When a fourteen-year-old girl walked into a biker garage asking to paint motorcycles for tips, the crew laughed like it was the punchline to a joke they’d heard a hundred times. Kids didn’t come to places like this unless they were lost, daring each other, or looking for attention, and this one looked too small and too tired to be any of those things. The laughter wasn’t cruel, just automatic, the reflex of men who had spent years turning strangers away. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a folded napkin, and laid it on the workbench with both hands. The oldest man in the room went white as paper, and every sound in the garage seemed to fall backward into silence.
She wasn’t just looking for work, even if she kept her voice steady and her eyes level. There was a tightness in the way she held her shoulders, a readiness to bolt that lived in her stance even while she stood still. She looked like someone who’d learned to keep moving because stopping meant being caught. The Iron Fangs garage sat on the edge of town where asphalt gave up and gravel took over, where the streetlights stopped pretending they cared about what happened after dark. It wasn’t the kind of place you wandered into by accident, and the fact that she had found it at all made the room feel suddenly watched.
The building looked like it had survived a war of weather and neglect, a long, low structure of corrugated metal patched with mismatched sheets that didn’t match in color or age. The windows were so crusted with oil and dust that even in broad daylight you couldn’t see anything inside, not even movement. Above the entrance, a hand-painted sign hung crooked, the letters blunt and uninviting: IRON FANGS MC — MEMBERS ONLY. The door opened with a tired groan, as if it resented being used, and the air inside carried layers of motor oil, cigarette smoke, and burnt coffee that had been sitting on a warmer since morning. Three bikes were up on lifts, engines half-disassembled and spread across benches like mechanical autopsies, parts arranged with the grim patience of men who knew how to put anything back together.
Before she entered, the crew had been deep in their usual rhythm. Wrenches clanged, tools scraped, and classic rock bled from a paint-splattered radio perched too high on a shelf to be knocked down. A burst of laughter would flare when someone swore after dropping a bolt into an impossible crevice, and then the work would swallow the sound again. That rhythm didn’t stop when the door opened, not immediately, but it shifted the way a room shifts when it senses a new presence. Heads turned one by one, and the conversations thinned as if they’d been cut with a blade.
She stood in the doorway like she was deciding whether to step forward or run, small frame, worn sneakers, a backpack that looked like it had been dragged through more miles than any kid should have to count. Her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and her jacket was two sizes too big, sleeves rolled up so she could use her hands without drowning in fabric. She did not smile, and she did not ask permission to be there, which made the men watch her harder. Rory was the first to really notice her, because he was closest to the door and because he had been elbow-deep in a paint job, custom flames licking up the side of a fuel tank. He glanced up with the brush still in his hand and gave her a look that wasn’t exactly welcoming, the kind of look that asked what trouble she was bringing into their day.
She shook her head once, almost like she was answering a question he hadn’t spoken, and stepped inside. The noise didn’t stop, but it lowered, as if the garage itself leaned in to listen. Dane, leaning against a toolbox with a beer in hand, raised an eyebrow and took in the backpack, the rolled sleeves, the way she kept her weight on the balls of her feet. In the corner near the space heater, Silas Marr, the oldest man in the room and the only founding member still breathing, sat flipping through invoices with a pen behind his ear. He looked up slowly, his gaze narrowing as he sized her up the way you’d size up a stray dog that wandered into your yard, unsure whether it was hungry or rabid.
“We don’t do tours,” Dane said, not unkindly, just flat and practical. He didn’t step toward her, but he didn’t step away either, and that alone carried warning. The girl didn’t flinch or apologize, which made Rory’s eyes sharpen. She walked up to the nearest workbench, set her backpack down like she had every right to place it there, and looked around the room as if she were cataloging faces, exits, and threats. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, but it didn’t shake.
“I can paint,” she said. She didn’t add a speech about passion or talent, just the bare fact, like she was offering a service and nothing more. “Bikes, helmets, whatever you need. I’ll do it for tips.” The silence that followed was brief but heavy, the kind that formed when a room tries to decide whether to take someone seriously. Then one of the younger guys snorted, and a few laughs followed, surprised more than mocking, because the offer sounded absurd in a garage full of men who’d been riding longer than she’d been alive.
