“Been meaning to touch base with you for a while.”
“Yeah?”
Merc didn’t answer my question though. Instead, he eyed me curiously, as if trying to figure something out on his own. When he didn’t see what he was hoping for, he breathed out a lengthy, fatigue-laden breath. “What’s your angle here, son?”
“Angle?” He tipped his chin up at me this time, as if to say, ‘Yeah, your angle, stop playing games and answer’. Fuck that. He’d have to spell it out before I answered him. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Merc grinned at me. “Okay then. How about you tell me why you really wanted to join the club. Never would have guessed anyone from Permanent Marks would want our doorstep to darken your paths.”
I glanced at him, then down at my lap, trying to determine what I should say here. The wrong thing would get me kicked out on my ass, and probably ensure no one else from the studio could take my place either. The right thing, and maybe I’d have someone backing my plays. I wasn’t sure Merc was among the people I could trust here, but at the same time, I knew he wouldn’t have had anything to do with Toby’s death. I decided to lay it all out on the line for him.
“I have friends here,” I explained. “I figured I’d give this shit a try and see if I fit. See if you all fit me. Me prospecting is just as much me testing your club just as you all are testing me.”
“That’s how it should be for man intending to become a brother,” Merc agreed. “That’s not all though, is it?”
“You’ve been watching me?” I didn’t need to ask, but he knew what I meant.
“You’re a prospect. Of course I’ve been watching you.”
“Nah, I mean you’re watching more than you would with a normal prospect.” Merc just grinned. “I’m going to lay this out there for you, and if you decide I’m no longer prospecting after this, I’ll hold you personally accountable for seeing to what I’m about to tell you.”
Merc nodded his head in agreement and sat back as he steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Go on.” I grabbed a tiny little notebook out of my pocket and tossed it on the desk in front of him. “What’s this?”
“That is why I’m here.” I watched as he opened the first page. I knew what was written there. The names of the six men who received tattoos from Ever. He glanced up at me with his brow quirked up in question, but he didn’t ask anything specific yet. There was a question mark next to PeeWee’s name along with a note about not being able to track his ass down. Crow’s name was circled. T-Bone’s was crossed out and his date of death was next to it. Merc’s name had an ‘x’ next to it, as did J-Bird and Double-D’s.
“Why are you trying to find PeeWee?”
“Someone was helping that cunt, Seneca. I never got a clear look at them, but a man on a crotch rocket rolled up to her once when I was tailing her. He had his kutte turned inside out and a full face shield on. I guessed older dude, or at the very least an out of shape younger guy. He had a good bit of weight on him. Not fat, but solid and on his way to softening up from the looks of things.”
“You think this person was a member of our club?”
“I think that I don’t believe in coincidences, and that bitch always knew where he was going.” I indicated the notebook. “See for yourself. Once Gretchen told us about the bitch, I followed her around for a while. We were waiting on a detective friend of Zeke’s to get us information on her, and until that came through, I wanted to keep watch and make sure she didn’t fuck with G.”
“Seems an awfully big time investment on your part for someone who just works in your shop,” Merc commented.
Kane cocked his head to the side. “Seems to me, a man who runs a brotherhood would understand that a tight-knit family can be formed in a lot of different ways. Our shop is not unlike this club in that we would do just about anything for one another.”
“You didn’t seem surprised?” Kane asked.
Merc shook his head. “That bitch wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room. It always sat wrong with me that she conveniently knew his every move.”
“But you’re not surprised it could have been someone on the inside helping her.” It was a statement, not a question.
“You ain’t a brother yet,” Merc told him. “Prove yourself and you’ll know what I know. Part of proving yourself is keeping me in the loop. If there’s a threat in my house that I’m not able to see, I want it pointed out. There’s something about the look in your eyes when you first started hanging around. Something about the way you were so watchful. I gave you that kutte so you could prove me right about a few things, don’t let me down now.”
In a move that surprised everyone, Merc had been the one to sponsor my prospect period. Actually, it went one step beyond and bypassed the traditional vote for taking on a new man. I still remember the day he handed my kutte to me.
Merc stood and moved to the tall cabinet in the corner of the room. He pulled out a leather kutte with the Prospect patch across the back side of it, and handed it to Kane. “I’m not calling Church, or a vote. I’m just putting you in, because I’ll be honest, I don’t know if a vote would go in your favor. You look down on a lot of these men when you’re hanging around. It’s obvious to some, not to others. You need to get a better poker face if you’re going to pull this off. I want you to strut your ass out there like one of our strippers, proud to show off what you have. You feel me? Peacock the hell out of that leather, and then you take the orders thrown your way, because that’s what it means to be a prospect. You prove yourself to even the lowest brother before you get patched in.”
That was exactly what I had done, and I’d been watching and taking notes through every bit of hell they put me through. I knew the shit they had me shoveling had nothing to do with whether or not they were loyal to the club or if they were behind having Toby taken out, but it gave me a glimpse at the guys that were especially cruel, and I had a long fucking memory.
