The fluorescent lights of the Sterling & Vance Private Medical Pavilion buzzed with a low, sterile hum that made Maya’s raging headache even worse.

She sat on the edge of the examination table, the crinkling paper beneath her shifting uncomfortably with every breath she took. She was eight months pregnant, exhausted down to her very bones, and her ankles were swollen over the tops of her scuffed, faux-leather boots.

Maya didn’t belong here, and the architecture of the building made sure she knew it. The walls were painted in soothing, expensive shades of slate and taupe. The medical equipment looked like it belonged on a spaceship, not in a clinic.

This was the wealthy side of town. The side of town where people paid out of pocket for boutique medical care, where waiting rooms served infused water and artisanal coffee.

Maya was only here because her regular, run-down public clinic on the south side had a plumbing emergency, and the county had temporarily rerouted high-risk maternity cases to the nearest available facility.

She felt the judgmental eyes the second she walked through the double glass doors. The receptionist had stared at Maya’s faded oversized hoodie and her heavily taped-together Medicaid card as if she had just handed over a dead rat.

Now, she was trapped in Exam Room 3, waiting for forty-five minutes for a doctor who clearly considered her presence an absolute insult to his practice.

The door finally swung open. It didn’t open gently. It was pushed open with the impatient force of a man who believed his time was worth a thousand dollars a minute.

Dr. Richard Vance stepped into the room. He didn’t look at Maya. He didn’t say hello.

He was in his late forties, impeccably groomed, smelling of expensive cologne and old money. Beneath his pristine, heavily starched white coat, he wore a custom-tailored Italian suit. The Rolex on his wrist caught the harsh overhead light, throwing a harsh glare across the room.

He picked up her chart from the door slot, sighing heavily as if the mere sight of her medical history was a personal burden.

“Maya,” he said, not a greeting, but a flat acknowledgment of the paperwork. “It says here you haven’t been taking your prenatal vitamins.”

“I… I ran out,” Maya stammered, wrapping her arms protectively over her swollen belly. “And my insurance hit a snag last week, so the pharmacy wouldn’t clear the refill until—”

“I don’t need a life story,” Dr. Vance cut her off smoothly, his tone dripping with the kind of condescension reserved exclusively for the lower class. “I need you to take responsibility. This is exactly the problem with you county overflows. You want premium medical treatment but you won’t even do the bare minimum to take care of yourselves.”

Maya felt her cheeks burn hot with shame. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, but she swallowed them down. She was used to this. When you were poor in America, you learned quickly that your dignity was the first thing they stripped from you at the door.

“I’m trying,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I work double shifts at the diner just to keep the lights on. It’s hard right now.”

“We all work hard,” Dr. Vance scoffed, stepping closer. He finally looked at her, his eyes scanning her cheap clothes with unconcealed disgust. “Difference is, some of us make responsible choices.”

He pulled a stethoscope from his neck. “Lie back. Let’s get this over with so I can get back to my actual patients.”

Maya did as she was told, her movements slow and clumsy due to the heavy weight of her child. The paper crinkled loudly. The room was freezing, but Dr. Vance didn’t offer her a blanket.

Just as he reached out to begin the examination, a harsh, buzzing vibration echoed through the small room.

It was Maya’s phone.

It sat on the metal tray next to the cotton swabs. It was an old, battered Android, the screen splintered into a massive spiderweb of cracks.

Maya’s heart leaped. She knew who was calling. It was Jax.

Jax was her older brother. He had been on a long-haul run out of state, moving freight with his motorcycle club, the Iron Hounds. He was supposed to be back today. He was her only family, her fiercely protective anchor in a world that constantly tried to drag her under. He had texted her earlier saying he was pulling into town and was coming straight to the clinic to pick her up.

Instinctively, terrified that he couldn’t find the building, Maya reached out and picked up the cracked phone to check the screen.

Dr. Vance stopped dead. His face flushed a dark, violent shade of red.

For a man who had spent his entire life surrounded by wealth, obedience, and groveling deference, the sight of a poor, charity-case patient daring to check a cheap cell phone while he was gracing her with his presence was the ultimate insult.

It was a trigger. A spark hitting gasoline. All the quiet, systemic hatred he held for the working class suddenly boiled over into blinding, irrational rage.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, his voice dropping an octave.

“I’m sorry,” Maya gasped, her thumb hovering over the screen. “It’s my brother. He’s coming to get me, I just need to tell him what room—”

“I don’t care if it’s the President of the United States!” Dr. Vance roared, the sudden volume making Maya flinch violently.

Before she could react, Dr. Vance lunged forward.

He didn’t just grab the phone. He swung his hand, treating her with the brutal dismissal he believed someone of her status deserved.

His palm struck the back of her hand with a loud, sharp SMACK, the force of the blow carrying upward and slapping aggressively against the side of Maya’s face, shoving her backward against the examination table.

The cracked phone flew out of her grip, smashing against the linoleum floor and skidding under a medical cart.

Maya gasped, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. She scrambled back against the wall, clutching her reddened cheek, her entire body shaking uncontrollably. Tears immediately spilled over her eyelashes, hot and fast.

“You put that garbage away when I am in the room!” Dr. Vance screamed, his chest heaving, his polished veneer completely shattered. “You are in MY clinic! You are wasting MY time! You disrespect me again, and I will have security drag you out onto the curb where you belong, pregnant or not! Do you understand me?!”

Maya couldn’t speak. She just sat there, pinned against the wall, weeping openly, wrapping her arms around her stomach as if trying to shield her unborn baby from the monster in the tailored suit.

She felt entirely small. Entirely broken. Entirely alone.

Dr. Vance stood over her, breathing heavily, a cruel, satisfied smirk starting to form on his lips. He had put the trash back in its place. He felt powerful. Untouchable.

He felt so powerful, in fact, that he didn’t hear the heavy, thudding footsteps echoing down the sterile hallway outside.

He didn’t hear the receptionist’s panicked squeak of protest.

He didn’t notice the temperature in the room seemingly drop ten degrees.

And he definitely didn’t notice the massive, towering shadow that suddenly blocked out the light from the open doorway.

The silence that fell over Exam Room 3 was absolute. It wasn’t a peaceful silence. It was the kind of heavy, suffocating quiet that rolls in right before a Category 5 hurricane makes landfall.

Dr. Vance was still breathing hard, his chest puffed out, riding the high of his own perceived supremacy. He stood over Maya, expecting her to apologize, to grovel, to beg for the scraps of his medical expertise.

But Maya wasn’t looking at him anymore.

Her tear-filled eyes had shifted, locking onto the doorway over the doctor’s shoulder. The sheer, naked terror that had consumed her face just seconds ago suddenly fractured. It didn’t disappear entirely, but it changed. It was replaced by a desperate, heartbreaking relief.

A choked sob escaped her throat. “Jax…” she whispered.

Dr. Vance scoffed, rolling his eyes in exaggerated annoyance. He assumed it was just another pathetic plea from a woman who couldn’t handle the harsh reality of her own life choices.

“I don’t care who you’re crying out for,” Vance snapped, adjusting the cuffs of his tailored shirt, entirely missing the sudden shift in the room’s atmospheric pressure. “You’re going to sit up, you’re going to act like an adult, and you’re going to—”

“Step away from my sister.”

The voice didn’t boom. It didn’t need to. It was a low, gravelly baritone that sounded like cinderblocks dragging across broken glass. It carried a terrifying, absolute authority that didn’t come from a medical degree or a trust fund. It came from the streets.

Dr. Vance froze. For the first time in his pampered, insulated life, a cold spike of primal dread shot up his spine.

He turned around slowly.

Standing in the doorway of the pristine, brightly lit examination room was a nightmare wrapped in scuffed leather.

Jackson “Jax” Miller was a mountain of a man. He stood six-foot-four, with shoulders so broad they practically touched both sides of the doorframe. He was wearing heavy, steel-toed boots coated in road dust, dark denim jeans stained with engine grease, and a heavy, reinforced leather jacket bearing the menacing three-piece patch of the Iron Hounds Motorcycle Club.

His forearms were thick, corded with muscle, and covered in a tapestry of faded ink. He wore thick, knuckle-reinforced riding gloves.

But it wasn’t his size that made the air freeze in Dr. Vance’s lungs. It was his eyes.

Jax’s eyes were locked dead onto the doctor. They were dark, cold, and completely devoid of human warmth. There was no anger in them. Not yet. Just a quiet, calculating violence that was analyzing exactly how to dismantle the man standing in front of him.

Jax had ridden five hundred miles without sleeping just to make it back in time to take his pregnant little sister to her appointment. He had walked through the fancy glass doors, ignored the snooty receptionist, and followed the sound of a man screaming.

He took one step into the room. His heavy boots made a dull, authoritative thud against the linoleum.

The smell of gasoline, worn leather, and cheap tobacco instantly overpowered the sterile scent of the clinic. The clash of their two worlds was violently jarring.

Jax’s gaze shifted for a fraction of a second. He looked at Maya.

He saw her huddled against the wall, trembling like a trapped animal. He saw the tears streaming down her face. He saw her holding her swollen belly protectively.

And then, he saw it.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights, a distinct, angry red mark was already blooming across Maya’s left cheek, extending down to her hand where she had tried to block the blow.

The temperature in the room plummeted. The quiet, calculating look in Jax’s eyes vanished, replaced instantly by a dark, murderous inferno.

Dr. Vance swallowed hard, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His aristocratic arrogance tried desperately to claw its way back to the surface. He was a man of status. He belonged here. This thug did not.

“Excuse me,” Vance said, trying to inject his usual command into his voice, though it came out sounding remarkably thin. “This is a restricted area. You cannot simply barge into my examination room. I’m going to have to ask you to leave immediately before I call building security.”

Jax didn’t say a word. He didn’t blink. He just kept walking forward.

Slow, deliberate steps. The steps of a predator cornering its prey.

“Did you hear me?” Vance’s voice pitched higher, a genuine crack of panic finally breaking through his Ivy League veneer. He took a half-step backward, suddenly hyper-aware of how trapped he was between the examination table and the wall. “I am Dr. Richard Vance! You are trespassing in a private medical facility!”

“You put your hands on her,” Jax stated. It wasn’t a question. It was a death sentence.

“She was being uncooperative!” Vance sputtered, pointing a shaking finger at Maya, desperately trying to regain control of the narrative. “She was on her phone during a consultation! I was simply asserting my authority as her attending physician—”

“You hit a pregnant woman.”

Jax was only three feet away now. The sheer physical presence of the biker was overwhelming. Vance had to crane his neck upward just to maintain eye contact. The doctor’s expensive cologne was completely suffocated by the smell of the open road and impending violence.

“It was a disciplinary reflex!” Vance spat, his ego making one final, fatal stand. “You people come in here, leaching off the system, expecting luxury treatment while acting like absolute garbage! Someone needs to teach you some manners!”

It was the worst thing he could have possibly said.

Time seemed to slow down to a crawl.

Dr. Vance, realizing too late that his words had no power here, tried to turn away, reaching for the emergency call button on the wall panel.

He never made it.

Jax moved with a terrifying, explosive speed that defied his massive frame.

His heavy, reinforced leather glove shot out and clamped down onto Dr. Vance’s tailored shoulder. The grip was like an industrial vice. Vance gasped, the fabric of his thousand-dollar suit crumpling under the immense pressure.

Before the doctor could even process the pain, Jax used the grip to violently spin the man around.

