by Hazel Parker
But part of that was, believe it or not, I thought that I was a good guy. I had emotional problems where I could swing from one side of the pendulum set to the other—one minute, I could be getting emotional watching SPCA commercials, and the next, I could be yelling about how I wanted to burn the Devil’s Mercs to the ground and then smoke their ashes—but those problems didn’t really manifest themselves in public issues. We had our club business with the DMs, but that was club business.
And because the Green Hills police, and specifically Sheriff Wiggins, knew full well why we had our business with the DMs, they did not really interfere. I think before this moment, I had gone to jail maybe twice in my life, once for public intoxication and once for a bar fight—and, I should mention, both of those took place when I was eighteen. I’d grown up a little bit in the decade-plus since then.
But tell that to the county police, the ones who had me in jail, and all you would get is laughs and disgusted looks.
“Biker boy.” “Criminal thug.” “Gangster.”
God, fuck that last one! They wanted to associate the Savage Saints with a gang, to call us gangsters, but that was about the worst fucking insult in the world. We were not gangsters. Gangsters took what they wanted, did whatever they wanted, and operated only on a code of self-interest and self-preservation. The Savage Saints had our fun, sure, but we operated on the basis of protecting Green Hills outside the boundaries of the law. When Sheriff Wiggins couldn’t get involved or didn’t have the evidence to get involved.
And now here I was, sitting in a goddamn cell, the place looking like the insides of a rusted pan, waiting for the book to be thrown at me for a crime that…
Well, let’s just say if Sheriff Wiggins were here, he would understand the very valuable distinction between club business and public business. And this fell square under public business.
The fucking county attorneys did not know that, though. And while Trace, my good friend and the club president, had promised he would get me out sooner rather than later, given that “later” was life in prison, sooner wasn’t exactly expected to be just a couple of days. We were looking more at weeks, maybe even months.
Oh, well. At least I had a chance to get some weightlifting in. I already was a fucking savage-looking man, and the chance to make my biceps grow even bigger would help.
Too bad it came at the expense of making the club look bad. Of making Trace look bad. Of betraying the club image by landing behind bars.
Goddamnit, Splitter, you fucking moron. Why, why, why…
I corralled myself and reminded myself the emotional volatility was a net negative, not a positive, just as I heard footsteps approaching the door. While some of the members had said they would never hesitate to talk shit to a cop or to a prison guard, I felt it in my best interest to keep my goddamn mouth shut. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I knew all it would take was one taunt back for me to berate them so harshly I’d wind up in a worse spot.
Seconds later, a key latched into my cell. I stood facing them, my hands by my side, my lips shut.
“You’re Splitter?” an older man with a goatee whom I did not recognize said. “You’re supposed to be the big, bad ‘Vice President’ of a criminal organization?”
I had to bite my teeth down extra hard to avoid saying anything that would remotely be construed as threatening.
“I am Splitter,” I said, adding nothing more.
“And your role as Vice President?”
I said nothing to that. The guard just laughed.
“Well, luckily for you, I’m not your judge, nor am I the DA,” he said with a chuckle. “But someone who is does want to see you. Congratulations, Shaun Reddings.”
No one uses my real name anymore. That’s a name I left behind when I joined the club. Why the fuck… Why the fuck!
“It’s time to learn what you’ve been charged with.”
I bit my lip so hard that I felt sure I would puncture my skin any second now. I put my hands out in front of me in a very rigid fashion, trying to quell my anger. The guard put the shackles on me and told me to march forward. I very nearly told him he should go first so I could fuck him in the ass as he was doing so with me, but thankfully, I only let my emotions get the best of me in situations I knew I could win.
Well, usually.
I went down the winding hall of prison cells in the drab blue area, hearing the taunts from other, real criminals who laughed at the sight of a Savage Saint in their midst. Unfortunately, we weren’t the most welcome crowd, probably because of everyone in the damn building, we were the most wholesome ones of all.
Fuckers were just jealous. Fucking jealous!
Two guards awaited me at the end of the corridor. They opened a door for me, and goatee man ordered me to walk left. He then opened a door for me that had a desk with four chairs at it and an obvious one-way mirror. He ordered me to sit “like the good dog that I am.”
I couldn’t help but glare at him at that moment, even if such an act carried a serious risk of punishment. This wasn’t the America where gazes could get you nothing more than a stern warning. In this fucking prison, the guard was right—he wasn’t the judge. He was God.
Perhaps fortunately for me, the guard just laughed as he slammed the door.
“Your kind is finally getting what you deserve!” he cackled as the slamming echoed a couple of times before dying down.
“Motherfucker,” I groused.
But then I nearly hit myself in stupidity, aware that anything that I said in that room was being recorded and would be used against me. It was time for the good boy Splitter, the one who volunteered at animal shelters and was a “yes, sir, no, sir; yes, ma’am, no, ma’am” man when at such events. It was like I had gone to church, albeit one where I sure as hell wasn’t about to confess my sins.
Hah, gone to church, sure as hell. So fucking good. So fucking good!
