As the high-end custom garage business snowballed, raking in fistfuls of East Coast cash. Chloe's name drifted back into my territory like a lingering stench from the gutters.

Big guy Tank walked over to the workbench, wiping black grease off the back of his hand with a filthy rag. Word on the street was that ever since Daryl stripped Chloe of her status and exiled her to the Eastside lot. She finally realized her waterworks brought her exactly zero sympathy among outlaws.

Desperate for revenge, she crawled into bed with Mark, the second-in-command of the Vipers-the very gang currently breathing down our necks on the outskirts of our turf.

Mark was a notorious sicko. But to use him as a weapon against Daryl and me, Chloe didn't hesitate to become the bastard's plaything.

"Boss lady, the Vipers have been sniffing around our lot lately like hounds on a scent," Tank grunted, his brow furrowed. "Word is, Chloe's whispering in Mark's ear every night, trying to stir up some deep shit."

"Let her dig her own grave," I sneered, casually tossing a heavy socket wrench into the metal toolbox with a sharp clang.

"A rat's gotta thrash around in the mud a bit before it drowns. Doesn't change the fact that their ship is sinking."

I didn't lose a wink of sleep over the bitch's vendetta, though Daryl quietly beefed up the security perimeter around the garage to the max.

However, the heavy retaliation we anticipated from the Vipers never materialized. 

Instead, Chloe torpedoed her own life in a spectacularly trashy melodrama.

Mark's wife wasn't someone to be trifled with. When she caught wind of Mark and Chloe's filthy affair-and discovered Chloe was using a fake ultrasound to strong-arm Mark into a divorce-the wife showed up with three trigger-happy hired guns and kicked down the flimsy door of Chloe's cheap motel room.

They didn't waste a single breath. They beat the living daylights out of her right then and there, stripped her down to her underwear, and tossed her onto the unforgiving asphalt like a bag of dead weight.

The real punchline leaked straight out of the ER: Chloe was never pregnant. She'd been popping bootleg pills from the black market for so long that she had completely wrecked her own endocrine system.

Realizing he'd been played for a fool with a fake pregnancy trick, Mark turned on her instantly, ordering his foot soldiers to drag her kicking and screaming off Viper territory.

A few afternoons later, I was leaning over, fine-tuning a custom V-twin engine, when a hysterical screech tore through the chain-link gate outside.
I wiped the grease off my hands and strolled out into the blinding sunlight.

Outside the gate, Chloe was gripping the chain-link mesh like a feral cat dragged through a slop bucket. Her matted hair was caked in grime, her face a canvas of nasty bruises, and her clothes were torn to shreds, soaked in a vile mix of mud and dried blood.

Her pitiful, innocent "saint" act had been shattered into a million unrecoverable pieces.

"Daryl! Daryl, get out here!" she shrieked, rattling the metal gate like a maniac. 

Daryl emerged from the deep shadows of the garage. The moment his eyes landed on the pathetic mess beyond the fence, his granite jaw set hard, his gaze stripped of any race of pity. 

“What do you want?” His voice cold as ice. 

"Daryl. I was wrong! I know I messed up!” Chloe dropped to her knees on the sharp gravel sobbing hysterically. 

"Mark is a sick psycho, he beat me, his wife humiliated me... I have nowhere else to go! Please, take me home! I swear I'll do whatever you say from now on!"

Daryl stared down at her like she was a rotting corpse.

"You made your bed. I set you up at the Eastside lot, but you struck the match and burned your last bridge to ashes. You and I? We've been squared away for a long time."

“No! It's all because of that outsider bitch!” Chloe suddenly snapped like a rabid dog, her hand trembling as she pointed a finger dead at me, her eyes practically bleeding desperate venom. 

“If Samantha hadn't stolen everything that belonged to me, I wouldn't be out here getting beaten in the streets! She stole you! She ruined my life!" 
I let out a dry scoff, taking my time as I strolled up to the fence, starting her down coldly through the metal diamonds. 

"You've got one thing twisted, Chloe.” My voice was low, but lined with razor wire. "The only thing that ruined you was your own cheap, bottom-feeding greed. You've spent your whole miserable life trying to leech off men to climb up, too blind to realize the truth: without a spine of your own, you're destined to be nothing more than the mud on someone else's boots." 

"Shut your mouth! You bitch-" She slammed her hand against the mesh, cracking her fingernails. 

"While the rest of us are out here bleeding to build something real, parasites like you are busy pissing away whatever dignity you have left." I locked eyes with her ghost-pale face, delivering the verdict one slow world at a time. "Where's that ‘bastard’ you're supposedly carrying? Oh, wait. I forgot- it was all bullshit. From start to finish, you're nothing but a walking joke."

Chloe's breach hitched violently. The last drop of color drained from her face as she slumped backward into a muddy puddle, clutching her head and wailing like a wounded animal. 

I couldn't even stomach another look at her. I turned my head and gave Tank a subtle nod. “Call the manager at the Eastside lot. Tell him to get his ass over here and scrape his trash off my driveway before my boys dump her in the city landfill.” 

Tank flashed a rugged, toothy grin. "You so it, boss lady." 

Two hours later, a rusted-out van screeched to a half out front, and the men roughly dragged still babbling Chloe into the back. 

Word around the crew a week later was that her mind finally snapped for good. She was forcibly committed to a local asylum, never to set foot outside this doors again. 

That rotten thorn in my side from a past like had finally been ripped out by the roots, burned to absolute ashes.