by Snow, Nicole
As long as I controlled my rage, I wouldn't end up like my old man. At least not by one careless, explosive instant.
It wasn't looking good for us, but every second we delayed and kept ourselves alive evened the odds against these bastards. I couldn't let the caveman urge to tear his fucking head off steal my whole fucking future with Sally and Caleb. I had to let him swing his dick without trying to hack it off until the time was right.
“Carlos!” The cartel boss barked, and Beam whipped his head around. “Get back in line. Now.”
Gold Teeth stepped forward, shoved his way past me, and got in the Prez's face. “Well? You going to take the deal I offered, or not? It's the best one you'll get, old man. And you're all out of leverage.”
“No. You'll take my counter-offer, or you'll kill us all, and get no terms with the club. No treaty means you'll have to destroy every other Grizzlies charter, all the way to Seattle. They'll never give up unless you've got a piece of paper with my name on it. Don't think you'll get anybody to flip. We've already cleaned house in every charter that would even think about cutting you a deal, capo.”
The Mexican clenched his jaw when the Prez called out the cartel captain. “A pity you didn't do such a good job keeping your own charter clean. Believe me, I'd love to spill your blood where you stand.”
“Here I am,” Blackjack growled, stepping away from the cartel boss and spreading his arms. “Do it. Firing squad style. What're you afraid of?”
Several men aimed their guns, locked and loaded on the Prez. Fuck!
The rest of the boys stirred, ready to jump in front of him and take every bullet if they needed to. Shit, shit, we were gonna die together anyway, but I sure as fuck wouldn't before I watched Beam and the cartel boss bleed out on the cold pavement underneath our boots.
“Afraid? No, old man, the only one who ought to be afraid here is you.” The boss stared at us, snarled out something in rapid fire Spanish, and all but two of the men lowered their guns. “I'll give you a few minutes. Think about what you're doing. Enjoy one last puff on your tobacco. Then, we'll see if you come to your senses. The only reason I haven't cut you and your men to pieces is because I'd really like to see your signature in blood on a new treaty. You do that for me, and anything can happen here today. There's still time to save lives all across your club, Blackjack.”
“Go to hell.” Blackjack reached into his pocket, plucked out a smoke, and lit it up.
For the first time since I quit that shit ten years ago, I wished I hadn't. It would've been fucking sweet to enjoy one last smoke.
But not half as sweet as tasting my woman's lips one more time, or hearing my kid laugh at my feet. The fucking assholes a couple feet away were taking it away, one second at a time. Thinking about our shit odds was like watching grains of sand running through a goddamned hour glass.
Can a man feel like a ghost before he's even dead?
I tried to think, straining my eyes, looking for any weakness. Asphalt, Brass, and even Stryker did the same. I didn't look too much at the last name – every time I did, it made me fucking sick.
I'd almost torched his skin off, for fuck's sake.
Maybe I deserved the dark, bloody end that was coming. Maybe today was the day karma would bitch slap me, force me to pay the brutal debts I'd stacked up over the years. Maybe my family could manage without me. I hoped to God they would.
Sally was strong. Caleb was bound to grow up a badass. This family had it in the blood.
No, I wasn't gonna see it – I wasn't gonna fucking see it.
My heart froze over, and so did the hellfire in my blood, every time I took a good look at those rifles trained on us.
The last thing I'd ever do in front of my killers was weep like a little bitch, but it was raining black sleet in my soul. I watched the Prez puff, in between sneaking looks at the smug, almost bored looks on the Mexicans' faces.
When Blackjack's cig was down to a stump and Gold Teeth's back was turned, quietly talking to one of his men by the SUV in the center, Beam made his move. He came toward me again, wearing the smirk that made me want to knock his fucking teeth out.
“You're a dead man, you know.” He gave me a cold look and spat at the ground.
I didn't flinch. “Better dead than a fucking rat. The cartels have their codes too, as fucked up as they are. How long before these bastards decide to chop your head off too, Carlos?”
