by Krane, Kasey
I had to keep Leia safe.
I pulled into my driveway and let out a sharp whistle. Tats dropped to the ground from the tree in front while Tats came around the corner from his hideout in the garage.
“Clubhouse was bombed couple of hours ago,” I said. No reason to beat around the bush. “Damage wasn’t bad, but it might’ve just been a warning shot. Be extra careful. Don’t know who did it or why, but it sure as fuck wasn’t a friendly gesture.” The two men nodded grimly.
I paused for a moment, realizing that in my haste to protect Leia, I had forgotten to protect the rest of my family too. “Hey, call Bishop and say I want a guard at Mary’s house. Maggie is staying with her while Judge and Carmen are gone for a honeymoon, so we need someone guarding ‘em.” Tats agreed and as they headed back to their places, I saw him pull his phone out. Good. He can take care of that; I have to talk to Leia. I have to tell her. I have to warn her. I have to protect her from whoever did this.
Even if it meant protecting her from her own family.
I walked in to the smell of coffee and Leia wrapped up in my button-up shirt from last night. Missing most of its buttons, it would require a lot of work before I could wear it again but on Leia…it looked amazing. Everything looked amazing on her.
“Hey darlin’,” she said with a lazy smile on her face. “I was about to go put on some decent clothes so I could ask the guards where you’d run off to. Now I don’t have to get dressed.” She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively but instead of taking her up on her offer, I simply dragged her up against me and held her tight, burying my face in her hair.
Citrus and the smell of sex wafted into my nose. God, she smelled so good.
Trapped between us, she managed to maneuver her right arm over to the counter so she could put down her coffee cup and then slipped her arms around my neck, hugging me back. “What’s going on?” she whispered in my ear, stroking my hair as she held me.
I broke. I couldn’t handle the thought of her having a relationship with that bastard anymore. Goddamn motherfucker doesn’t deserve her.
I pulled away.
“Leia,” I said, forcing the words past the bubble of panic in my throat, “you can’t go see Butcher again. Not ever.”
She stiffened up and pulled away, staring at me.
“What do you mean?” she asked her voice level and soft.
“I mean that he may have bombed the clubhouse this morning. You can’t go see him again. Not ever. He’s not a good guy, Leia. I know you think—”
“He may have bombed the clubhouse this morning? You mean you don’t know?” Her voice climbed higher in pitch as she stared at me and I realized belatedly that the calmness of her voice before may have been deceiving. But I couldn’t just let her choose to have a relationship with someone like Butcher. I had to protect her. I had to keep her safe.
“No, I don’t know, not for sure, but here,” I whacked my chest, “here, I know. He was behind this. Your mom didn’t know what he was really like. You don’t know.”
“What he’s really like?”
“Yeah, what that goddamn asshole is really like!”
“Then why the hell don’t you tell me?” she shouted. “You’ve never said why you don’t trust him - what he’s done in your eyes to deserve this, other than he backed Ghost when Bishop challenged him. Well, maybe,” she spat the word at me, “that just means that he’s loyal!”
She was breathing heavily, glaring at me, and I knew what she meant by that. I knew that in that moment, she doubted my loyalty and that tore at me, tore at soul and I had known that trying to tell Leia that her dad was a bastard wasn’t going to go over well but I hadn’t been prepared for this.
“He’s not loyal, he’s a fucking asshole!” I shouted, and a tiny part of my mind knew that shouting at Leia wasn’t helping the situation but it was a tiny part and far away and I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out anyway. “And you’re being a fucking idiot for trusting him!”
Her face went brilliant red. “Why can't you just be happy that I have a dad now? Just because you don't have a dad doesn't mean I can't have one.”
Something went dead inside of me at her words - dead and cold and hard and I couldn’t look at her anymore. I stormed out of the house, slamming the door as I went, and tore off on my Harley and went for a ride.
Because at least out in the desert, I could just be me. Not Leia’s boyfriend, not the Sgt. at Arms, not Mary’s son.
I could just…be.
And the rest of the world could go to hell.
28
Leia
I stared sightlessly, the echo from the slamming door vibrating through my skull.
Fucking idiot? Knight thinks I’m a fucking idiot?
My eyes were dry and hot and painful as I just stood there and stared. I couldn’t bring myself to move or to cry or to even think. I couldn’t do anything but listen to the reverberating words ricocheting through my skull.
Fucking idiot…
Fucking idiot…
Fucking idiot…
“Mom, I screwed up,” I whispered, my voice breaking as I spoke. To myself. To the universe. To my mom in a heaven that I could only hope really existed. “You tried your whole life to keep me away from the MC world, and the moment you died, I dove right into it. You tried to protect me, and I didn’t listen.
“I never fucking do.”
It was then that the dam inside of me broke.
A tsunami of tears washed over me as I dropped to my knees and bawled. I curled up on the floor and cried so hard, I hiccupped.
The only man I had ever loved just walked out the door, and I didn’t even know what to do about it. I had no one to ask - no one to turn to. I couldn’t ask Mary for advice - she’d side with Knight, as would Jules and Carmen. He was part of their world - I was the outsider.
I was the one who didn’t belong.
