Season 1, Episode 1 — Part A
"Pilot: Smoke and Teeth"
The sun clawed up over Charming like it was late for work. Teller-Morrow wore a gray film of ash that no washdown had shifted yet; the smell of last night's fire hung in the yards and the shirts and the back of your throat. Cian Teller parked the Dyna by the bays, rolled his shoulders, and told himself he wasn't tired. The scanner on the bench muttered codes like a guilty conscience.
Clay stood in the doorway with Tig at his shoulder, both of them cut from the same bad idea. Chibs nursed a coffee that could strip chrome. Jax leaned against a lift, hands dirty, eyes somewhere else. Gemma had a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, multitasking grief into control.
"Morning," Cian said, and it wasn't.
Clay's gaze dipped to the ash on Cian's kutte, then to the bulge inside it where Cian kept the things that mattered. "Tell me you got something."
"Partial plate and a face full of stupid." Cian tossed a printed still onto the workbench—grainy shot of a beat-up blue tow truck, left fender dented like someone'd chewed it. 6J3 at the front of the plate, the rest lost to pixel soup. "Street cam picked it up after the fire. Same make that ghosted by the warehouse before the pop. Juice is pulling shop invoices and DMV within thirty miles."
"Six J Three," Tig repeated, like tasting it might make it bleed. "Dented fender, blue. Tow boys we don't pay pay somebody else."
Unser slid in on lungs full of smoke and sarcasm, hat back, jaw tight. "Or somebody pays you back. You boys planning on staying behind my tape today, or we doing the dance where I yell and you smile?"
"Depends," Clay said, easy. "You planning on solving my arson?"
Unser glanced at the still, then at Cian. There was a second where the old cop's eyes softened like he wanted to be somewhere else, then the usual gravel came back. "Watch your step. ATF's sniffing, and Stahl's the kind of dog that bites for sport."
Gemma's cigarette hit the ashtray like a period. "Then we'll give her nothing to chew." She put a hand on Clay's arm without asking for permission. "Church, now."
---
The chapel felt smaller when men were angry. Wood creaked with it. The Reaper on the table looked like it had decided you were guilty before you opened your mouth.
Clay took the gavel because of course he did. "We got hit. They took our guns, then lit the building so all we got left is nothing." He didn't look at Jax, didn't need to. "We all know who."
"Mayan work," Tig said, the word like a bruise he wanted to poke. "Alvarez pretending it ain't? I'll carve the truth outta—"
"Cool it," Chibs cut in. "We hit wrong, we buy a war we can't afford."
Jax spoke without looking away from the table. "We don't let anyone take our livelihood and tell a story about it." His voice was level, but there was a far shore in it. "We hit back. Smart. Loud."
Clay's eyes flicked, pleased and watchful at once. "Agreed. Cian?"
Cian spun a cheap biro between his fingers. He could feel Gemma's gaze through the wall like heat. "Tow's a lead. Registered to Soria's Auto & Tow in Lodi. Shop changed hands last winter. Owner's cousin does bodywork for a Mayan prospect in Stockton. Juice will confirm. If they moved crates with that truck and staged from a friendly yard, there's a chance they dumped some heat where it was easy."
Bobby scratched his beard. "You saying stash house."
"I'm saying the tow's a thread. I pull, we see what unravels." He pointed at the laminated county map on the wall. "If I'm Mayans and I want to move crates without getting kissed by CHP, I go east frontage to the orchards, cut across Barrett, stage at an old cannery or a farm with a barn no one's used since Carter was president. We all know three such spots. I'll put eyes on two with Juice."
Clay nodded, the quick kind he did when a kid he'd bet on didn't embarrass him. "Do it." He knocked the gavel once. "Tig, with them. Chibs, with me to Alvarez for the ritual bullshit where we accuse and he lies. Bobby, Opie, gear the van." His gaze finally landed on Jax. "You and me later."