Rory smirked, because smirking was easier than admitting curiosity. “Yeah?” he said, turning the brush in his fingers. “You got a portfolio, Picasso?” He expected her to stumble, to get embarrassed, to leave with her backpack and her pride bruised, because that was how most of these interactions ended. She didn’t answer right away, and that pause made the men watch her more closely. Instead, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a folded napkin, wrinkled and stained with something that might have been coffee or grease, handled like it was fragile. She unfolded it carefully and slid it across the workbench toward Rory.
Rory leaned in out of habit, and his smirk disappeared. The drawing was in ink, probably from a cheap pen, but the detail was sharp enough to look carved. It showed a custom emblem, a jagged jawbone wrapped around a coiled serpent, flames curling up from the base like they’d been fed with anger. Inside the design were initials, G.H., and beneath that, a date that made Silas’s breath catch. Silas stood up so fast his chair scraped against the concrete, the harsh sound slicing through the stunned quiet.
He crossed the garage in three long strides, grabbed the napkin from Rory’s hands, and stared at it like he’d seen a ghost step out of the past. His fingers trembled as he held it, and his eyes looked wetter than anyone in that room would have expected. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, voice rough and barely controlled, as if the words had to be forced past something tight in his throat. The girl looked at him without blinking, her expression steady in a way that felt practiced. “My brother drew it,” she said.
Silas’s face tightened, and he spoke the name like it hurt to say it aloud. “Your brother,” he said, “Gideon Hale.” The garage went dead silent, no music, no tools, no laughter, just the hum of the space heater and the distant sound of traffic somewhere outside. Dane set his beer down slowly, careful not to make noise, as if sound itself might break whatever fragile thing was happening. Rory stepped back from the workbench, eyes fixed on the napkin as if it might explain itself. A younger member named Kellan, patched in only a year ago, looked around confused because the name meant nothing to him, but it meant everything to everyone else.
Hale had been one of the original Iron Fangs, a rider who could make a bike sing, a storyteller who could hold a room without raising his voice, and a painter whose custom work was so distinctive people still talked about it years after he died. He’d gone down in a crash on a rain-soaked highway, rode alone, never made it home, and the club had buried him with full honors. They’d mourned him, then kept living the way you have to when you lose a brother on the road, carrying his memory like a patch sewn into the inside of their vests. No one had ever mentioned a sister, not once. Silas’s jaw tightened as he stared at the girl. “Gideon never said he had family,” he said.
“He didn’t talk about me much,” she replied, and the plainness of that sentence made it heavier than grief-saturated poetry ever could. She held Silas’s gaze and didn’t look away even when the room’s attention pressed on her like heat. “But he told me if I ever needed help, I should find you,” she said. “He said you’d know what to do.” Rory folded his arms, trying to regain control of the room because silence made him uncomfortable. “And what exactly do you need help with?” he asked.
The girl hesitated, just long enough for Silas to notice, just long enough for Dane to lean forward slightly as if he could hear the truth in her breathing. “I need work,” she said finally. “That’s all.” It wasn’t all, and everyone in the room knew it, because you didn’t walk into a place like this with a backpack and a napkin like that if your life was calm. Still, no one pushed, not yet, because Silas was holding that drawing like it could crumble to dust if handled wrong. Rory studied her again, then looked at Silas, and something in Rory’s expression shifted from irritation to something closer to respect.
“All right,” Rory said slowly. “You want to paint? Let’s see what you’ve got.” He grabbed a stripped gas tank from a shelf and set it on the bench with a hollow metallic thud. He tossed her a set of brushes and a few cans of paint, watching to see if her hands would shake. “One hour,” he said. “No tracing, no stencils. Show me what Hale taught you.”
She didn’t hesitate. She tied her hair back tighter, rolled up her sleeves higher, and moved like someone stepping into the only place she felt sure-footed. She didn’t sketch first, which was the first thing that made Rory’s brows lift, because most amateurs grabbed a pencil to hide behind. She just started painting, building layers, letting the design rise out of instinct and memory. The lines were clean, the shading aggressive but controlled, and the style was unmistakable in a way that made older members exchange looks they didn’t want to name. It wasn’t just similar to Gideon’s work, it carried the same bite, the same rhythm, like a signature passed down through blood.
At first the crew returned to their tasks because pride demanded they act unimpressed. But one by one they found reasons to drift closer, to glance over, to watch without admitting they were watching. A wrench stayed idle in a hand too long, a cigarette burned down without being smoked, a conversation trailed off mid-sentence. When she finally set the brush down, half the garage had gone quiet again. They stared at the tank like it was breathing, like it held a heartbeat they had thought was gone.
