by Eden Rose
“What are you talking about?” I blurt out.
Q Ball and Big Don both grab an arm and yank me on feet. I feel their fingers bite into the flesh of my arms and it stings. Their rough and calloused fingertips are abrading my skin and my eyes begin to water from it.
“We had a deal. Our deal was,” Big Sir starts talking, “you keep your mouth shut and pay your debt. You fucked it up by working for The Bear.”
The thought of trying to talk is not happening and all I want to do is yank my arms out of their hands. Their nails are now embedded into my skin and I already know that I’m going to have half moon scars after this.
Q Ball then drops my arm and I fall into Big Don who holds me up by extending my arm to ball up against my shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to get in the middle of this,” Q Ball says and then stands in front of me. I look at his young face and I see lust. He rubs his hand down the arm that he was gripping and laces our fingers. “You were supposed to pay Big Sir and not be collateral damage.”
I gasp out loud and then squeeze my eyes shut. “What do you need me to do?” I whisper.
“What we need you to do is drain the accounts for the club and transfer it to Big Sir’s offshore account. If you can do that, we will call it even and you won’t owe,” Big Don says to me in my ear. His breath is hot and a little too thick with the smell of stale coffee.
I nod my head and then look over at my parents. Their faces are alert with worry and I can only assume what they are thinking right now. “The only way I will do it is if you let my parents go. They have nothing to do with the debt that I owe you,” I point to Big Sir.
He rubs his big chin with his massive hand and then points to Big Don. “Hold her tighter,” he barks loudly. Big Don’s grip gets tighter and he holds me closer to him. Big Sir then points at Q Ball. “Let them out of their chairs but not out of the room. I need them here to make sure this little bitch does what she’s told to do.”
“I promise that I will do what you want. Please, just let my parents go!” I beg. My poor parents had nothing to do with any of this and it kills me that they have to be here and watch all of this. Even though I haven’t spoke to them in a few years, it doesn’t mean that I want them to know everything that I have done.
A massive hand flies out and hits me across the mouth causing me to fall into Big Don’s side. The impact of me falling into him caused him to fall towards the ground but he dragged me with him. Instead of him hitting the floor first, I hit it.
My head bounces off the freshly waxed wood floors that my parents are known for and then my eyes get heavy. A whoosh sound clogs my ears and I can’t help but shut down completely to avoid any more pain. I give into the urges of my body and let the darkness come in.
The Bear
Dana’s body is wracked with her sobbing as she hunches over my body. “I’m pregnant, Joe. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
We are both seventeen years old and don’t have a clue what to do with this. Do I marry her? Do people still do that? I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to her or even what to say. All I know is I’m scared.
“You have to stop doing cocaine,” I blurt out. I didn’t mean to be so blunt, but she needs to stop doing smack or it’s going to harm the baby. I might not know too much about babies but I know that you’re not supposed to be fuckin’ high every minute of the day while pregnant.
“I can’t. I’m trying…” She cries into my arms.
I fight the urge to push her off of me and then to yell at her for being weak. “You’re going to kill yourself and our baby if you don’t stop getting high.”
Dana’s brown hair glistens in the moonlight and it reflects all of the gold pieces that I loved the most. I knew why she got high all of the time and that was to make her forget about everything that her father makes her do. Her father would be the first one that I kill when I get patched in at Lucifer’s Lair. I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to spread his ashes all over the beds of the men that he lets sleep with his underaged daughter.
She’s crying harder and I can’t even bring myself to feel sorry for her. I don’t feel sorry for junkies but I know that Dana is still in there. The actual person that Dana used to be is still alive but she’s hiding behind this junky.
“I can’t… Joe… I’m scared. I’m so scared to tell my dad that I’m pregnant or he’s going to kill me! He’s going to fucking kill me, Joe!”
I bite back the remark of her dad not killing her because she’s worth more alive even if she’s pregnant. Dana is five months pregnant but due to the amount of drugs that she’s done, you can’t tell. Hell, we didn’t even find out until last week. She was so badly off that her body hid her pregnancy and that’s what kills me the most. Our baby is suffering because his mom is too busy doing fucking drugs.
I rub my hand up and down her back as I rock her back and forth trying to soothe her. “We’re going to be okay.”
I jump on my bike and then start it up. As if they knew, Rabies, Mack Truck and Slice come out of the house and then jump on their bikes.
Mack Truck has his phone in his hand and he’s typing something quickly on it. “They are not at his house. Somewhere in the valley it looks like. Who do we know that lives there?” He asks me.
“I don’t know, man,” I reply. “How do we get there?”
Again he starts typing something and then puts his phone away. “It’s about fifteen minutes away and it’s off of the highway. The tracker that we put in all of the cages says they are off of Lafayette St and Main.”