The meeting dissolved, men scraping chairs and duty back onto their shoulders. Jax hesitated. "I'll—"
The shop phone rang. Gemma snagged it with a "Teller-Morrow" that sounded like keep it brief. There was a pause, a hard inhale. She looked at Jax, something raw and maternal flickering—the kind she tried not to let anyone see. "It's County. It's… about Wendy."
The room tilted a few degrees. Jax went still, then moved like a man who'd heard this version before. He took the phone, listened, swallowed. "I'm on my way." He hung up. "She OD'd. The baby's early."
Clay's jaw worked. "Jesus Christ."
Gemma's face calmed the way a lake calms in a picture. She walked to Jax and cupped his cheek. "Go. We'll handle the mess here."
Jax's eyes cut to Clay, then to Cian—the brother look, the one you wore because you needed someone to know what you weren't saying. Cian pretended to adjust his gloves so nobody saw him nod. Jax left without another word, the door slapping back behind him.
Tig blew air through his teeth. "Guess we split our feelings and our errands."
"Feelings later," Clay said. "Errands now."
---
Cian slid into the small office they called "comms" and that Gemma called "don't make a mess." Juice already had two monitors up and a third booting, grinning like a kid with a pile of stolen fireworks.
"You see this tow?" Juice said, fingers flying. "Soria's changed their logo last year, bad stencil job, overspray on the side panel—matches your still. Owner's cousin is a Luis R. Pulled a parking ticket last month on a blue Chevy hauler, three miles from an orchard that's been outta business since NAFTA was hot."
Cian leaned in. "Give me cameras near that orchard road."
"County cut two last year. Got a feed from a bait shop down the way, though—old boy points one at the road so he can yell at kids for doing donuts." Juice pulled the window up. They scrubbed back to 2 a.m., watched headlight smears, and then—there. Blue tow, dent obvious in the bad sodium light, bed empty coming in, bed heavy going out an hour later. Two trucks behind it. Masked plate on the third.
"Gotcha," Juice said, delighted.
Cian tapped a quick route on a paper map because pens don't crash. "We go look. We don't spook. Tig takes close with me, you hang back and watch for tails."
Juice made a face. "Why do I always get the hang-back?"
"'Cause you're pretty and I'm lazy," Cian said. "And I still picked a job where I ride in."
Juice's grin went sideways. "You're a menace."
"True facts."
They grabbed helmets. Gemma intercepted Cian in the hallway, hand on his sleeve, a stop that felt like a leash he'd volunteered for. "You keep Clay out of blowback," she said. "And keep your brother's name out of anything with a badge."
He kept his face a clean sheet. "I always do."
Gemma's thumb smoothed the fold in his collar where he let it. "You hearing me, baby?"
"Loud." He didn't reach for her. He didn't pull away. Two truths, like always.
---
The orchard sat in a curl of road that people forgot was there. The trees were ragged, irrigation lines sun-rotted, the dirt turnout marked by the kind of beer can that said teenagers proved they existed here. Cian and Tig ghosted down the track with their engines eased, Juice a minute back in the car he hated but used because glass and metal didn't draw attention like chrome and noise.
Past the treeline: a pole-barn half-collapsed, a trailer with no wheels and two windows punched out, the kind of quiet that was big enough to hide violence. Cian cut his engine and let silence climb back onto the scene. He slid off the Dyna and crouched so low brush whispered against his kutte. Tig did the same, eyes bright in the shade.
"Smell that?" Tig said.
"Gas," Cian said. "Old. Some rubber. Hot metal not long ago." He pointed with two fingers. "Tire ruts, duals. Tow weight. Someone turned that barn into a loading bay." He scanned the ground and found what he wanted: boot prints, different sizes, one with a heel cut in that weird crescent like the photo. He snapped a still on his phone, then lifted it for a broader shot that caught a smear of fresh paint on the barn's lip. "Blue."
They moved slow around the trailer. There were discarded zip ties, cut ends still clean. A pair of nitrile gloves stuck inside out under a pallet. And there—at the far post where the shadow held the ground cool—an old milk crate with two spray-paint cans rolling inside it, one rattling half-full, the other used up.
"Amateurs bring empty cans," Tig muttered. "Pros leave you a rattle to tell a story."
