Savages in Leather, Shadows in Silence
They called us monsters. Savages in leather. Nightmares on chrome. The kind of men mothers whispered about when engines roared past, the kind fathers warned their sons to avoid. People assumed we were all chaos, broken men with nothing but torque wrenches and vengeance in our hearts.
Maybe once, they were right.
But that night, past midnight, in the quiet of the Iron Cross Garage, I learned that monsters don’t always wear leather or ride steel chariots through the darkness. Sometimes, they wear clean shirts and carry the smell of rage that seeps into a house like smoke.
My name is Caleb Rourke, but most people call me Hollow. I run with the Black Halo Saints—a motorcycle club that the world pretends doesn’t exist by day, and prays never notices them by night. We’re not saints. Not exactly. And not demons. Not anymore.
The night had been ordinary enough: engines cooled, tools wiped down, the smell of grease and oil lingering like incense in the cramped garage. I was finishing a Softail rebuild, torque wrench sliding back into its drawer with the soft click of completion. Then I heard it.
A whisper.
So faint I almost thought it was the wind curling under the garage door.
“Please… don’t let him find us.”
I froze.
The garage was supposed to be empty. Briggs, our mechanic, had already gone home hours ago, leaving only the hum of fluorescent lights and the faint hiss of the air compressor settling into silence.
I stepped out of the shadows and found them.
Four kids, small, shaking, barefoot. Behind them, slumped against a dented tool cabinet, was a woman barely conscious. Blood seeped through her blouse, her breathing shallow and uneven. One eye was already swelling shut, a dark crescent blooming across her cheek.
The smallest boy clutched at her waist, silent sobs shaking his thin frame, as if crying too loudly would make things worse.
I raised both hands, trying to seem unthreatening.
“You’re okay,” I said. “You found the right wrong place.”
Movement behind me. Briggs appeared from the lounge, a mug of burnt coffee in hand. He froze, took in the scene, and set it down without a word.
“Hollow?” he asked quietly.
“Get Lena,” I said.
Lena, a former combat medic whose hands had saved more lives than most ERs could count, was already halfway down the alley. She had been ours for years—patched up gunshot wounds, broken bones, and worse, without a single complaint. Tonight would be no different.
The tallest child stepped forward, eyes darting to the garage door as if expecting it to explode. Thirteen, maybe fourteen, all sharp edges and forced courage.
“We weren’t stealing,” he said quickly. “We were hiding. From him.”
I crouched to be level with them, voice low, patient.
“What’s your name?”
“Evan,” he said, voice trembling but defiant. “That’s Mara, Lucas, and the baby’s Elle. And that’s my mom. Her name’s Rose.”
Elle, the baby, trembled violently in a soaked hoodie. Mara’s wrist was bruised purple, raw and angry against her skin. Lucas wouldn’t let go of their mother’s sleeve.
Lena arrived seconds later, gloves already on.
“Gunshot?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Blunt force. Ribs. She’s hurt badly, but she’s alive.”
Rose stirred, voice fragile as cracked glass.
“Please…” she whispered. “Don’t let Derek find them.”
The name hit the room like a punch. Briggs’ jaw tightened.
“Derek Cole?”
Evan nodded. “He… he hurts her. All the time. He’s… he’s going to come back tonight. He said he would find us.”
Lena worked with quiet precision, assessing injuries, cutting away torn fabric, murmuring under her breath.
“Possible concussion. Cracked ribs,” she said. “If she collapses, we can’t wait for an ambulance. Not with him out there.”
I turned to the kids. “Listen carefully. No one touches you tonight. That man doesn’t step past our gate.”
Within minutes, the garage came alive. Locks clicked into place. Engines warmed. Men moved without a word, like soldiers in a silent army. Rose hadn’t picked us by accident. She had come to the right wrong place—Hollow’s garage, where nightmares sometimes became nightmares for someone else entirely.