I used the name Gold Teeth yelled. He gave me a nasty look, and then his face twisted.
He laughed, higher pitched than I'd heard before, betraying his anxiety. My ears pricked up at another noise coming through his shit – something lower, roaring, droning.
I squinted, looking past him toward the very edges of the old complex. I saw the faintest puffs of dust behind the old fuel tanks. Bikes were on their way, coming up the route we always used to get back here, right through a break in the rusted gate.
Fuck. Just in time.
Beam stopped laughing and drew his wicked black eyes back on me. “You think you're hot shit, don't you? You walk around thinking you're a good man, a strong man, now that you've got your wife and kid. Let me tell you something, asshole.”
He pushed against my chest, as hard as he could. The lean little fuck was too weak to move me an inch, even with anger spiking his blood.
I cast a quick look at Blackjack. The Prez's face didn't show shit, but his eyes were fixed on the tiny smoke coiling in the distance too. He knew what was coming.
Beam kept talking, slinging the best shit talk he had. “You'll want to listen to this, fuckface. Listen good. I'm going to track down your hot blonde princess when we're through here. I'll find her, take her, and fuck her all I want. I'll take her in every hole, all fucking night, make her forget every last trace of you while she's howling on my cock. Then, when I've had my fill, I'll drive her well stretched ass to Mexico to be sold. She'll survive a year, maybe two in the game. But I'll give her a fighting chance, just for you, by fucking her 'til she hurts. I'll turn her into my whore, Roman. It's good practice once some of the cartel's friends get a hold of her.”
I snorted. “You done yet, Carlos?”
He shook his head. His jaw tightened, stretching his skin tight across his fucked up face. For a second, that shitty punk rock broomstick on his head looked like it was sitting on a skull.
“I'll do it all, you bastard. I swear I will. Every. Fucking. Word.” His head snapped back, and he flew forward, hurling spit in my face.
Slowly, I raised one hand, wiping my eye. “You're gonna have a hard time with my girl,” I said, sliding my other hand to my hip.
“Why's that, asshole?”
“She doesn't like dudes with ruptured balls and broken dicks.”
Two seconds. That was all I needed to make my move.
My knee shot up and smashed Beam's junk so hard I wasn't sure if he ever felt his nuts split like rotten eggs. My gun's barrel hit his temple too fast, and I pulled the trigger.
The Mexicans started screaming before he even hit the ground. I went down, holding onto his corpse like a shield, listening to my boys behind me start shooting.
My whole universe became screaming lead, kicking at the dusty pavement and flesh around me, each hot flash threatening to snuff out my life just as quickly as I'd done to the rat.
Brass roared, firing over my head. I angled my gun up as soon as I hit the ground, firing at every dark moving shape I could see. Several cartel boys ran forward, and their chests exploded outward, death blossoming in bloody vines.
Rabid and the prospects were here. The cavalry hit them from the back, slaughtering those motherfuckers like hogs.
Gold Teeth ducked between two vehicles, dropped his fancy looking magnum, clutching a bleeding wound on his leg. Bright red gore poured through his lily white trousers.
I emptied my clip and burst two more heads. It was too fucking dangerous to reload, especially with a bastard holding an automatic coming toward me, spraying down suppression fire.
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The hellfire advanced, coming on like a line of advancing rain.
Inevitable. Outrageous. Fatal.
I thought about Sally's hot lips on mine as she was wrapped around me, thrusting like my life depended on it between her legs, snarling as I pushed her over the cliff into ecstasy.
I remembered Caleb's laugh, smiling as the bullets came closer, sparking on the cracked cement like firecrackers. It was like somebody slowed down time, just enough to let the things that mattered flash before my eyes.
I couldn't get my boy's cherub laugh outta my skull, even if it might as well have been on fucking Jupiter with death racing toward me here. I'd never hear it again. Not for real.
I thought about ma. She'd looked happier than she had for years holding my kid, bouncing him on one knee. Probably amazed that Sally and me created such a perfect miracle. She'd still have that after I was gone.
