Sterling, standing ten feet away near his Mercedes, looked like he was about to stroke out. He grabbed his lawyer’s arm. “Get them out of here! File an injunction! I want a restraining order!”
The lawyer, a slick man in a gray suit, looked nervous. “Mr. Sterling, with the cameras rolling… it’s difficult. Public opinion is shifting.”
“I don’t care about public opinion!” Sterling screamed, forgetting the microphones were hot. “I own this city! I pay the taxes that pave these roads! Chief Miller! Do your job!”
Chief Miller, the weary police chief, stepped forward. He looked at me, then at the bikers. He saw Tiny, my VP, cleaning his fingernails with a Bowie knife.
“Mr. Tate,” Chief Miller said diplomatically. “You’re creating a disturbance. I’m going to have to ask you to disperse.”
“No,” I said.
“That wasn’t a request, Jackson. It’s a lawful order.”
“Then arrest me,” I said, holding out my wrists. “Put me in cuffs right here on live TV. Charge a father for standing outside the window of his dying son. Go ahead. See how that plays in the polls next week.”
Miller hesitated. He knew I was right. It was political suicide.
Suddenly, a commotion broke out near the hospital entrance. The automatic doors slid open.
A man walked out. He looked disheveled. His tie was loose. He was holding a briefcase like a shield.
It was Mr. Henderson. The teacher.
He looked around at the chaos—the lights, the bikers, the screaming billionaire. He locked eyes with me.
“Henderson!” Sterling shouted. “Get over here! Tell these reporters that it was an accident! Tell them the Tate boy slipped!”
Henderson stopped. He looked at Sterling, the man who had likely gotten him the job, the man whose influence hung over the school board like a shroud. Then he looked at me. He remembered the door exploding inward. He remembered the blood on the floor.
But mostly, he looked at the crowd. He saw the truth in the eyes of the bikers.
Henderson walked past Sterling. He walked right up to the cameras.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Henderson said. His voice was shaking, but it was audible.
The reporters swarmed him. “What? Who are you?”
“I’m David Henderson,” he said into the microphones. “I was the teacher in Room 104. I saw it.”
Sterling lunged forward. “Shut up, Henderson! You’re fired! You hear me? You’ll never teach in this state again!”
Tiny stepped in front of Sterling, blocking him with a wall of chest muscle. “Let the man speak.”
Henderson took a deep breath. Tears were welling in his eyes.
“Trent Sterling pulled the chair,” Henderson confessed, the words tumbling out. “He did it on purpose. He laughed. And… and I did nothing. I was scared of his father. But I can’t be scared anymore. The boy… Leo… he was seizing. It was brutal.”
The silence that followed was heavy. The narrative had shattered.
Sterling went pale. The Chief of Police slowly turned to look at the billionaire.
“Is that true, Richard?” the Chief asked. “Did you tell me it was ‘roughhousing’?”
“He’s lying!” Sterling shrieked, panic setting in. “He’s a disgruntled employee! I’ll sue him! I’ll sue all of you!”
My phone buzzed.
It was Dr. Evans.
My heart stopped. The politics, the media, the bikers—it all vanished.
“Hello?” I answered, turning my back on the circus.
“Mr. Tate,” Evans said. “You need to come up. Now.”
“Is he…” I couldn’t say the word.
“Just come up, Jackson.”
I dropped the phone. I didn’t say a word to the press. I didn’t say a word to Sterling. I sprinted toward the doors.
Tiny caught my eye as I ran past.
“Hold the line,” I yelled.
“Until hell freezes over, Prez,” Tiny roared back.
I burst into the lobby, hitting the elevator button repeatedly. Come on. Come on.
The ride to the ICU felt like ten years.
When the doors opened, I ran down the sterile hallway. I burst into Room 402.
Dr. Evans was standing by the bed. A nurse was checking the monitors.
And in the bed…
Leo’s eyes were open.