Vance was whipped around like a ragdoll. His eyes were wide, completely dilated with shock. His mouth opened to scream for help, but the sound never materialized.

Jax had already pulled his right arm back. His boots planted firmly on the floor, transferring the kinetic energy from his legs, through his torso, and straight into his fist.

The punch was flawless, brutal, and utterly devastating.

The reinforced knuckles of Jax’s riding glove connected squarely with Dr. Vance’s jaw. The sound was sickening—a sharp, bone-rattling CRACK that echoed off the sterile walls like a gunshot.

The sheer force of the blow lifted Dr. Vance off his feet.

His head snapped violently to the side. The lights went out in his eyes instantly. His brain simply shut down, unable to process the massive trauma.

Dr. Vance was completely unconscious before gravity even had a chance to pull him down.

He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. His body hit the medical cart, sending a tray of steel instruments crashing to the floor in a deafening clatter. His heavy, lifeless form bounced off the side of the examination table and crumpled into a pathetic, twisted heap on the polished linoleum.

His Rolex smashed against the ground, the glass face shattering into a dozen pieces.

Silence slammed back into the room.

The only sound was the heavy, rhythmic breathing of the biker standing over the fallen doctor. Jax didn’t shake out his hand. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t even look at the man on the floor anymore. He was entirely unfazed, as if he had just swatted a particularly annoying fly.

Outside the door, the hallway was in utter chaos. Nurses were screaming. Someone was yelling into a phone for the police. The sound of running footsteps echoed from the reception area.

Jax ignored all of it.

He stepped over Dr. Vance’s unconscious body, his heavy boots crushing the scattered cotton swabs and broken glass of the doctor’s watch.

He walked over to the corner of the room, bent down, and retrieved Maya’s shattered Android phone from under the cart. He slipped it carefully into his jacket pocket.

Then, the terrifying, violent monster vanished, and the older brother returned.

Jax turned to Maya. His rugged face softened entirely. The coldness in his eyes melted away, replaced by a deep, aching protective warmth.

He reached out slowly, taking off his heavy right glove and tucking it into his belt. With a gentle, calloused hand, he wiped the fresh tears off Maya’s cheeks, careful not to touch the red, swollen mark the doctor had left.

“I got you, kid,” Jax whispered, his voice impossibly tender. “I’m right here. Nobody’s ever touching you again.”

Maya broke down. She leaned forward, burying her face into his solid, leather-clad chest, wrapping her arms around his torso. She sobbed, the raw emotion pouring out of her. Jax wrapped his massive arms around her, shielding her entire body from the harsh lights of the room.

He stood there, holding his pregnant sister, an immovable mountain of muscle and leather in the middle of the high-society clinic.

Suddenly, two male orderlies and a senior nurse burst into the doorway, their faces pale and panicked. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the scene.

They saw Dr. Vance, the untouchable star of the Sterling & Vance Pavilion, lying motionless on the floor, bleeding from the mouth, completely knocked out cold.

And they saw the biker holding the crying woman, his back turned to them.

“Hey!” one of the orderlies yelled, trying to sound brave, though his voice cracked noticeably. “Get away from him! The police are on their way!”

Jax slowly turned his head. He didn’t let go of Maya. He just looked over his shoulder at the three staff members blocking the doorway.

The glare he gave them was so dark, so dripping with predatory promise, that the orderly actually took a step backward, bumping into the nurse.

“Good,” Jax said softly, his voice echoing in the tense room. “Tell ’em to bring an ambulance for your boss. And a body bag for the next person who tries to stop me from taking my sister home.”

The staff froze, completely paralyzed by fear.

Jax carefully helped Maya slide off the examination table. He kept one arm firmly wrapped around her waist, supporting her weight.

“Come on, May,” he murmured, guiding her toward the door. “We’re leaving.”

He walked straight toward the three staff members. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t alter his path.

As the massive biker and his pregnant sister approached the doorway, the orderlies and the nurse didn’t say a word. They didn’t try to stop him. They simply pressed themselves flat against the walls of the hallway, holding their breath, parting like the Red Sea to let them through.

Jax walked Maya down the long, immaculate corridor, leaving the sterile, prejudiced world of Dr. Vance in ruins behind them.

But as the wail of police sirens began to echo in the distance, cutting through the suburban afternoon, Jax knew this was far from over. You don’t shatter the jaw of a millionaire doctor in his own clinic and just ride off into the sunset.

The wealthy always demanded a pound of flesh from the poor. They were going to try to ruin his life. They were going to try to lock him away and leave his sister completely defenseless.

Jax tightened his grip on Maya as the flashing red and blue lights reflected against the clinic’s glass doors.

Let them try.

The automatic glass doors of the Sterling & Vance Private Medical Pavilion slid open, letting in a sudden rush of heavy, humid afternoon air.

It was a stark contrast to the climate-controlled, sanitized chill of the clinic. Out here, the real world was waiting. And the real world was currently bathed in the chaotic, strobe-like flashing of red and blue police lights.

Three white-and-blue cruisers had already jumped the meticulously manicured curb, their tires crushing the expensive imported petunias lining the walkway.

Four officers were already out of their vehicles. They were moving fast, their hands resting instinctively on the thick black grips of their service weapons. Their faces were set in masks of high-adrenaline tension.

Dispatch had received a frantic call from a high-end medical facility in the affluent Oakwood district. The words “assault,” “biker,” and “Dr. Vance” had been used. In a town like this, a threat to a man of Vance’s tax bracket was treated with the same urgency as a bank robbery.

Jax didn’t stop walking. He didn’t run, either.

He kept his pace slow, steady, and deliberate. His right arm was wrapped securely around Maya’s trembling shoulders, pulling her flush against his heavy leather jacket.

Maya was crying silently now, the kind of deep, exhausted weeping that shook her entire frame. She was terrified. She knew how this story ended. When a poor kid from the south side got into an altercation with a millionaire in the hills, the truth didn’t matter. The law was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

“Eyes on me, May,” Jax murmured, his voice a low, vibrating rumble in his chest. “Don’t look at the lights. Don’t look at the cops. Just look at your shoes and keep walking.”

“They’re going to take you away, Jax,” she sobbed, her fingers digging desperately into the thick leather of his vest. “He hit me first. He hit me, and they won’t care.”

“I know,” Jax said, his tone utterly devoid of panic. It was a cold, hard fact of life. “But he’s not going to touch you again. That’s what matters.”

“Stop right there! Put your hands in the air!”

The command ripped through the humid air, amplified by a megaphone.

The lead officer, a thick-necked sergeant with a tight buzz cut, was standing behind the open door of his cruiser, his weapon drawn and leveled directly at Jax’s chest. The other three officers immediately fanned out, forming a tactical semi-circle, their guns also pointed at the massive biker.

The wealthy patrons who had been walking toward their imported luxury SUVs froze in the parking lot. Cell phones were instantly whipped out. Gasps of horror rippled through the onlookers.

To them, Jax was the monster. He was the savage, uneducated brute who had dared to bring violence into their pristine sanctuary.

None of them saw the angry, raised welt forming on the cheek of the pregnant woman huddled against him. They only saw the leather, the tattoos, and the threat to their bubble of privilege.

Jax stopped.

He didn’t make any sudden movements. He knew exactly how this game was played. He had grown up playing it. One wrong twitch, one sudden shift of his weight, and these cops would have all the justification they needed to empty their magazines into him right here on the pavement.

“I’m unarmed,” Jax called out, his voice projecting clearly over the crackle of police radios. “I have a pregnant woman with me. She’s in distress. I am going to let go of her slowly, and then I will comply.”

“Shut up and put your hands on your head! Now!” the sergeant barked, taking a step forward. The laser sight of his pistol painted a dancing red dot over the center of Jax’s chest.

“Please!” Maya screamed, her voice cracking with raw hysteria. She tried to step in front of her brother, acting as a human shield with her swollen belly. “Don’t shoot him! The doctor attacked me! My brother was just protecting me!”

“Ma’am, step away from the suspect!” another officer yelled, his voice laced with panic. “Step away now!”

“May, listen to me,” Jax said, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for her. He gently but firmly grabbed her shoulders, moving her to his side so she was no longer in the line of fire. “You have to step back. If you fight them, they’ll charge you too. Think about the baby.”

That stopped her. Maya choked on a sob, her hands dropping to her stomach. The reality of her situation came crashing down with crushing weight.

“I’m stepping away from her,” Jax announced loudly to the police.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Jax unspooled his arm from around his sister. He took two deliberate steps away from her, isolating himself in the open space of the driveway.

He didn’t raise his hands immediately. Instead, he locked eyes with the sergeant. Jax’s gaze was completely steady, a dark, unyielding stare that refused to submit to the intimidation tactics. He was yielding to the guns, not the men holding them.

Slowly, he raised his massive, heavily tattooed arms, lacing his thick fingers behind his head.

“On your knees!” the sergeant commanded, emboldened now that the suspect was complying. “Get down on the asphalt!”

Jax lowered himself to his knees. The rough concrete bit into his jeans, but his expression remained a mask of carved stone.

Two officers rushed forward instantly. They didn’t approach him like a citizen. They approached him like a dangerous animal that had escaped its cage.

One officer slammed his knee squarely into the center of Jax’s back, forcing the biker’s chest toward the pavement. The impact was violent, designed to cause pain and assert dominance.

Jax grunted, his jaw clenching, but he didn’t resist. He let them pull his arms down roughly. The cold steel of the handcuffs snapped shut around his thick wrists. The cuffs were ratcheted on far too tight, the metal immediately biting into his skin and cutting off the circulation.

It was a petty, vindictive little trick cops used when they felt threatened by a suspect’s size. Jax knew it well.

“Jackson Miller,” the officer hissed in his ear as he patted him down aggressively, finding nothing but keys, a wallet, and Maya’s shattered cell phone. “You just made the biggest mistake of your miserable life, biker trash.”

“Check his pockets,” the sergeant ordered, jogging over. “The clinic manager said he assaulted Dr. Vance. Unprovoked attack.”

“Unprovoked?” Maya screamed, breaking away from a female officer who was trying to corral her. She pointed a trembling finger toward the clinic doors. “He slapped me! He hit me in the face because I checked my phone! Look at my face!”

She turned her cheek toward the glaring police lights. The red mark left by Dr. Vance’s hand was undeniable. It was shaped perfectly like a large handprint, the skin slightly bruised and puffy.

The sergeant barely glanced at her. His eyes swept over her faded maternity jeans, her cheap sneakers, and her distressed state. He immediately calculated her social worth, and it came up zero.

“Ma’am, calm down,” the sergeant said, his tone dripping with patronizing dismissal. “Paramedics are inside treating Dr. Vance. We’ll get your statement later. Right now, your brother is under arrest for aggravated assault.”

“You’re not listening to me!” Maya sobbed, coughing violently as the stress overwhelmed her system. “He attacked a pregnant woman! Arrest him! Why aren’t you going in there and arresting the doctor?!”

“Because Dr. Vance is a respected member of this community,” the sergeant snapped, his patience evaporating. He looked at Maya as if she were dirt on his shoes. “And people like you don’t get to come to this side of town and cause a scene. Now step back, or I’ll have you cited for obstructing an investigation.”

Jax, still pinned to the hood of the cruiser, whipped his head around. His eyes, previously calm, ignited with a terrifying, lethal fire.

“You talk to my sister like that again,” Jax snarled, his voice a low, guttural threat that made the officer holding him actually flinch, “and handcuffs won’t be enough to keep me off you.”