Silas stepped forward, his boots scuffing the concrete. He ran his fingers along the edge of the design, careful not to smudge the paint, as gentle as a man touching a grave marker. “He taught you this,” he said, and it wasn’t a question so much as a confession. The girl nodded once. “Every weekend,” she said, and the simplicity of that made Silas’s eyes harden with something that looked like grief and fury braided together. He didn’t say anything else right away, just looked at her like he was seeing more than a runaway kid, like he was seeing Gideon’s shadow stitched into her bones.
She stayed. Silas didn’t officially invite her, but he didn’t tell her to leave either, and in a place like this, that was invitation enough. After the gas tank, Rory handed her a helmet that needed touch-up work, then a fender, then another tank. She worked quietly near the paint bay, methodical and focused, not chatting, not asking questions, just earning her space with every stroke. The crew went about their business around her, but the garage felt subtly altered, like a new gear had clicked into place.
That night she slept in the back office, curled up on the old couch that smelled like dust and leather and long hours. Someone left a blanket and food without making a show of it. She didn’t ask permission, didn’t thank anyone, just vanished into sleep the way someone does when they’ve learned to rest wherever safety appears, even if only for a few hours. In the early morning, Dane found her already awake, sitting cross-legged with her notebook open, sketching with a battered pencil. He leaned against the doorframe with coffee in hand, watching her draw as if her pencil could reveal what her mouth wouldn’t.
“You got people looking for you?” Dane asked. She didn’t stop drawing. “Probably,” she said, as if it was a weather report. Dane’s jaw tightened, and he asked if that was going to be a problem for them. She finally looked up, eyes sharp, and said, “I don’t know yet.” Dane took a slow sip of coffee, buying time for the words he didn’t want to say. “Kid,” he told her, “we can’t harbor a runaway. You get that, right?”
“I’m not asking you to hide me,” she said, and her voice stayed calm even as something tense flickered behind her eyes. “I’m asking for work.” Dane glanced at the backpack, the worn straps, the way it looked packed like a life compressed into fabric. “Work requires a name,” he said. “An age. Documentation.” She didn’t look away. “June Hale,” she said. “Fourteen.” Then she added, quieter, “And I don’t have documentation anymore.”
Dane didn’t respond right away because he had three kids at home, and he knew the difference between teenage drama and real fear. He knew what it looked like when a young person was running from something that wasn’t imaginary. He also knew what it meant to get tangled in someone else’s legal mess, because the system didn’t care about intentions. “Where’d you come from?” he asked. June closed her notebook slowly, as if sealing up a part of herself.
“A group home two counties over,” she said. She didn’t elaborate until Dane asked if they’d just let her walk out. “They didn’t let me do anything,” she replied, and the bitterness in that sentence was the first crack in her composure. Over the next few days, the story came out in pieces, never poured all at once. June didn’t volunteer much, but the crew, especially the older ones, had seen enough wounded pride and buried pain to know patience was a kind of mercy. They didn’t corner her with questions, they let her speak when she was ready.
Bria, who handled the club’s books and paperwork, was the one who finally got June to open up. Bria had a way of asking things that didn’t feel like interrogations, like she was offering the option to tell the truth rather than demanding it. One evening she brought June food, sat down in the paint bay, and talked about nothing important until the silence turned soft. June started filling that silence, first with small details, then with heavier ones. She’d been in foster care since Gideon died, bounced through homes that ranged from tolerable to unbearable, always temporary, always conditional.
But the group home had been worse in ways that didn’t always leave bruises. There were rules without logic and punishments that felt personal, carried out by adults who treated kids like problems that needed to be contained. June had mentioned her brother during intake, and someone had told her to stop living in the past. When she asked if she could keep his dog tags, they said personal items were a privilege, not a right. A supervisor found her sketchbook filled with drawings of Gideon’s bikes, every detail she could remember, the exhaust pipes he’d customized, the flame patterns he’d taught her to layer, the emblem he’d worn like a promise.