However, the priest of said church did not seem interested in making a timely entrance, as for what felt like a good dozen minutes, no one entered the room, leaving me by myself to twiddle my fingers and gaze around the room, analyzing every speck of dust, every ceiling tile, and every part of the mirror in which the “one-way” aspect of it had failed. I’d played this game before, although the past couple of times, it was the DA or prosecuting attorney coming to tell me I was free to go.
Given that a good deal of Los Angeles probably saw or heard about that warehouse blowing up, I didn’t think I was going to escape with such ease this time around.
It gave me the chance to think about how I would make it up to Trace, but funny enough, there did not seem to be much in the way of things the club needed right now. Killing Diablo had decimated the Devil’s Mercenaries, and we’d also managed to procure a significant portion of their drugs and guns. Business was really good, at least in the short-term. I’m sure we had some long-term questions we needed to answer, especially as the value of small-town Green Hills faded, but…
Fuck, that was a tough one. Especially with how much I loved Green Hills. Some things really—
The door swung open.
I did not flinch, though the suddenness of the DA’s and assistant attorney’s arrival had admittedly shocked me. There was no indication, no outside footsteps, nothing of the kind to warn me that they were about to enter. I supposed it was my fault for falling too deep into the self-pity hole and not paying attention to what was about to happen.
The DA, an Asian man with short hair and a grumpy expression, sat down. His assistant, a white man with brown hair, seemed no more interested in being here either.
“Shaun ‘Splitter’ Reddings,” the man said, not even pretending to want to be here—then again, who the fuck would want to be here. “Do you know what you are here for?”
“No, sir.”
I decided then that my answers would be limited to about three things. “No, sir.” “Yes, sir.” “I want my lawyer.”
Of course, I did not have a
lawyer; the club had said they would procure one for me, but lawyers weren’t exactly like ordering fast food. They would cost the club a shitload of money that we either did not have or would barely have, essentially rendering our raid of the DM’s drugs and guns a net zero. And it’s your fault, Splitter. Your own goddamn fault.
“Well, ignorance might be bliss in your spot, because you have just about everything in the book on your head right now,” the DA said, smirking as he finally looked me in the eyes. “Let’s see. For starters, we have… property damage… arson… public disturbance… oh, and these are just the minor ones, by the way: the ones in which we have such a slam dunk case that not even a drunk DA could mess up.”
That seemed like an odd comment to make, but I just silently stared at them, trying not to make my gaze seem like I was trying to fuck with their heads.
Which would have been great for the sake of fighting them, but not so great when I was trying not to be a goddamn lifer.
“Oh, and here’s the good one, yeah, the real good one. First-degree murder. Ohhhh.”
I figured that they would have thrown everything at me, most especially since the DA probably would have loved to make an example of a Savage Saint, especially one who looked like me—tattoos, slicked-back hair, and everything else that suggested “dangerous.” What DA wouldn’t have loved the opportunity to parade a man like me in front of everyone, make an example of me, and then use it to get re-elected to his position?
“What are you going to do, Shaun?” he said.
He had to have known that calling me by my real name was bound to piss me off. I just looked down, hating that I was being less of a man by not making eye contact… but then again, that fucking guy was being the opposite of being a man, being all passive-aggressive as he was. He didn’t deserve the courtesy of a look in the eye.
“Hmm? For all the things you’ve done here, don’t you think you might want to have a plan of some kind?”
I almost cracked, having to give a sigh of some kind, but I kept my temper in check.
I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out, though. I mean, seriously, fuck this guy—what sort of a pansy prick like him got to be in a position like this?
“It seems to me that you have an awful lot on your plate, Shaun,” he said. “An awful lot of things that you did.”
“I didn’t do them!”
Fuck. Shouldn’t have slipped. You goddamn fool.
I scowled, not letting my facial expression reflect the fact that I severely regretted the fact that I had “cracked,” even though this crack was nothing more than a standard denial. It was more the fact that I had swore I wasn’t going to say anything but had.
Fucking DA. Fucking DA’s assistant. Fucking everything in this fucking building!
“Is that so?” the DA said, yawning. “You see, for all your claims, the amount of evidence that we have is just so overwhelming against you that you are in no real position to thrive. Your best bet is to admit to it, take a plea deal, and maybe in a couple of decades, when you and your little gang—”
I felt my fists clench at that and my toes curl.
“—are outdated and gone with the wind, as the old movie title goes. Or, you can fight the charges, pretend that you’re innocent, and then you can either get executed or spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement.”
Somehow, I found the inner strength to remain calm and not talk back, which was just as well, because this asshole was really getting to me. All his talk about the Savage Saints being outdated? Fiction. Fake news. Whatever fucking term you wanted to use.
The Saints had been around since almost around the time I was born. Though the days of social media had made our presence less mythical and more in your face, we still played a major role in Green Hills, and that was not about to change. What, was Green Hills suddenly going to sprout into the second Los Angeles?
Admittedly, the prospect of the Savage Saints disappearing was so emotionally terrifying for me that I never contemplated it sober; and when I thought of it drunk, it usually resulted in me having to leave the room out of fear of looking like a pussy before all the men. When I did think of it…
But sober, here? Nah. I was good. I was fine.