They were groggy. One pupil was still slightly larger than the other. But they were open. And they were looking at me.
“Dad?” he croaked. His voice was raspy from the dry hospital air.
I collapsed. My legs, which had held up against the police and the press, turned to jelly. I fell to my knees beside the bed and buried my face in the mattress.
“I’m here, Leo,” I sobbed. “I’m right here.”
He reached out a hand—a hand with IV tubes taped to it—and patted my head. He was comforting me.
“Why are you crying?” he whispered. “You’re Iron.”
“Even iron melts, kid,” I choked out. “Even iron melts.”
“Did you… did you fix the door?” Leo asked. He was worried about the school property.
I laughed through my tears. “Don’t worry about the door, son. I’m going to buy them a whole new school.”
Dr. Evans stepped forward. “He woke up five minutes ago. His vitals are stabilizing. The intracranial pressure is dropping. He’s going to have a hell of a headache for a month, and no sports for a year, but… he’s going to make it, Jackson.”
I stood up and shook the doctor’s hand. I nearly crushed it.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Evans smiled. “Thank the helmet.”
“Helmet?”
“His skull is unusually thick,” Evans joked. “Takes after his father.”
I looked out the window. Down below, four stories down, I could see the parking lot. The sea of motorcycles. The flashing lights.
“Leo,” I said. “Look at this.”
I cranked the bed up slightly so he could see out the window.
Leo peered down.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“That’s the family,” I said. “They’ve been standing guard for six hours. Waiting for you.”
Leo smiled. A weak, crooked smile, but it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“Cool,” he whispered.
Chapter 6: The Awakening and The Aftermath
Three days later.
The discharge papers were signed. The hospital bills were… handled. (Surprisingly, the hospital administration decided to waive the co-pay after Tiny “negotiated” with the billing department by staring at them until they felt uncomfortable).
I wheeled Leo out of the front entrance of St. Jude’s. He was wearing his glasses again—we taped the frames. He had a bandage on the back of his head and was wearing my spare club beanie, which was three sizes too big for him.
The moment the automatic doors opened, the roar began.
It wasn’t sixty bikes this time.
It was three hundred.
Word had spread. Chapters from West Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. had ridden in. The parking lot was a sea of chrome.
When they saw Leo in the wheelchair, three hundred bikers revved their engines at once.
VROOOOM-BUM-BUM-BUM.
It was a salute. A thunderous, ground-shaking welcome back to the land of the living.
Leo’s eyes went wide. He gripped the armrests.
“Are they all here for me?”
“Yeah, kid,” I said, pushing the chair. “You’re a prospect now.”
Tiny walked up. He was holding something. A vest.
It was a small leather cut. Denim, actually. On the back, it didn’t have a Reaper. It had a patch Tiny had custom-made in the last 72 hours.
A shield. With a pen and a pencil crossed like swords.
IRON ARTIST.
“For the little man,” Tiny grunted, handing it to Leo. “Since you took a hit and kept ticking. That’s warrior stuff.”
Leo put it on over his hospital gown. He looked like the toughest twelve-year-old in the state.
We loaded him into my sidecar—I had attached it just for today.
“Ready to go home?” I asked, putting a helmet gently over his bandaged head.
“Yeah,” Leo said.
“What about Trent?” he asked quietly. “Is he going to be at school?”
I paused. I looked at the lead police cruiser that was escorting us—not to arrest me, but to clear the traffic.
“No, son,” I said.
I didn’t tell him the details yet. I didn’t tell him that Richard Sterling had been arrested for Attempted Bribery of a Public Official and Obstruction of Justice after trying to pay off the police chief on camera. I didn’t tell him that Trent had been expelled and was currently facing juvenile charges for Aggravated Assault.
“The bad guys lost,” I said simply. “We won.”
We rode out.
It was a parade. The police blocked the intersections. The Iron Reapers took up all four lanes of the highway. I rode in the front, my son in the sidecar, the wind in our faces.
