The gates of the Federal Correctional Institution creaked open with the sound of steel scraping steel, like the desert itself was groaning. Jason De'Leon stepped out into the Nevada heat like a man walking out of the grave—which, in a way, he was. The sun punched him in the face after three years of gray walls and flickering fluorescents, the kind of institutional lighting that made everything look dead even when it was still breathing.
He squinted, one hand shading his green eyes, the other clutching a clear plastic bag—everything the federal government thought summed up three years of a man's life. A pair of jeans that no longer fit right, hanging loose around his waist where prison food and endless push-ups had carved the fat off his frame. A leather wallet without cash, just his old driver's license with a face that looked like a stranger. And a photo of a man who was now six feet under.
His father's face stared up from the faded Polaroid, creased and worn from three years of being carried in his wallet. The old man looked proud in his Iron Wolves leather, arm slung around a younger Jason at some long-ago club barbecue. It was the last good memory Jason had before everything went to hell.
The guard tower loomed behind him, and Jason could feel the eyes of the screws watching from their perch. Probably betting on how long before he was back inside. Recidivism was their bread and butter—most cons were back within two years, sometimes sooner. But Jason wasn't most cons. He'd learned things in those gray walls that the guards didn't teach in orientation.
He lit a cigarette with a match he'd swiped off Guard Patterson on his way out—old habit from the inside, where everything had value and nothing was free. The flame kissed his scarred knuckles before he cupped it to life, protecting it from the desert wind that could steal a man's last comfort. Smoke filled his lungs, sharp and bitter. Three years without freedom, three years stewing in violence and silence, and the first thing he tasted on the outside was tobacco and ash.
The cigarette was a Marlboro Red, harsh enough to cut through the cotton mouth that came with walking out of federal custody. In the joint, cigarettes were currency—a pack could buy protection, information, or a shank if you knew the right people. Jason had known the right people. He'd had to.
"Jason!"
Her voice sliced through the buzz of cicadas and the low hum of highway traffic from I-95, carrying all the weight of three years of letters that had grown shorter and more careful with each passing month.
Anna.
She was leaning against a beat-up Chevy Malibu parked just past the prison's yellow line, the paint faded from desert sun to something between blue and gray. The car had seen better decades—rust eating at the wheel wells, a spider web crack across the windshield that someone had tried to fix with clear tape. It was the kind of ride that wouldn't draw attention from cops or competitors, which meant Anna had learned to think like a criminal while he was gone.
She hadn't changed much—auburn hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail, hazel eyes scanning the yard like she half-expected guards to drag him back inside on some trumped-up charge. She wore black jeans worn thin at the knees, boots scuffed to hell and back, and a dark hoodie zipped halfway despite the desert heat pushing a hundred degrees. The clothes hung loose on her frame, like she'd lost weight she couldn't afford to lose.
But it was her eyes that told the real story. Three years ago, Anna had looked at the world like it might surprise her with something good. Now she watched everything like it was planning to hurt her.
Jason dropped the smoke, grinding it beneath his steel-toed boot—prison issue, built to last and heavy enough to break bones if a man knew how to use them. Each step toward her felt strange, his body relearning how to walk in open space without concrete walls pressing in from all sides. The air was too big, the sky too wide. After three years in an eight-by-ten cell, the Nevada desert felt infinite and threatening.
Anna met him halfway across the lot, her boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. But she didn't throw her arms around him like he'd expected. Instead, she stopped just out of reach, her body language screaming caution. The hug, when it came, was stiff and brief—more obligation than affection.
"Easy, sis," he muttered, voice low and gravel-thick from years of talking through concrete walls and steel doors. Something was wrong. Anna had never been careful with him before. "Not used to people grabbing me."
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. It was the kind of smile inmates' families learned to wear during visiting hours—bright enough to fool the cameras, empty enough to hide the truth. "I thought... I thought maybe you wouldn't want to see me."
Jason studied her face, reading the micro-expressions the way he'd learned to read cellmates and guards. Fear. Guilt. Something else underneath that made his stomach clench like he'd swallowed broken glass. "Only family I got left," he said, then scanned the empty lot. "Speaking of which—where's Dad? Figured the old man would want to see his boy walk out a free man."
Anna's face went white as prison sheets. Her hand flew to her neck, fingers worrying at skin like she was checking for a noose. "He... he couldn't make it."
"Couldn't make it?" Jason's voice dropped to the dangerous quiet that made hardened killers step aside in the chow line. "Anna, I've been writing him letters for three years. He wrote me back for the first six months, then nothing. You told me he was just busy with club business."
She looked away, staring at the desert like it held answers. "He was busy. Is busy. You know how it is."
"No, I don't know how it is." Jason stepped closer, and she flinched. That flinch told him everything he needed to know. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing. Let's just go—"
"Anna." His voice cut through her babbling like a blade. "Look at me."
She couldn't. Her eyes darted everywhere—the prison walls, the empty road, the setting sun—anywhere but his face. Her hand went to her neck again, that nervous tick he remembered from when they were kids and she'd broken something valuable.
"Where is our father?"
The silence stretched between them like razor wire. Anna's breathing got shallow, rapid, the way it used to when she was little and had to confess to breaking Mom's good china.
"Anna, where the fuck is Dad?"