Cian crouched again and angled the camera to catch the overspray pattern where someone had masked a plate and got lazy at the edge. "We have a match." He rocked back on his heels. "They staged here. Either still do, or they'll come back for cleanup."
"Now?" Tig asked, eager like a dog who smelled a fight.
"Tonight," Cian said. "We call the boys, we circle. We bring fireworks."
Tig's grin was sick and beautiful. "I like when you talk pretty."
Juice's text buzzed their pockets at the same time: ATF pinged county—warehouse arson listed. Stahl asking for surveillance.
Cian typed: I'll feed her what we want. Keep a buffer between our faces and their system for 48.
Juice: u sure 48?
Cian: I like a challenge.
He slid his phone away and let the orchard settle. A hawk ghosted the far fence, a shadow with hunger. He felt the shape of the day in his bones—all the ways it could go wrong, and the one or two where it went his way if he didn't blink.
"Let's go tell Dad," Tig said, and the word shouldn't have stuck, but it did.
Cian stood. "Let's go tell Clay," he corrected, soft enough that only the dirt heard.
---
When they rolled back in, the hospital had taken Jax and turned him into a man you didn't ask questions of. He reappeared at Teller-Morrow with wind-burned eyes and hospital stink on his clothes, the kind that makes you think of bleach and failure. He walked like he was balancing two truths in the same hand and didn't want to drop either.
"How is he?" Gemma asked, voice wrapped in armor.
Jax's mouth twitched into a thing that wanted to be a smile if the world gave it a second. "Breathing. They say he's a fighter." He didn't say the name he wasn't sure of saying yet. He didn't say Wendy. He didn't have to. The room knew.
Clay clapped his shoulder like he was knighting him and steering him at the same time. "Good. We got a spot on the Mayans."
Jax's gaze slid to Cian. Question. Answer. "Where?"
Cian pointed at the map. "Old orchard east of Barrett. Barn's a staging bay. Blue overspray. Tow tracks. They'll be back."
"How many?" Bobby asked.
"Enough," Cian said. "We go in with a message. We grab what we can grab. We light the rest."
Clay was already nodding, eyes gone cold and bright. "Opie, Bobby—prep the truck. Chibs, grab the long toys. Tig, you ride point. Cian, you run comms and keep us invisible. Jax—"
Jax cut him off gently. "I'm in." There was no anger in it. There was something worse. Decision.
Gemma stepped in, mother's force behind a smile. "You got a son in the hospital."
"I got a club under fire," Jax said, and for a second, just a second, Cian saw John Teller's ghost lean between them, looking nobody in the eye.
Clay read the tension, turned it into leadership like he always did. "He's in," he said. "We do this tight. No bodies we gotta explain to anybody."
"Tig," Chibs said, eyebrow up.
Tig mimed zipping his lips and tossing away the key. "Scout's honor."
"Scout my ass," Bobby muttered.
The room moved. Guns came out of places you didn't think they'd fit. Vests got zipped. Knives found homes. Cian pulled his laptop into his lap at the bench and started pushing traffic—small, invisible hands on the levers most people didn't know existed. A false call would pull a CHP unit to Highway 12. A "disabled vehicle" marker would bog a sheriff's cruiser two towns over. A power hiccup at the bait shop would buy him twenty minutes of darkness on a camera pointed the wrong way. He layered lies until the county map looked like a stage he'd dressed on a bad budget.
Juice leaned over his shoulder, whistling. "You're a full-service menace."
"Tell your friends." Cian slid a small earbud into his ear and paired radios one by one, private channel hopping until he had the club in his ear like a choir that cursed. "Check check—Clay."
"Copy," Clay's baritone came.
"Tig."
"Loud and sexy."
"Chibs."
"Aye."
"Bobby."
"Present."
"Opie."
"Yeah."
"Jax."
Silence. Then: "Yeah." Not the kind you gave freely. The kind you committed.
Cian stood and tucked the dog tag under his T-shirt like it needed taming. He glanced at Gemma. She watched him like a woman watching a fuse, calculating distance and burn rate. He thought of the folded page tucked against his heart and hoped it wasn't a match.
