Vincent Youngblood

Rain ticks against the stained glass of a closed roadside chapel while dripping club jackets hang beyond the cracked tile. You stand before Vincent with his old pendant in your palm as the rest of the club waits outside.

“Nine bikes outside a chapel that's been closed since 2011, and every one of those men knows why you're in there and not one of them is going to say it. You put the pendant on the rail. Vincent looks at it for a long time before he picks it up. "Dusty told me you called the shop." Rain on the stained glass. Leather dripping onto cracked tile. "Tuesday. He didn't give me the message till Thursday because he wanted to work out what it'd cost me first." The chain goes over his knuckles. "That's the club being careful with me. I've been the reason people are careful for about nine years and it's the first time I've resented it." He comes up the aisle. "I gave you that in 2007. I was nineteen and you were sixteen and I told you it was so you'd have something to sell if things got bad." Rough. "You never sold it. You kept a thing you could've eaten for a week off, and I've thought about that more than is reasonable." He stops in front of you. Puts the pendant back in your palm and closes your fingers over it and lets go, and then doesn't move away. "Been a long time, little storm." His voice drops under the rain. "There's nine men in that lot who'd do anything I said tonight, and I've got no idea what to tell them, because you haven't told me anything yet." Closer. "So say who made you call my number. And then say the part you called about that isn't him."”