by V. Theia
Turns out, that guy was Austin Black.
A well-respected fire chief from the area and he needed someone to fix a few things around his place.
They’d shared a beer after he’d approached the guy and he found he liked the fire chief instantly.
Being in the outlaw business for years and around unscrupulous assholes who would sell you out as soon as look at you, it was always easy to spot a guy who had a bad vibe about them. While Austin gave off the aura of not suffering fools lightly, he was open and honest and easily likeable. As was his wife Bonnie, who he’d met the following day when he rode through to their large farm estate at the crack of dawn.
They didn’t keep animals other than chickens, it wasn’t a working farm, it just needed upkeep with the landscape and as Austin confided while Bonnie fetched a pitcher of freshly made lemonade, he needed the help around the place, so Bonnie didn’t overdo things as she tended to.
Months later, he was still there, much to his own surprise.
He hadn’t gotten bored with the place, the town or the job.
It was hard work, fixing fences along the perimeter, maintaining the landscaping, repairing the barn loft, and one day Bonnie fancied herself a pond, so he got to work on that too.
He didn’t know why that older couple took him in without so much as a reference to check his credentials, he’d been up front and told Austin he was a figures man previously but he wasn’t afraid of hard graft.
They trusted him on their property with no questions asked.
Each morning he showed up at 7 am to be greeted by Bonnie and she would always insist on feeding him. Even when he protested that she didn’t have to. “Piffle.” She’d tell him in her southern accent, that sounded like honey and smiles. “A growing boy needs his food, now stop dithering and come on inside. It’s hotter than hell on the fourth of July out here.”
He stopped objecting after a while and enjoyed the good home cooking and the company, though Bonnie did most of the talking which she didn’t seem to mind.
On certain days she had her sewing circle at the farm, as she called them.
Much as he could tell they didn’t do a lick of sewing at all, but they did drink homemade lemonade spiked with gin, and they’d sit out on the wide deck swing and gossip up a storm.
He even noticed those older ladies watched him like a hawk when he took off his shirt.
He liked the quiet family town, the work and the people.
He found he wasn’t drinking as much either, choosing to fall into his motel bed at night to sleep soundlessly until it was time to get up again.
Nor was he warming the beds of faceless women.
Sex and booze were never the formula to forget any troubles and he learned that pretty quick. He didn’t like the hangovers and he hated knowing he was using bodies to make himself feel better for a few minutes.
The truth was, he’d fucked up so much he couldn’t see a time when he wouldn’t feel guilty for betraying his friends… family really.
So, day by day he just did what he could and went on living.
Everyone knew him as Tait Hunt. Not one person called him Texas and for weeks that felt strange. He’d gotten used to his road name; it gave him a purpose in life he’d never felt before, joining the ranks of the Renegade Souls, but he’d seen to it that he fucked that up royally.
So, Tait he was.
That night, after saying bye to Austin, he climbed onto his bike and rode a few miles down the road into town and mounted the stairs to the second-floor motel room he rented by the week. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was kept clean by a daily maid service and he didn’t need much anyway.
More tired than usual, after digging a trench for most of the day, he staggered into the shower and let the cooling water fall over his head while he sudded up with soap and cleaned off the daily grime.
Once he was dressed in black sweats, leaving his feet and chest bare, he ordered a sausage and onion pizza to be delivered and crawled onto the bed.
It was small and lumpy in comparison to the king size, high raised bed he had back home. Fuck, he missed that bed.
Home. Could he even call it that now?
If not, then he needed to think about getting rid of his loft apartment sometime soon.
Cut his last and final tie to the city he’d loved for years.
Until then, it would stand empty.
The last cut, he knew, which was always the deepest.
He thought he was done hurting but as he lay on his back, scrolling through his phone newsfeed, he got a jolt through his chest seeing an email in his inbox.
After reading it, he knew he should have left it untouched, because now his guts felt on fire.
Dread and that old guilt weighed him down until he had to roll himself off the bed and he walked the short distance to grab the lone bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring three fingers into the glass, he downed it in one, the burn chasing through his stomach did little to moderate his anxious feeling.
Looking over at the bed with his taunting phone laid face up, he inhaled slowly and ran a hand through his growing beard.
He’d never had this much facial hair before.
Always perfectly groomed.
Perfectly pressed clothes.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
He scoffed at that. He was a fucking liar and a joke.
Nothing was fucking perfect, and certainly nothing about his life.
He’d straddled two lines for the last few years and his realization had been he was just as fucked up as everyone else.
If not more so because he marched into his crimes with both eyes wide open.
It didn’t matter if he had reasons.
Reasons he thought were valid at the time.
He’d fucked up, and nothing about him was, or ever would, be perfect.
Pacing the small room, his feet cushioned by the soft carpeting, he didn’t feel an ounce of calm he’d come to rely on.