“Shut your mouth!” the officer yelled, shoving Jax’s face hard against the hot metal of the car hood. “You’re in no position to make threats, scumbag.”

Inside the clinic, the scene was a completely different story.

Dr. Richard Vance was currently putting on the performance of a lifetime.

He was sitting on a plush leather chair in the manager’s office, holding an ice pack wrapped in a sterile, high-thread-count towel to his jaw. His thousand-dollar suit jacket was discarded. Two nurses were hovering over him like anxious servants, offering him water and checking his vitals.

A fresh-faced, eager police officer was sitting across from him, pen hovering over a notepad, hanging onto Vance’s every word.

“It was terrifying, officer,” Vance lied smoothly, his voice adopting a perfectly calibrated tone of victimhood and aristocratic shock. He winced, playing up the pain in his jaw. “I was simply conducting a routine examination on a… difficult patient. A charity case, unfortunately. The county forces us to take them.”

Vance sighed heavily, shaking his head. “She became verbally abusive. Highly uncooperative. I asked her, very politely, to put her phone away so I could monitor her baby’s heart rate. Suddenly, she started screaming for her brother.”

The officer nodded sympathetically, scribbling furiously. “And then the suspect entered the room?”

“Barged in,” Vance corrected, his eyes narrowing with calculated malice. “Like a wild animal. He didn’t say a word. I tried to reason with him. I told him this was a sterile environment. Before I could even finish my sentence, he attacked me.”

Vance pointed to his swelling jaw. “He blindsided me. A massive, unprovoked haymaker. He could have killed me. These gang types, they’re animals. They target successful people because they’re envious of what we’ve built.”

“Did you make any physical contact with the female patient, Dr. Vance?” the young officer asked tentatively, simply following protocol.

Vance’s eyes flashed with cold, sharp danger. He lowered the ice pack. “Are you implying that I, a board-certified physician with twenty years of unblemished practice, would lay hands on a pregnant woman?”

“No, sir, of course not,” the officer backpedaled immediately, intimidated by the doctor’s wealth and status. “It’s just standard procedure to ask.”

“She became hysterical and tripped backward into the wall when her brother attacked me,” Vance fabricated seamlessly, his lie airtight and rehearsed. “If she has any marks on her, it’s from her own clumsiness. Or perhaps her thug brother did it before they arrived. Who knows how these people treat each other behind closed doors?”

It was the perfect execution of class warfare.

Vance knew the police would believe a man in a tailored shirt over a girl in a faded hoodie every single time. He knew his word was the law in this zip code. He wasn’t just going to send the biker to prison; he was going to make sure the sister was painted as a hysterical, lying welfare queen.

Back outside, the heavy rain suddenly broke, a torrential summer downpour washing over the affluent suburb.

The wealthy onlookers rushed to their expensive cars, abandoning the spectacle. The cold rain soaked through Maya’s thin clothes instantly, plastering her hair to her face as she stood shivering on the sidewalk.

The officers had hauled Jax to his feet. They practically dragged his massive frame toward the open back door of the squad car.

“Jax!” Maya cried out, stepping forward, the rain mixing with her tears. “What do I do? How do I get you out?”

Jax stopped resisting the cops pushing him. He planted his heavy boots on the wet asphalt, forcing the two officers to physically halt their momentum. He turned to look at his sister.

Even soaked in rain, chained like an animal, and surrounded by men who hated him, Jax looked entirely unbroken. He was an oak tree in a hurricane.

“Listen to me, May!” Jax yelled over the downpour. “Go straight home! Don’t talk to these cops anymore. Don’t sign anything. Don’t let them take your picture.”

“But your lawyer—”

“Forget the public defender!” Jax interrupted fiercely. “Call Marcus! Tell him exactly what happened. Tell him the Iron Hounds need a favor called in. He’ll know what to do.”

“Get in the car, dirtbag!” the sergeant roared, shoving a heavy hand onto the back of Jax’s head and forcing him downward into the cramped back seat of the cruiser.

Jax folded his massive frame into the small plastic seat. The door slammed shut with a heavy, final thud that echoed like a vault locking.

Through the rain-streaked window of the police cruiser, Jax watched his little sister. She looked so small, standing alone on the sidewalk of a neighborhood that despised her, shivering in the cold.

A dark, dangerous shadow crossed Jax’s face.

Dr. Vance thought he had won. The doctor thought his money, his ZIP code, and his white coat made him a god. He thought he could break a poor woman and throw her brother in a cage without consequences.

But Dr. Vance didn’t know who he had just messed with. He didn’t know the deep, incredibly dangerous network of loyalty, brotherhood, and raw power that stood behind Jackson Miller.

The Iron Hounds weren’t just a motorcycle club. They were an army. And they protected their own.

As the police cruiser pulled away from the curb, its sirens wailing into the stormy afternoon, Jax leaned his head back against the plastic partition. He ignored the painful biting of the handcuffs cutting into his wrists.

He didn’t feel fear. He didn’t feel regret.

He only felt the cold, absolute certainty of impending vengeance.

Dr. Vance wanted a war. He had just started one. And the wealthy doctor was about to learn a very painful lesson about what happens when the people you step on decide to finally bite back.

The cross-town bus ride from the pristine, manicured streets of Oakwood back to the crumbling asphalt of the South Side took exactly forty-seven minutes. To Maya, sitting shivering in the back row, it felt like an eternity suspended in absolute dread.

Her thin maternity clothes were completely soaked through from the torrential summer downpour. The harsh air conditioning of the city bus blasted against her wet skin, making her teeth chatter uncontrollably.

But the cold was nothing compared to the burning, throbbing pain radiating from her left cheek.

Every time the bus hit a pothole—and there were many once they crossed the invisible class dividing line at 8th Avenue—the jolt sent a fresh wave of agony through her jaw. The red mark left by Dr. Vance’s heavy hand had deepened into an angry, mottled purple bruise.

She kept her head down, her wet hair acting as a curtain to hide her face from the other exhausted, working-class passengers. She wrapped her arms tightly around her swollen belly, silently praying to a God she hoped was still listening that the stress and the physical blow hadn’t harmed her unborn child.

She had nothing left. Her brother, her protector, the only person in the world who gave a damn whether she lived or died, was currently sitting in the back of a police cruiser, chained like a dangerous animal.

All because a millionaire doctor decided she wasn’t human enough to deserve basic respect.

When the bus finally hissed to a halt at her stop, Maya practically dragged herself down the steps. The rain had slowed to a miserable, icy drizzle.

Her apartment building was a decaying, four-story brick structure that looked exactly like what it was: a forgotten dumping ground for the city’s working poor. The lobby smelled permanently of boiled cabbage, cheap weed, and damp rot. The elevator hadn’t worked since 2019.

Maya gripped the rusted handrail and forced herself up three flights of stairs, her pregnant body screaming in protest with every heavy step.

She fumbled with her keys, her hands shaking violently, until the deadbolt finally gave way.

The apartment was small, cramped, and entirely silent. It was a stark, depressing contrast to the sprawling, brightly lit medical pavilion where her nightmare had just unfolded.

Maya didn’t bother changing out of her wet clothes. She didn’t even turn on the lights. She walked straight to the kitchen counter, where an old, clunky landline phone sat next to a stack of past-due utility bills. She hadn’t used it in months, relying entirely on her now-shattered Android, but she kept it active for emergencies.

This was the definition of an emergency.

Her fingers trembled as she picked up the receiver. She didn’t need to look up the number. Jax had made her memorize it years ago.

“If the police ever take me. If the club is ever in trouble. If you are ever backed into a corner and I am not there to bleed for you, you call this number. You tell him who you are, and you tell him it’s time.”

She dialed the ten digits. The line rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Thorne,” a voice answered.

The voice was impeccably smooth, cultivated, and chillingly calm. It sounded like expensive scotch poured over razor blades.

“M-Marcus?” Maya stammered, her voice cracking as a fresh wave of tears choked her throat.

There was a fraction of a second of silence on the line. Then, the smooth, professional detachment vanished entirely, replaced by a razor-sharp, hyper-focused intensity.

“Maya. Where is Jax?”

“They took him,” Maya sobbed, her legs finally giving out. She slid down the front of the kitchen cabinets, sitting heavily on the scuffed linoleum floor, pulling the telephone cord with her. “They arrested him. He told me to call you. He told me to tell you the Hounds need a favor.”

“Take a breath, Maya,” Marcus Thorne commanded gently, but with an authority that forced her lungs to obey. “Where are you right now? Are you safe?”

“I’m at my apartment,” she cried, wiping her nose with the back of her wet sleeve. “I’m safe, but Jax—”

“I will handle Jax. Tell me exactly what happened. Do not leave out a single detail. Start from the beginning.”

Maya poured it all out. She told him about the clinic. The condescension. The delayed insurance. The terrifying, explosive rage of Dr. Vance. She told him how the doctor had slapped her across the face for checking her cracked phone.

When she mentioned the slap, the silence on the other end of the line became terrifyingly heavy.

She continued, her voice trembling, describing how Jax had walked in, seen the mark, and dropped the doctor with a single, devastating punch. She described the police arriving, the guns drawn, and the way the sergeant had immediately taken the wealthy doctor’s fabricated story as absolute gospel while treating her like trash.

“They didn’t even listen to me, Marcus,” Maya wept, the injustice of it all crushing her spirit. “Dr. Vance lied. He told the cops he never touched me. He said Jax attacked him unprovoked like an animal. And they believed him. They’re going to put Jax in prison, and I’m going to lose my baby.”

“Maya, listen to me very carefully,” Marcus said. His voice wasn’t just calm anymore. It was lethal. It was the voice of a man who destroyed lives for a living. “Nobody is taking your brother away from you. And nobody is taking your child. Do you understand me?”

“But he’s a doctor,” Maya whimpered. “He has money. He has the police in his pocket.”

“And I,” Marcus replied, his tone dropping to a terrifying, absolute whisper, “have Jackson Miller.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Dr. Vance just made the worst miscalculation of his privileged, pathetic life,” Marcus stated coldly. “Lock your door, Maya. Do not answer it for anyone. Not the police, not the landlord, nobody. If you need anything, there will be two Hounds parked outside your building in exactly fifteen minutes to stand guard. I am going to the precinct.”

The line clicked dead.

Maya sat on the kitchen floor, holding the buzzing receiver to her ear, the darkness of her cramped apartment suddenly feeling a little less suffocating.

Across town, in a penthouse office overlooking the city’s financial district, Marcus Thorne placed his sleek smartphone down on a mahogany desk that cost more than Maya’s entire apartment building.

Marcus was thirty-eight years old, devastatingly handsome, and arguably the most ruthless, brilliant defense attorney in the state. He wore a custom-tailored Tom Ford suit that draped perfectly over his lean, athletic frame. He looked like the epitome of high-society wealth and Ivy League education.

But Marcus Thorne had a secret that the city’s elite didn’t know.

Twelve years ago, before the degrees, before the corner office, Marcus had been a reckless, debt-ridden law student who had gotten involved with a very dangerous, very violent cartel. They were going to kill him. They had him tied to a chair in a warehouse by the docks, waiting to put a bullet in the back of his head.

Jackson Miller had kicked the warehouse door off its hinges.

Jax had walked into a room with four armed men, armed with nothing but a crowbar and pure, unadulterated street rage. He had taken two bullets to the shoulder, but he had left four men bleeding on the concrete. He had cut Marcus loose, dragged him out, and paid off his debts using the club’s money.