"Be back for dinner," she said, like it was a joke.
"Bring takeout," he countered, because ritual keeps men from falling into holes.
---
They rolled out in a stagger—Clay and Tig first, Jax alongside Chibs, Bobby and Opie in the truck breathing dust. Cian rode tail for two miles, then cut off onto the ridge road that gave him sight lines and escape routes, a ghost with a headset. He watched the dots move on the HUD he'd jerry-rigged—tiny GPS pings he'd buried in their bikes for "theft recovery," a truth that fit in the same pocket as all the other lies.
At the orchard, the light had gone sideways, that last yellow hour where you can still see the men who mean you harm. Clay signaled with two fingers and they broke—Tig to the right, Chibs left, Jax with him, Bobby and Opie taking the midline with the truck.
Cian parked behind the tree line where he could see the barn mouth and the approach. He killed his engine and let the bugs take back the soundscape. He keyed the mic. "Two vehicles on approach—south track." He'd caught the dust first, then the faint rhythm of an engine idling like a smoker. "Blue tow in the lead. Dented fender. Second vehicle, panel van, white, plate masked."
"Copy," Clay said, voice all granite.
"Positions," Chibs murmured.
Cian slid the small pistol out of his waistband and checked the slide, the lazy way that said practice more than worry. He wasn't the brawler. He was the stopgap you never saw coming if you looked in the wrong direction.
The blue tow nosed into the yard, the driver rolling easy like he was home. Two men hung off the bed, one with a ball cap, one with a bandanna around his neck. The panel van tucked in behind, doors still closed. The barn ate them bite by bite.
"Three outside," Cian whispered. "Two in tow bed, one by the van rear. Two more inside the barn mouth, both armed." He paused, the earbud buzzing with the team's breathing. "No colors on the outside boys. Inside—one with a Mayan patch, hard to tell stripe. Second unpatched."
"On my count," Clay said.
"Hold," Cian cut, because he'd seen a sliver of motion at the far fence that didn't match the pattern. He squinted over the pistol sight, exhaled, let the scene settle until it resolved: a spotter half-hidden behind a rusted disk harrow, rifle barrel low, angle set to catch men moving in from the left. "Sixth at the fence line, left flank, long gun."
"Got him," Jax said, voice gone clean.
Silence, the good kind, the kind where a crew becomes one animal.
"Three," Clay breathed. "Two. One."
The yard exploded into barking engines and boots. Tig came from right with a laugh that wasn't healthy; Chibs sliced the left angle with the kind of focus you don't learn, you live through. Clay walked in like he owned it and reality would adjust. Jax flowed, gun up, eyes narrow, all those conflicting truths smoothed into a single line.
Cian slid along the treeline, covering the rifle at the fence. The man turned in surprise, muzzle climbing, and Cian fired twice, clean, precise—the first kicking the dirt at the man's ankle, the second punching the rifle out of hands. The spotter jerked, swore, went for a sidearm. Cian was already moving, low and mean, closing the distance the way a lazy man moves when he can't avoid it—efficient, economical, ugly. He drove a shoulder into the spotter's gut, knocked the wind out, planted a boot on the rifle, and hammered the pistol into the man's cheek hard enough to make bone make a sound.
"Sleep," Cian said. The man did not. So Cian made him.
Inside the yard, the truck fishtailed, Bobby throwing it sideways to block retreat. Opie jumped out with a bat he didn't need but liked, and introduced it to a bandanna's kneecap in a way that would initially appear regrettable and eventually feel personal. Tig put a man on the hood and asked him a question with his elbow. Chibs cut the panel van door open with a pry and a prayer. Clay disappeared into the barn and came out dragging a crate with a grin that made Cian's skin say careful. Jax covered him, eyes catching Cian's for a heartbeat—brother, check, alive, check, go.
"Load what's ours," Clay barked. "Torch the rest."
Tig pulled a bundle from the truck that had a lot of fuses and even more personality. He winked at Cian as he went past. "You like fireworks, Kid Chaos?"
