“He’s doing it right,” she admitted bitterly. “Everything he is doing is perfectly legal on paper. If you don’t know what to look for, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the picture he’s painting.”
Eleanor raised her head and locked her clear, sharp eyes with Iron Bear’s.
“I couldn’t go to the local police,” she explained, the desperation returning to her tone. “Because, technically, no crime has been committed yet. I couldn’t go to a lawyer downtown because I simply can’t afford to fight the legal labyrinth he’s built. And I couldn’t go to my own kids because they think I’m losing my mind.”
She swallowed hard.
“So, I sat in my kitchen this morning and I prayed. I asked God to send me someone who wasn’t afraid of him. And then, you boys rode into the parking lot.”
Iron Bear let the silence stretch out for a long moment. He stared down into the black depths of his coffee.
“How long before he gets here?” he finally asked, his voice a low rumble.
“Fifteen minutes,” Eleanor replied.
The brass bell fastened above the diner’s front door suddenly jangled, shattering the quiet hum of the room. Nobody at the booth moved a muscle.
Then, the heavy glass door swung open. Daniel Pierce walked in.
He was exactly the kind of man who entered a room fully believing he already owned the air inside it. He was in his mid-forties, wearing a meticulously tailored dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up just enough to display an aggressively expensive watch. His hair was swept back flawlessly. Tucked securely under his left arm was a thick, brown leather portfolio.
Daniel carried the easy, sickening confidence of a man who had rehearsed his lines in the bathroom mirror a dozen times that morning. He had already convinced himself that this was merely a transaction. He had rationalized the cruelty, telling himself that Aunt Eleanor really was getting too frail, that the big house was a burden, that he was the only one practical enough to do what needed to be done.
He paused near the entrance, his eyes scanning the linoleum floor. He spotted Eleanor’s familiar white hair in the back corner.
And then he froze.
His brain struggled to process the image. Six massive, leather-clad bikers were crammed into a single booth. And sitting comfortably right in the dead center of them, sipping a milkshake and laughing at something a scruffy kid had just said, was his elderly aunt.
Daniel recalibrated his posture instantly. He pasted on a bright, thoroughly rehearsed smile and strode across the dining room.
“Aunt Eleanor,” Daniel said smoothly, stopping at the edge of the table. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining company today.”
He glanced at the ring of bikers. His expression was a carefully constructed mask, attempting to project polite amusement but landing somewhere in the murky territory between deep unease and arrogant dismissal.
“Oh, it’s just family, Daniel,” Eleanor beamed brightly, her voice steady and clear.
She reached out and gently patted Iron Bear’s massive, tattooed forearm. It was the exact, affectionate gesture of a proud mother showing off her boy.
“You remember Rex, don’t you?”
Iron Bear didn’t smile. He slowly extended a heavy, calloused hand across the table. Daniel had no choice but to take it. The biker’s grip, Daniel quickly realized, was absolute iron. It felt like sticking his hand into a closing vise.
“Good to finally meet you,” Iron Bear rumbled, his voice scraping the bottom of his throat. “Mom talks about you a lot.”
The word Mom hung in the stale diner air like a lit match over gasoline.
The other five men at the table were now staring silently at Daniel. It was the heavy, predatory gaze of road-tested men who had already sized him up, weighed him, and found him severely lacking. They were quiet. They were perfectly calm. And they were entirely immovable.
Daniel desperately tried to regain the high ground. He pulled up a spare wooden chair and sat directly across from them. He placed the heavy leather portfolio squarely on the table. He hadn’t planned for an audience. He certainly hadn’t planned for an audience that looked capable of dismantling a truck engine with their bare hands.
Daniel was accustomed to dominating boardrooms. He controlled family dinners. He dictated terms to expensive doctors. He was entirely unequipped to sit across from men who couldn’t care less about the brand of his shoes or the price tag of his watch.
“I just need a few private minutes with Aunt Eleanor,” Daniel said. His voice had dropped an octave, shifting into a crisp, business-like cadence. “To go over some routine paperwork.”
“Sure thing,” Iron Bear replied evenly. “What kind of paperwork?”
Daniel bristled. “It is a private family matter.”
“We are family,” Gust chimed in from the far end of the table. He flashed a wide, casual grin, stating it like it was the most obvious fact in the universe.