The supervisor flipped through the pages and tossed the sketchbook into the trash without a word. June told Bria she waited until lights out, fished it from the dumpster, wiped the grime from the cover, and left that same night. She’d been on the move ever since, sleeping in bus stations and fast-food bathrooms, doing odd jobs for cash, always watching for the system’s hands reaching to drag her back. Bria listened without interrupting, her expression tight and thoughtful. When June finished, Bria nodded once, slow and controlled.
“Hale never told us about you,” Bria said gently. “Why do you think that was?” June shrugged, but her shoulders lifted like they were bracing against old disappointment. “He kept his life separate,” she said. “He said the club was important, but so was I. He didn’t want those things touching.” Bria asked if Gideon ever tried to get her out before he died, and June stared down at her hands as if the answer lived in the lines of her palms. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. He said he was working on something, but then the accident happened and everything just fell apart.”
Bria made a mental note, because “working on something” sounded like paperwork, like plans, like a trail that might still exist. June kept painting, and word started to spread among local riders. People who had known Gideon back in the day came by just to see her work, and some of them stood in silence with their mouths set tight, shaking their heads like they couldn’t accept what their eyes were seeing. “That’s Hale,” one of them murmured, and the reverence in his voice made Rory’s skin prickle. The attention made Dane nervous, because the more people who knew June was there, the harder it would be to keep her off anyone’s radar.
Dane brought it up at the next club meeting, his voice low but firm. He said June had been there too long and someone was going to call it in. Silas answered flatly that she was Gideon’s sister and they owed Gideon. Dane shot back that respect didn’t erase the law, and sheltering a runaway minor was a nightmare waiting to happen. The room divided in a way that felt dangerous, not because anyone wanted to fight, but because they wanted different kinds of safety. Rory stayed quiet, which wasn’t like him, and that silence spoke louder than a speech.
Bria left the argument and went into the back office, digging through old club records. Gideon’s file was sparse, no mention of family, no notes about a sister, nothing that explained why he’d kept June separate. Then Bria found something else, a document request from years back that looked like it had been printed, stamped, and filed away with bitter resignation. A petition had been filed with the county family court. Gideon had tried to get custody of June. Bria read the attached report twice, then a third time, because the reason for the denial twisted her stomach.
The petition had been denied because of Gideon’s association with the Iron Fangs motorcycle club. The evaluator had labeled him unfit, citing lifestyle and associates, as if love and stability were measured by who you drank coffee with at midnight. An incident report was sealed, so Bria couldn’t access the details, but the summary mentioned violence at June’s group home and allegations that had been buried. Bria sat back staring at the screen, feeling the shape of Gideon’s failure, not his failure as a brother, but the system’s refusal to let him be one. He had tried to save June, and the system had stopped him.
Bria printed the documents and brought them to Silas that night. Silas read them in silence, his face carved into something hard. When he finished, he set the papers down carefully, as if slamming them might break something else. “He tried,” Silas said quietly. “And they stopped him.” Bria nodded, feeling the same anger settle into her bones. “Which means this isn’t just about a runaway,” she said. “The system failed her before Gideon even died.”
The garage felt different as the days passed, not just because June was there, but because everyone was watching the edges now. Dane avoided Silas during meetings, both of them too stubborn to back down and too proud to admit fear was part of their argument. Rory focused on paint jobs and kept his mouth shut, but his eyes tracked June’s movements like he was unconsciously guarding her. The younger members stayed out of it, not because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t know where they stood. Kellan was the one who accidentally made things worse.
Kellan had been helping Bria pull old records when he found a thread of emails that didn’t belong with the rest. The messages were dated near the time of Gideon’s custody petition, and they weren’t about bikes or dues or runs. Someone had been digging into Iron Fangs background checks, mapping associations, looking for leverage. The inquiry had come from a law firm, but the firm was representing a private client, and most of the name had been redacted. Kellan kept scrolling until he found one email where the name slipped through: Calder Voss.
Kellan didn’t recognize it. He brought it to Bria and asked who that was. Bria’s expression changed instantly, like a door slamming shut. “Voss,” she said quietly. “He ran with the Chrome Shackles back in the day.” Kellan asked what happened to him, and Bria’s eyes hardened. “His brother died in a crash,” she said. “Same night Gideon went down.” Kellan leaned back, unease crawling up his spine, and asked if Bria thought it was connected.