"I like endings," Cian said.
"Same church."
Cian shifted to the van. Inside: cutting agent, glassware, a plastic bin of baggies like snow. He grabbed a duffel of cash because cash fits all sizes of problem, then tossed a second duffel to Jax without looking. "For diapers," he said, and Jax's laugh was a cut wire sparking once in the dark.
"Sheriff unit diverted," Juice crackled in all their ears from his car perch. "But you got a CHP coming hot if you don't clear in seven. I can buy you three more if I fake a rollover on 18."
"Buy it," Cian said. "We're folding."
They stacked two crates—IRA metal, not all of it, but some. Clay ran a palm over the stenciling like it was a woman he'd missed. Tig set his little friends where they'd talk loud and fast. Chibs lit one with a cigarette and spat smoke at the barn in benediction.
"Out," Clay said, and nobody argued.
Engines roared. The blue tow sat abandoned like a dog that bit the wrong man. Cian slid onto his bike, hit the ignition, and felt the cylinder pulse steady under him. He keyed the mic once. "Go."
They rode. Behind them, the orchard turned into a second sun. Fire rose and made a sound like victory and regret kissing. The shockwave hit Cian's back like a hand telling him to hurry up. He didn't look behind until he was a mile out, then only long enough to make sure the smoke column cut a line the sheriff could read and the Mayans could learn from.
At the ridge, he stopped, let the others roll under him like a school of fish that knew where it was going, and checked the map—his lies held, the path stayed thin. His phone buzzed once, a hospital number he didn't have to look at to know. He let it buzz. He would call later, when he could be the brother and not the boy who liked to watch things burn.
Down in the valley, the Reapers he loved threaded through farm roads toward home with what was theirs. The wind smelled like gasoline and oranges and choices.
Cian smiled into it, private. "You don't steer chaos," he told the empty air. "You just ride it."
They came back hot and loud, two crates heavier and one orchard lighter. Teller-Morrow swallowed the convoy with a squeal of brakes and the stink of burning fruit still clinging to denim. Clay rolled off his bike with victory in his shoulders. Jax dismounted like a man who'd made a choice and hadn't decided if he liked it. Gemma took a headcount without moving, cigarette a metronome between her fingers.
"Two back," Clay said. "Enough to keep us breathing."
"Enough to keep the Irish from breaking our kneecaps," Bobby added.
Chibs popped the truck latch. Opie and Tig man-handled the crates inside. Cian hung back a beat, saw everything at once—Juice's grin a degree too bright, Gemma's eyes logging Jax's face, Clay enjoying the beat before consequences. The scanner muttered on the bench; he reached without looking and turned it down.
Unser's crown vic nose-in at the curb ten minutes later meant the beat was over. He climbed out, hat slanted, a man who knew bad news had a parking spot with his name on it.
"You light a county landmark?" he rasped.
"Bonfire got out of hand," Clay said, all teeth.
Unser looked past him at the crates. Didn't count them, but he did the math. "Fire boys think the orchard was an accident. I convinced them further investigation is a waste of taxpayer money." His gaze snagged Cian for a heartbeat. "You're welcome."
"Appreciate the small-town values," Cian said.
Deputy Chief Hale cruised up behind Unser like a shadow that shaved. Crisp suit, crusader jaw, eyes already writing the report. "Morning," he said, and it wasn't. "Funny night to be an orchard."
"Apples are flammable," Tig said, solemn. "Lots of… apple oil."
Hale ignored him. "Warehouse fire's officially arson. County's looping state and maybe federal if they find a reason to care."
"Find any?" Clay asked.
"Not yet," Hale said. "But reasons tend to show up when you make room for them." He let his eyes slide over the lot—bikes, crates now invisible behind a shut bay door, Gemma immaculate in smoke. He looked back to Unser, like he was trying to borrow authority from a past that didn't like him much. "We'll be in touch."
Unser watched him go like a man watching a child touch a hot stove for the first time. Then he told Clay, low: "Keep your heads down. I can't sell two accidents in a week."
