Honor and Redemption

by A. C. Bextor

  Instead, I woke up to this.

  You told me that night changed your life.

  “What the hell is that?” Vante questions, staring at my hand.

  “This?” Holding the ring between my fingers, I tell him, “This is Cricket sayin’ goodbye.”

  “She didn’t leave you. She wouldn’t,” Vante claims. “No fuckin’ way.”

  “Vante,” I hiss. “She didn’t just leave me, she left us all.”

  “Fuck! Give me five.” Vante turns on his heels and heads to his room, slamming the door in a rush.

  Mindfully sorting through this nightmare, calculating I could be right, Leglas’s jaw grinds and his eyes narrow. “Get Elevent here,” he demands, sliding a shirt over his chest and growling low. “I’ll call Sty and Advay.”

  Thirty minutes later, Elevent’s sitting at the head of the table, accepting that I’m right. Cricket’s gone.

  “She went there,” Sty proposes. “To Seveena, her father.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Advay rebuts. “Cricket’s a little nuts, but she’s not certifiably insane.”

  No matter what happens. No matter what decisions we make. Everyone’s time is borrowed.

  Over the table, Elevent’s gaze meets mine. I nod, berating myself for not listening to what she’d already made up her mind to do.

  “Why would Cricket do that when she knows we’ve got this?” Vante questions, standing by the door with his arms crossed and his foot propped against the wall.

  “But she doesn’t know shit,” Sty counters. “She only knows what she thinks she does.”

  “Cricket listens,” Vante asserts. “She hears everything she shouldn’t.”

  What you didn’t know was that mine changed so long before that.

  “Get word to Vlad, and Nikolas,” Elevent orders. “If Seveena has Cricket, they’ll know before we will.”

  “They’ll want in on this,” I affirm. “Especially Nikolas.”

  Nikolas will take whatever happens to Cricket personally. He’ll also do everything in his power just as we will to get her back.

  “If we can use him in any way we will,” Elevent concurs, turning toward Leglas. “We have nothing at our back.”

  My chest tightens at Elevent’s declaration. We have no real guns, and very little ammo. Hell, we don’t even have knives. Our club is clean—has been for years.

  Fuck.

  “I hate askin’ for their help to intervene, but if Cricket did this, we have no other choice,” Elevent scowls.

  “Got it,” Leglas returns.

  “Vlad and Nikolas do not make a move without us. No doubt Vlad’ll be pissed, but Nikolas has ties to that bitch. After what she put Cricket through and how Eve ended, he’ll lose his mind.”

  “I’ll talk to Vlad first, have him get in touch with Nikolas,” Leglas conveys. “Vlad can deal with him.”

  “Leglas, this is a rush. Get to the point and don’t mince words.” Leglas stares at Elevent as if he’s grown two heads. If any brother here is incapable of mincing words, it’s Leglas.

  Rather than debate, Leglas nods.

  Sty sits back in his chair. “We’re doin’ this tonight,” he states. “We were gonna do this anyway, but our motivation changed the plans.”

  “More exposure and risk if we rush this, but if Cricket really did walk herself into that fucking warehouse, we’ll have no choice,” Leglas puts in.

  “Sty,” Elevent calls out. “Need as much recon on this as you can get, and a plan. We’re not storming in there blind. You don’t have much time.”

  “Got it,” Sty replies.

  “Gypsy,” Elevent calls next. “You’re with me.”

  “I won’t sit here and do nothing,” Vante contends, standing and puffing his chest. “I can’t.”

  “You’ll brief the girls. And when I say brief, I mean, you’ll be as vague as fuckin’ possible. You won’t tell them what we’re plannin’, and you won’t tell them where we suspect Cricket to be.”

  “Done,” Vante assures, following on Sty’s heels to the door.

  Advay takes off in their direction, saying, “I’ll look at what we got in inventory and get what we have ready.”

  Leglas scoots his chair back, his unwieldy body tight with anxiousness. “If Cricket did this on her own, she’s out and…” He pauses, grinding his jaw hard. “I swear to God, it’ll be the last fuckin’ thing she has to do with this club, Elevent.”

