My name is Trevor Hollis, a twenty-six-year-old prospect for the Cinder Hills MC. In our world, you don’t ask questions. You watch, you listen, and you prove you’re worth the patch.
Michael “Reaper” Garrison was the last man you’d expect to have a soul. As the club’s Enforcer, he didn’t just handle problems—he made them vanish. He was cold, sharp, and silent. So, when he started disappearing every Tuesday night, the rumors grew dark: drugs, betrayal, a rival gang.
Hatch, our Sergeant-at-Arms, finally had enough. “Find out where he goes,” he ordered. “And stay quiet.”
I followed Reaper’s bike fourteen miles west to the Sangre de Cristo Children’s Home. I waited for a hand-off, a payoff, or something violent. Instead, I saw the impossible. Through the window, I watched Reaper—the man who once broke a man’s ribs without blinking—tie a bright yellow Hello Kitty apron over his leather vest.
I watched him stir massive pots of stew, serve thirty orphans, and sit with a crying child until the boy finally smiled.
When Reaper caught me staring from my truck, I thought I was dead. He didn’t pull a gun. He just opened my door and asked, “You hungry?”
Inside the kitchen, the air smelled of garlic and industrial cleaner. “I grew up in a place like this,” Reaper said, his voice a low gravel. “I cook here because I know what hungry feels like. I don’t do it for the club, and I don’t do it to feel like a hero. It’s a debt.”
He looked me dead in the eye, the iron returning to his gaze. “You’re going to go back and tell Hatch I’m meeting a contact. You’re going to lie, Prospect. Because if you blow this for these kids, you’ll be the one explaining to them why the kitchen is closed.”
I looked at the empty bowl in my hands. I realized then that the scariest man I knew was also the only one among us who was truly whole. I nodded, kept his secret, and for the first time, I finally understood what it meant to earn a patch.
It isn’t just about who you’re willing to hurt—it’s about who you’re willing to protect.