“Official reports called them separate crashes,” Bria said, choosing her words carefully. “Different highways. Different times.” She told him the Shackles believed Gideon caused it, that he ran Voss’s brother off the road and crashed while fleeing. Kellan asked if that was true, and Bria shook her head immediately. “Gideon was a lot of things,” she said, “but he wasn’t a killer.” Silas had been with Gideon that night, she reminded Kellan, and Silas had always said they were riding alone, heading back from a run, when Gideon hit a patch of oil and went down hard.
Bria said Voss didn’t buy it, and that was the problem. Kellan pulled up more recent records, chasing threads the way young men do when they want to prove they’re useful. He found that Voss had hired a private investigator who specialized in tracking runaways. The investigator had been active in the area for weeks, asking questions at bus stations and shelters, circling closer. Bria felt her stomach drop as the implications snapped into place. If June had escaped the system, someone else was following her trail for a different reason.
Bria brought everything to Silas that night. The club gathered in the back room with the door shut and voices low, the air thick with tension and stale smoke. When Bria laid out what Kellan had found, the room went quiet in the way a room goes quiet before a storm. Dane spoke first, his face tight. “So this isn’t just about child services,” he said. “Someone’s actively hunting her.” Bria nodded once, feeling sick as she said it out loud. “Looks that way.”
Silas rubbed his jaw, thinking, his eyes distant as he stared at nothing. “Voss wants revenge,” he said, voice flat. “He couldn’t get it from Gideon, so he’s going after Gideon’s sister.” Rory finally spoke, his voice low and edged. “What’s his play?” he asked. “He can’t just snatch a kid.” Bria answered that he didn’t have to snatch her, not if he could force her back into the system and let the system do the disappearing.
She told them Voss only had to make sure June ended up in a place where she had no allies, no protection, maybe even somewhere worse than where she came from. Dane swore under his breath and glanced toward the paint bay, where June was working late again with headphones in, lost in brush strokes. She had started a mural on the far wall, huge and ambitious, showing the club riding together through flames, every member rendered with relentless precision. At the center was Gideon, leaning into a turn, his bike roaring, his face fierce and alive. Right behind him, barely sketched in, was a smaller figure, a girl on a bike made of light pencil lines, unfinished, still becoming.
“She doesn’t know,” Dane said quietly. Silas’s eyes hardened. “And we’re not telling her,” he replied. “She’s been through enough. We handle this ourselves.” Rory asked how, and Silas stood up, his chair scraping the floor. “We make sure she’s protected legally,” he said. “We get ahead of this before Voss does.” Dane crossed his arms and pushed back, asking what happened if the state came knocking and all they had were good intentions.
“Then we fight,” Silas said, the words steady and final. “The way Gideon would have.” The room stayed silent, and Dane looked like he wanted to argue, because he had children and he knew what it meant to risk everything. But he also knew what it meant to walk away when someone needed you, and that knowledge sat in his throat like a stone. He looked again at the mural, at Gideon’s face, at the unfinished girl behind him taking shape, and the decision seemed to make itself.
“All right,” Dane said finally. “But we do it smart. We get a lawyer. We build a case. We don’t throw ourselves in front of the train and hope it stops.” Silas nodded, relieved not because the plan was easy, but because it was real. He told Bria to pull together everything they had, the custody petition, the incident reports, anything that showed the system failed June. Bria said she was already on it, her voice crisp with purpose. Silas told Kellan to keep digging on Voss, to find where he was, who he was working with, and what his next move might be.
Silas turned to Rory last. “Keep her busy,” he said. “Keep her safe. Don’t let her know we’re worried.” Rory glanced toward the mural, his expression unreadable. “She’s got a good eye,” he muttered, trying to sound casual. “That piece is going to be something when it’s done.” Silas’s voice softened as he answered, “Yeah. It will.”
Over the next few days, June kept painting in bursts, sometimes staying up past midnight with headphones in, lost in the rhythm of color and line. The crew gave her space but stayed close, the way wolves circle without showing teeth. Someone always made sure there was food, even if it was just a plate slid onto a table without a word. Someone always checked that the heater was running, that the back office door latched, that the locks were where they should be. June didn’t ask why the care had sharpened into vigilance, and maybe she sensed it, or maybe she was simply used to people keeping secrets around her.
One evening, Silas found her standing in front of the mural, staring at Gideon’s face. The paint was still wet in places, the flames bright and violent, the riders captured in motion. June’s posture looked smaller when she stood that still, as if grief could shrink her. “You miss him,” Silas said, and it wasn’t a question. June nodded once, swallowing hard. “Every day,” she said.