  Meaning, after Cricket’s latest stunt, should we all make it through, Leglas wants her sent away. For her own good and his peace of mind.

  “Duly noted,” Elevent readily confirms.

  Driving his point, Leglas concludes, “You’ll get rid of her.”

  “She’ll be in the truck with Mom and Pop to Texas. But right now, I need you focused on gettin’ to Vlad so we can get her back.”

  “I’m a ghost,” Leglas tells Elevent, ignoring me as he walks to the door.

  Leglas, being a man who’s never loved a woman in its truest sense, must somewhat relate. He’s not lending me his pity for her loss. Rather, he’s doing what he can to get her back.

  “Gypsy,” Elevent calls once Leglas clears the room.

  Loving you has been the sweetest and cruelest gift of my life.

  “Damn it, Gypsy,” Elevent calls again. When my gaze hits his, he asks, “You good?”

  “Would you be if this were Mia?”

  “Not a fuckin’ chance,” he affirms. “We both know I’d be out of my head. What I gotta know is, are you gonna be able to keep yours?”

  I want you to have a beautiful life.

  “She left me, El,” I strangle out, resenting her and loving her at the same time. Elevent takes to his feet as I tell him, “She knew what she was doing. She gave me every goddamn sign she was thinking stupid thoughts, but I missed all of it.”

  “Hell knows what she was thinkin’,” he returns. “But if she did this, it was because she loves you.”

  “That’s twisted.”

  Elevent smirks. “That’s Cricket. She doesn’t think rationally.” Running his hands over his face, he says, “We’ll need you out there should this not go as planned.”

  His unspoken order hit home, and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I’m the only person with medical training. If something does go bad, I’ll need to keep an even keel.

  “Say something here, brother,” Elevent urges. Standing at my side, he adds, “Tell me you’re gonna keep your head or you’re out of this.”

  “Elevent...” I try to defend my position, but the words are lost.

  Elevent slaps my shoulder hard before grabbing the back of my shirt and yanking me to my feet.

  Eye to eye, I pull from my gut the truest words I can muster. “Cricket’s the rest of my life. If I lose her, I have no place anywhere.”

  Wrenching hard, Elevent pulls me into his hold, grasping tight.

  On our own, we’ve both feared the outcome, had passing moments of doubt, looked into a future without Cricket. Separately, we’ve realized in the short time she’s been gone, how much losing her would destroy all we are.

  “This is Cricket,” he grinds out, his voice dark and broken. “We’re all in this, Gypsy. We do or die in getting her home.”

  Pulling away, Elevent avoids my sick and worried gaze. He walks to the door and is through it before I can say another word.

  “Somethin’s not right,” Elevent worries, laying on his gut in the high grass. Using a pair of slim, black binoculars, he scans the property ahead. “This place should be crawling with guards. There’s nothing here at all.”

  Standing beside where he lies, I stare off into the dusk fallen distance.

  Before discussing a plan to get Cricket out of here, Vlad had his contacts verify that Seveena did, in fact, have Cricket. Doing this, they also confirmed she was being kept in the warehouse just as we’d suspected.

  As further plans unfolded, Vlad ordered Elevent to keep he and Nikolas apprised. He were relentless
in his demand to know exactly what Saint’s was calculating.

  Vlad, mainly because he has a familial vested interest in Saint’s.

  Nikolas, because he has the same interest in Cricket, but an added incentive that includes a checkered past with Seveena.

  Both Russians despise the vile woman and deplore all she represents. Without a word of debate or moment of deliberation, Vlad not only agreed to back Elevent’s play to draw in close and take them by surprise, he also insisted Elevent have the Zalesky brigade of soldiers on standby should this get ugly.

  This consideration was pivotal, shifting all our doubts to the good. Yet, a favor of this magnitude does not go without risk.

  Vlad’s soldiers aren’t bikers. They’re not men aiming to lead good, clean lives, either. They don’t deliberate their choices. They make a decision and push forward, consequences be damned.