“You’re going to be a lawyer, kid,” Jax had told a terrified, bleeding Marcus all those years ago. “You’re going to get a fancy suit, and you’re going to learn their rules. Because one day, my people are going to need someone who can fight these rich bastards in a courtroom instead of an alley.”

Marcus had never forgotten that debt.

He stood up from his mahogany desk. His dark eyes were burning with a terrifying, predatory focus. He pressed the intercom button on his phone.

“Sarah,” Marcus snapped. “Cancel my afternoon appointments. All of them. Even the Mayor.”

“Yes, Mr. Thorne,” his terrified secretary replied instantly. “Is everything alright?”

“No,” Marcus said coldly. “Someone just touched my family.”

He grabbed his briefcase. It wasn’t just filled with legal briefs. It was a weapon of mass destruction aimed directly at the Oakwood Police Department and the Sterling & Vance Pavilion.

Meanwhile, inside the sterile, windowless interrogation room of the 14th Precinct, the temperature was deliberately kept at a freezing sixty degrees.

Jax sat in a bolted-down steel chair, his hands cuffed tightly to the metal table in front of him. His thick leather jacket had been confiscated. He was wearing only a black, sleeveless undershirt that exposed the massive, intricate tattoos covering his muscular arms.

He had been sitting there in total silence for two hours.

The door finally opened with a loud, metallic clank.

Detective Reynolds walked in, carrying a manila folder and a steaming cup of coffee. He didn’t offer any to Jax.

Reynolds was a man who enjoyed his power entirely too much. He had a prominent gut, a cheap suit, and the arrogant swagger of a man who believed the badge on his belt made him a king. He pulled out the chair across from Jax and dropped the folder onto the table with a loud smack.

“Jackson Miller,” Reynolds said, dragging out the syllables with a sneer. He flipped open the folder, pretending to read from it. “Long sheet you got here. Assault, disturbing the peace, suspected gang affiliation. You Iron Hounds think you run the south side, don’t you?”

Jax didn’t blink. He just stared at the detective, his face an unreadable mask of carved stone.

“Well, you ain’t on the south side today, biker,” Reynolds continued, leaning forward, trying to invade Jax’s personal space. “You crossed the tracks. You walked into a high-end medical facility and assaulted one of the most respected, philanthropic doctors in this city. You shattered his jaw in three places. He’s in emergency surgery right now.”

Jax’s expression didn’t change, but internally, a dark, satisfied warmth bloomed in his chest. Three places. Good. The bastard deserved worse.

“You’re looking at a Class 2 Felony, Miller,” Reynolds barked, slamming his hand on the table to emphasize his point. “Aggravated assault. Battery with intent to cause severe bodily harm. With your record, the DA is going to ask for a minimum of ten years. You’re going to rot in a cell.”

Silence.

“Nothing to say?” Reynolds mocked, taking a slow sip of his coffee. “I talked to Dr. Vance before he went under. He told me everything. He told me how your sister—what was her name? Maya?—was screaming, completely hysterical, causing a scene. He tried to calm her down, and you walked in and blindsided him like a coward.”

Jax’s jaw muscles feathered. The metal chain connecting his handcuffs clinked softly as his fists clenched tightly under the table.

“You’re a liar,” Jax finally spoke. His voice was a low, terrifying rumble that seemed to vibrate the very walls of the small room.

Reynolds scoffed, leaning back in his chair. “Oh, am I? That’s what you’re going with? The word of a violent gang member over a multi-millionaire, Ivy League physician? Good luck with a jury on that one, pal.”

“He hit her,” Jax said, his dark eyes locking onto the detective with a terrifying, piercing intensity. “He slapped a pregnant woman across the face. She had the mark on her skin. Your officers saw it.”

“The officers saw a woman who tripped and hit her face on a wall while her animal brother was attacking her doctor,” Reynolds countered smoothly, reciting the lie Vance had so carefully constructed. “That’s what’s going in the police report. That’s the official narrative. Your sister is a clumsy, hysterical charity case, and you are a violent thug who belongs in a cage.”

Jax leaned forward as far as the chains would allow. The sheer, overwhelming menace radiating from his massive frame made Reynolds subconsciously slide his chair backward.

“You think you have this figured out,” Jax whispered, a dark, chilling smile touching the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile of a wolf watching a sheep walk into a trap. “You think because he has money, and you have a badge, you can rewrite reality.”

“I don’t think it, Miller. I know it,” Reynolds sneered, though his heart rate had noticeably spiked. “The rich write the rules. Trash like you just get crushed by them.”

“You better hope he dies on that operating table, Reynolds,” Jax said softly.

“Is that a threat?” Reynolds snapped, his hand dropping to his belt.

“It’s a medical recommendation,” Jax replied, leaning back in his chair, his demeanor instantly returning to calm, chilling stoicism. “Because when my lawyer gets done with him, Dr. Vance is going to wish I had killed him today.”

“Your lawyer?” Reynolds threw his head back and laughed loudly, a harsh, grating sound. “What, you got some overworked, underpaid public defender lined up? Some fresh-out-of-law-school kid who’s going to beg me for a plea deal? You don’t have the money to fight this, Miller. You’re broke. You’re nothing.”

Before the detective could finish his sentence, the heavy steel door of the interrogation room didn’t just open. It was violently pushed open, hitting the cinderblock wall with a deafening CRASH.

Detective Reynolds jumped out of his chair, spinning around, his hand instinctively resting on his holster. “What the hell is going on here?!”

Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the harsh fluorescent lights of the hallway, was Marcus Thorne.

He didn’t look like a public defender. He looked like an apex predator in a three-thousand-dollar suit.

His posture was impeccably straight, his eyes cold and devoid of any human empathy. He carried his leather briefcase in his left hand, and his right hand was casually adjusting the silk knot of his tie.

Behind him, the precinct’s desk sergeant was visibly sweating, looking completely panicked. “Detective Reynolds, I tried to stop him, but he—”

“I am Marcus Thorne,” the lawyer announced, his voice slicing through the stale air of the interrogation room like a newly sharpened scalpel. He didn’t yell. The terrifying calmness of his tone commanded absolute obedience. “I am senior partner at Thorne, Sterling, and Hayes. And as of this exact second, this interrogation is over.”

Reynolds stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He recognized the name immediately. Everyone in the city recognized the name. Marcus Thorne was the lawyer billionaires called when they murdered someone on a yacht. He was a legal god.

“Mr. Thorne?” Reynolds stammered, entirely thrown off balance. His arrogant swagger evaporated instantly, replaced by the nervous deference a middle-class cop automatically gives to the ultra-wealthy. “What… what are you doing here?”

“I am here to see my client,” Marcus said smoothly, stepping into the room. He looked at the peeling paint on the walls with undisguised disgust before locking his dark, calculating eyes onto the detective.

“Your client?” Reynolds repeated dumbly, his brain failing to process the situation. He pointed a trembling finger at the massive, tattooed biker chained to the table. “You’re representing him?”

“Jackson Miller is a decorated veteran, a tax-paying citizen, and a man who was unlawfully detained by your grossly incompetent officers,” Marcus stated, stepping closer to the table. He didn’t even look at Jax yet. He kept his predatory gaze locked entirely on Reynolds. “And you, Detective, have exactly three seconds to unchain him before I personally ensure you spend the rest of your pathetic career writing parking tickets in the basement of the municipal garage.”

“Now wait just a minute!” Reynolds protested, his ego trying desperately to fight back against the overwhelming display of power. “This man brutally assaulted Dr. Richard Vance! He’s a menace! You can’t just walk in here and—”

Marcus didn’t argue. He simply opened his bespoke briefcase, pulled out a perfectly pressed legal document, and slapped it onto the metal table, right over Reynolds’s spilled coffee.

“This is a writ of habeas corpus, signed by Judge Aris Thorne, who, incidentally, is my father,” Marcus said, his voice dripping with venomous privilege. “It demands the immediate release of my client due to severe procedural violations during his arrest, including the denial of medical attention for his pregnant sister, who was assaulted by your so-called ‘victim’.”

“Vance didn’t touch her!” Reynolds snapped, pointing at the report. “It’s in the file!”

“The file is a work of fiction,” Marcus countered smoothly, leaning forward, bracing his perfectly manicured hands on the metal table. “Dr. Vance committed felony battery against a pregnant woman. My client intervened in defense of a vulnerable third party, which is completely protected under state law. Your officers arrived, ignored the victim’s visible injuries, and arrested the protector based purely on the socio-economic bias dictated by Dr. Vance’s tax bracket.”

Marcus stood up straight, towering over the detective.

“I have already dispatched a private medical team to document the contusions on Maya Miller’s face,” Marcus continued, his words falling like hammer blows. “I have filed a formal complaint with the internal affairs division regarding your sergeant’s conduct at the scene. And I have already drafted a multi-million dollar civil rights lawsuit against this precinct, the city, and the Sterling & Vance Pavilion.”

Reynolds was completely pale now. The coffee in his stomach had turned to lead. This wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.

“So, Detective Reynolds,” Marcus whispered, a cruel, satisfied smile playing on his lips. “Are you going to take those handcuffs off my client, or do I need to call the Mayor and explain why his police department is protecting a man who beats pregnant women?”

Reynolds looked from the terrifying lawyer in the custom suit to the massive, silent biker who had just destroyed a millionaire’s jaw.

For the first time all day, the detective realized that Dr. Vance wasn’t the most powerful man in this equation.

With shaking hands, Reynolds reached for his keys.

The metallic click of the handcuffs unlocking sounded louder than a gunshot in the cramped, freezing interrogation room.

Detective Reynolds’s hands were shaking so badly he nearly dropped the small silver key. He didn’t make eye contact with the massive biker sitting across from him. He couldn’t.

The psychological dominance in the room had shifted so violently, so completely, that the veteran cop felt physically sick to his stomach.

Jax slowly pulled his arms back. He didn’t rub his wrists. He didn’t massage the deep, angry red indentations the tight steel had bitten into his flesh. He simply rolled his massive shoulders, the intricate ink on his muscles shifting under the harsh fluorescent lights.

He stood up.

Without the table acting as a barrier, Jax’s sheer size was suffocating. He towered over the detective, his dark eyes radiating a quiet, lethal promise that made Reynolds instinctively take a step backward, bumping into the cinderblock wall.

“My jacket,” Jax said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that didn’t ask for permission.

“I’ll… I’ll have the desk sergeant retrieve your belongings,” Reynolds stammered, practically sprinting for the door to escape the terrifying aura of the two men.

Marcus Thorne didn’t even watch the detective leave. He was already turning his attention to Jax, his cold, predatory demeanor softening just a fraction.

“You good, brother?” Marcus asked, his perfectly tailored suit a jarring contrast to Jax’s black undershirt and road-stained jeans.

“I’m fine,” Jax grunted, grabbing his heavy leather vest from the evidence pile the desk sergeant had hurriedly brought to the doorway. He slipped it on, the familiar weight of the Iron Hounds patch settling onto his back. “Maya?”

“Safe,” Marcus assured him immediately. “I have two of your men—Bear and Dutch—parked outside her building. I also sent Dr. Evans. He’s my personal physician. He’s at her apartment right now, documenting the assault.”

Jax stopped mid-stride. He looked at the wealthy, immaculately groomed lawyer standing before him.

Twelve years ago, Marcus was a terrified, bleeding kid tied to a chair in a damp warehouse. Now, he was moving chess pieces across a board that the city’s elite didn’t even know they were playing on.