"Who's selling?" Clay said, genial. The smile didn't reach his eyes.
---
St. Thomas wore the morning like a bad suit. Cian walked the hallway with Jax, hospital air making his skin itch. The NICU window was a TV nobody wanted to watch: rows of plastic cradles, tiny hands fighting machines. Jax's face softened in a way Cian had never seen, something unclenching and then grabbing tight.
A nurse in blue scrubs—kind eyes, efficient hands—pushed open the door. "He's stable," she said. "Small, but stubborn."
"What's his name?" Cian asked before Jax could speak. It came out too easy.
"Abel," Jax said, voice unsteady just on the edges. "Abel Teller."
The name touched something old in the room, like a bell hit once and left to ring. Cian nodded, because anything more would land wrong. He put two fingers against the glass near the incubator like a prayer he didn't believe in.
Gemma arrived fast, like she'd been crouched in the parking lot waiting for an all-clear. She checked Wendy's room first—Cian could feel that—and came out with a mouth like a razor in velvet. "She's doped. Useless." Then she saw the baby and something detonated quiet inside her. The armor cracked. She pressed her palm to the glass where Jax's hand wasn't and let herself be a grandmother for one breath. After that, she was Gemma again. "He's beautiful."
"Looks like you," Cian said, because if you don't feed a grenade something, it finds whatever's closest.
Gemma gave him a look that softened sideways. "And you look like me too." It was a joke sharpened on a bone. Neither of them flinched.
The door behind them hissed. Cian felt the angle of the room change before he turned. Dr. Tara Knowles—white coat, confidence, a memory Jax wore around his eyes sometimes—stopped at the nurses' station, checked a chart, looked up. Their gazes collided the way you collide with a history you didn't plan on seeing today.
"Jax," Tara said, careful and simple.
"Tara," he returned, the same.
Gemma's smile filed its nails. "Well, look what Charming dragged back."
Cian stepped into the space between old lovers and current fires without making it look like bodyguard duty. "Doc," he said, friendly. "Thanks for keeping him breathing."
Tara's gaze flicked to him, reading his kutte, the Teller on his chest. "You're family."
"Unfortunately for my reputation," he said. "I'm Cian."
"Nice to meet you, Cian." She went back to Jax because that was the real gravity. "He's got good stats for a preemie. We'll watch for withdrawal complications. He's tough."
"He gets that from his grandmother," Cian said.
Gemma smoothed her hair like she'd been accused of kindness. "You two catch up," she said to nobody in particular. "I'm gonna go make sure Wendy understands consequences."
Tara's jaw ticked. "She nearly died."
Gemma rolled a shoulder. "Consequences."
She left on heels that made nurses step aside. Cian watched her go and thought about all the rooms in this town where Gemma Teller had been the last word. He turned back to the glass and Abel's small machine-lit chest. Jax didn't move for a long time. Tara stood with him in the silence like she had either learned or relearned how.
Cian drifted when he felt like a third truth in a two-truth moment. He wandered down to a vending machine and bought a coffee that hated him. Unser found him there, because Unser found you everywhere.
"You boys set a field on fire," the sheriff said, no preamble. "You stole back what wasn't yours. You pissed in Alvarez's cereal."
"We cleaned up after ourselves," Cian said, testing the coffee. It tasted like burned pennies and regret.
Unser put his shoulder against the wall, winced like it was an old friend with sharp elbows. "Clay's gonna want to press. Jax is gonna start reading. You're gonna pretend you don't care."
"Three for three," Cian said.
Unser's eyes softened. "Don't let those two drag you into the middle, kid."
"I live in the middle," Cian said. "Good view."
"Bad place to be when two trucks come from opposite sides." Unser pushed off the wall. "You tell your mother to keep her hands clean in this hospital."
"Odds are bad," Cian said.
"I like losing bets," Unser said, and clapped him once, a fatherly thing he didn't mean to do. He left the way he'd come, quiet and heavy.
Cian finished the coffee because suffering on purpose builds character or something. He texted Juice: shift DMV search to Luis R. + cousin in Stockton. Any Mayan chatter?