  Right now, units of these men are protecting the perimeter. They’re armed, ready, and waiting for word to do as needs done.

  “It’s early,” I relay to Elevent. “Seveena could keep her shit locked down, using the darkness to her advantage.”

  “We can’t wait to give her that, either,” he returns, rolling up to stand.

  Once nightfall hits, the abandoned warehouse on the hill will be impossible to maneuver through and around. There aren’t any lights on the outside of the building. The moon could be of some use, but being the sky is cloudy, it won’t serve its full purpose. Inside will be tricky as well. There’s not a single window leading in, the structure being one big cement box.

  From the recon and intel we’ve done from the distance, there’s only one way in and out. A large metal door which faces east.

  “Where’s Leglas?” I question, eyes still narrowed ahead.

  Elevent wipes the dirt from his gut and legs. “He’s in his place at the other side.”

  “What if Cricket’s not in there?” Wilson steps in close to question. The fear in his tone is telling.

  Originally, Wilson was supposed to head out with the others, taking lead on watch. Earlier, Elevent noticed he’d been acting strange. He’d been looking around, darting his focus to everything except where Wilson’s mark should’ve been. Elevent and I talked, deciding that instead of sending him inside with the others, he’d hang back here to be of more use.

  Max and Blaze took no issue following Leglas to the line of fire. Hell, they were hungry for it. Sty was proud of their enthusiasm; Leglas was not. Like me and Elevent, Leglas wants this shit done and over.

  For good.

  “Wilson, she’s there,” Elevent assures again. “Once we get word, we’ll get in and get out.”

  “Before I shit myself or after?” Wilson questions, his tone void of amusement.

  “We’re a go,” Advay informs, stepping up from the brush. “Sty’s got a run on the power lines now. He cuts those, everything goes dark inside, and Leglas, Max, and Blaze are gonna take out the garage door first.”

  “Wait,” Elevent prompts, shifting his gaze to the building, hurriedly looking through the binoculars again. “Son of a bitch,” he grinds out.

  “Why the fuck is he here?” Advay hisses, lowering himself to the ground and looking through his lenses.

  Leaning over, I grab the binoculars from Wilson, positioning them in time to see Nikolas walking toward the door with his hands raised in the air.

  “Nikolas,” I hiss. “Bastard isn’t supposed to be here.”

  The sound of the heavy metal echoes when the large metal door trips open. A short, stocky man wearing camo gear steps out from inside. Strapped around his shoulders is a large, semi-automatic weapon. Once close to his target, another man walks out, barking an order to Nikolas.

  Wearing a goddamn suit and tie, Nikolas drops to his knees as he must have been ordered.

  The man with the gun takes another step and positions it to Nikolas’s forehead.

  “Leglas, you on this?” Elevent urgently relays into the radio.

  Nothing but silence from the other end.

  “Fuck, Leglas, gimme something,” Elevent tests again.

  Tossing the remote to the ground, Elevent grabs his bag and turns to Advay. “Go find Leglas and the others.” Turning his attention to Wilson, he points directly into the kid’s face. Wilson’s eyes widen and his face pales. “You, get on there and see who you can get. You’ll tell me exactly what you see from here.”

  “Elevent,” I call, dropping the binoculars to my side and fighting the bile in my throat.

  Gunfire sets off just as a plume of black smoke bellows from behind the large door. Someone’s already inside. Without warning, one of ours has already moved forward.

  To this realization, Elevent steps closer to where I stand and slaps my shoulder, his heavy hand not moving away. “Gypsy, you good?”

  “I’m good.”

  Elevent’s expression is resolved. “Let’s go get our girl.”

  Sending a quick prayer to whoever may listen, I follow his footsteps into the brush.

  Hold on, baby. We’re on our way.

  Each frantic beat of my heart is another reminder that soon, it’ll beat no more.

  “You look like her,” my father claims, holding a tumbler of amber liquid in one hand, and rubbing the top of my hand with his thumb from the other.

