Chapter 1 - THE ACCIDENTAL EMBRACE
(Word count: ~810 words)
“Please, just pretend you’re hugging me,” a terrified eight-year-old boy whispered after crashing into me on a rain-soaked Chicago sidewalk and wrapping both arms around my leather vest.
Seconds later, two uniformed men came charging after him, demanding I hand him over, but they had no idea the biker standing between them and that frightened child was the president of one of the most powerful motorcycle clubs in Illinois.
My name is Andrew Whitman, president of the Black Ravens Motorcycle Club. That afternoon, I was walking alone through downtown Chicago, counting my footsteps against the slick asphalt the way I had almost every day since my life completely fell apart.
Then a small, soaking-wet body slammed into my hip.
The boy clung to my heavy leather vest like he was drowning in the middle of Lake Michigan. His dark hair stuck to his forehead in wet strands, his thin jacket was two sizes too small, and one untied sneaker dragged through a deep rainwater puddle.
But when he looked up, his eyes stopped me dead in my tracks.
They held a kind of raw, desperate fear no eight-year-old should ever have to know.
“Ethan! Ethan Miller!”
Two men in dark, slate-grey security uniforms came running around the corner of 4th Street, their heavy boots splashing through puddles.
“Get back here right now!” the taller one shouted, pulling a pair of plastic restraints from his belt.
Ethan flinched violently, gasping for air, and buried his trembling face directly against my chest.
Every instinct I had learned from fifteen years of leading the Black Ravens told me that trouble was coming. My club had enough enemies in the city already, and strangers appearing out of nowhere usually meant heavy consequences.
But fifteen months earlier, consequences had stopped frightening me altogether.
A rain-slick highway outside Joliet had taken my wife, Sarah, and the unborn daughter we had already named Lily. Since that devastating night, motorcycles, club business, and my loyal brothers had kept me moving, but none of them had made me feel truly alive. I was just a ghost riding a heavy steel machine through a gray world.
So I reached down and wrapped both arms tightly around Ethan’s shaking shoulders.
“There you are,” I called out loudly, my voice projecting across the rain-swept street. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, son.”
The two uniformed men slowed their sprint, stopping ten feet away, their eyes narrowing.
“Sir, step away,” the taller one demanded, wiping rain from his brow. “That boy is with us. He ran away from a juvenile facility during a supervised recreation movement.”
Ethan’s small fingers tightened so hard around my leather vest that I could feel his knuckles digging into my ribs.
“This boy is my son,” I said calmly, stepping forward so my broad frame blocked Ethan completely from their line of sight. “Ethan Whitman.”
The men exchanged a doubtful glance.
One of them finally lowered his gaze to my chest, noticing the heavy white-and-red embroidered patch stitched across my left lapel: PRESIDENT.
Then his eyes traveled to the rocker below it, displaying the winged skull emblem of the Black Ravens MC.
Recognition instantly changed his expression from arrogant to bone-chilling fear. In Chicago, everyone knew what that patch meant.
Behind me, the deep, thunderous roar of three heavy V-twin engines suddenly rumbled from across the street. Three of my closest club brothers—Grizzly, Jax, and Doc—had spotted me from the diner parking lot and were pulling their custom Harley-Davidsons directly up to the curb, idling their engines in a low, menacing chorus.
“And unless you want to explain to the Chicago Police why two grown men are chasing my terrified kid through downtown,” I said, stepping closer to the tall guard, “I suggest you turn around and back away.”
The shorter guard swallowed hard, his hands dropping away from his belt. “There... there may have been a misunderstanding, sir.”
“There definitely was,” I replied coldly.
They didn't argue further. They turned on their heels and retreated back down the alley as fast as their boots could carry them.
Only after their figures disappeared around the corner did Ethan loosen his desperate grip on my vest.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his small voice trembling against the cold wind.
Something cracked sharply through the thick ice of numbness inside my chest.
“You’re safe for now,” I told him, dropping to one knee in the rain so I was eye-level with him. “Tell me why you were running, kid.”
His wide, dark eyes immediately darted back toward the dark alley corner.
“They were taking me back,” he whimpered.
“Back where?”
“To the home. To St. Jude’s Annex.”
Then Ethan grabbed my leather sleeve again, his small fingers digging into the wet leather.
“Please don’t let them take me back, Mr. Whitman.”
My blood went instantly ice cold.
I had never told him my name.
“How do you know who I am?” I asked, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper.
Instead of answering, Ethan reached inside his soaked jacket and pulled out a faded, plastic-wrapped photograph.
His hands shook uncontrollably as he handed it to me.
I unfolded the plastic beneath the falling rain.
The roaring motorcycles behind me suddenly sounded impossibly far away, drowned out by the heavy thud of my own heart.
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Because staring back at me from that faded photograph was my dead wife, Sarah.
And she was standing on a sunny porch, holding a newborn baby boy whose eyes looked exactly like Ethan’s.
