Page 21 of Gonzo's Grudge
The news came fast, slipped through Burn’s contacts before the papers even printed the notice.
“Tomorrow morning,” Burn said, sliding the folder across the table. “Six a.m. transfer. Avery Mitchell Detention.”
Avery Mitchell. The kind of place you don’t come back from the same.
I clenched my fists so hard my knuckles went white. “He’s just a kid.”
Burn didn’t flinch. “Kid or not, they’ll eat him alive if we don’t make sure he’s covered.”
“I’ll make sure,” I growled. “Whatever it takes.” We had a couple of brothers doing time there, but if he didn’t land in a unit with them, I wasn’t sure how this would go.
And not knowing was unacceptable to me.
That night I worked the phone, calling in every favor, digging deep into the club’s reach. Avery Mitchell was crawling with men who owed the Saints—some patched, some not, but all loyal enough to know what it meant when I said protect him like he’s your own.
“He didn’t kill Pop,” I told every contact, every voice on the other end. “You hear me? GJ had nothin’ to do with it. You spread that word. You put it in stone. Anyone says different, you shut them up.”
There was a pause, then a promise.
“We’ll keep him safe, Gonzo.”
Safe.
I wanted to believe it. But I’d lived long enough to know prison was never safe.
The morning came too fast.
I stood in the lot behind county jail, cut weighing heavy on my back, and watched helplessly as they loaded my boy onto the bus. Shackled at the wrists, chained at the ankles, orange jumpsuit glowing like a target. His eyes found mine through the wire-reinforced glass, and for a second, the kid in him showed—the same boy who once climbed onto my bike seat, helmet too big for his head, grinning like the road was his kingdom. Now he looked like a caged animal being shipped to slaughter.
I raised my fist, slow and steady. He mirrored it, shackles clanking, and then he was gone. The bus engine roared, belching black smoke, and rolled out of the lot. I swung my leg over my bike and followed.
The ride was torture. Forty-eight miles of asphalt and exhaust, the bus lurching forward, me tailing it like a shadow. I wanted to tear the doors open, drag my boy out, throw him on the back of my Harley-Davidson Street Glide and disappear into the wind. But I couldn’t. Not without destroying every chance we had of proving his innocence.
So I followed just to keep my eyes close to him.
Mile after mile, the cage carried my son closer to Avery Mitchell’s gates. High fences topped with razor wire rose from the horizon, gray concrete walls swallowing the sky. The bus pulled in. Guards in towers watched with rifles slung casual, like vultures waiting.
I killed the engine and sat there, watching those gates close behind him.
And I’d never felt so damn powerless in my entire life.
The ride back was nothing but fury. My chest burned, my hands itched for violence, and the roar of my bike did nothing to quiet the storm in my skull.
By the time I hit town, I couldn’t go to the clubhouse. Couldn’t go home. I needed to breathe, to keep from shoving my fists through walls.
And that’s when I found myself at the college looking for her.
The campus was alive with people spilling out of classrooms, books clutched to their chests, laughter ringing through the air. They all looked so damn young. Carefree. Like the world hadn’t touched them yet.
And then I saw her.
IvaLeigh Walsh.
Her hair caught the sunlight, her steps tired but steady as she walked across the lot with her backpack slung over one shoulder. But what made my blood heat wasn’t her—it was him.
The young man who put his arm around her and I watched her jerk out of his grip. That little bastard shadowed her steps, his eyes fixed on her like he owned her. Like she was something he could toy with and discard. I read the fucker like a damn book.
IvaLeigh’s shoulders hunched, quickening her pace. He matched it.