  As I bravely walked up to the warehouse, armed only with the determination to end this, I was met by two men. I didn’t recognize either of them. They were dressed in black, both pointing guns to my head. Introductions weren’t exchanged. They knew who I was, so I was accepted on sight.

  Before we descended farther into the mazes of dark hallways, I was ordered to undress to the barest of clothes. I took little comfort in recognizing the size, shape, and layout of the building as being similar to the one I’d lived in as a child.

  Drafty. Hollow. Lewd.

  I was led down a small corridor with a guard flanking every angle. The men were twitchy, anxious for me to take my turn to run. They had no way of knowing my intention wasn’t to fight. The notion that this could be a desperate woman’s ultimate act of surrender never crossed their calloused minds.

  “She tried to get away,” my father continues, not looking at me, but beyond my shoulder. “She fought,” he adds on a single stilted grunt. “I proved to the most beautiful woman in the world that I was the ugliest man born to it.”

  Having no clue where this is leading, I sit mutely in the same place he insisted I be in before our conversation began. On my knees, my shoulders and head positioned between his thighs, my palms laying out on top of both.

  Silent. Still. Obedient. A sex slave in the making.

  “You look like her,” he says again, this time with remembrance. Running his calloused finger over the apple of my cheek, he softly admits, “You always were my pretty little girl.”

  I say nothing. Rather than buy more of his wrath, I accept his chastising torment, just as I had my entire childhood.

  Admittedly, I recognize how much the years have changed him.

  No longer heavy in frame and authoritative in nature, my father is overly thin and frail. His gray teeth, pale skin, and thinning hair, all indicative of his choices. Drugs, booze, women, and loneliness has cast away the man he used to be, and in their place has left him this.

  Tilting his head to the side, he brings his eyes to mine. In the reflection of his, I hadn’t expected to find regret. But it’s there, in its most crooked form.

  “Why did you come to me?” he asks plainly.

  The answer is simple. “You won’t stop until you’ve made Saint’s pay. Until you do, you’ll never leave them at peace.”

  “Peace,” he barks, laughing. He leans forward, positioning his mouth inches from mine. A warm mist of his rancid breath fans my lips as he says, “You were mine, Terese. You belonged to me.” Reaching out to pull my hair, he brings my face as close to his as possible. Our noses connect as his venom voices, “Your mother’s screams of terror pierced my fuckin’ ears, yet I pla
nted my seed in her tight, untouched cunt.”

  Hearing his insinuation that not only was I born into a life of crime, but I was the product of rape, I bite my tongue to keep from reacting.

  “She begged me not to tie her down,” he presses forward. “She asked me to kill her. Begged for it end.”

  I bite harder to fight back the tears.

  “I couldn’t let her go,” he confesses, reminiscent. “She was soft. She smelled so sweet. Her pain was worth the hell I lived for you.”

  Closing my eyes, a drop of sadness slips down my cheek.

  “You were born the day before her birthday,” he remembers. “She would’ve been sixteen.”

  Oh my God.

  My mother was fifteen when she gave me life, and he stole the rest of hers soon after.

  As if I couldn’t hate him more.

  “Gypsy will come for you,” he claims at my closed lids. “I’m counting on it.”

  Gypsy will come, but not for a while, and not alone. As soon as he figures out I’m gone, it’ll take a while to piece the rest of the puzzle together. By then, I’ll be dead, my father having what he wants.

  And finally, all of this will be over.

  Seveena can crawl back to whatever hole she came from. My father can muscle his way into another life. Saint’s will recover from another loss.

  “You think I’ll be done after Gypsy?” he tsks, reading my thoughts. “Too easy. They’ll all pay for stealing what was mine,” he threatens. “Elevent. Leglas. Vante.”

  At this, my back straightens and I brave a better look at him.

  His knowledge of my family shouldn’t come as a surprise, as I have no doubt that Seveena filled him in. My father could never have collected personal details of my life. Not this much of it, anyway.

  “The women, too,” he sneers, forcing my head back. “Elevent’s girl is a pretty one. I hear she prays.”

  Mia. My stomach sickens, and my hands, still resting over his thighs, start to tremble.