“You didn’t have to do this, Marc,” Jax said quietly, his voice thick with unspoken gratitude. “Your world… this kind of noise could mess up your firm’s reputation.”

Marcus actually laughed. It was a dark, humorless sound that echoed off the peeling paint of the precinct walls.

“Jax, my firm represents billionaires who dump toxic waste into rivers and politicians who steal from pension funds,” Marcus said, straightening his silk tie. “Taking down an arrogant, wife-beating doctor who thinks his tax bracket makes him a god? That’s not noise. That’s a vacation.”

Marcus clamped a firm, reassuring hand on Jax’s massive shoulder. “You saved my life. You gave me the chance to wear these suits. Nobody touches your family. Ever. Let’s go get your sister.”

They walked out of the interrogation room and down the long, narrow corridor of the 14th Precinct.

It was a walk of absolute triumph.

The bullpen was dead silent. Every single police officer, detective, and clerk had stopped what they were doing to watch them leave. They had all heard the rumors spreading like wildfire: the biker who shattered Dr. Vance’s jaw was walking out the front door, escorted by the most feared legal shark in the state.

Jax didn’t look at any of them. He walked with heavy, deliberate steps, his boots thudding against the linoleum.

He wasn’t a criminal sneaking out the back door. He was a man who had done the right thing, walking out the front door, daring anyone in a uniform to try and stop him again.

Nobody did.

They pushed through the heavy glass double doors and stepped out into the humid, rain-washed evening air.

A sleek, black Mercedes Maybach was idling at the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the neon glow of a nearby liquor store sign. A driver in a crisp black suit immediately stepped out and opened the rear door for them.

Jax climbed into the cavernous, leather-scented interior. It felt alien to him. He was used to the raw, vibrating horsepower of his Harley, not the silent, insulated luxury of the 1%.

Marcus slid in beside him, pulling out a sleek silver tablet before the car even pulled away from the curb.

“What’s the play?” Jax asked, staring out the tinted window as the decaying storefronts of the south side began to blur past.

“The play is absolute destruction,” Marcus replied coldly, his fingers flying across the screen. “We don’t just clear your name, Jax. If we only play defense, men like Dr. Vance win. They go back to their country clubs and their luxury clinics, and they keep treating people like Maya as disposable garbage.”

Marcus looked up, his dark eyes flashing with legal malice. “We go on the offensive. We burn his kingdom to the ground.”

“He told the cops she tripped,” Jax growled, his hands clenching into fists on his knees. “He completely erased what he did to her. The cops wrote it down as gospel.”

“Of course they did,” Marcus sneered, his voice dripping with venom for the corrupt system. “It’s the privilege of the elite. They don’t just own the hospitals; they own the narrative. But Dr. Vance made one critical error.”

“What’s that?”

“He assumed Maya was alone,” Marcus said softly. “He looked at her cheap clothes and her Medicaid card, and he calculated that she was a nobody. A zero. Someone without the resources to fight back. He never imagined that she had a monster for a brother, and he certainly never imagined that her brother had me.”

The Maybach smoothly navigated the pothole-ridden streets of Maya’s neighborhood. The contrast between the three-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle and the crumbling brick tenements was staggering.

They pulled up to Maya’s apartment building. True to Marcus’s word, two massive, custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles were parked diagonally across the entrance, aggressively blocking the sidewalk.

Leaning against the brick wall, smoking cigarettes in the damp air, were Bear and Dutch. They were both heavy-hitters for the Iron Hounds, wearing their cuts proudly.

When they saw Jax step out of the luxury car, they immediately tossed their cigarettes and approached.

“President,” Bear nodded respectfully, his massive, bearded face looking entirely out of place next to the Maybach. “No trouble. Landlord came snooping around an hour ago asking about the cops. We told him to take a walk.”

“Good,” Jax grunted, clapping Bear on the shoulder. “Keep the perimeter locked down. Nobody gets in unless I say so.”

Jax and Marcus took the stairs three at a time. Jax didn’t bother knocking when he reached the third floor. He used his key and pushed the heavy wooden door open.

The cramped apartment was no longer dark. Every light was on.

Maya was sitting on her worn, faded floral couch. She had changed out of her wet clothes and was wearing a thick, oversized sweater.

Sitting across from her on a folding chair was an older, distinguished-looking man with silver hair, wearing a perfectly tailored charcoal suit and a stethoscope around his neck. It was Dr. Evans, Marcus’s private physician.

He was holding a high-definition digital camera, carefully reviewing a series of close-up photographs on the small screen.

When Maya saw Jax walk through the door, she completely broke down.

“Jax!” she sobbed, struggling to get up from the deep cushions of the couch.

Jax crossed the small living room in two massive strides. He dropped to his knees right in front of her, wrapping his thick, tattooed arms around her trembling frame. He buried his face in her shoulder, letting out a long, heavy breath that he felt like he’d been holding since the moment the police slammed him onto the hood of their cruiser.

“I’m here, May,” Jax whispered fiercely, kissing the side of her head. “I told you I wasn’t going anywhere. I got you.”

Maya clung to his leather vest, crying tears of pure, unadulterated relief. The terrifying isolation she had felt on that bus ride home completely vanished. Her brother was back. The monster in the white coat hadn’t won.

Marcus stood quietly by the doorway, giving them a moment, before turning his attention to his physician.

“Dr. Evans,” Marcus said smoothly. “Report.”

Dr. Evans stood up, his face grim and entirely professional. He was a man accustomed to treating senators and CEOs, but the poverty of the apartment didn’t seem to faze him. He was entirely focused on the medical reality.

“The baby is perfectly fine, Mr. Thorne,” Dr. Evans said, addressing Marcus but making sure Maya heard him. “Heart rate is strong and steady. No signs of placental abruption or distress from the mother’s elevated cortisol levels.”

Maya let out a ragged gasp of relief, burying her face deeper into Jax’s chest.

“And the blunt force trauma?” Marcus pressed, his voice turning icy.

Dr. Evans handed the digital camera to Marcus. “Undeniable. The contusion on Ms. Miller’s left zygomatic arch—her cheekbone—is severe. It is clearly the result of a high-velocity strike from an open human hand. I have mapped the exact dimensions. The bruising pattern aligns perfectly with a large, adult male handprint. Furthermore, there is defensive bruising on the back of her left hand where she attempted to block the strike.”

Marcus looked at the high-definition photos on the screen. The purple, angry handprint on Maya’s pale skin looked even more horrific in brutal clarity.

“Will it hold up against a police report claiming she tripped and hit a wall?” Marcus asked, his eyes never leaving the screen.

Dr. Evans scoffed, a rare display of emotion breaking through his clinical exterior. “A wall does not leave individual finger contusions, Mr. Thorne. Any first-year medical student could tell the difference between a flat-surface impact and a physical assault. The police report is entirely medically illiterate.”

“Excellent,” Marcus smiled, a terrifying, predatory baring of teeth. “Thank you, Dr. Evans. Please send the digital files securely to my private server immediately. You are on retainer for the trial.”

“Of course, Marcus,” the doctor nodded, packing up his equipment.

Jax slowly stood up, keeping one hand reassuringly on Maya’s shoulder. He looked at Marcus, the raw, violent anger returning to his dark eyes.

“So, what happens now?” Jax demanded. “I’m not sitting around waiting for a court date while that arrogant bastard sits in his mansion.”

“Neither am I,” Marcus said, snapping his briefcase shut. “Dr. Vance’s entire defense is built on his reputation. He believes the public will see him as a noble, wealthy savior who was viciously attacked by gang trash.”

Marcus pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen.

“Tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, I am holding a press conference on the front steps of the county courthouse,” Marcus announced, his voice ringing with absolute authority. “I am going to release these photos to every major news outlet in the state. I am going to expose the Sterling & Vance Pavilion as a discriminatory facility that brutalizes low-income mothers.”

Maya looked up, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and awe. “You’re going to put my face on the news?”

“I am going to make you the most protected woman in this city, Maya,” Marcus promised gently. “By the time I am done talking to the cameras, Dr. Vance won’t be able to walk down the street without being spit on. We are going to drag him out of his ivory tower and straight into the gutter where he belongs.”

Meanwhile, clear across the city, the atmosphere inside the VIP recovery suite of the Oakwood Memorial Hospital was anything but triumphant.

Dr. Richard Vance was awake.

He was lying in a hospital bed that cost three thousand dollars a night, surrounded by monitors that beeped with expensive, rhythmic precision.

The pain radiating from the lower half of his face was blinding, white-hot, and completely agonizing.

His jaw was wired shut. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe through his nose. His face was swollen to nearly twice its normal size, a horrific canvas of purple and black bruising where Jax’s reinforced riding glove had connected with bone-shattering force.

Standing at the foot of his bed was his business partner, Dr. William Sterling.

Sterling was pacing nervously, his expensive Italian loafers squeaking against the polished floor. He looked pale, sweating profusely despite the cool air conditioning.

“Richard, blink once if you can understand me,” Sterling said, his voice trembling slightly.

Vance glared at him with bloodshot, furious eyes and blinked once. He wanted to scream. He wanted to demand to know why the biker wasn’t already rotting in a maximum-security cell.

“We have a massive problem,” Sterling whispered, leaning in closer, looking nervously at the closed door of the suite. “I just got off the phone with the precinct commander.”

Vance’s eyes narrowed. He tried to grunt, a pathetic, muffled sound of impatience escaping his wired jaw.

“The biker,” Sterling swallowed hard, looking like he was about to vomit. “Jackson Miller. He… he was released.”

Vance’s body actually convulsed against the hospital sheets. The heart monitor beside him began to beep rapidly, signaling his sudden, violent spike in blood pressure. His eyes widened in pure, unadulterated disbelief.

Released? How was that possible? He was Dr. Richard Vance! He had dictated the police report himself!

“It gets worse,” Sterling said, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “He wasn’t bailed out, Richard. He was pulled out. By Marcus Thorne.”

Vance froze. The name hit him like a second punch to the jaw.

Every wealthy man in the city knew the name Marcus Thorne. He was the legal grim reaper. He was the man you hired when you wanted to completely destroy someone else’s life.

“Thorne walked into the precinct an hour ago,” Sterling continued, his voice dropping to a panicked whisper. “He brought a judge’s order. He threatened to sue the city, the police department, and our clinic. Richard… Thorne has a private medical team documenting the handprint on the pregnant woman’s face right now.”

Vance couldn’t breathe. The oxygen in the luxurious recovery suite suddenly felt entirely sucked away.

“He’s calling a press conference tomorrow morning,” Sterling said, his eyes wide with absolute terror. “He’s going to release the photos, Richard. He’s going to tell the world that you beat a pregnant charity patient and then lied to the police to cover it up.”

Vance stared at the ceiling, his heart pounding violently against his ribs.

For the first time in his pampered, privileged, untouchable life, Dr. Richard Vance felt the cold, suffocating grip of true, undeniable consequence.

He had looked at Maya Miller and seen a powerless victim. He had looked at Jax and seen an uneducated thug.

He had been so incredibly, fatally wrong.

The poor were no longer just taking the abuse. They were fighting back. And they had brought a monster to the courtroom.

The morning sun broke over the city skyline, casting long, sharp shadows across the concrete steps of the County Courthouse.

It was 7:30 AM. In the affluent neighborhoods of Oakwood, people were waking up to the soft hum of espresso machines and the quiet rustle of the Wall Street Journal. They were insulated. Safe. They believed the world functioned strictly according to their rules.

