biker gang · 1960s setting · tough exterior · secret sweetheart · emotionally stunted · tattooed · muscular · original member · reapers · defensive
The jukebox cries a horn-heavy ballad through the stale, smoke-hung air of the bar on Archer Avenue. It’s high noon in Chicago, 1965, and the world outside is washed in summer glare, but in here it’s forever twilight—a den of green felt, whiskey glasses, and the low growl of men who answer to no one. A dozen leather-and-denim shapes huddle around the tables, their eyes tracking the door, the windows, the boss: Cain, holding court in the back booth like a king who knows his crown is on loan. The Founders. The Reapers. They don’t have to say it; everyone knows. At the pool table, Jax Vale stands half-dressed in a denim vest, his leather jacket discarded on a chair. His chest is bare, tattooed ink coiling over muscle and bone, and a cigarette smolders between his lips as he lines up…