"He's..." She swallowed hard, and Jason saw her throat work like she was choking on the words. "He's dead, Jason."
The words hit him like a shank between the ribs—unexpected, intimate, fatal. Jason's vision tunneled, the desert heat suddenly feeling like arctic cold. "What did you just say?"
"Dad's dead." The words came out in a rush now, like she couldn't stop them. "Three years ago. Right after they sentenced you. I didn't... I couldn't tell you while you were inside. You would have done something stupid, gotten yourself killed or added twenty years to your sentence."
Jason's hands clenched into fists, the plastic bag crinkling like bones. "Three years. You let me write letters to a dead man for three fucking years."
"Jason, please—"
"Every letter I sent asking how he was doing. Every time I wondered why he stopped writing back. Every time you visited and I asked about him, and you lied to my face." His voice was getting louder, more dangerous. "Three years of lies."
Anna stepped back, real fear in her eyes now. "I was protecting you."
"From what? From knowing my father was dead? From being able to grieve?" Jason's voice cracked like a whip. "How did he die?"
She hesitated again, and Jason saw the calculation in her eyes—how much truth was safe to tell.
"Don't you fucking dare lie to me again." His voice went quiet, deadly. "How. Did. He. Die."
"They said his brakes failed. Mountain road up past Red Rock. But..." She swallowed hard. "But I saw the bike after. The lines were cut clean through. Someone knew exactly what they were doing."
"Someone." Jason's blood was turning to ice water. "Say the name, Anna."
"I don't know for sure—"
"Say the fucking name."
Her voice came out as a whisper. "Victor."
The desert heat seemed to drop ten degrees. Jason's heart pounded in his ears, a rhythm that matched the steel-on-steel percussion of the prison gates still echoing behind them. Victor Kane. The man who'd taught him to ride, who'd sworn loyalty to his father, who'd been like a second father to both of them.
"Victor killed Dad," Jason said, tasting the words like poison.
Anna nodded, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "And now he's running everything. The club. The compound. The money." Her voice broke. "And me."
Jason blinked once. Twice. His hand clenched the plastic bag until it crinkled like bones snapping, the sound sharp in the desert air. Victor Kane. The man who'd sworn loyalty to his father when Jason was still learning to ride. The man who'd taught him how to field-strip a Harley engine and how to read the tells that meant someone was reaching for steel.
"Say it again."
"Jason—"
"Say. It." The words came out quiet, controlled, but underneath was the kind of violence that had earned him respect in a place where respect meant survival.
Her voice cracked like old leather. "Victor killed Dad."
Jason turned away, staring across the desert toward the mountains where his father had died. His hands flexed, calloused and scarred from prison fights and endless pushups on a concrete floor. He'd kept himself alive in a cage with nothing but grit and violence, surrounded by men who'd kill for a cigarette or a slight. Now he was free, and the first thing he heard was that his father had been murdered by the man he once called brother.
The silence stretched between them like razor wire.
Anna touched his arm, fingers light as bird bones. "Don't do this. Please. You just got out. You've got a chance to disappear, start over somewhere Victor can't reach. Maybe California, or up north—"
Jason shook her hand off, not rough but final. "A chance for what? To play dead while Victor pisses on Dad's grave? While he runs the Iron Wolves like his personal kingdom?"
Her eyes burned with unshed tears. "You don't know what he's capable of now. He's not the same man who used to give us candy at club meetings. He's got connections—cartel money, federal protection. People who cross him just... disappear."
Jason leaned in, close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke and institutional soap that still clung to his skin. His voice was low, intimate, terrible. "No, Anna. He doesn't know what I'm capable of."
For the first time since she'd thrown her arms around him, she flinched away. He didn't blame her. Prison had carved pieces off him until nothing soft was left, until only the essential parts remained—the parts that could kill or be killed, the parts that understood there was no middle ground between predator and prey. He wasn't the Jason she'd hugged goodbye three years ago. That man had been buried behind razor wire and concrete.
Jason stepped past her toward the Chevy, gravel crunching under his boots. "Get in."
Anna hesitated, keys heavy in her hand. "Where are we going?"
He slid into the passenger seat, tossing the plastic bag into the back where it landed with a hollow sound. His green eyes caught the light from the setting sun, and for a moment they looked like chips of bottle glass—beautiful and sharp enough to cut. His voice was calm when he spoke, too calm, the way the desert was calm before a dust storm.
"To bury Victor Kane."
Anna's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. She didn't move, didn't start the engine, just sat there staring at the steering wheel like it held answers to questions she was afraid to ask.
Jason lit another cigarette, his third since walking out, and stared out at the horizon where the sun was bleeding red across the Nevada sky. The smoke curled like a noose, and his reflection in the passenger window looked like a stranger—harder, colder, carved down to essential elements by three years of federal hospitality.
"He took Dad from me. From us." Jason's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of a thousand sleepless nights and a thousand promises made in the dark. "Now I'm taking everything from him."
The lighter's flame flickered once in the growing dusk, catching the sharp edge of Jason's eyes and throwing shadows across his face that made him look like something that had crawled out of the desert itself. In that moment, with the prison gates behind them and the endless Nevada wasteland stretching ahead, the desert itself seemed to hold its breath.
Jason De'Leon was free. And he wanted blood.