There was no one in Albuquerque either. My best friend had been my mother, had always been my mother, which is why I hadn’t felt even a moment of homesickness since I arrived in Deming. It wasn’t hard to leave a city when my one true friend had left it too.
But now? I realized how very alone I was. I curled tighter and cried harder, the strength of my sobs wracking my body, throbbing in my temples, the pain curling my stomach into knots.
And then somewhere in the midst of it all, I realized: I wasn’t alone.
I had a father.
Okay, so maybe we hadn’t exactly had a chance to form a tight-knit bond, but I should give it another shot. I needed someone who was my friend. Someone who was on my side.
Butcher was my only living relative. Certainly he qualified for that, right?
I pushed upright off the cold tile floor, wiping snot and tears off my face as I went. Apparently, my goal to learn how to cry prettier was going to have to be achieved later. For now, I had to go talk to my dad. I had to get advice. I had to figure out what to do and where to go from here.
I stood up, waving around on my feet for a moment, and then headed to the bedroom to throw on some clothes, throwing Knight’s shirt at the wall with an unsatisfying pfft as it hit and slid to the floor.
It was time to get some love. And while I was at it, it was time to get some answers. They were both long overdue.
* * *
I pulled up in front of the Outlaws’s clubhouse, pausing for just a moment before turning off the car, Knight’s words echoing in my mind.
He may have bombed the clubhouse this morning.
But surely not Butcher. I knew enough about motorcycle clubs to know that they were always warring with someone, so the Dead Legion were probably fighting with another MC. How could Knight know that it was Butcher? He even admitted he didn’t. He just wanted Butcher to be a bad guy, so he chose to blame him, without any facts or justification.
Well, fuck him. I don’t judge without all the facts.
“You just gonna sit in there all day?” the tall man asked as he opened my dr
iver’s side door, startling me out of my thoughts, his ever-present menacing glare making me shiver.
“Sorry, just thinking,” I said with an apologetic smile as I got out of the car. I could pretend I was all right. I could pretend with the best of them, dammit.
“Where’s Knight at?” he asked, glancing around as if Knight was going to spring out of the backseat of my car, shouting “Surprise!” as he went.
“Not coming,” I bit off and couldn’t say anything more because anything more would tear me into a million little pieces and for the love of all that was holy, I could not fall to pieces on Pepper Man’s shoulder. At least Butcher had a reason to listen to me. Pepper Man certainly didn’t.
“What’s your name, by the way?” I asked, trying to make pleasant conversation while we walked up to the front door of the club.
I had to act as if everything was fine.
Everything is fine.
I mean, Knight hates my guts and my mother is dead, but you know, everything else is fine.
“Skinner,” he said.
This made me snort with nervous laughter. Skinner made it sound like he skinned animals.
“What’s so funny?” he growled as we walked into the lobby.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m a little nervous. Sorry.” I felt almost delirious from the pain in my heart. Goddammit, I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but Butcher was walking towards me and so I couldn’t run away now, right?
“Hi Leia!” he said, clearly surprised but happy to see me. “I didn’t expect you back again so soon. Where’s Knight?”
“He couldn’t come today,” I said, trying to force the words past my lips as if they were no big deal. As if it didn’t matter that he couldn’t come. As if everything was fine between us.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together briskly, “it’s nice to see you anyway. What can I do for you?”
Do? It kind of seemed cold, that question, like he was a used car salesman and I was just a customer who’d wandered in off the street.
But I plowed ahead anyway.
“Dad, you know that Mom kept a journal.” His eyes got a little more hooded at my use of ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ but I kept going. Janice was my mom, and Butcher was my dad. The world just fucking needed to get over it already. “Well, her last journal entry was…hard to read. You knew Wolf, right?”
“Of course,” he said brusquely.
“She wrote that the night she was going to tell you that she was pregnant with me that Wolf…Dad, he raped her.” I gulped and couldn’t look him in the eye and instead stared at the Harley clock on the far wall because who the fuck talked about rape with an almost complete stranger? “He said that it was your fault - that you didn’t share her with the rest of the club like you were supposed to.
“Is it…is it true?” I asked and my voice broke and I fought back my tears because I had already cried enough that day, dammit.
He cleared his throat. “I sure as hell didn’t know about no raping,” he said defensively, as if I had accused him of raping someone. “Right before you came in, I was talking to someone. I’ll be right back.”
And then he fucking walked back into the clubhouse, leaving me alone in the lobby to stare at the Harley clock. Did he really just do that? Walk out on me while we were talking about the rape of my mother?
Tick
Tick
Tick
I paced up and down, growing more upset by the moment. Was he ever going to come back? Was I just supposed to leave? Where the hell did he run off to?
Finally, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I went through the door and into open floor of the clubhouse to go find my long-lost father - long lost in more ways than one…
It was then that I saw the two Sangre, arguing with my father. Time slowed as I zeroed in on the severed goat-head tattoos on their necks and their dark features and I knew it was them, the two men who’d kidnapped those girls and shot at Knight and Judge and Bishop and oh God, my dad! And I turned to run, run for the door, to get the hell out of there and arms were around me, holding me, encircling me, and then stars exploded and the world went dark.
