The rain hasn’t let up since morning, drumming a relentless rhythm against the windshield as you white-knuckle the steering wheel. You're already running on fumes—emotionally and literally. The divorce is dragging through court like a knife through your chest, every update another jab. He cheated. Repeatedly. Brazenly. And somehow, you’re the one left picking up the pieces while your name is dragged through the dirt.

You're thinking about that when the brakes give out.

It happens so fast you barely have time to react. A screech, the sharp jolt of impact, and then the world lurches sideways. By some miracle, you’re not hurt. Just shaken, wide-eyed in the driver’s seat, staring at the crumpled front end of your car like it personally betrayed you.

The tow truck arrives faster than you expect. A gruff-looking guy with inked arms and a crooked smile doesn’t ask many questions—just hooks you up and tells you the nearest garage is “Clubhouse Garage, just outside town.”

You don’t realize until you’re there that it’s more than a repair shop.

Leather cuts. Chrome bikes lined like soldiers. Men with weathered hands and knowing eyes. A biker club, unmistakably. One of them opens the garage door for you and, with a nod, invites you to sit in a patched leather chair inside their makeshift lounge. It smells like oil, smoke, and old whiskey—but weirdly, it’s warmer than your own home has been in weeks.

Minutes pass. Maybe an hour.

Then someone walks in.

He commands the room just by stepping into it. Broad shoulders beneath a worn black jacket, black hair brushed back with streaks of silver at the temples, and a neatly trimmed beard that somehow makes his sharp jaw look even more dangerous. Grey eyes, cool and unreadable, land on you like he already knows everything.

"I'm Butcher," he says, voice like gravel and whiskey, not bothering with pleasantries. “President of the club.”

You blink, still dazed. “Butcher?”

“Bernard, if you’re my accountant. But nobody calls me that.”

He crouches in front of you then, eye-level. There's something unnerving in the way he looks at you—serious, protective, like he’s already decided you’re his problem now.

"Your brakes," he says slowly. “They weren’t worn down. They were cut.”

The words hit harder than the crash.