“We do have one little fucking problem though,” Merc brought me back from memories of months ago.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Some of the brothers have noticed that you don’t seem to be proud to wear that prospect patch out and about, especially when you’re headed to work, at work, or leaving work if you get my drift.”
It took everything in me to hold my tongue. What wanted to come out was a bunch of shit about how it was none of their fucking business, but that wasn’t exactly true. “Permanent Marks is unaffiliated with clubs. I respect that, and don’t wear my kutte there.”
Merc nodded his head sagely. “I suggest you start doing so before you find yourself out on your ass. I need you on the inside. Lot of shit gets said in front of prospects. Some of it as a test, other shit because these assholes get drunk and forget who you are. I brought you in without a vote. You better believe they’ll demand you’re gone if they think you’ve been disloyal. Wear the fucking kutte everywhere from now on or I won’t be able to save your ass when the time comes.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face as if I could wipe away the shitstorm I knew it would cause when rocking up to the shop on my Harley while wearing a kutte. Gretchen was still fragile with us and I didn’t think she’d take it too well knowing that I was now a prospect for the club that got her man killed. Before I could turn to leave, Merc called out to me one more time.
“You can’t tell her that you’re here for any other reason than to prospect.”
“I fuckin’ know it.” The words tumbled from my lips while tasting sour on my tongue. She was going to be disappointed, and maybe even hate me when she saw.
Chapter 10
Betrayed
Gretchen
It had been two weeks since Anna started working for my sister. In those two weeks, my life slowly began to take on a new normal. Sure, working at Permanent Marks wasn’t new to me, but the way I felt about being there was. Nothing made that more clear to me than a regular customer coming in and making a comment that summed up the cha
nges in my life perfectly.
“What happened to you? You used to be sultry sunshine, now you look like tragic love lost.”
I’m sure he didn’t notice the blood draining from my face as he walked away, while checking out my ass in my black skinny jeans. I glanced down at myself and laughed. He was right. I looked exactly like some tragic, emo, anti-romance character. My hair was stick straight and white blond, hanging down my back and over my shoulders. It almost hid the studded leather choker I wore all the time now. It didn’t do anything to disguise the black thermal shirt I was wearing, despite the fact that it was too warm for that type of clothing. At least it was a fitted look and not a bulky – I might have stolen this from my boyfriend – looking shirt. Granted, I didn’t have a boyfriend to steal clothes from anymore, so that wouldn’t be an issue.
My mind was lost in the wardrobe changes I’d made to reflect how I felt on the inside when something outside the shop caught my eye. Actually, that wasn’t correct. I hear the pipes long before I could see anything. My heart ticked up several beats as it recognized the sound and ached for it to be the one I missed most. I knew it couldn’t be Toby, but my heart didn’t seem to agree with what my brain knew. I almost lost it when I saw the black leather kutte as a denim-clad leg swung over the bike that had been backed into the spot out front. It took a minute for the pounding in my chest to settle once I realized it was Kane dismounting the Harley. Kane.
“What the fuck?” I whisper-hissed to no one at all as he moved closer, opened the door, and sauntered his giant ass inside, looking like the bad ass biker he was apparently becoming. My initial shock quickly gave way to anger. “Why would you do this? They took everything from me!” The words were yelled out of my mouth before I could pull them back. I saw Ever move up front. I wasn’t sure if she was there to support me in this, or if she would be in Kane’s corner for this one. It didn’t matter though, because the sting of betrayal was riding my back. How could he? I felt the angry tears trailing down my cheeks and I let them roll unchecked.
“I’m doing this for you,” Kane whispered. “I need you to calm down.”
“I won’t calm down. They took him from me! They took my baby from me!”
“The whore who did those things is sitting in jail right now, sweetheart. The club didn’t do those things. That club was Toby’s heart. They were his family.”
“They left me to deal with it all alone! I was his heart! Our baby was his heart! None of them cared!”
I heard Ever’s intake of breath, and still I didn’t care. What I said was the truth. No one in their family had cared about me. I didn’t blame Anna. She was young, in shock, and had to do as her family demanded. The rest of them were adults, capable of making their own decisions at the time, and they all decided that my well-being and grief didn’t mean a damn thing to them. Kane had been there when they weren’t. I couldn’t understand why he would step in and want to be a part of their family, a part of the world that wrecked Ever once upon a time and took everything I cared about from me.
“Come on, G.” Kane reached out and grabbed hold of my hand. He tugged, gently at first, in order to get me to follow him. “We should talk about this privately,” he offered as he glanced between Ever and myself.