And as I watched Lena stabilize Rose on a cot we’d dragged from the lounge, I realized that this wasn’t just a fight for survival—it was a test of everything I thought I knew about monsters.
Hours passed. The night deepened into blackness so thick it swallowed the neon glow from our bay doors. I sat in the corner, torque wrench in hand, but my mind was elsewhere. Outside, the wind picked up, tugging at the loose edges of the garage tarps, making them snap like gunfire.
“Caleb,” Lena whispered, not looking up from Rose, “something’s off.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
She paused, eyes narrowing. “The way the kids reacted when you said Derek Cole. They weren’t scared of us. They were scared… like they already knew he wouldn’t be stopped. Like he’s been here before.”
I froze.
“You mean… he knows this place?”
Lena shook her head slowly. “Or he knows you.”
The thought made my stomach twist. Every lock, every chain, every reinforced gate suddenly felt fragile, a thin veil against the kind of violence Derek carried with him.
Then Mara, the middle child, spoke. “He… he left something.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She handed me a small, folded piece of paper, edges curled from moisture. I unfolded it carefully.
I will find them. Even if I have to burn this whole place down.
I glanced up. “He was here?”
“No,” Mara said. “But he was close. We saw him from the alley. Watching. Waiting.”
Briggs slammed his hand against the nearest toolbox. “That son of a bitch isn’t supposed to know where we live!”
“Not anymore,” Lena murmured. “But he does now.”
A cold realization settled over me like a fog. Derek Cole didn’t just hurt women. He hunted. And he knew how to find his prey.
The kids huddled together, and I studied them. Their fear wasn’t the kind that went away with a night of safety. It was carved into their bones. Yet, beneath that terror, there was defiance. A kind of hope that hadn’t been fully crushed.
“Caleb,” Evan said quietly, “if he comes, he won’t just hurt Mom. He’ll…” His voice broke. “…he’ll take us too.”
I felt the weight of that promise. Every plan I’d ever made for protecting anyone from men like Derek was suddenly put to the test.
By 2 a.m., the storm outside matched the one brewing inside my head. Rain rattled against the corrugated roof. Thunder rolled, deep and hungry, shaking the walls. I checked every lock again. Every exit. I knew Derek wouldn’t come in the light of day, but he had a way of moving through shadows like smoke. And the thought of him slipping past the garage unnoticed made my blood run cold.
Then the first twist of the night revealed itself. Lena looked at me sharply. “He didn’t come alone.”
I stiffened. “What do you mean?”
She pulled a small mirror from her pocket, angled it just so. In the reflection, I saw them: a pair of headlights down the alley, almost too high for cars, almost… precise. They weren’t trying to hide; they were calculating.
Briggs cursed under his breath. “Motorcycles.”
I grabbed my jacket, feeling the familiar weight of steel in my pockets. “Then we wait.”
Hours stretched into tense silence. The kids slept fitfully in the lounge, nightmares spilling into reality, murmuring the name Derek like a prayer or a curse. And through it all, I felt it—an electric tension coiling around the garage, waiting for the storm to break.
Then, a sound like gravel under tires. But not just one. A dozen.
My men moved. Silent, efficient. Shadows among shadows. We didn’t wait for him to strike. We prepared to strike first.
The door rattled. Not breaking, just testing. A warning.
Then, silence.
And a single voice, calm and deliberate:
“Caleb Rourke.”
It wasn’t Derek’s usual rage-filled bark. It was a whisper, smooth, controlled. Too much control.
“Your garage is small,” the voice said. “But your sins… they are larger.”
I gritted my teeth. Derek had learned something. He had allies. And somewhere, hidden in the night, the real threat was circling, waiting for a mistake.
I turned to my men. Briggs, Lena, and the rest of the Saints.
“No one dies tonight,” I said.
And for the first time in a long time, I wondered if the monsters people feared weren’t the men in leather—but the ones who wore the clean shirts, smiled, and waited.
Because tonight, in the Iron Cross Garage, all lines between savages and saints would blur.
