don’t do anything stupid.”

Jason left.

Already planning.

The night of the operation, the clubhouse crackled with tension.

Weapons cleaned. Armor strapped. Men murmuring in low tones that sounded like prayer and threat mixed together.

Jason stayed in his room as ordered, but the roar of bikes firing up in the lot made his pulse race.

A knock came.

Sophie stood there in pajamas with cartoon cats.

“Can I come in?” she whispered.

Jason nodded.

She sat on his bed and picked at her backpack strap.

“Daddy’s going to fight the bad men tonight,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Are you scared?” she asked.

Jason thought about it.

“A little,” he admitted. “But your dad’s smart. He’ll be okay.”

Sophie swallowed. “He promised he’d come back. Adults break promises sometimes.”

The pain in her voice stabbed Jason deeper than Vargas’s knife ever had.

Jason leaned closer. “Not your dad,” he said firmly. “He’s coming back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he has you to come back to,” Jason said. “And that’s the most important thing in the world.”

Sophie exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for years.

She leaned against Jason’s shoulder for a minute, and they listened to the motorcycles roar out into the night.

When she left, escorted by a guard, Jason went to the window.

The parking lot was mostly empty.

Except for one nondescript black sedan labeled on a hook inside as an emergency vehicle.

Jason’s mind raced.

Cain had forbidden him from joining the assault.

He hadn’t said anything about Jason doing his own recon.

Jason grabbed his stick and his small vest, slipped down the back stairs, and moved through the kitchen.

No one noticed the skinny kid with too much purpose.

He took the sedan keys and drove.

Careful. Under the speed limit. Blending like a ghost among headlights.

The industrial district waited like a mouth full of teeth.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Gunfire popped faintly like fireworks gone wrong.

The Iron Wolves were already engaged.

Jason parked two blocks away and approached on foot, stick in hand, heart hammering.

This was insane.

Suicidal.

And still, his feet kept moving.

He circled behind a lit warehouse.

A Viper stood guard, jumpy and alone, as if even he knew the night had turned against them.

Jason struck low, catching him behind the knees.

The man dropped with a grunt.

Jason pressed the stick against his throat. “Where’s Vargas?”

The Viper gasped. “Second floor… office… back.”

Jason zip-tied him, gagged him with his bandana, and slipped inside.

Chaos.

Iron Wolves everywhere. Men shouting. Equipment smashed. Vipers zip-tied and dragged.

No one looked twice at a kid in a vest.

Jason found the stairs and climbed.

The office door glowed with light underneath.

Locked.

He kicked once. The frame splintered.

The door burst open.

Vargas looked up from loading a gun and laughed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snarled. “Stick kid.”

Jason raised his weapon. “Yeah.”

Vargas fired.

The bullet passed so close it stirred Jason’s hair like a rude breeze.

Jason didn’t stop.

He swung.

Hickory caught Vargas’s wrist.

Bones cracked.

The gun clattered.

Vargas punched Jason in the jaw, stars exploding.

Jason staggered, then came back like pain was just another language he’d learned.

Vargas dove for the gun.

Jason brought the stick down on his reaching hand.

More cracking.

More screaming.

“You tried to take Sophie,” Jason said, voice eerily calm.

“It was business,” Vargas spat.

“Business?” Jason hit him in the ribs. “Kids are off limits.”

Vargas spat blood and laughed. “I don’t answer to you or your biker buddies.”

Jason lifted the stick again and froze.

He could end this.

Vargas was wounded, unarmed, defenseless.

One more strike and the line would shatter.

Jason felt the edge of the cliff under his feet.

Maya’s face flickered in his mind.

Would she want him to become a killer?

The door exploded inward.

Cain filled the frame like a storm.

Blood spattered across his vest. Eyes blazing.

“Jason,” Cain said, voice dangerous. “Step back.”

Jason lowered the stick immediately.

“He’s yours,” Jason said.

Cain walked forward, slow, deliberate, predator approaching wounded prey.

“You broke the rules,” Cain said quietly. “You went after my daughter.”

“I didn’t touch her,” Vargas wheezed. “The kid stopped us.”

Cain’s smile was cold. “Doesn’t matter. You tried.”

Cain picked up Jason’s stick from the floor, examined it like it was sacred.

“You know what this is?” he said to Vargas. “This is proof a fifteen-year-old has more honor than you’ll ever have.”

He handed it back to Jason.

“Go downstairs,” Cain ordered. “Wait in the truck. Now.”

Jason obeyed.