Once again, someone was sparing her feelings. I followed along though because the need to know why he was joining that club outweighed everything else. It just didn’t make sense. What the hell could he possibly be protecting me from? I knew that was just the shock of seeing Kane in the Aces High MC kutte, but I couldn’t help feeling the way I did. We ended up in the apartment upstairs that I had taken over after Ever had vacated it to go move in with the man who was now her husband.
Once we were through the door and it closed behind us, I rounded on Kane. “What the hell are you doing wearing that?”
“You don’t remember, do you?” He asked quietly.
I scrunched my eyebrows together, trying to think of what the hell he could be talking about. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“There was a time when you walked in on a conversation Zeke and I were having about one of us needing to join the club to make sure Ever was safe.”
“But, everything’s changed, and you already know she’s doing fine. Why would you do this now?”
“G, I did this a while back. I only just now started wearing my kutte around you, because it was brought to the Prez’s attention that I’d been taking it off at work.” He sighed and sat down.
“How long?”
“For a while.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“But,” I started to say, still lost, “Ever is fine.”
“You weren’t. You aren’t.”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m not a part of the club any longer.”
“G, I can’t explain everything right now, okay? What I’m going to tell you is that I don’t think one lone chick could follow you guys the way she did without help.”
There was no containing the stunned gasp that left my mouth. “You think someone in the club made her do that?”
Kane nodded his head. “Even if that turns out not to be the case, we still needed someone on the inside to look out for you guys. Ever’s even closer to the club now than before since she married Deck. You’re close to Anna again, and she’s married to the club too.”
“But I’m no one,” I whispered.
“You’re someone to me. To us,” he corrected quickly. “You girls need someone looking out for you. That’s all this is. I swear to you, I wouldn’t have any need to join this damn club if not for that.”
“I can’t ask you to do that though.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m still doing it, G. It needs to be done, even if I have to dismantle the club from the inside out to make sure you’re all okay. There’s a rot inside that club and it’s been tainting everything that comes in contact with it for a really long time.”
“Why does it have to be you? It’s dangerous, Kane.”
“I know what I’m doing, and I have backup on the inside too, honey. No need for you to worry about me. I promise.”
“You can’t make that promise to me. Toby made me the same promise, and look what happened to him.”
“Okay, how about if I tell you I’m being as careful as I can while making sure you’re all out of the crosshairs of anyone who may have possibly been working with Seneca.”
My heart stopped beating. Swear to God, it skipped whole beats. I didn’t like it at all. “I already lost Toby,” I whispered to Kane as he watched the emotions play out on my face. “If what you’re thinking is true, then you could be in danger. I don’t know if I could take it. What if we lost you too? And this time I would know that it was my fault.”
“How the hell could it possibly be your fault?”
“That woman didn’t start following Toby until I was in the picture. She used our secret trysts to her advantage in a way, because no one else ever saw her following us, following him, so they never took it seriously. Not until just before…” I couldn’t even get the words out. “If you’re really there to protect me, and the other girls, then it would be my fault. All of it.”
Kane reached out and pulled me into the warmth of his embrace. The heat from his body seeped into me, chasing away some of the cold dread that had settled deep in my bones. “Please, don’t take that on your shoulders sweetheart. It’s not like that. I’m helping to weed out the bad people from the bunch, and they’re already rotten to the core. No involvement from you could ever change that fact. It wouldn’t matter if you tucked tail and ran off to the other side of the world, there would still be a problem in that club that needed to be dealt with.”
“But you’re not even a full-fledged member yet. Why can’t one of the actual club brothers do something about it?”
“Because Merc doesn’t know who to trust and who not to trust. The older guys came up with him and he has blinders on wh
ere most of them are concerned. Then there’s the younger crowd that he doesn’t really know well enough, they haven’t been tested thoroughly enough yet to know how loyal they actually are.”
“Please, just be careful.” It was all I had left that I could say. I knew it, and so did he.
“I have an appointment scheduled in a few minutes. Will you be all right up here until I get finished?”
“Go, do your work. I’ll be back down in a minute. Sorry, I know I shouldn’t be throwing all my drama around at work, but you shocked me walking in with that thing on.”
“I know it, G. If I could have given you a warning, I would have.”
“Did you actually plan to tell me?” There was a slight pink tint that flooded his cheeks that gave me the answer.
“Honestly, I was hoping to put it off as long as I could because I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Well, I’m officially worried, but Kane,” I started and waited until I had his full attention again. The moment his brilliant blue eyes settled on my own I finished. “I would rather worry over you than have you living lies like I lived before. At least this way, I know to look out for you too.”
Chapter 11
Accountability
Kane
Gretchen pushed into me and gave me a hug before I left her in the apartment to pull herself together. It felt right to have her in my arms, even as I felt guilty as fuck for thinking it. Toby was dead, but for some reason it still felt like I was betraying him, betraying what they had together to feel things for her. That’s why it didn’t settle well with me as I walked down the stairs to hear Zeke placating Ever about what had gone down and the things Gretchen had mentioned before I took her upstairs.
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