Silas stepped closer, careful not to crowd her, and told her Gideon had been a good man, loyal, reckless sometimes, but loyal. June’s voice turned quiet and rough when she said Gideon told her the club was his family. She said he promised they would take care of each other when things got bad. Silas replied that Gideon was right, and that promise included her. June turned to look at him like she was searching his face for something that wouldn’t break.
“Why didn’t he tell you about me?” she asked. Silas took a slow breath, choosing truth without cruelty. He told her he thought Gideon was trying to protect her from this life, from the weight that came with it. June’s eyes flashed with pain as she said she needed him, and he wasn’t there. Silas didn’t argue, because argument would have been disrespect. “I know,” he said, voice low. “But we are.”
June looked back at the mural, at the unfinished girl behind Gideon, and something in her expression shifted toward frustration. “I don’t know how to finish it,” she admitted. Silas studied the pencil lines and the empty space, and he said it would finish when she was ready. June didn’t respond with words, just picked up her brush and added a stroke, then another, as if testing whether readiness could be built. Silas watched for a moment, then quietly walked away, leaving her alone with the work she was trying to make into a future.
The call came early in the morning, sharp as a slap. Kellan’s phone buzzed while he was still half-asleep, and the message made him sit up fast, heart pounding. The private investigator had filed a formal report with child services, and June’s location was in it. Someone was coming. Kellan called Silas immediately, his voice tight, and within an hour the entire club was at the garage with faces set and movements quick.
Bria had her laptop open on the desk, files spread around it like a war map. Dane paced in short, angry loops, running his hands through his hair, thinking about consequences. Rory stood near the paint bay with his arms crossed, watching June work on the mural like nothing had changed, like denial could keep the world out. Silas asked how much time they had, and Kellan said maybe a day, two if luck held. Bria looked up and said she had everything compiled: Gideon’s custody petition, incident reports from the group home, testimonies from other kids placed there who had suffered the same neglect.
“It’s enough to show a pattern,” Bria said, though her eyes showed she didn’t trust the system to care. Dane asked if it was enough to win, and Bria admitted she didn’t know. Silas didn’t let doubt settle. He turned to Dane and reminded him he said he knew a family lawyer. Dane nodded, already pulling out his phone, and said a woman named Nora DeWitt handled custody and foster placement cases and didn’t scare easily. Silas told him to call her now.
While Dane stepped outside to make the call, Silas walked over to June. She had her back to him, adding details to one of the bikes in the mural, her hand steady. “We need to talk,” Silas said quietly. June set the brush down and turned around, and the way her eyes sharpened told him she already knew what was coming. “They found me,” she said.
Silas nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “But we’re not letting them take you without a fight.” June’s jaw tightened, and for a second she looked younger than fourteen, like a child cornered by history. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “I can disappear again. I’ve done it before.” Silas asked her where she would go, how long she thought she could keep running, and he didn’t say it to shame her, only to anchor her in reality.
June didn’t answer, and Silas took that silence as permission to tell her what she deserved to know. He said Gideon tried to get her out, that he filed paperwork and fought the system, and they shut him down because of the club, because he wouldn’t walk away from the Iron Fangs. June’s eyes narrowed. “So this is about guilt,” she said, and the accusation landed hard. Silas didn’t flinch. “This is about family,” he replied. “Gideon was our brother. That makes you ours, too.”
June studied his face like she was looking for cracks, for performative kindness, for the moment the promise would fail. She didn’t find it, and that seemed to scare her more than comfort her. Dane came back inside with the phone still in his hand and said Nora was in. He said she would meet them in a few hours and she needed to see everything they had. Bria began gathering documents with brisk efficiency, and Kellan backed up digital files to a drive with shaking hands. Rory finally spoke, voice steady. “What do you need from me?” he asked.
Silas told him to keep June calm. Then he told him to finish that mural, to make sure it was done before anyone showed up at their door. Rory raised an eyebrow, skeptical even now. “You think a painting’s going to make a difference?” he asked. Silas looked toward the wall, toward Gideon’s face and the unfinished girl, and he said he thought it showed June had a reason to stay. Rory didn’t argue after that, because he could see the truth in the brush strokes.
