Sarah heard the door explode downward before she saw him.
The sound of splintering wood echoed through the house like a gunshot. She was halfway down the stairs, wearing lingerie that wasn’t meant for her husband, when she froze.
Jax stood in the doorway.
Not the Jax she’d said goodbye to thirteen months ago. This was something else. Something primal. His leather jacket was gone. His thermal shirt was soaked with melting ice. And in his arms, pressed against his bare chest, was Lily.
Their four-year-old daughter.
Blue-lipped. Unconscious. Wrapped in a wet blanket.
“Jax?” Sarah’s voice came out as a whisper. “You weren’t supposed to be back until Tuesday.”
He didn’t answer. He walked past her like she didn’t exist, carrying Lily to the heating vent. His movements were mechanical, desperate. He wrapped her tighter, rubbing her arms.
The house was suffocatingly warm—seventy-five degrees at least. Sarah had cranked the heat up hours ago. But it wasn’t for Lily.
“What happened?” Sarah asked, her voice rising in fake concern. Behind her on the landing, Diesel was zipping up his jeans, trying to disappear into the shadows.
“You know what happened,” Jax said without looking up. His voice was deadly calm. “You put her outside.”
“I didn’t—”
“She told me.” Jax finally looked at her, and Sarah felt her stomach drop. His eyes weren’t angry. They were empty. “She told me about the ‘time out.’ About being too loud. About how you said she needed to learn to be quiet.”
Sarah’s mind raced. She had put Lily outside. Just for ten minutes, she’d told herself. Just to teach her a lesson about interrupting. But then Diesel had poured another drink. Then another. And the minutes had stretched into twenty. Thirty. Maybe forty.
She’d forgotten.
“You’re insane,” she said, her voice shifting to panic. “You broke into our house! You’re scaring me!”
“Our house?” Jax pulled out a phone, his hands shaking. “I built this house. I paid for every brick. And you left our daughter to freeze on the porch I built with my own hands.”
He dialed 911.
“I need an ambulance. Four-year-old girl, critical hypothermia. 288 Elm Street. And send the cops—tell them it’s Jax.”
He hung up.
Sarah saw her opening. “Did you just… did you call the cops on yourself?” She almost laughed. “You’re a fugitive, Jax. You just broke into your own house. And now you’re holding our daughter. How do you think this looks?”
Diesel finally spoke from the stairs, emboldened. “Bro, you need to leave. This isn’t your home anymore.”
Jax stood slowly, still cradling Lily. When he turned to face Diesel, the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
“Say that again.”
Diesel opened his mouth, but the words died as sirens wailed in the distance.
“You brought a Viper into my house,” Jax said quietly. “You let him sleep in my bed. You let him drink my liquor. And while you were celebrating, my daughter was dying three feet from the door.”
“She wasn’t dying,” Sarah snapped. “She was fine. It was just a time out. Kids need discipline.”
“It’s ten degrees outside,” Jax said. “She was wearing cotton pajamas. No coat. No shoes. How long, Sarah? How long was she out there?”
Sarah’s silence was the answer.
The door burst open. State troopers flooded in, weapons drawn, flashlights cutting through the warm air.
“HANDS! SHOW YOUR HANDS!”
“She’s dying!” Jax roared. “She needs a medic!”
A female officer pushed through, saw Lily’s blue lips, and everything changed.
“Code Blue! Pediatric emergency!”
Paramedics swarmed in. They took Lily from Jax’s arms and laid her on the couch. Sarah watched from the stairs as they cut her daughter’s frozen pajamas, applied monitors, started compressions.
“No pulse.”
Sarah gasped, covering her mouth. For a moment—just a moment—the horror of what she’d done crashed over her. The image of Lily curled on the doormat flashed through her mind. She’d walked past the window once. Had seen the small pink shape. Had told herself five more minutes.
But then she saw the officers wrestling Jax to the ground. Saw the broken door. Saw the bag of cash spilled on the porch.
And she made her choice.
“Officers!” she cried, running down the stairs. “Thank God you’re here! He broke in! He’s crazy! He—he took my baby!”
Jax thrashed against three officers. “You left her to freeze! Tell them the truth!”
“She’s delirious!” Sarah sobbed, leaning into Diesel’s arms. “He’s been gone for over a year! He’s unstable! I was trying to protect Lily from him!”
The female officer looked between them, uncertainty flickering across her face.
“Check her body temperature,” Jax pleaded as they cuffed him. “She’s been outside for at least twenty minutes. Check the doormat—it’s soaked. Check my jacket—it’s still warm. I just got here!”
“Ma’am,” the officer turned to Sarah. “Where were you when this happened?”