My brothers' faces flashed in my head, one by one, locked in perfect rhythm to the tracers coming toward me.
Blackjack. Brass. Rabid. Asphalt. Southpaw. Stryker.
So many fucking more. Too many faces, and not enough time. Never enough –
Fuck. Fire ripped through my side, and I felt like a goddamned water balloon losing its contents.
Two seconds later, the shooting stopped, but it didn't really matter. I saw myself sprawled out on the ground, passed the fuck out, my eyes dead and vacant.
I floated away from everything, and there were no brakes. I was already a ghost, even as some brother caught up to me and started shaking me, screaming in my ear. His words were like listening to a man screaming down a long tunnel.
They blurred into nonsense. I heard someone else talking, a voice I hadn't heard for nearly twenty years. The last words my old man ever said to me surged in the blackness like a giant tidal wave, pulling me deeper, crashing across my soul.
Live the life I couldn't, son. Live like a good man 'til the day you die. Don't forsake your family.
XIII: Under the Gun (Sally)
I'd never had so many emotions flickering through me at once, tearing me to pieces like twisted currents.
Hatred. Bitterness. Sadness. Love.
Each time Roman's face flashed in my mind, I didn't know whether I wanted to kiss him or rake him across the cheek with my nails. Mostly, I just wanted him to come home so I could make up my mind, preferably before my intestines tangled up in a permanent knot.
It was so fucking dark out. Almost midnight.
There hadn't been a word all evening, not since we got home from the hospital, and Rabid took off with his guys, leaving a two man skeleton crew of prospects watching over us.
Caleb stirred in my arms. He kept crying no matter how often I tried to feed him, fusing every time I rocked him or smoothed his brow the way he liked. The kid could sense the tension on some scary primal level.
“Damn it!” Missy whispered for the third time in an hour, tearing the phone away from her ear. “Still no answer. I tried all of them. I really don't understand this. Somebody should pick up. Even Rabid isn't talking.”
Christa's shoulders slouched. I watched her bring a hand up to the scars on her cheeks, touching them and then snatching her fingers away, like they burned her hand.
“Something's wrong. They've never kept the line dead this long, and never all of them at once. We can't just sit here all night.”
“What's your plan? Lower a rope made out of our skirts and jeans down the window? Rabid said we're not going anywhere. I'm scared too, but there's no way we'll get past the prospects down there. You sweet talked your old man, but those boys only care about following orders, whatever it takes to earn their bottom rockers.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think they're not sweating rivers down there too? Hope you've got a mop, Sally. Their orders only go so far. They'll be just as confused as us the longer they wait with no word from the rest of the brothers.”
“We have to try something!” Missy exploded, stood up, and reached for the door before I could say another word.
Maybe she was right. My heart throbbed pure adrenaline, a cold, harsh fuel for the pessimism grinding my heart to ashes.
I wanted to believe he was okay. He had to come home. But this world had no guarantees, and the damning silence gave a good idea about what happened without the specifics.
I looked at Caleb and clutched him tight, carrying him out as the other two old ladies ambled down the stairs. My mind had already gone to that dark pit, wondering how I'd afford this place if Roman was really gone.
Jesus, and it wouldn't get any easier as the years went on. I couldn't lie to my son, not when he'd barely met his father.
One day, I'd have to look him in the eyes, and tell him his dad did – what? Defended his family? Or went down the same as his grandfather, pulled into a world of savage violence he never should've embraced?
I'd say anything to stop it from becoming a family tradition. Caleb would never end up like Dagger and...Roman?
My heart turned to cold, dead rock just considering the possibility he was gone.
I shook my head, following the girls downstairs. Missy and Christa did most of the talking. The two prospects eyed us glumly, sharing nervous looks.
“Can't do that, ladies,” a prospect named Thorn said. “The brothers'll have our asses if anything happens to you. Shit, we don't even know what's going on at the clubhouse. It could be compromised too.”
