Page 6 of Jagger's Remorse
CHAPTER ONE
Jagger
Present Day…
I wake up with her father's blood on my hands again.
Not literally.
That was five years ago.
But every morning at 4 AM, my body jerks awake with the phantom weight of Miguel Delgado's last breath rattling through my trigger finger.
The sheets are soaked with sweat.
My St. Michael pendant sticks to my chest like a brand.
I sit up, scrubbing my face, and reach for the bottle of Jameson on my nightstand.
The whiskey burns away the taste of guilt, but nothing touches the image burned into my retinas.
Her eyes—Scarlett Maria Delgado's eyes, amber like expensive whiskey, staring at me over her father's corpse.
She should have been crying. Screaming. Begging.
Instead, she looked at me like she was memorizing my soul so she could rip it apart later.
I still remember her words:"I'm going to take it all away, piece by piece, until you're begging me to put a bullet in your head."
A nineteen-year-old college girl shouldn't have been able to make that threat sound like a blood oath, but she did.
And for five years, I've been waiting for her to make good on it.
My phone buzzes.
Church in twenty. Emergency meeting.
I roll out of bed, muscles protesting from yesterday's enforcement run.
A few of the Three Devils MC thought they could cook meth in our territory.
Now they're learning different lessons in whatever afterlife takes men like us.
The shower goes cold—punishment I deserve.
I let it punish me while I catalog my sins.
Miguel Delgado. Jorge Ramirez. Tommy Walsh. Roberto Vega.
Names of dead men who visit me at 4 AM.
But it's only Delgado's daughter who haunts me.
Only her promise follows me into consciousness.
Little dragon.
I dress in the dark—jeans, boots, black thermal, leather cut with my VP patch.