“I was upstairs,” Sarah said, tears streaming down her face. “I heard crashing. I thought someone was breaking in. When I came down, he had Lily. She was fine before. She was sleeping in her room.”
“That’s a lie!” Jax shouted. “Check her room! The bed’s not even slept in!”
But the officers weren’t listening. They saw a fugitive biker with a history of violence. They saw a broken door. They saw a terrified mother.
“Get him out,” the lead officer ordered.
As they dragged Jax toward the door, the paramedic shouted: “Got a pulse! Weak but steady!”
Jax stopped fighting. His whole body sagged with relief.
“She’s alive,” he whispered. “Thank God.”
They shoved him into the cruiser. Through the window, he watched them load Lily into the ambulance, a medic still doing compressions just in case.
And then he saw Sarah.
She was standing on the porch, staring at the spilled cash. Fifty thousand dollars in non-sequential bills, scattered across the frozen concrete. Diesel stood beside her, his arm around her waist, both of them calculating.
She looked at Jax through the cruiser window.
And she smiled.
Not a big smile. Just a small, satisfied curve of her lips.
She’d won. He was going to prison. She had the house, the money, the child, and her lover.
The ambulance pulled away, sirens wailing. One of the officers was taking Sarah’s statement. She was crying on cue, playing the victim perfectly.
Jax didn’t look away. He memorized that smile.
Because he was going to wipe it off her face.
The holding cell was freezing, but Jax didn’t feel it. He sat on the metal bench, replaying the moment over and over.
Lily’s blue lips. Her frozen skin. The way she’d whispered “Daddy” like she’d been waiting for him to save her.
And Sarah’s smile.
Three hours passed. Then Detective Miller walked in. He looked tired, holding a coffee cup and a thick file.
“Sit down, Jax.”
Jax was already sitting. “Where is she? Is she alive?”
Miller took a long sip. “The girl’s at St. Jude’s. They got her body temperature back up. She’s in a medically induced coma. The doctors say… it’s too early to tell if there’s brain damage.”
Jax closed his eyes. Brain damage. His bright, laughing daughter might never be the same.
“Your wife gave quite a statement,” Miller continued, opening the file. “Says you broke in around 11 PM, intoxicated and enraged. Says you dragged Lily out of bed and threw her on the porch because she was crying. Says she and Mr. Diesel tried to stop you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Two witnesses say otherwise. And you’ve got a history of violence, Jax. The broken door. Your prints all over the scene.”
“Check my phone. I called 911 the second I found her. Why would I put her outside and then call for help?”
Miller made a note. “We’re checking it. But right now? You’re looking at attempted murder. Child endangerment. Breaking and entering. Add that to your existing charges, you’re never seeing daylight again.”
Jax leaned forward. “Miller, you know me. You’ve been chasing me for over a year. You know what I am. But you also know what I’m not. I don’t hurt kids.”
“Maybe you snapped. Thirteen months on the run, the pressure—”
“I came back to see my family. I brought them money. I was going to leave again. I wasn’t even supposed to be there.” Jax’s voice cracked. “I found her by accident. By luck. By God. If I’d been five minutes later…”
Miller’s expression softened slightly. “I believe you might not have meant to hurt her. But the evidence—”
“The evidence is that Sarah left her outside and I saved her. Check the timeline. Check everything.”
“Your bail is set at five hundred thousand dollars. No bondsman will touch it with your record.”
Miller stood to leave. “Get comfortable, Jax. You’re going to be here a while.”
Hours became a blur. The drunk in the next cell kept singing. The fluorescent lights hummed constantly. Jax sat and stared at the concrete, thinking about Lily alone in that hospital bed.
Then, near midnight, a guard appeared.
“Teller. You made bail.”
Jax looked up, confused. “What?”
“Someone paid. You’re free to go.”
He walked out into the freezing pre-dawn darkness to find Tiny waiting with two motorcycles.
“How?” Jax asked.
“We emptied everything,” Tiny said, his voice heavy. “Every safe house. Every buried stash. Called in every favor from Newark to Oakland. The boys sold their bikes, Prez. Their weapons. Everything. We’re broke. Completely broke. But you’re out.”
Jax felt the weight of that sacrifice. The club had given everything for him.
“Where’s Diesel now?”
“At your house. Threw a party. He’s telling everyone he’s the new President. Says you’re done. Says the Sons are his now.”
Jax swung onto the bike. The engine roared to life.
“Not for long.”
They didn’t attack the house immediately. Jax had a different plan.
First, he needed to see Lily.
He slipped into St. Jude’s Hospital through a service entrance, wearing stolen scrubs. Rico had looped the security cameras. He made it to the pediatric ICU, where his daughter lay surrounded by machines.
She was intubated, unconscious, but alive. Monitors beeped steadily. Her small chest rose and fell with the ventilator.