The meeting with Nora DeWitt happened at a diner outside of town, the kind of place with cracked vinyl booths and coffee that tasted like it had been poured through old memories. Nora was a sharp woman in her fifties with tired eyes that missed nothing, wearing a blazer that had seen better days and carrying a briefcase that looked older than June. She ordered coffee, listened to the story without interrupting, and flipped through Bria’s documents with brisk, practiced movements. When she finished, she set the folder down and looked directly at June, not at Silas, not at Rory, not at the club.
“Do you want to stay with them?” Nora asked. June hesitated, and that hesitation held everything she’d been through, every adult who’d promised safety and then failed. “I don’t want to go back to the group home,” June said. Nora didn’t let her dodge. “That’s not what I asked,” she replied. June glanced at Silas, then back at Nora, and finally said, “Yeah. I want to stay.”
Nora nodded once, decisive. She said they would file an emergency petition, show systemic failure, show Gideon’s blocked custody attempt, and show that the Iron Fangs could provide stability. Dane asked if it would work, and Nora said it depended on the judge, but they had a decent shot if they could show June had been thriving at the garage. Silas said she had, and his voice carried certainty that wasn’t performative. Nora warned them that guardianship would bring background checks, inspections, scrutiny, and the state would pry into everything.
“We’ve got nothing to hide,” Silas said. Nora gave him a blunt look and told him everyone had something to hide, but as long as it wasn’t something that endangered the kid, they could work with it. The hearing was set quickly, because Nora pulled strings and called in favors, and because the threat of child services moving June into a temporary placement made time feel like an enemy. The courtroom was small, the kind where every cough sounded too loud. June sat between Silas and Bria, hands folded tightly in her lap, her foot bouncing under the table like a heartbeat trying to escape.
The state argued that June belonged in the system, that the Iron Fangs were unfit, that safety had to come before sentiment. Nora countered with documents, placing Gideon’s custody petition in front of the judge like a wound that needed to be seen. She pointed to the reasons for the denial, the way “wrong lifestyle” had been used like a weapon. She presented the incident reports from the group home, the complaints that had been ignored, the pattern of neglect and abuse that had been allowed to grow. She called Dane to the stand, and he spoke about his own children, about what family meant, about why the club was willing to step up when the system failed.
Then Nora called June. The judge asked simple questions that felt anything but simple: how long had she been at the garage, did she feel safe, what did she want. June answered carefully, her voice quiet but clear, the way she had learned to speak when adults held power over her life. She talked about Gideon, the art he taught her, the promise he made, and the mural waiting on the wall. She said she had been painting the club, all of them, because they were the only family she had left. The judge listened, then asked to see the sketchbooks June always carried like armor.
Nora handed the notebook over, and the judge flipped through the pages slowly, studying each drawing. There were Gideon’s bikes, rendered from memory with obsessive detail, there were faces of club members caught in charcoal and ink, there was the emblem that started everything. The judge’s expression didn’t soften into sentimentality, but it sharpened into something like understanding. When the judge finally spoke, the room went still. Temporary guardianship was granted to Silas Marr and the Iron Fangs motorcycle club under supervised conditions, with regular check-ins and clear consequences for violations.
June exhaled, shoulders dropping as if she had been holding her breath for years. Outside the courthouse, Nora shook Silas’s hand and told him not to ruin this, her voice hard because she had seen too many adults fail. Silas promised they wouldn’t, and the promise sounded different now that it had legal weight. Back at the garage, the crew had finished the mural in June’s absence. Rory had added the final touches carefully, blending June’s sketches into something whole without erasing her hand.
When June walked in and saw it, she stopped as if the floor had disappeared under her. Every member was there in paint, past and present, riding through flames that looked alive. Gideon was at the center, fierce and real, and behind him was a girl on a bike, fully rendered now, no longer only pencil lines. Silas stepped up beside June holding something folded in his hands, and when he opened it, it was a custom-made patch with her initials stitched into the fabric. “You’re not running anymore,” he said, voice low and certain. “You’re riding.”
June took the patch with hands that trembled despite her effort to keep them steady. She looked from Silas to the mural to the crew standing around her, faces rough and awkward with emotion they didn’t know how to show. No one clapped, no one made a speech, because this wasn’t that kind of family. June swallowed hard, pressed the patch against her palm, and for the first time since she walked through that door, her mouth softened into a real smile that looked like relief.