But down town, the atmosphere was entirely different. The air was thick with the scent of diesel exhaust, stale coffee, and impending absolute destruction.

Marcus Thorne had promised a war, and he had delivered an army.

Six different local news vans were already parked haphazardly along the curb, their massive satellite dishes extended toward the pale morning sky. Reporters were furiously checking their microphones, while cameramen jockeyed for the best angles in front of the hastily erected wooden podium.

Marcus hadn’t just called the local affiliates. He had tapped his extensive network. Stringers for two major national news syndicates were present, lured by the promise of a bombshell scandal involving a high-profile millionaire doctor and a police cover-up.

Class warfare was always good for ratings.

Inside a black, armored SUV parked fifty yards away in an alley, Maya sat trembling.

She was wearing a simple, clean, dark blue maternity dress that Marcus’s assistant had purchased for her late last night. Her hair was pulled back neatly. But there was no makeup on her face. Marcus had strictly forbidden it.

He wanted the cameras to see the truth. He wanted the world to see the grotesque, purple-and-black bruise that now covered the entire left side of her face, the distinct, swollen imprint of Dr. Vance’s fingers glaringly visible under the harsh morning light.

Jax sat next to her, a massive, unmoving wall of solid muscle and worn leather. He held her small, trembling hand in his heavy, calloused grip.

“I can’t do this, Jax,” Maya whispered, her breath hitching in her throat as she stared out the tinted window at the sea of camera lenses. “They’re all going to look at me. They’re going to judge me. They’ll dig up every mistake I’ve ever made.”

“Let them dig,” Jax rumbled, his voice a low, steady anchor in the storm of her panic. “You got nothing to hide, May. You work double shifts, you pay your taxes, and you’re bringing a kid into this world. You’re a hell of a lot tougher than any of those trust-fund parasites.”

He squeezed her hand gently.

“Today, you aren’t just Maya Miller from the south side,” Jax told her, looking directly into her tear-filled eyes. “Today, you’re the brick we use to smash their glass house. You walk out there, you keep your head up, and you let Marcus do the talking. I am right behind you. Nobody gets within ten feet of you. You hear me?”

Maya swallowed hard, the lump in her throat feeling like a golf ball. She nodded once. A slow, determined fire began to spark in her chest, replacing the terror. She touched her swollen cheek. She remembered the sheer, arrogant disgust in Dr. Vance’s eyes when he struck her.

She was done being a victim.

The heavy door of the SUV opened. Marcus Thorne stood there, looking like a lethal weapon forged in a bespoke Italian suit. His silk tie was perfectly knotted. His expression was a mask of cold, calculating execution.

“It’s time,” Marcus said simply.

Maya stepped out of the vehicle. Jax followed, his massive frame instantly casting a shadow over her. He didn’t wear a suit. He wore his heavy work boots, his grease-stained jeans, and his leather cut with the Iron Hounds patch displayed proudly on his back. He wanted the world to see exactly who they had messed with.

As the three of them walked toward the courthouse steps, a sudden, heavy rumble began to vibrate through the pavement.

It wasn’t a passing truck. It was a synchronized, mechanical roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the surrounding buildings.

The reporters turned their heads, their microphones dropping in sheer confusion.

Coming down Main Street, riding in a flawless, staggered, two-by-two formation, were fifty heavily modified Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

It was the Iron Hounds.

They weren’t speeding. They weren’t revving their engines aggressively or breaking any traffic laws. They were moving at exactly twenty miles per hour, an unstoppable tidal wave of chrome, black leather, and raw horsepower.

Bear and Dutch were riding at the front of the pack. They pulled their massive bikes right up to the police barricades surrounding the courthouse square, cutting their engines in perfect unison. Forty-eight other bikers followed suit, lining the perimeter of the square like a heavily tattooed Praetorian Guard.

They didn’t shout. They didn’t hold up signs. They simply dismounted, stood next to their bikes, crossed their thick arms, and stared directly at the cameras.

It was a brilliant, terrifying show of force. It was Jax’s way of telling the city: We are here. We are watching. And if you try to bury this, you deal with all of us.

The media went absolutely frantic. Camera flashes erupted like a strobe light at a rave. The reporters started shouting questions over the remaining rumble of exhaust pipes.

Marcus ignored them all. He guided Maya up the concrete steps, positioned her slightly behind the podium, and stepped up to the array of microphones. Jax stood directly behind his sister, his arms crossed, his dark eyes scanning the crowd with predatory focus.

Marcus tapped the center microphone once. The sharp thump echoed over the PA system, immediately silencing the chaotic square.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Marcus began, his voice impeccably smooth, projecting an aura of absolute, terrifying authority. “My name is Marcus Thorne. I am the senior partner at Thorne, Sterling, and Hayes. And I am here today to expose one of the most grotesque abuses of power, privilege, and medical authority in the history of this state.”

The silence in the square was absolute. Every lens was locked onto the devastatingly handsome lawyer.

“We are told that the medical profession is a sacred trust,” Marcus continued, his voice echoing off the marble pillars of the courthouse. “We are told that doctors take an oath to do no harm. But yesterday afternoon, at the prestigious Sterling & Vance Private Medical Pavilion, that oath was violently, viciously broken.”

Marcus stepped slightly to the side, gesturing a perfectly manicured hand toward Maya.

“This is Maya Miller,” Marcus stated, his voice dropping slightly to emphasize the gravity of the moment. “She is twenty-four years old. She is a waitress. She works sixty hours a week to survive. She is also eight months pregnant. Yesterday, due to a plumbing failure at her local public clinic, she was redirected to the Oakwood district for a mandatory, high-risk prenatal checkup.”

The cameras aggressively zoomed in on Maya. She kept her chin up, just like Jax had told her, refusing to hide her face.

“She was assigned to Dr. Richard Vance,” Marcus spat the name as if it were a foul taste in his mouth. “A man who sits on the board of three charities. A man who claims to be a pillar of the affluent Oakwood community. But behind the closed doors of his pristine examination room, Dr. Vance is nothing more than a classist, violent predator.”

A collective gasp rippled through the press corps. Pencils flew across notepads.

“Dr. Vance did not treat Ms. Miller as a patient. He treated her as an inconvenience. A piece of trash dirtying his expensive floors,” Marcus’s voice rose, a sharp edge of genuine anger bleeding through his professional veneer. “When Ms. Miller, who was terrified and isolated, checked her cracked cell phone to see if her brother had arrived to pick her up, Dr. Vance lost his temper.”

Marcus paused. He let the silence hang for a split second to ensure maximum impact.

“Dr. Vance verbally abused this young, expecting mother. And then, he physically assaulted her. He struck an eight-month pregnant woman across the face with enough force to cause severe, documented blunt force trauma.”

The reporters erupted. Dozens of questions were shouted simultaneously.

“Mr. Thorne! Do you have proof?!”

“The police report says she tripped! Are you accusing the Oakwood police of lying?!”

Marcus didn’t flinch. He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out a large, glossy, 11×14 high-definition photograph. He held it up for the cameras.

It was the picture Dr. Evans had taken the night before. The horrific, purple handprint on Maya’s pale cheek, blown up for the entire world to see.

The crowd went dead silent again. The undeniable brutality of the image was sickening.

“This is the face of a woman who tripped, according to Detective Reynolds of the 14th Precinct,” Marcus sneered, his voice dripping with venom. “I ask you all, since when does a flat wall leave individual finger contusions? Since when does a linoleum floor leave defensive bruising on a victim’s wrist?”

Marcus threw the photograph onto the podium.

“The official police report is a fabricated, medically illiterate work of fiction,” Marcus declared loudly, pointing a finger directly at the camera lenses. “It was dictated by a millionaire doctor desperate to cover his tracks, and it was rubber-stamped by a corrupt police department more interested in protecting a high-tax ZIP code than protecting a pregnant woman.”

“What about her brother?” a reporter from Channel 5 shouted. “Jackson Miller was arrested for shattering Dr. Vance’s jaw!”

“Jackson Miller walked into that room to find a grown man standing over his weeping, pregnant sister after having just struck her,” Marcus fired back instantly, not missing a beat. “Mr. Miller executed a textbook, legally protected defense of a vulnerable third party. He neutralized an active threat. He didn’t use a weapon. He used his bare hands to stop a monster from striking his sister a second time.”

Marcus leaned forward, gripping the edges of the podium. His dark eyes were burning with a terrifying, scorched-earth intensity.

“The Oakwood Police Department didn’t care about the truth. They arrived at the scene, took one look at Ms. Miller’s faded clothes, took one look at her brother’s tattoos, and decided they were guilty of being poor. They cuffed a hero, ignored a victim, and gave the abuser an ice pack and a police escort.”

Marcus stood up straight, smoothing his tie. The execution was complete. Now, he was just delivering the bill.

“As of 8:00 AM this morning,” Marcus announced, his voice ringing with absolute finality, “my firm has officially filed a fifty-million-dollar civil rights lawsuit against Dr. Richard Vance, the Sterling & Vance Medical Pavilion, and the City Police Department.”

The number hung in the air like a detonation. Fifty million dollars.

“Furthermore,” Marcus continued, “I have submitted these forensic photographs, along with sworn affidavits, to the State Medical Board, demanding the immediate and permanent revocation of Dr. Vance’s medical license. And I have formally petitioned the District Attorney’s office to bring felony battery charges against Dr. Vance by the end of the day. If they refuse, I will personally escalate this to the Department of Justice.”

Marcus grabbed his briefcase.

“We are done letting the elite write their own laws. Dr. Vance thought he could break this woman and sweep her under the rug. He was wrong. We are going to take his clinic, we are going to take his license, and we are going to ensure he spends the next decade in a state penitentiary.”

Marcus turned away from the microphones, effectively ending the press conference. The media exploded into a frenzy, reporters practically tripping over each other to get their footage back to the news desks.

Jax put his heavy arm around Maya, shielding her from the flashing cameras, and guided her back down the steps.

As they reached the bottom, the fifty members of the Iron Hounds didn’t cheer. They didn’t make a sound. They simultaneously kicked their kickstands up and fired their engines. The deafening roar of fifty Harley-Davidsons echoed through the downtown corridor, a mechanical symphony of absolute victory.

Clear across the city, in the opulent VIP recovery suite of Oakwood Memorial Hospital, the world was ending.

Dr. Richard Vance was trapped in his hospital bed, his jaw wired tightly shut, an IV drip feeding painkillers into his arm.

The massive flat-screen television mounted on the wall was turned to the local news. The volume was low, but Marcus Thorne’s smooth, devastating voice filled the room.

Vance watched, his eyes wide, completely dilated with sheer, unadulterated panic, as the high-definition photo of Maya’s bruised face was broadcast across the screen.

Beneath the image, the chyron read in bold, unforgiving letters: “MILLIONAIRE DOCTOR ACCUSED OF ASSAULTING PREGNANT PATIENT; POLICE COVER-UP ALLEGED.”

Vance’s heart monitor began to beep frantically, a high-pitched, terrifying rhythm that matched the absolute free-fall of his reality.

He couldn’t speak. He could only let out a pathetic, muffled groan of despair through his clenched teeth.

His cell phone, resting on the bedside table, was vibrating violently. It hadn’t stopped ringing for ten minutes. Texts and emails were flooding in like a tsunami.

He didn’t need to look at the screen to know what they said.

His country club memberships were being revoked. The charity boards he sat on were demanding his immediate resignation. The investors who funded his private medical pavilion were pulling their capital out in a blind panic.

His entire life, meticulously built on a foundation of wealth, prestige, and classist superiority, was evaporating before his very eyes.