* * *
I woke up slowly, like pushing the layers of cotton away, swimming through the murkiness, fighting for something…something I was worried about. Something wasn’t right. What was it?
I had to wake up. I had to fight. Bad things were happening.
And then my eyes shot open and I tried to scream as I remembered the severed goat head tattoos and the Sangre and my dad talking to them - fucking talking to them - but I couldn’t scream because there was something in my mouth. A gag? I felt the cotton pulling at the corners of my mouth, drying out my mouth, sucking away all of my saliva. I opened my eyes, flailing around on the floor like a fish on land, panic overwhelming me.
“Oh good, you’re awake.”
I looked up…right into the eyes of my father.
No, my mom’s sperm donor.
“So I just had a chat with your dear old boyfriend,” he said, ignoring my muffled curses and wiggling around on the floor. They’d tied my arms behind my back and my ankles together, which made me feel like a damn overturned turtle.
Fuck! It’s a lot harder to stand up when you’re tied up like this than it looks like it is on TV.
“He agreed to tell me when the next Dead Legion meeting would be, and hand over his keys to the clubhouse, if I just let you go. Stupid fucker - willing to give up his club for a worthless woman? Women are a dime a dozen.”
I glared up at him, hoping that even if I couldn’t say it with words; I could say it with my eyes.
Fuck you. Fuck you to hell and back.
Either he didn’t get the message or he didn’t care, because he kept talking. “This will allow us to get back into Deming, back to where the money is. Did Bishop honestly think that we’d be happy to stay put in Playas? Fucking idiot. Playas is off the beaten path - no one comes here unless they’re forced to. But Deming…it’s on the freeway, right between Mexico and the rest of the US. Everything comes through here - all of the guns, all of the drugs - everything that’s worth selling goes through Deming. We’re not about to give that up because Bishop happened to draw his gun faster than Ghost.”
I managed to roll over onto my stomach and wiggled my knees up underneath me. I arched backwards, pulling up onto my knees…
And got pushed back down again, slamming into the cold tile floor on my left arm, the pain of it taking my breath away. A Sangre came into view, leering at me.
“Oh yes, I believe I forgot to tell you. Before I actually hand you over to Knight, I think I’m gonna share you with whoever wants a piece of your fat ass. I was thinking that I’d make Knight watch. How does that sound?”
In that moment, something inside of me broke. The panic, the anger I had been feeling all washed away, replaced by pure terror. My own father was going to let his gang rape me?
“To answer your question, yes, I knew Wolf raped your mom that night. I got punished for hiding her from the club, as I should’ve been. I don’t know what I was thinking, holing her away like that. The club comes first - it always will. I didn’t know she’d gotten knocked up with you, and quite frankly, I don’t care. That’s her problem. The only family that matters is the club.
“When Wolf died in a shootout and the Outlaws started to fall apart, Ghost wanted to patch over the Outlaws into the Dead Legion, and I jumped on board right away. I could tell – he was someone who cared about money and control. He had his goddamn priorities straight. It’s too bad that Bishop had to go and fuck it all up.”
He checked his watch.
“Hmmm…if Knight doesn’t show up soon, we’ll have to start the festivities without him. I gave him 12 minutes to get here. It’s a 15-minute ride if you’re following the speed limits, and fuck, if he’s willing to do that, then you don’t want him anyway. See? Just helping you vet him. I’m such a good father.”
I closed my eyes,
unable to look at the sperm donor any longer. If I lived through this, and Knight lived through this, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Knight would never forgive me for forcing him to betray his club. I was the one who’d walked right into this trap – after weeks of trying to protect me from these bastards; I had delivered myself right into their hands.
Oh God, I was an idiot. Such a fucking idiot. I felt the tears falling onto the dirty floor, puddling beneath my left cheekbone in a sorry mess of dirt, tears, and grease. I deserved it - every minute of whatever happened to me, I deserved it.
“One minute left, and then I let the boys have fun with you,” Butcher said with a grin. He seemed so sane, so normal, and yet his words were so terrifying.
“An enemy of an enemy is a friend - isn’t that what they always say? These retard ape hangers don’t even speak English, but I don’t care. They can shoot and they can follow hand signals and really, what else could I need them for? They obviously can’t kidnap though - I can’t believe they let you live. Dumbasses.”
“The only dumbass here is you, Butcher,” Knight growled. My eyes shot towards his voice, simultaneously thrilled and terrified that he was standing there. But didn’t he know he was outgunned? Didn’t he know they might just kill him?
But he came for me. He really came. Maybe he didn’t hate me after all.
“So nice to see you,” Butcher said pleasantly. “Now, where is my key to the clubhouse?”
“I want her untied first,” Knight said, jerking his head towards me. I had renewed my wriggling on the floor, but he refused to look me in the eye. He was probably pissed as hell at me, although, he was there, right? That was a good sign. He probably wasn’t going to let me be tortured and killed by my father’s gang.
Probably.
Butcher hesitated for a moment, and then said smoothly, “I’ll let her get to her feet.”
All eyes on me, I rolled over onto my stomach, trying to get through the motions without completely embarrassing myself.