He stood at her bedside, taking her small hand. It was warm now. Not the frozen ice he’d held on the porch.
“I’m sorry, Bug,” he whispered. “I should’ve been here. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve known she’d…”
He couldn’t finish. The guilt was crushing.
The bathroom door opened.
Sarah emerged, her hair perfect, makeup done. She looked like she was going to lunch, not sitting vigil for a dying child. She saw Jax and her face went white.
“How did you—”
“Did you really think I’d stay in that cell?” Jax asked quietly.
Sarah’s fear turned to calculation. She reached for the call button.
“You press that button,” Jax said, “and I’ll tell them about the doorbell camera.”
Her hand froze.
“What camera?”
“The neighbor’s. Mrs. Chen. You didn’t think about her Ring camera, did you? The one that faces our porch. The one that recorded everything.”
Sarah’s face drained of all color.
“She doesn’t have—”
“She does. And Detective Miller is getting a warrant right now. So you have two choices, Sarah. You can press that button, I get arrested, and in six hours the cops come for you. Or…”
“Or what?”
“You leave. Tonight. Take Diesel. Take whatever cash you can grab. And you disappear. Because when Lily wakes up, I don’t want her to remember that her mother tried to kill her.”
Sarah’s hands trembled. “She’s my daughter too.”
“You gave up that right when you put her on the porch. When you forgot about her. When you chose your lover over your child.”
Tears filled Sarah’s eyes—real ones this time. Not manipulation. Genuine fear.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. I just… I just wanted ten minutes. Ten minutes of peace. She wouldn’t stop crying about wanting you. About missing you. And Diesel was there, and the wine was there, and I just…”
“You forgot,” Jax finished. “You forgot your daughter was outside freezing to death because you were too busy screwing my enemy.”
“Where would I even go?”
“I don’t care. Mexico. Canada. Hell. Just stay away from her.”
Sarah looked at Lily’s small body in the bed. For a moment, Jax thought he saw regret. Maybe even love.
But then she grabbed her purse and walked to the door.
“The house—”
“Is mine,” Jax finished. “Always was. And when the cops find that footage, you’ll be lucky if prison is all you get.”
She left without looking back.
Jax stayed with Lily for ten more minutes, stroking her hair, whispering promises he intended to keep.
“I’m not leaving you again, Bug. Not ever. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”
He heard security coming and slipped out.
Jax stayed with Lily for ten more minutes, until he heard security coming. He kissed her forehead and slipped out.
Back at the house, Diesel was still celebrating with the Vipers.
Jax didn’t bring an army. He went alone.
He cut the power. Loosened the gas line just enough to make them nervous. Then he walked through the front door like he owned the place.
Because he did.
In the darkness, with the smell of gas heavy in the air, panic erupted.
Jax found Diesel in the living room, scrambling for his weapon.
“Looking for this?” Jax held up Diesel’s gun. He’d taken it from the mantle.
Diesel backed up against the wall. “Jax, man, we can talk about this—”
“We’re done talking.” Jax didn’t shoot. He didn’t need to. He grabbed Diesel by the vest and dragged him to the front door. He threw him down the porch steps into the snow.
“You and your crew have sixty seconds to clear out. Or I light the gas and we all go together.”
The Vipers poured out of the house like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Jax stood alone in his ruined living room, flicked his lighter, and held it up.
“Sixty. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight…”
They were gone in thirty seconds.
Three days later, the news broke.
Sarah Teller had been arrested at the Canadian border. Doorbell camera footage confirmed she’d placed Lily outside as punishment. Charges: attempted murder, child endangerment, child abuse.
Diesel and three Vipers were arrested for conspiracy and witness tampering.
And Lily woke up.
Jax was there, sitting beside her bed, when her eyes opened.
“Daddy?”
“I’m here, Bug.”
“You came back.”
“I’ll always come back for you.”
She smiled—a small, tired smile. But it was real.
Detective Miller appeared in the doorway.
“We need to talk, Jax.”
“I know.”
“You’re still a fugitive. You still have charges.”
“I know.”
Miller sighed. “But… given the circumstances, and your cooperation… the DA is willing to make a deal. Probation. Community service. You stay clean, you stay with your daughter.”
Jax looked at Lily, her hand in his.
“Deal.”
Six months later, Jax sat on the porch of 288 Elm Street—rebuilt, repaired, no longer a crime scene.
Lily was playing in the yard, laughing, her voice carrying on the summer wind.
She’d recovered. Not completely—there were scars, nightmares, therapy sessions. But she was alive. She was his.
And that was everything.
The Sons of Misery was gone. Jax had disbanded it. He worked construction now, regular hours, regular life.
He wasn’t a President anymore.
He was just a dad.
And that was enough.