The door to the suite flew open.

It wasn’t a nurse. It was Dr. William Sterling, his business partner.

Sterling didn’t look like an arrogant, wealthy physician anymore. He looked like a man who was watching his own house burn to the ground. His tie was loosened, his hair was messy, and his face was a pale, sickly shade of gray.

“Richard,” Sterling gasped, slamming the door shut behind him. He looked at the television screen, then back at Vance. “Tell me you didn’t do it. Tell me Thorne fabricated that photograph.”

Vance glared at him, a mixture of rage and terror in his bloodshot eyes. He couldn’t answer.

“My God,” Sterling whispered, stepping back from the bed in absolute horror as he realized the truth. “You actually hit her. You hit a pregnant woman in our clinic.”

Vance let out an angry grunt, trying to gesture wildly with his hands, trying to convey that she deserved it, that she had provoked him, that she was just a nobody.

“Stop it!” Sterling shouted, his voice cracking with panic. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?! Thorne is destroying us! The hospital switchboard has completely crashed! We’ve had four hundred calls in the last twenty minutes calling us butchers!”

Sterling paced the room frantically, pulling at his hair.

“The Mayor’s office just called,” Sterling said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “They’re throwing us under the bus, Richard. The DA is already looking into filing the battery charges to save his own political career. Thorne forced their hand.”

Vance’s eyes widened further. The DA was his friend. They played golf together at the Oakwood Country Club. They drank scotch in his study.

“He’s not your friend anymore, Richard!” Sterling yelled, reading Vance’s expression. “You are radioactive! You are a PR nightmare! Nobody is going to protect you now. They are all scrambling to save themselves!”

Sterling stopped pacing. He looked down at his partner, the man he had built an empire with. There was no sympathy left in his eyes. Only cold, brutal self-preservation.

“I’ve called an emergency meeting with the board,” Sterling said, his voice suddenly going completely flat. “We are voting to immediately terminate your partnership at the pavilion. We are publicly condemning your actions. I’m sorry, Richard, but you are completely on your own.”

Sterling turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving Vance completely isolated in his expensive, sterile prison.

Vance stared at the television. The broadcast had cut to footage of the Iron Hounds motorcycles lined up outside the courthouse. He saw the massive, imposing figure of Jackson Miller standing behind his sister.

Vance closed his eyes, a tear of pure, agonizing defeat sliding down his unbruised cheek.

He had thought his money made him a god. He had thought the rules didn’t apply to him.

He was wrong. And he was about to lose absolutely everything.

Meanwhile, inside the precinct of the Oakwood Police Department, the chaos was even worse.

The bullpen was a madhouse. Phones were ringing off the hook. Angry citizens were demanding to know why the police were acting as private security for a woman-beater.

Detective Reynolds was standing in the center of the room, his face flushed a dark, angry red, shouting into his desk phone.

“I’m telling you, the report was accurate to the best of my knowledge at the time!” Reynolds yelled into the receiver, trying to defend himself to a reporter who was practically laughing at him.

“Hang up the phone, Reynolds.”

Reynolds froze. He slowly lowered the receiver.

Standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the bullpen, was the Chief of Police. He was an older, hardened man, and right now, he looked entirely murderous.

“In my office. Now,” the Chief barked, his voice cutting through the chaos of the room like a machete.

Reynolds swallowed hard, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He practically jogged up the stairs, knowing full well he was walking to his own professional execution.

He stepped into the office and closed the door.

The Chief didn’t offer him a seat. He was standing behind his desk, leaning heavily on his knuckles, staring at Reynolds with absolute, unfiltered disgust.

“Chief, I can explain,” Reynolds started immediately, his hands raised in a placating gesture. “Vance gave us a statement. The officers on the scene assessed the situation based on the demographics—”

“Based on the demographics?” the Chief repeated, his voice dangerously low. “You mean they took one look at a rich white doctor and a blue-collar biker and decided the rich guy was telling the truth? Even with a handprint on the pregnant woman’s face?!”

“She was hysterical!” Reynolds defended himself weakly. “Vance said she tripped!”

“And you believed him because he wears a Rolex,” the Chief snapped, slamming his fist onto the desk. “You arrogant, lazy idiot. Do you know who just called me? The Mayor. Do you know who is calling him? The Department of Justice. Thorne has initiated a federal civil rights inquiry into this precinct.”

Reynolds went entirely pale. Federal inquiries ended careers. They ended with officers in prison.

“We are trending nationally, Reynolds,” the Chief said, picking up a remote and turning on a small TV in the corner of his office. It was showing the exact same news broadcast. “We are the poster boys for corrupt, elitist policing. The entire country is watching us.”

“What do we do?” Reynolds whispered, his arrogance completely shattered.

“I’ll tell you what we do,” the Chief said, his eyes cold and devoid of any loyalty. “We clean house. I am suspending you without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal affairs investigation. The sergeant who made the arrest is also suspended.”

“Chief, you can’t do that! I have a pension!” Reynolds panicked, taking a step forward.

“You don’t have a job,” the Chief corrected him harshly. “Turn in your badge and your gun, Reynolds. You backed the wrong horse. You thought you could crush a nobody, and you ended up waking a sleeping giant.”

Reynolds slowly reached down to his belt. His hands were shaking just as badly as they had when he unlocked Jax’s handcuffs the night before.

He unclipped his gold badge and placed it heavily on the Chief’s desk. He unbuckled his holster and laid his service weapon next to it.

He had spent twenty years climbing the ranks, building a comfortable life by catering to the wealthy and stepping on the poor.

It was all gone in a matter of twenty-four hours.

Down in the streets, the rumble of the Iron Hounds’ engines finally faded as they rode back toward the south side, escorting the black Maybach safely out of the affluent district.

Inside the SUV, Maya leaned her head against Jax’s heavy leather shoulder. For the first time in two days, the agonizing tension in her chest had finally evaporated.

She looked out the window at the passing city. She was exhausted, her face throbbed, and her life was about to become a media circus.

But she wasn’t afraid anymore.

She looked at Marcus, who was already on his phone, ruthlessly dismantling the hospital’s legal defense team before they even had a chance to organize.

She looked at Jax, the immovable mountain who had risked his freedom to ensure her safety.

Dr. Vance had tried to teach her a lesson about where she belonged in society. He had tried to show her that she was powerless.

Instead, Maya had learned a very different lesson.

She had learned that when you back a dog into a corner, it eventually bites back. And when that dog has teeth like the Iron Hounds and Marcus Thorne, the bite doesn’t just draw blood. It tears the entire kingdom down to the bone.

The silence in Dr. Richard Vance’s VIP hospital suite was no longer the peaceful, insulated quiet of the ultra-wealthy. It was the suffocating, terrifying silence of a tomb.

The flat-screen television had been muted, but the images flashing across the news networks were inescapable. Every single channel was running the same story. His pristine reputation, cultivated over twenty years of aggressive social climbing and ruthless elitism, had been completely incinerated in less than twenty-four hours.

The door to the suite opened, lacking the usual deferential knock.

Arthur Pendelton walked in. Pendelton was a shark in a pinstripe suit, the most expensive defense attorney the Oakwood elite could buy. He was the man politicians called when they were caught embezzling, the man CEOs called when their negligence killed workers.

But right now, Pendelton didn’t look confident. He looked exhausted, irritated, and deeply cynical. He dropped his heavy leather briefcase onto the visitor’s chair with a loud, dismissive thud.

Vance looked up from his hospital bed, his wired jaw aching furiously. He tried to project his usual arrogant authority, but with his face swollen to the size of a melon and purple bruises ringing his eyes, he just looked pathetic.

“I’ll skip the pleasantries, Richard,” Pendelton said, his voice entirely devoid of bedside manner. He didn’t even bother to sit down. “Because quite frankly, we don’t have time for them. You are in free fall, and the parachute is currently on fire.”

Vance let out a muffled grunt of protest, glaring at his lawyer. He gestured frantically toward his phone, which he had used to type out a note: Make Thorne back down. Counter-sue for defamation.

Pendelton looked at the screen and actually scoffed. It was a harsh, grating sound that made Vance’s blood boil.

“Counter-sue?” Pendelton repeated, shaking his head as if he were talking to a delusional child. “Richard, are you still operating under the delusion that you have any leverage here? Marcus Thorne doesn’t bluff. He doesn’t settle. He annihilates.”

Pendelton opened his briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of legal documents, tossing them onto the foot of Vance’s bed.

“That is a copy of the formal complaint filed in civil court,” Pendelton said coldly. “Fifty million dollars. Thorne has already petitioned the judge to freeze all of your personal and business assets pending the trial to prevent you from hiding capital offshore. Your bank accounts are locked. Your investment portfolios are frozen.”

Vance’s eyes widened in absolute horror. His heart monitor spiked, beeping with frantic, terrifying speed. His money was his armor. Without it, he was nothing.

“It gets worse,” Pendelton continued relentlessly, pacing the sterile room. “The District Attorney officially filed charges thirty minutes ago. Felony Aggravated Battery of a Pregnant Woman. It’s a Class 2 Felony. They aren’t offering a plea deal, Richard. The DA is running for re-election, and right now, your head on a pike is the best campaign ad money can buy.”

Vance shook his head wildly, a tear of pure panic escaping his left eye. He tried to speak, but the wires in his jaw held tight, leaving him gagging on his own desperate excuses.

“The hospital board has formally severed all ties with you,” Pendelton delivered the next blow without breaking eye contact. “They are publicly claiming they had no idea about your ‘history of volatile behavior.’ Which brings me to the absolute worst part of my morning.”

Pendelton leaned over the bed, his face inches from Vance’s battered, swollen visage.

“Thorne’s paralegals didn’t just file a lawsuit for Maya Miller,” Pendelton whispered, his voice dripping with venom. “They dug into the hospital’s archives. They found the Non-Disclosure Agreements, Richard.”

Vance completely froze. The monitor beside him seemed to skip a beat.

“Three other women,” Pendelton stated, holding up three fingers. “Over the last eight years. All of them on Medicaid. All of them women of color. All of them filed formal complaints stating that you physically intimidated them, grabbed them, or verbally abused them behind closed doors. And every single time, the clinic paid them off with five-thousand-dollar hush money settlements and swept it under the rug.”

Vance closed his eyes. The room was spinning. The walls were closing in.

“Thorne has subpoenaed the NDAs,” Pendelton said, stepping back and straightening his tie. “He is petitioning the court to invalidate them under the crime-fraud exception. He is building a RICO case, Richard. He is going to prove a systemic, institutional pattern of class-based violence.”

Pendelton snapped his briefcase shut.

“My advice?” the lawyer said coldly. “Plead guilty. Beg for the mercy of the court. Maybe, if you cry hard enough in front of the judge, you’ll only get seven years in a medium-security facility instead of ten.”

Vance’s eyes snapped open. The terror in his gaze was suddenly eclipsed by a dark, frantic, cornered rage. Plead guilty? Go to prison with the very people he had spent his entire life looking down upon?

Never.

Pendelton turned and walked out of the room without another word, abandoning his client to the wreckage of his own making.

Across the city, on the gritty, rain-slicked streets of the South Side, the atmosphere was entirely different.

Maya’s cramped, third-floor apartment smelled like home-cooked food.

The working-class neighborhood had seen the news. They had seen the photograph of Maya’s bruised face, and they had seen the Ivy League doctor who put it there. In a community that was constantly ignored, marginalized, and pushed around by the wealthy, Maya had inadvertently become a symbol of resistance.

