I Set the Sheets on Fire, Then the Clubhouse novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Club Law

In the lot Becky throws her ring into the fire, Dario claims the table will rule on her Friday, and her bank balance reads zero.

I did not get in the truck.

"No," I told Boone.

He held the door open anyway, and his hand on the frame was shaking.

I had never seen that hand shake.

"Kid, there are sirens coming," he said. "Get in."

"You sat there while I asked," I said. "You heard me ask."

He closed his mouth.

Behind him the second floor was a wall of orange, and Pearl was dragging two prospects away from the front door by their sleeves.

Dario came across the gravel at a jog with his cut hanging open.

He had put on a face for the lot, wounded and shaky and kind.

"Becky, baby," he said, loud enough for forty men to hear. "I know you're hurting. I know it's your mom's anniversary month."

It was my mother's anniversary month.

I had cried about it to him in March, in the same bed.

"She's not herself," he told the crowd. "She came at Elena with a fuel can. Somebody could've died."

Elena stood near the bar door, now in a black tank top, hugging her arms.

She nodded along with him.

I looked at the men who had stayed silent in the main room.

Some of them nodded too.

"I gave you ten seconds," I said to Dario. "I checked every room before I came down."

"You set fire to a building full of people."

"It was a room full of people who already knew where the door was."

A couple of the older patches almost smiled before they remembered not to.

Dario stopped smiling.

The first fire engine turned into the lot, and the club moved all at once.

I watched it happen, a machine I had lived inside for five years.

Two prospects ran to the gate.

Boone walked out to meet the chief at the front of the truck, and I heard him say "kitchen grease, my fault, nobody hurt."

The chief looked at the sky and at the gravel and at forty bikers, and he went to work.

Nobody said arson.

Nobody said my name.

Boone came back to me with the lines in his face deeper than they'd been that morning.

"The table rules on this Friday," he said, in the voice he used for the whole room. "Fire on club property is club law. She's held until then."

"Held?" I said.

"The gate's chained. Nobody leaves till Friday, you included."

"You can't hold me."

"I'm not holding you." He didn't look away. "I'm keeping you where nobody can say you ran."

The way he said it didn't match the words.

Dario heard that too, and I saw him file it away.

He stepped in close and took my left wrist, smiling for the crowd.

"Come on, baby. We'll go sit in my truck and talk like a married couple."

"Let go of me."

"Becky."

"I said let go."

His thumb pressed into the bone.

Nobody moved.

Then someone's arm came between us like a gate, and Cade Ostrow said, "She said let go, Dario."

Dario's smile went thin.

"This is between me and my wife, Cade."

"Take your hand off her or I'll take it off."

For three full seconds the only sound was the hoses.

Dario let go.

My wrist had white marks on it that were going red already.

I looked down at my other hand, at the ring on my finger.

It was a plain gold band, bought in a mall in Tulsa for four hundred and twelve dollars, because we'd been broke and happy.

I thought of the one on his nightstand.

I slid mine off.

I walked to the edge of the fire's heat, where the gravel was hot through my shoes, and held it up so every man in the lot could see.

"Five years," I said.

I threw it into the burning doorway.

It rang once against the concrete and was gone.

Pearl made a small sound behind me, and somebody in the back said, "Damn."

Dario said, very softly, "You're going to regret that."

"I regret every Sunday dinner I cooked for any of you," I said.

I took out my phone, because my hands needed something to do.

I only meant to look at the time.

A banking notification sat on the lock screen, sent at 7:52 that morning.

TRANSFER COMPLETE.

I opened the app and my thumb stopped.

The joint account balance read zero.

The account held thirty-eight thousand dollars, every cent of my mother's life insurance, saved for a house with a porch.

I opened the transfer.

It had gone to an account ending in 4417, to a name I knew from the lease Elena kept on her apartment above the hardware store.

It was authorized under his login, two hours after he'd texted me love you.

I looked up.

Dario was watching my face, and he had seen exactly what I was reading.

He did not look sorry anymore.

He smiled.

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