“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes and stepped forward. “The whores still sleep there. They'd be the first to come screaming if anything happened.”
“Yeah, assuming they could. You know these invasions can happen so fucking fast it'll make your head spin, right?” Thorn gave me a sharp look, his goatee twitching.
I cocked my head. “You sound like you're talking with experience. Jeez, at the rate the club's bringing in new blood, you've been wearing that prospect patch for like a month, maybe two? Hard to believe you're a battle-hardened biker badass in just a few weeks.”
His face tightened. Christa and Missy laughed. Brass' old lady pushed through us and got in his face.
“Come the fuck on. We'll drive carefully, take my car the whole way there. We'll pull over a couple miles away. You boys can go on and make sure the coast is clear. I'm sure the Prez and VP will appreciate somebody looking over home base.”
“She's right. What? You're not scared, are you, boys? I hear the ones who show some initiative get their bottom rockers a whole lot faster.” Christa smiled, and we all suppressed a laugh, watching them eyeball each other like nervous owls.
“Whatever, you bitches are crazy, you know that?” Thorn growled at last. “We'll ride in front and rear 'til the very end, and then we'll go on ahead to scope it out. Soon as we're in, you're getting guns and going in the back. I'm not letting anybody out in the bar 'til I hear something from higher up.”
“Sounds like a plan!” Missy said. “Very thoughtful. Very original. Totally not mine.”
She reached up and slapped Thorn on the shoulder, then turned around and led us out. The prospects scrambled to get their bikes going before we pulled out of the driveway. I sat in the back, holding Caleb, trying to let the light humor wash over me.
The girls made me laugh, even with the uncertain hell waiting up ahead. But I couldn't hold onto the comic relief.
Not until I knew what happened to Roman. Please, God, let him be okay.
* * * *
I'd closed my eyes the whole way there. Not far from the clubhouse, Missy pulled over and waited. It took the prospects about ten minutes to ride in, comb through the place, and then give us a call to come through the gate.
We parked and made our way to the back. They shoved several guns into everybody's hands. I'd learned to shoot with Norm and Uncle Ralph. I wasn't afraid of guns, but there was something strange about having one in my purse on the floor while Caleb sat on my lap.
I prayed I wouldn't have to use it, but I would in a heartbeat to defend my baby, or any of thes
e girls here. We headed for the storage room in the back.
It was the only place with a thick metal door. Missy and Christa both suffered here, back when the club was run by Fang. He'd used it as a torture chamber, and I could feel the black pain dripping off the walls, cold and unsettling. I cuddled Caleb close, if only to guard him from the same dark energy.
We huddled together, waiting for what felt like half the night, though it was only another hour. Caleb finally dozed off. I was afraid Christa would wake him when she jumped up, pressing her ear to the wall.
“You hear that? Motorcycles.”
Missy and I stood, following her to the thick wall. It wasn't easy to hear through it, but the longer I strained my ears, the more I could make out the distinct guttural roar of Harleys. Lots of them, swarming like bees.
A couple minutes later, Thorn pounded on the door. “Coast is clear, girls.”
“We're ready! Let us out!” I yelled, covering my son's ears.
The door creaked open. The same two prospects blocked our paths, and Thorn muttered something about guns.
We all reached into our purses. I was relieved to get rid of mine, and hopeful because it meant maybe things were going to be okay after all.
But at the last second, something stopped me. No, I didn't want the gun around, especially with Caleb. But what if I needed it someday to keep him safe?
I looked at the empty hand Thorn held out for mine. “Let me keep this for a little while.”
He squinted. “Can't let you do that. Club property.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. I know you guys have tons of these things. The serial numbers are all filed off too, aren't they? I know how to shoot. My Uncle took me out to blow up bottles in my teens. He sent me to a safety class. I know how to handle these things.”
“Christ. You gonna give me anything but trouble today?”
“Maybe. But I guess that depends whether or not you want me to explain to Roman how you yanked away the only thing making me feel safe...”