Juice: radio quiet. Alvarez pissed per our friend in Lodi.
Cian: let him stay pissed.
He slid the phone away and went back to the window. Jax hadn't moved. Tara had, but only to put a hand near his on the glass without touching. Cian stood with them until he knew Jax could stand without him. Then he left.
On the way out, he passed Wendy's room. Gemma's voice, sweet as sugared poison, curled through the crack in the door: "…you say his name and I will end you." Cian kept walking. There were altars you didn't kneel at unless you meant to kill a god.
---
Church again without the candles: the chapel smelled like oil and old wood and the kind of man you had to be to sit here. Clay put the two crates in the corner like trophies. Men stood easier with visual proof.
"We hurt them," Tig said. "They'll limp."
"Or bite," Chibs said.
Bobby looked at Clay. "You call Alvarez?"
"I'll call him when I feel charitable," Clay said, which meant he'd already started the ritual: deny, accuse, posture, drink. He looked at Jax. "You ready for the next one?"
Jax's jaw did that small thing it had started doing when John Teller's ghost stood behind him. "We send a message. But we don't start a war we can't finish."
Clay's smile had no temperature. "A message is only good if the man you send it to reads."
"He will," Jax said.
"On this," Clay said.
The gavel hit wood: thunk. Duly noted. Unchanged.
Cian watched the space between them narrow into a line you could cut yourself on. He said nothing. He said less than nothing. He scribbled a nothing on a notepad that read like a parts order so anyone glancing saw business. Under the line items he wrote small: Find out who tipped the Mayans to the guns. He underlined it once. The pen didn't know about blood.
---
In the comms office, he finally let himself breathe the way he did when the action ended and the thinking began. He pulled the micro DVR from the rag-wrapped coffee can labelled BOLTS and slid it into the tool. The monitor blinked awake like it had been dreaming of fire.
He scrubbed back to the frames he'd watched earlier: ghost men, efficient hands, the faint flash of a Mayan patch. He paused again on the tow—6J3 and the little dent like a bitten apple. He saved stills to a portable drive and tucked it into a hollow slot under the desk he'd carved months ago with a Dremel and boredom. He put the DVR back in its can, back on the shelf with the other lies.
He took out the folded page from JT's manuscript and read it all the way this time, alone with the sound of the shop breathing.
…the crow on our backs was meant to carry the dead, not feed on the living. When the men forget that, the patch becomes a shroud. Do not let the business starve the brotherhood. Do not mistake fear for leadership…
He felt a pressure behind his eyes he didn't have a label for. He pictured Clay's hand on his shoulder out back by the dumpster, the pride that stuttered when it tried to say father. He pictured Gemma smoothing his collar, touching fabric instead of skin. He pictured Jax at the glass with Abel, silence doing more work than words ever could.
He folded the page back into its small truth and slid it behind the dog tag. He thought, Not today, and heard in his own head the lie.
Juice leaned into the doorway, bright like a bad idea. "Got something for you, Kid Chaos." He swung a printout. "Luis R. paid cash for a new fender last week at a pop-up paint shack behind Soto's in Lodi. Guess what color."
"Blue," Cian said.
"Ding ding ding."
"Good. Now find me who paid Luis's cousin to shut up," Cian said. "And figure which way Alvarez hears this: that we stole from him, or that he hired idiots who got caught."
"Spin?" Juice's grin widened. "I like spin."
"Make it hurt in the right direction," Cian said. "We don't need a war; we need a story that makes them embarrassed."
"Embarrassed Alvarez is my favorite Alvarez." Juice saluted with the paper and vanished.
Cian opened a county portal and queued a batch of "routine maintenance" pings across three cams near the orchard, one by the warehouse, and two by the storage lot. He set timestamps, wrote clean comments with fake employee IDs, and hit send. In twelve hours, any outside auditor pulling video for that window would find three files corrupted and the others inconveniently blank. Unser would guess. Hale would suspect. ATF would get frustrated. That was the best case most days.