And as for the rest of the charges, well, I had already anticipated the fact that they would put a murder charge on me to try and get me executed or life in prison. I was well aware that they’d do that; what I would be more interested in seeing was how all the shit played out over the coming weeks.
“I can see that I bore you, Shaun,” the DA said. “Which I suppose is only fair since you bore me too. This case is so cut and dry that I’m not even sure why I’m giving you the courtesy of this meeting.”
Then he looked to his assistant, who gave him a nod, and the DA laughed. The whole thing could not have looked more pathetically staged, and I even smiled at how bad it looked.
“You liked that, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, keeping to my three phrases.
“Well, then you are going to love the offer that my dear friend here reminded me of,” he said. “You see, Shaun—or should I say, Splitter, VP of Savage Saints—you are a big gun there, it’s true. But you’re not the biggest gun.”
What the actual fuck are you getting at?
What the fuck!
“Your friend, Tracy Cole? Yeah, see, we can say between the three of us that we all know he’s engaged in some illegal matters. Drug smuggling, murder, you name it. Unfortunately, we also know that he has friends in, let’s say, high places that make our job difficult. You were sloppy and will surely be convicted of all of this.”
I had to fight not to roll my eyes, although really, I had no idea how heavily the evidence was stacked against me.
“So we know that we can at least take down the VP. However, that’s like cutting off the end of a snake. It’ll just grow it back, and it’ll keep going. Or, perhaps the metaphor is better said it’s like cutting off its fangs? You are more important than the end, after all.”
Noticeably, the assistant DA rolled his eyes, although his superior didn’t seem to notice. I had to put my hands over my mouth to hide my smile at that.
“In any case, we’re interested in ending this domestic terrorist threat of the Savage Saints gang once and for all, and the only way we feel confident in doing that with one fell swoop is by getting Mr. Cole behind bars.”
There was so much that fucking infuriated me that my face turned red. “Domestic terrorist threat?” “Gang?” “Mr. Cole behind bars?”
The only real question was which of those three pissed me off the most, but one thing was for certain: I was not selling out Trace. To do so would have violated the very core of who the Saints were—a brotherhood that stood up for each other, never ratting out anyone—and in any case, Trace was a friend of mine. I was not about to send him behind bars so that I could get out when I was fifty instead of when I was going to my grave. That was fucking laughable.
Well, it would have been, if it was not so goddamn infuriating.
“So, we are happy to cut a deal with you, Shaun,” the DA said. “All you have to do is agree to testify against Mr. Cole. I daresay that such a deal would allow you to walk free.”
I couldn’t fucking take it. I slammed my fists on the table, drawing a jolt from both the DA and his assistant.
“If you… if you think…” I began, having to exert every ounce of energy not to swear, “that I will ever sell out Trace… I swear—”
But before I could finish, the door swung open. All three of us turned to see what might have been the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.
She was about my height, maybe a couple of inches shorter. She had long blonde hair, piercing green eyes, and perfect curves that told me she’d look great naked.
“Amber Reynolds, legal representation for Shaun Reddings,” she said.
She’s my legal representation?
Holy fuck. I have the hot lawyer! Damn, at least
some part of this situation is going well.
“And I am not going to let you speak to my client until I have a chance to sit down with him.”
“I’m sorry, Amber, I am fully aware of who you are,” the DA said. “And you’re representing him? Can he even afford you?”
“The payments between my clients and I remain between my clients and I, Edwin,” she scolded him. “I suggest that you remain professional and focused on what matters, not on the relationship with my clients.”
Heh, relationship. I’d like to have some kind with you.
Damn. Like… there’s beautiful, there’s hot, and then there’s the kind of beauty that makes you feel like an awkward middle school kid all over again. She is most certainly that. Good Lord.
“Now then, if you’ll excuse us, I need a chance to speak to my client in private.”
“Jesus,” the DA said.
“Would you mind?” Amber said.
I was unsure of what she recoiled at, but Edwin quickly apologized. I gave her an askance look, but she seemed only interested in getting me out of the room at that moment. Not that I was going to argue—the sooner I got away from the situation that left me on the verge of cracking emotionally, the better.
“You can use the break room, three doors to the left,” Edwin said. “Fifteen minutes.”
Amber nodded, motioned for me to follow her, and then led me down. I kept silent until she had latched the door behind her, and as soon as she did, I leaned back into the couch, letting out a long sigh.
“Thank fucking heavens,” I said.
I noticed that she winced when I spoke.
“Are you OK?”
“Something you should know about me, Mr. Reddings,” she said. Her voice was soft but firm—she was not scolding me, but there was little doubt that I would listen to her. “I am a devout Catholic. I cannot tell you what to do, but I would appreciate it if you did not take the Lord’s name or anything associated with him in vain.”
Oh, the religious type.
Trace… I sure hope you didn’t just get me a missionary that I won’t ever be able to do missionary on. Because if you did, I’ll have to kill you myself!