What could he do?
Could he trust the message was true?
It was a simple message.
Lawless was never one for fancy words and always got to the point.
T, we got word from the Diablos that they’re holding a chick by the name of Penelope. According to them you know her, she went looking for you at the wrong MC. Axel wants payment for her. I went by there and got a picture. It’s included. I wouldn’t worry if you do nothing about it. The boys looked to be enjoying her company.
– Lawless.
Striding back to the bed, he hooked up his phone and flipped to the photo included in the email.
It was the little girl he’d always called Poppy.
Decked out in a wedding gown.
He didn’t hear she was getting married, but then, why would he?
She was a lifetime ago.
How long had it been since he’d seen her? A good few years. The last time he was back home in New York for one of his mother’s fancy fucking charity benefits she’d guilted him into attending. Why, he still didn’t know, because she’d been ashamed of her biker son.
A big fucking disappointment, that was his lot in life.
A people pleasing schmuck.
He’d seen Penelope through the crowd on the arm of some guy.
Taking his eyes to the picture again, he searched every inch of the screen.
What in the hell was she doing in any MC to begin with?
The wedding gown was a mystery.
And she’d been looking for him?
That made no sense at all.
They literally were in two different walks of life.
She’d once shadowed him, and he’d thought it was cute.
A kid with her front teeth missing chasing after him and then later still when she entered her teens and wore braces. He was a few years older if he remembered right, but she’d always been a scrawny small kid, wrapped up in cotton by her family.
He didn’t have much patience for a kid her age back then, not wh
en his whole teen life revolved around someone else.
As they grew older, and the usual summer parties in full effect in Harrison, among the circle his family socialized in, he’d been more tolerant of the squirt following behind him with a million questions because he felt sorry for the shy girl.
His brother teased him about her crush.
This had to be a mistake.
But Lawless rarely, if ever, got shit wrong.
He ignored the email and tried as much as he could to forget it.
For two days he ignored the gnawing sensation in his gut.
Replaying the words over and over in his mind.
The boys looked to be enjoying her company.
His control snapped and he threw down the shovel.
Whether it was Lawless’ sick mind games at work, or somehow a ruse to get him back to town to kill him, he didn’t know, but even the slightest thought of a little girl he once knew being held at the mercy of that deplorable MC put bile in his throat.
He walked across the field, up the porch steps to the Black household and knocked lightly. It was Austin who answered.
“I need to leave. I’m sorry,” he explained.
“That’s okay, son, it looks about finished anyway for the day.”
“I mean leaving town.”
Austin Black frowned. “Is anything the matter, Tait? We thought you were fixing to stay around until after the New Year at least. You know Bonnie was hoping you’d join us. Our girl, her husband and their kids are coming. You haven’t met Sena and Noah yet.”
He hadn’t but he’d heard a lot about The Black’s only child who lived in Manhattan with her family.
“I’m sorry. Something’s come up.” He couldn’t say more.
The Black’s didn’t know anything about his former life, and he was reluctant to let them in and hear what an untrustworthy guy he was.
The older couple were good to him when he didn’t deserve anyone’s compassion.
“Is there anything we can do?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t sure if even he himself could do anything.
Maybe it was all a ploy to find him.
After all, he’d gone off the grid so even his own brother didn’t know where he was.
“Are you coming back?”
There was that compassion again and it twisted up his guts.
“Maybe. I hope so. I don’t mind if you let my job go. You’ve been good to me and—”
“Say no more, son. Your job will be waiting if you ever want it.” And then the shrewd man added. “Whatever you’re running from, you always have a place here, you understand?”
He could only nod. Emotion stinging his throat.
“Now come on inside and say your goodbyes to Bonnie. She’ll skin me alive if I let you go before she feeds you.”
There wasn’t anything else to say or do after that.
He didn’t have a lot to pack, within minutes his bike was gassed up and ready to go.
His worry swirling around his mind for a little girl he’d last seen years ago.
She shouldn’t be anywhere near a MC, let alone one as disreputable as the Diablo Disciples. If she’d turned up at the Souls he wouldn’t have worried at all.
Rider would never allow a woman to be harmed.
They would have dealt with her and sent her on her way.
Tension mounted as the miles ate up under his bike.
He didn’t know if he was going back to his own death.
Texas didn’t care anymore, least of all about his own well-being.
But he was going back home to Colorado.
And some small part of him was glad.
THREE
“Prince Charming is not so…princely.” – Penelope
It was some fucked up self-punishment that made Texas ride by the Renegade Souls compound when he finally arrived back in Colorado.
Familiar sights and smells greeting him with a punch of pain to his sternum.
It would mean an extra hour ride back out of town to get to Axel’s place, but there he was, like a goddamn chump and the bike purring idly under his ass while he gazed through to the building he’d called home for years.