He pulled up the storage facility log next. It still showed nothing. He felt a small mean pride that he'd kept that secret for Jax without lying to his face once.
"So you do care," he told the empty room.
The room didn't argue.
---
He found Jax alone behind the bays an hour before dark, sitting on the step with a cigarette unlit between two fingers. The helmet sat beside him like a dog waiting for a word. He didn't turn when Cian came up; he didn't have to.
"You gonna quit?" Cian asked, nodding at the cigarette.
"Thinking about it."
"Maybe start small," Cian said. "Like… less felonies."
Jax huffed a laugh that died before it became a smile. "Abel's hands are the size of my thumbnail."
"Big as that?" Cian said. "Kid's gonna be a bruiser."
Jax's eyes flicked to him. "You got jokes even here."
"Jokes are cheaper than therapy."
They sat a while with the sounds they knew: a compressor coughing awake, Gemma's radio leaking the end of a song, the highway a distant river. Finally Jax said, "You ever wonder what Dad wanted from this place?"
"Every day I breathe in here."
Jax worked his jaw, thinking about words and picking the ones that wouldn't betray him. "I found something. Pages. It reads like… like a man who loved the thing and hated what it was turning him into."
"That's most men in a mirror," Cian said. "What did he want?"
Jax stared at his cigarette as if he could learn to read smoke. "To carry the dead," he said softly. "Not feed on the living."
Cian's heart kicked once, hard enough to feel. "Sounds expensive."
"Cheaper than what we've been paying."
Cian nodded. He didn't take out the folded page he had hidden under his shirt. He didn't say, I stole a piece of your scripture and I agree with the part that hurts most. He said, "I'll help you read."
Jax finally lit the cigarette like a man picking a lesser sin. He took one drag, made a face, and ground it out on the concrete. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's the felonies I should cut back on."
"Ease yourself off," Cian said. "Go from felonies to mischief like a gentleman."
Jax smiled, small and real. "Thanks for today."
"Tell Abel he owes me a beer in twenty-one years."
"Seventeen," Jax said automatically, then caught himself. "Right. Not in this family."
They stood. They were brothers in their bones even when the story changed. Cian clapped his shoulder, felt the tension there like a wire strung across a road.
"Clay's gonna want to hit again," Jax said, half to himself.
"Clay always wants to hit again," Cian said. "It's how he knows he's alive."
"You think he's wrong?"
"I think he's Clay." Cian tilted his head. "You're Jax. That's a problem and an answer."
Jax nodded like he'd put those words somewhere safe. "See you at church."
"Should get a better name," Cian said. "Less pressure."
---
Evening dropped a blue lid over Charming. At Teller-Morrow, Chibs tuned a carb by feel, Tig told a story about a raccoon with a meth habit, Bobby hummed "Unchained Melody" like it owed him money. Gemma refilled coffee and rebukes with the same hand. Clay talked with his chin more than his mouth, eyes slicing through conversations like knives through apples.
Cian slipped into the little hallway off the office. He put his palm flat against the drywall where he'd folded wires into a conduit and hid drives in the space no electrician would waste time on. Behind it: the DVR he'd saved, the stills, the secret page in his shirt. He wasn't sure which of the three would kill them faster.
From the shop, Clay's voice rolled in, warm as a growl. "Tomorrow we pay a visit. Real polite."
"Polite like flowers or polite like bats?" Tig asked.
Clay didn't answer with words.
Cian closed his eyes a second. He let the sound of his family fill the space behind his ribs and make it easy to breathe again. He told himself—again—that he didn't steer chaos, that he only rode it. Then he remembered the ridge and the radios and the cameras and the little lies he layered like sandbags and knew he'd been lying to himself all day.
Chaos can be aimed.
He opened his eyes and stepped back into the noise, a lazy grin on like armor, hands in his pockets so nobody could see the fists.
—End of Episode 1. If you want, I'll roll straight into S1E2 Part A: fallout with Alvarez, Hale tightening the screws, Gemma's hospital power play, and Cian pulling at the first loose thread he finds in Clay's version of events.