“Who’s watching Smokey?” I demand before snuffing out my cigarette.
Rabies answers me and then points towards the warehouse. “Don’t worry about it. We got it covered. Let’s go.”
The drive is quick but it’s long enough for me to remember things that I have suppressed all of these years.
“Are you Joe Montague?” A police officer asks me while I hop over a fence in order to skip school.
It’s my senior year and being in school is the last thing that I want. All I want is to prospect for the club and then get my patch. After that, I can focus on fucking killing Dana’s dad.
“Who’s askin’?” I reply and cross my arms over my chest. I hit a growth spurt about two years ago and ever since then, I have worked out trying to get bigger. My dad is a big dude and everyone in the club is packed with muscles. I want to be an enforcer there so I need to get bigger.
The officer, Officer Beckett, is an older man but he seems rather nice. The problem with being raised by a father like mine is the fact that I don’t trust cops. I don’t trust them one bit and I don’t like this guy that is staring at me as if he feels bad for me.
“Son, I’m going to need you to come with me. I need you to go to the hospital with me.”
My head begins to spin and I’m having a hard time trying to catch up with everything that he is saying. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
He places his hand on my arm and I jerk my hand away from him. “No! You don’t get to touch me until you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about!” I yell at him.
“Do you know Dana Marshall?”
Dana Marshall. My girlfriend. The future mother of my child. A junky who probably has pissed off someone badly enough to get the cops called. “Yeah…” I hedge.
He takes a deep breath and then takes a step back. “Son, I’m sorry to say this but she’s in the hospital.”
“What? Why?” I question and furrow my brows. If something were wrong with Dana she would have told me. I know she would have. Yeah, she didn’t show up at school today but that’s normal. We don’t always go to school. It’s not something that rang any alarm bells for me.
“She took a bad hit and it caused her to go into early labor. Dana is at the hospital right now and she’s asking for you. Because her father can’t be reached right now, we need you to make decisions.”
Make decisions. Make the decision as to whether or no
t she should live or if she should die. Make the decision if I want them to save her or my son.
By the time we get to the house where Q Ball is at, I see his cage in the driveway. I don’t bother signalling where I’m turning and I pull into the driveway. All of the other guys pull in behind me and we examine the house. It’s a Tudor style house and it looks to be a nice one. Why the hell would he be here? I don’t understand how he could even know someone that lived in this house.
“Did you find out who lives here?” I ask Mack Truck.
He shakes his head and shuts off his bike. “Nah, man. Some yuppie or some shit.”
Slice parks his bike and then shuts it off. “What are we going to do?” He asks and looks around the house.
I think about what to do for about fifteen seconds and that was when I heard a scream and a gun shot. The piercing sound of a Glock sparks me into action and I know exactly who has that gun.
Fuck waiting! My girl is in that house and there is no telling what the fuck just happened.
I run towards the front door that is wide open with my gun drawn and I’m ready for whatever is about to happen. Rolling through the door, I see Big Sir and Q Ball standing in the middle of the room with guns in one of their hands. Before I let them know that I’m here, I look around the room to make sure that I didn’t just walk into a trap.
With a quick look behind me, I see my brothers approaching me as well. I flick a finger in the air to let them to wait where they are because I need to investigate the situation a little better. There has to be something else going on.
Why would Q Ball, a brother for the past ten years, risk everything to work with Big Sir? How the fuck do they even know each other well enough to be in the same room? What the hell is happening?
Deciding that I have had enough of the guessing games, I ask a simple question. “Where is she?” I ask calmly. I’m surprised that I’m able to be polite and not to start shooting the both of them.
Instead of just two the heads that I expected to be looking at me, I see four. There is a man and a woman that are tied to two different chairs and they both look scared. I could only imagine how they got involved in this situation. Fuck. They are probably just homeowners and came home to see two thugs in their house and didn’t know what else to do.
“Who?” Big Sir asks with a sly smile on his face. “Oh, you mean the person that owes me a shit ton of money? Are you here to botch that fucking deal too? You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
I pull the safety off and then adjust my gun right at his head. “I didn’t botch anything, mother fucker. You sold fucking drugs to a pregnant woman! You sold the drugs to her and then probably helped her inject them, didn’t you?” I fume.
Digging up what happened in the past was the last thing that I wanted to do but this man really fucking irks me. Everything about him makes me want to kill him. I fucking hate him. He ruins lives and he doesn’t even show remorse like a normal person. I’ve killed people, I’m not Jesus or anything over here but I at least have a reason.
Something that people don’t understand that when you take a life, that person haunts you for the rest of your life. Their death follows you wherever you go and there is no escaping it. I see the faces of every person that I have killed every time I pick up my gun. It never fades.