The Souls protected compound was out of the way of civilization and designed that way when the club was first erected. In the background was the fantastic mountains with snow-capped peaks reaching into the clouds as far as the eye could see.
The three sets of buildings were made of concrete, bricks and corrugated steel for a reason, almost impenetrable to being firebombed. Just the last few years, ever since Rider, the prez, took on his queen, he had all the windows changed to Hammerglass triple glazing. That shit was impossible to break and Texas being the money man then, knew how much it cost the club. It wasn’t cheap, but Rider wanted the club and his house like Fort Knox for Zara.
He was an idiot for stopping, not like they’d be happy to see him.
Rider had done him a solid by not killing him, instead, he’d dished out something worse by taking Texas’ cut from him. Stripping him of his MC identity.
For anyone in the biker lifestyle, that shit hurt worse than a thousand stabs.
Months later he still didn’t know whether he would have preferred being killed.
He’d known the moment he confessed to Rider, about how he was feeding information on other clubs to his ATF twin brother, in hopes of keeping Malachai off the Souls backs, that he was done for.
He’d put the nail in his own coffin.
Rider and the Souls treated loyalty as sacred.
If there was no loyalty among the members, then Rider didn’t want that man around.
By doing the only thing he thought right at the time, he’d fucked himself into losing what meant most to him and being banished back to a life he hated living.
No one would understand why he did what he did.
To the Souls, the rules were black and white.
It was club first.
Always the club came first, no matter what.
Hindsight was a bitch because he did regret every decision he’d made.
Mal was his twin, his blood and he had a bond to the man no ordinary siblings would understand, though they were estranged for reasons he didn’t want swimming in his head.
One fucking problem at a time.
For now, he had to deal with whatever Poppy Astor, socialite of New York was doing with a club like the Diablos.
This shit was bizarre, but he was going to find out what was happening.
Texas scraped a gloved hand through his dark, tousled hair. He kept it short because of the Carolina heat, but it was usually long enough on top to warrant the aid of hair product to tame it.
Probably because of his upbringing was the reason why he liked grooming and nice, expensive clothes. No one in the MC ribbed him maliciously about his state of dress not being a carbon copy of their worn jeans and vintage tees. Texas had always gone for designer denim with a matching belt, a pressed long-sleeved dress shirt with a thickly knotted tie along with his leather cut. A merge of his old with the new.
Oh, of fucking course they took the piss occasionally, especially when he wore a fancier tie, something that caught his eye on the Saks website, but he’d always, always felt part of the club.
And now he was the dickhead moping outside of their gates.
He wondered if Rider had assigned Texas’ treasurer patch to anyone yet.
A feeling of woe is me attacked his chest.
That was his patch, he’d earned it. And then lost it.
Sighing his own disgust, he revved the pipes of his black matte Harley with her custom slate gray bodywork done by Red Light, and he took off at high speed, hunched over the handlebars and the wind in his face, giving him clarity.
He’d deal with Poppy’s dilemma and head back south.
There was nothing left for him here, and he needed to accept that fact.
Pulling into the smaller operation of the Diablo Disciples MC sometime later, h
e climbed down off his bike, feeling every inch the ache for the long ride.
His eyes clocking everything and everyone as he approached their entryway in his slow rolling stride.
Their club was easily accessed. No one manning the gate whatsoever, and the door was wide open. Had Texas been of a mind to go crazed shooter, he could have taken out four of them instantly.
Four sets of eyes looked him over in his worn leather jacket and equally worn light denim and thick soled biker boots.
“Looking for Axel.” He said.
He recognized most of these men. Being part of the Souls, and the biggest MC with the most clout, the brothers made it their business to have the information on all of the neighboring MC’s. There was no hacking Lawless couldn’t do on any person.
That included the president of this club.
Axel Tucker, who straddled the line of morally corrupt almost as dangerously as Hades once did. The only good thing going for Axel was he didn’t deal in sex trafficking and he seemed to be fair with his men. Plus, the club was small and didn’t really have any influence whatsoever.
Hearing they were wanting a pay-out for Penelope was not unheard of in their circles. Business was business and an exchange for cash for a body was common.
It didn’t go unnoticed by Texas that he himself had been the man to put some of this MC into jail from the information he’d fed to his cop twin brother.
He was stepping into the lion’s den, how was that for some karma shit.
Wondering if Axel knew of what he’d done and that’s why he was holding Penelope flitted through his mind a time or two on the way here.
Rider was no snitch and wouldn’t have informed Axel that he was losing men because of Texas’ big mouth.
“Haven’t seen you at any of the rallies for a while, Texas.” The VP came forward and slapped his hand. “How’s it?”
“Not bad. How’s things with you, Chains?”
“I’d be better if we could get our guys out of lock up.”
Texas wasn’t even attacked with a pinch of guilt for his part in that.
He was Souls loyal, even if they didn’t think so.