The doorbell hadn’t stopped ringing all morning.

Neighbors she had barely spoken to before were dropping by. Mrs. Higgins from 2B brought a massive tray of baked ziti. Old Man Peterson, the retired mechanic from down the street, dropped off a bag of fresh groceries.

They didn’t stay long. They knew she needed rest. But every single one of them looked at the two massive Iron Hounds standing guard in the hallway, gave a respectful nod, and told Maya the exact same thing: We’re with you, sweetheart. Don’t let them break you.

Maya was sitting on her faded floral couch, a warm bowl of soup in her hands. The deep purple bruise on her face was still agonizingly tender, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel the crushing, suffocating weight of poverty holding her down.

She felt surrounded. She felt protected.

Jax was sitting at her small kitchen table, systematically cleaning the parts of his customized Harley carburetor. His heavy, tattooed hands moved with precise, methodical care, a stark contrast to the devastating violence they were capable of.

“You should eat, Jax,” Maya said softly, setting her empty bowl down on the coffee table.

Jax didn’t look up from the carburetor. “I ate.”

“Coffee and a stale donut don’t count as food,” she scolded gently, a faint, tired smile touching her lips.

Jax paused. He set the greasy wrench down on a shop towel and finally looked at her. His dark eyes, usually guarded and hard, softened entirely when they landed on his little sister.

“You did good today, May,” Jax rumbled, his voice low and thick with genuine pride. “Standing up there. Facing those cameras. Mom and Dad would have been proud of you.”

Maya’s smile faded slightly, a wave of bittersweet sorrow washing over her. Their parents had died in a factory accident when Jax was nineteen and she was just eleven. The company had blamed it on “operator error” to avoid paying a settlement. They had been crushed by the wealthy, just like Dr. Vance had tried to crush her.

“They wouldn’t have let it get this far,” Maya whispered, rubbing her swollen belly instinctively.

“They didn’t have a choice,” Jax corrected her, standing up and walking over to the couch. He sat down heavily next to her, the leather of his cut creaking. “They didn’t have the Hounds. They didn’t have a shark like Marcus in their corner. But mostly, they didn’t have you.”

He reached out, his massive, calloused hand gently resting on her shoulder.

“You aren’t just fighting for yourself anymore, Maya,” Jax said, his voice a low, fierce promise. “You’re fighting for that kid in your belly. You’re making sure that when they grow up, they don’t have to bow their head every time someone in a fancy suit walks into the room.”

Suddenly, Maya gasped, her hand flying to her stomach.

Jax instantly tensed, his protective instincts flaring into overdrive. “What? Is it the baby? Do I need to call the doctor?”

Maya laughed, a bright, beautiful sound that cut through the lingering darkness of the past two days. She took Jax’s heavy, tattooed hand and pressed it firmly against the side of her stomach.

“No,” she smiled, her eyes shining with tears. “He’s just kicking. Hard.”

Jax held his breath. Beneath his rough, reinforced knuckles, he felt the strong, rhythmic, undeniable thump of new life. The massive biker, a man who had broken bones and stared down the barrels of guns without flinching, looked completely awestruck.

“He’s a fighter,” Jax whispered, a rare, genuine grin breaking across his rugged face. “Just like his mom.”

The peaceful moment was violently interrupted by the sharp, shrill ringing of Jax’s cell phone.

He pulled it out of his pocket. The caller ID simply read: THORNE.

Jax’s smile vanished instantly. He hit answer and put the phone to his ear. “Yeah.”

“We have a complication,” Marcus Thorne’s perfectly modulated voice came through the speaker. There was no panic, but the chilling, predatory edge was sharper than ever.

“What happened?” Jax demanded, his posture instantly shifting back into combat mode.

“Detective Reynolds didn’t just turn in his badge,” Marcus explained quickly. “He vanished from the precinct. He cleared out his locker and went off the grid. One of my private investigators just pinged his cell phone before he turned it off.”

Jax’s blood ran cold. “Where was the ping?”

“Two miles from Maya’s apartment,” Marcus said, the danger explicitly clear. “He’s desperate, Jax. He lost his pension, his career, and his reputation. He blames Maya for the press conference. He might be looking to force a retraction out of her, or worse.”

Jax stood up so fast he nearly knocked the coffee table over. “I’m on it.”

“Do not kill him, Jackson,” Marcus warned, his tone absolute. “If he turns up dead, the narrative shifts. Dr. Vance becomes the victim of a violent gang. We lose the moral high ground, and the lawsuit falls apart. Handle it, but keep him breathing.”

“I’ll handle it,” Jax growled, hanging up the phone.

He turned to the front door, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. He threw the deadbolt open and stepped into the hallway.

Bear and Dutch were leaning against the plaster wall, instantly snapping to attention when they saw the dark, murderous look in their President’s eyes.

“Lock this door behind me,” Jax ordered, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. “Nobody gets in. If the building catches fire, you carry her out. But nobody comes through this frame.”

“Done, boss,” Bear nodded, stepping directly in front of the door, folding his massive arms across his chest.

Jax took the stairs three at a time. He didn’t wait for the elevator. He hit the ground floor running, bursting out into the damp, fading evening light of the South Side.

He pulled his phone out and dialed the clubhouse.

“I need eyes on the streets,” Jax barked into the receiver. “A disgraced Oakwood cop named Reynolds is in our territory. Gray sedan, probably unmarked. Find him.”

It didn’t take long. In this neighborhood, the Iron Hounds were the law. They had a network of eyes and ears that the police could only dream of.

Ten minutes later, Jax got the call.

Reynolds was parked in a dark, narrow alley behind a liquor store, exactly four blocks from Maya’s apartment building. He was sitting in his car, drinking heavily, working up the liquid courage to do something incredibly stupid.

Jax didn’t take his bike. He walked.

He moved through the shadows of the crumbling brick buildings with the silent, lethal grace of an apex predator tracking a wounded animal.

When he reached the mouth of the alley, he saw the unmarked gray sedan. The engine was off, but the faint glow of the streetlamp illuminated the silhouette of a man slouched over the steering wheel.

Jax stepped into the alley. His boots crunched softly against the broken glass and gravel.

Inside the car, Detective Reynolds took a long, burning pull from a cheap bottle of whiskey. He was sweating profusely, his hands shaking as they gripped the steering wheel. His service weapon was gone, but he had a heavy, unregistered snub-nose revolver resting on the passenger seat.

He had lost everything. His wife had packed her bags. The Chief had humiliated him. All because of a piece of south-side trash who wouldn’t learn her place. He just needed to scare her. Make her record a video saying Thorne had paid her to lie. That would fix it. It had to fix it.

Reynolds reached for the door handle.

Before his fingers even brushed the plastic, the driver’s side window violently exploded inward.

A shower of tempered glass rained over Reynolds’s lap as a massive, heavy, steel-toed boot kicked straight through the window, shattering it completely.

Reynolds screamed, throwing his hands up to protect his face. He lunged frantically toward the passenger seat, grabbing for the snub-nose revolver.

He never made it.

A heavy, leather-clad arm shot through the broken window. Jax’s massive hand clamped around Reynolds’s throat with the unstoppable force of a hydraulic press.

Jax didn’t just choke him. He gripped the disgraced detective’s neck and violently dragged him out of the car through the shattered window.

Reynolds choked and gagged, the jagged edges of the remaining glass tearing at his cheap jacket as he was hauled into the freezing alley.

Jax threw him onto the wet asphalt like a bag of garbage.

Reynolds scrambled backward, gasping for air, his eyes wide with absolute, primal terror as the towering silhouette of the biker loomed over him.

“Please!” Reynolds croaked, holding his bleeding hands up. “Please, Miller, I wasn’t—”

Jax didn’t say a word. He took one step forward, reached down, and grabbed Reynolds by the collar of his shirt, lifting the grown man entirely off his feet. He slammed the detective brutally against the brick wall of the alley, pinning him there.

“Marcus said I couldn’t kill you,” Jax whispered, his voice so low, so dark, that it sounded like it was vibrating from the very depths of hell. “He said it would ruin the lawsuit.”

Reynolds whimpered, a pathetic, high-pitched sound of total defeat. He could smell the leather, the exhaust, and the sheer, unfiltered violence radiating from the man holding him.

“But Marcus isn’t here,” Jax continued, leaning in closer, his dark eyes locking onto the terrified cop. “And I don’t give a damn about the money. I care about my sister.”

Jax pulled a heavy, custom-forged hunting knife from the sheath on his belt. The blade caught the faint light, gleaming with lethal intent.

Reynolds squeezed his eyes shut, sobbing openly, warm urine soaking the front of his trousers as his bladder let go in sheer terror.

Jax didn’t stab him. Instead, he brought the flat side of the cold steel blade up and pressed it firmly against Reynolds’s cheek.

“You’re going to walk out of this alley,” Jax commanded, his voice cold and absolute. “You’re going to leave this city. If I ever see your face again. If I ever hear your name whispered within ten miles of my sister… I won’t just kill you. I will make it last for days.”

Jax released his grip, letting the disgraced detective collapse into a pathetic, weeping heap on the wet garbage-strewn pavement.

Jax turned his back and walked away, disappearing into the shadows of the south side, leaving the broken man in the dark.

But while Jax was neutralizing the threat on the streets, an entirely different, far more insidious threat was being born in the sterilized heights of Oakwood.

Dr. Richard Vance was still in his hospital bed. The suite was dark. The door was locked from the inside.

He was holding a cheap, disposable burner phone—smuggled in by an orderly who was loyal to cash, not ethics.

Vance’s hands were shaking as he dialed a number he hadn’t called in ten years. A number that didn’t belong to a lawyer, a doctor, or a politician.

It belonged to a ghost. A fixer. A man the ultra-wealthy used when they needed a problem completely, permanently erased without any fingerprints.

The line clicked. There was no greeting. Just the soft sound of breathing.

“It’s Vance,” the doctor hissed through his wired jaw, the pain excruciating, but his desperation overriding the agony.

“I saw the news, Richard,” a smooth, chillingly calm voice replied. “You made a very messy mistake.”

“I need it cleaned,” Vance choked out, his eyes wide with manic, cornered madness. He had lost his career. He had lost his reputation. He refused to lose his freedom. “The biker. The lawyer. The girl.”

“Thorne is untouchable,” the voice replied logically. “The biker is surrounded by a gang. The girl is the center of a media circus. Touching any of them right now is suicide.”

“I don’t care!” Vance snapped, spitting blood onto his own hospital gown. “I will give you everything! My offshore accounts. My Cayman holdings. Five million dollars. Just make the lawsuit go away! Make her disappear!”

There was a long, heavy silence on the line. The kind of silence that dictated life and death.

“Five million,” the voice finally echoed. “Half now. Half when it’s done.”

“Yes,” Vance gasped, a sick, twisted smile forming beneath the bandages. “Yes. Whatever you need.”

“Consider the problem handled, Dr. Vance. But understand this,” the fixer’s voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. “When I move, there is no collateral damage limit. Whoever is in the room, burns with the room.”

The line went dead.

Dr. Vance dropped the burner phone onto the pristine white sheets. He stared at the ceiling, his breathing ragged, his heart pounding with dark, irreversible intent.

He couldn’t win in a courtroom. So he was going to burn the courtroom down.

Marcus Thorne thought he had cornered a rat. He didn’t realize he had forced the rat to chew through the very foundations of the building.

The real war hadn’t even started yet.