See, I told you. I’m not Jesus but I didn’t let those deaths happen in vain.
Q Ball drops his gun and then runs over to me. “Oh my fucking god, Bear! He came to the clubhouse and forced me to take Pinky with us. I had no idea what he was going to do,” he begs me.
The mother fucker should have been an actor. Too bad all of that skill and talent is about to go down the drain.
“Is that right?” I question and tilt my head to the left. As I do so, I see a pair of legs that I have gotten to know quite well. I push Q Ball aside and run towards Chantal. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
Chantal is lying on the floor with her head at an awkward angle that looks painful. It almost looks as if she fell or something. That would have been something that could have happened but Big Sir is looking all too pleased with himself.
“Oh, Pinky?” Big Sir asks with his eyebrow raised. “She fell.”
I place my hands under her neck in order to try and move her but she doesn’t move easily. She’s very stiff and it’s scaring me than anything that is happening right now. I use a little more force in order to get her head to move so I could look at her. Chantal head moves with me as I do this and that is when I see a few red spots on the floor.
“Chantal? Baby? Can you hear me?” I ask her.
When she doesn’t move, I search the room in order to find anything to put under her head so she has something to rest on. This floor is not very comfortable and I don’t want her fucking hurting herself any worse than now.
“Slice! Mack Truck!” I yell out the door.
I make a quick turn to the right and see blankets on the ground and I quickly grab one. Rolling it up into a little pillow, I lift my girl’s head a little more so I can rest her head on the pillow. Once that’s done, I take my hands away and lay a quick kiss on her forehead.
She’s still breathing and that is the number one thing that I needed to make sure of before I focus on everyone else. Well, that was until I looked down at my hands and found them covered in blood.
“There is no way in fucking hell that she fell!” I get to my feet and walk over to Big Sir. “You wanted me here, mother fucker. What the fuck do you want?” I demand.
I know exactly what he wants. He wants my pipeline but I’m not giving that bitch up. Giving up my pipeline would lose my club millions of dollars a year and we can’t do that. Or he wants something else.
“I know you don’t need money. What do you want?” I blurt out.
Slice and Mack Truck are standing at the door with their chests rising and falling pointing their guns at Big Sir and Q Ball. The look of betrayal that is on both of their faces sums up how I feel regarding everything. Q Ball was a brother who got greedy and now he’s going to have pay.
“What do you want us to do?” Mack Truck asks and circles around towards me. “Fuck it, I’m on it.” He grabs his phone out of his cut pocket and starts dialing a number. “Yeah, man. I need you to track my number and come get Prez’s ol’ lady. She’s hurt real bad and I need a clean up crew.”
Thanking him for the initiative that he just did, filters through my mind but I’m focused on making sure that Chantal gets out of here alive. I point my finger to Slice and he runs up behind Big Sir. Once his arms around the man, I point my gun and shoot him in his knee cap.
“Tie him up on the couch. Don’t let him bleed out too much,” I command with disdain. “Who are they?” I ask Q Ball who is on his knees and begging for me to not kill him. “Who are they?”
“Her parents. Look, I didn’t know what was going on. I swear it!”
“I don’t really give a fuck what you thought or didn’t think. Get off of your fucking ass and let her parents out of the chairs!”
When Q Ball doesn’t move, I pull out my gun and point it at his chest. I’m not going to shoot him yet. I want to know why he did this. What Smokey and Big Sir are getting out of this. Everything.
Just then, the sounds of a van come pulling up and I see our clean up crew walking in. It’s a group of five guys that we keep on the roster for times like this. Plus, A Team is our doctor.
“Make sure you get my girl out of here and back to the clubhouse. Whatever she needs, make sure she gets it. Call me as soon as you know what’s going on with her,” I direct A Team.
He nods his head and walks over to where Mack Truck is sitting with Chantal’s head in his lap. When did that happen? I didn’t even see them move.
A Team gingerly picks up Chantal and she falls against him like a bean bag. A sharp pain hits my chest while the thoughts of everything flood through my mind. She could have been killed or raped… There are so many things that could have happened to her
and they are probably all because of me.
Fuck! I have to focus!
When Q Ball still doesn’t move, I point my head towards Mack Truck to get them out of the chairs. The last thing that I need is more collateral damage. “Get them out of those chairs and get them in the cage out front. We need to make sure they won’t talk.” I then direct my attention back to Q Ball and Big Sir who are now sitting on the couch. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Fuck you, I’m not telling you shit!” Big Sir spits out at me and I don’t even think.
I aim my Glock and fire a shot right between his eyes. His head explodes and I take a deep breath. It’s amazing how much lighter I feel after that.