As he reached the stairs, he heard Vargas start to beg.

Jason didn’t stay for the ending.

He didn’t need to.

Some debts write their own conclusions.

The aftermath was brutal.

Four Viper locations hit. Drug labs destroyed. Cash seized. Members captured or scattered.

By the time police arrived, delayed by “friendly” silence, the scene was sanitized: terrified Vipers waiting to be arrested, warehouses wrecked, evidence gone.

Jason sat in the back of Cain’s truck, stick across his lap, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Cain climbed in, knuckles bruised and bloody, and drove without speaking for a long time.

“You went after Vargas,” Cain said finally.

“Yes.”

“I told you to stay at the clubhouse.”

“I know.”

Cain’s voice tightened. “You could have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.”

Cain’s hands clenched on the wheel. “That’s not the point. You’re under my protection. That means when I tell you to stay safe, you stay safe.”

Jason stared out the window, shame and stubbornness tangling in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Cain huffed. “No, you’re not. You’d do it again.”

Jason didn’t argue.

Because it was true.

When they got back, the clubhouse was celebrating. Music. Shouts. Men slapping backs.

Word spread fast that Jason had confronted Vargas and lived.

Some shook their heads. Some laughed. Some looked at him like he was a myth with skin.

“Kid’s got steel,” Tank declared, handing Jason a soda. “Stupid, but steel.”

Hammer pointed a finger at him. “You scared ten years off Cain’s life.”

Sophie found him after the crowd thinned.

She hugged him like she’d decided he was part of her spine now.

“Daddy said you helped catch the bad man,” she whispered.

Jason hugged her back, careful of her smallness.

“Your dad did most of it,” Jason said.

“But you helped,” she insisted. “You’re brave.”

Jason swallowed hard.

“So are you,” he told her.

Because she was still smiling after fear tried to steal it.

And that, Jason decided, was its own kind of courage.

Six months later, Jason sat on the porch of Cain’s house outside the city.

Twenty acres. Trees. A real fence. A swing set Sophie insisted on even though she was “too old” for it, according to her tutor.

A German Shepherd named Titan lay at Jason’s feet, head on paws, eyes half-closed but always listening.

Jason’s room was upstairs, across from Sophie’s.

He had a desk for homework now. Clothes that fit. Shoes without holes.

He went to a private school for MC families. It was strange being in a classroom again, but his teachers were patient.

He got straight A’s.

Math still tried to murder him weekly.

Hammer trained him with the stick, proper stance, proper flow, turning Jason’s raw survival instinct into something refined and dangerous.

Cain’s truck rumbled up the driveway.

Sophie sprinted to greet him, and Cain scooped her up with one arm, laughing like a man who’d forgotten how until recently.

Watching them, Jason felt something in his chest loosen.

Not healed.

But… less tight.

That night after dinner, Cain called Jason into his study.

“You turn sixteen next month,” Cain said.

Jason nodded, heart thudding.

“Prospect age,” Cain continued. “Old enough to officially join if you want.”

Jason’s hands went sweaty.

Cain opened a case on his desk.

Inside was Jason’s original reinforced stick, mounted like a relic.

Beside it, a new stick.

Slightly longer. Perfectly balanced. Silver reinforcement tuned to Jason’s grip.

Engravings ran along the length: a silhouette of Sophie’s unicorn backpack, the Iron Wolves logo, and one small dandelion chain etched near the handle, so tiny you’d miss it unless you were looking for ghosts.

Cain slid a black leather vest across the desk.

PROSPECT on the back in white letters.

“This isn’t a gift,” Cain said. “It’s a choice. You can stay here as family, which you are regardless… or you can earn your patch. Work your ass off. Prove yourself a hundred times.”

Jason stared at the vest.

Six months ago, he’d been nobody.

A throwaway kid sleeping under streetlights.

Now he had a home, a future, and a decision.

He thought about Maya.

About the promise he’d made.

About Sophie, alive and laughing because he didn’t run.

“I want to prospect,” Jason said firmly.

Cain’s mouth twitched into something like pride.

“I figured you’d say that.”

Jason took the vest, then took the new stick, and felt its weight settle into his palms like fate.

Outside, motorcycles roared to life, the Iron Wolves gathering for patrol.

Cain stood at the door and paused.

“You coming?”

Jason grinned, and the grin felt real.

“Hell yeah.”

He stepped out into the night with the stick in hand, not as a weapon now, but as a symbol.

Not of violence.

Of a boy who refused to let the world take another child.

And of a man who finally found something worth living for besides survival.

THE END