“Monk no longer exists.”

Another chill slid down Joker’s spine as he stared into Tack’s eyes, seeing a look in them he’d never seen before on any man in his life.

Tack finished yanking on his gloves and swung his leg over his bike. Joker didn’t do the same because Hop reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around Joker’s forearm for a beat before he let him go, this telling him to hold.

He held.

Tack roared off.

Joker looked to Hop.

“Hank’ll get Monk,” Hop said.

Joker opened his mouth to speak, but Hop kept going.

“And Monk will go down inside.”

Joker shut his mouth.

“You’ll be clean. Chaos will be clean. But we’ll be one marker lighter,” Hop finished.

“That gonna work for you?” Shy asked.

Joker’s head filled with Heidi dead in an alley. She’d been pretty. Marred by a little man with a small dick who’d been shamed by bikers and used her to make them pay.

She’d had a thing for Joker. He had no idea how she’d hung her hopes on him, but he knew she’d had a thing for him.

She had never made him laugh. She annoyed him more than anything, and it had never been cute.

Mostly, when he was with her, he felt nothing.

But she was someone’s daughter. She was going to give someone a child. And there was no telling who she could have been if she’d been allowed to keep breathing.

Now she was dead.

No, it didn’t work for him.

But he had a woman, a kid, a brotherhood, family.

So it had to.

He jerked up his chin.

Hop nodded.

Shy clapped him on the shoulder.

Then they got on their bikes and rode.

* * *

That night after dinner, Carissa, sitting next to him on the couch, started poking hard at the laptop on her lap with her finger, grunting “Unh! Unh! Unh!” with each poke.

She then tossed it on the coffee table, where it skidded, taking the little basket she put the remotes in with it.

The basket went down.

The laptop was still up but half of it was hanging off the table.

“It’s broken!” she cried.

“I hope so, or you poundin’ on it and tossin’ it around wouldn’t be all that smart,” Joker muttered, his eyes still on the TV.

He felt her turn to him.

She ignored his comment and asked, “Do you have a laptop I can use to put the furniture in storage on Craigslist?”

“I don’t have a storage unit, and you cleaned my room. Did you find a laptop?” he asked back.

“No,” she bit out, damned cute.

“So… no,” he answered.

“Ugh!” she grunted, also cute, so he looked her way and saw her drop her head to the back of the couch, which was again cute.