Hard Sacrifice (Savage Saviors MC Book 4)

by J. C. Allen

  “True, true. So, ya did get things settled with yer lady?”

  I gave him a look, realized there was no way he could know what I was thinking—what I was feeling—and that I had to become better at stating what I thought was the obvious. Most especially when “the obvious” was something that Roost had gotten on my case about with quite an extreme amount of intensity the last few days.

  “I did,” I admitted. “Better than settled. We’re so good now that I’m sort of uneasy being away from her. So can we get a move on?”

  “That’s fair,” Roost said. “But I needed to know that ya mind was right before we went into this stuff. A leader without a mind ain’t nothin’ but guts on the street.”

  “That’s… OK,” I said, trying not to turn this topic into an unnecessary speech.

  With a nod, Roost directed me to some printouts he had waiting beside him. As he handed them over, he did me the favor of summarizing their contents.

  “Couple of my guys were on the case, as it was. But it was a guy I ‘visit’ every once in a while that came through; inside guy who works as a guard at the pen.”

  The way Roost chuckled and the way he spoke, I knew exactly what he was referring to—but it still left me more than a bit stunned.

  “You’re fucking a prison guard?” I asked, thinking about what kind of implications that might have for the Saviors. Roost was much better than me about not putting the group in danger with his escapades, but he wasn’t immune. “And for that he’s willing to share information?”

  Roost outright laughed at that, as if I were a fool for saying such a thing—which, to be fair, with how little I knew of gay culture, wasn’t the most inaccurate assumption.

  “He wishes I’d give him that honor. No, boy, I let a prison guard suck my dick on Wednesdays. And ya can bet yer virgin ass that once he’s done swallowing, he lets spill with just ‘bout anything I’ve got to ask.”

  “OK, lovely, thanks for the imagery,” I said, to which Roost took a delight in seeing me uncomfortable. What can I say, he loved making arrows feel a little bent.

  “Anyways, he let spill that a certain someone—one Charles ‘Chuck’ Kellerman, who was one hell of a submissive little prison bitch from the sounds of things—was suddenly and, quote, ‘inexplicably released due to some filing errors in the courts.’”

  Great. Falcons at work.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I groaned. “And, what, they just happened to discover the error now? Or the guy who was supposed to catch it just suddenly realized, ‘oops, my bad guys.’”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, kid,” Roost said. “Or the messenger’s cocksucker, in this case.”

  “This got something to do with the Falcons? It has to. There’s no way it didn’t. World’s greatest coincidence if not.”

  Roost was already nodding as he folded his massive arms over his barrel chest.

  “Informant with the DA’s office says some money ‘might have’ exchanged hands behind closed doors.”

  Wait, why did he… how many guys…

  “Another guy lucky enough to suck your dick?”

  “Nah,” he said, shrugging the question off. “Just a poker buddy.”

  Just? Just a poker buddy?

  “Anyway, he said he thought we might’ve had something to do with that little exchange. Care to guess why?”

  I wiped my face and shook my head. It was obvious to us but not so much to anyone who didn’t live and breathe our club worlds.

  “Stab in the dark:” I said with a groan, knowing full well it wasn’t exactly a dark stab but a rather well-lit one. “They recognized a few former Saviors?”

  “And ‘Bingo’ was his name-o.”

  And because they don’t realize they’ve joined the Falcons, they think that we did this. Well, ain’t that just a fucking delight.

  “So the Falcons sprang Eve’s brother,” I said what we’d already established aloud, testing the sound of it and deciding I really didn’t like it. I shook my head, confused. “Why on earth would they do that? It’s not like Eve and him were on the best of terms, and they never would have assumed I knew a goddamn thing about the prick.”

  “See, I was thinking the same thing,” Roost said. “And it got me thinking. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Chuck had outright paid off all his debts, right? Would it be fair to say that the Falcons would no longer be gunning for him?”

  “Presumably, sure,” I said, nodding. “That wouldn’t prevent them from killing him out of spite, but they wouldn’t waste resources chasing him.”

  He mirrored my nod with one of his own. We both knew all too well that contracts and debts to the Falcons were mere suggestions; it took someone of great power or stature to hold them accountable, and being accountable to them was more of a life sentence than a temporary payment plan.

  “Right. Now let’s say that Chuck had only sort of paid off his debts, what then? Consider this: Chuck’s dug himself in deep with the Falcons, an’ now he’s bein’ hauled off to the pig pen. Shit’s bad in there, sure, but it’s a lot worse out here, where the Crew is, an’ it could be downright fatal in there if he doesn’t do something to take the boot off his neck. So what if he made them some sort of offer? What if he gave them, not money—not exactly—but the means to make it? It’d take a lot of that heat off of him, wouldn’t it?”

  My frown deepened into a scowl. Chuck probably knew that Eve would come to him if asked, if pressed… and even though Eve would have known of it, too, she wouldn’t have had the guts to tell him to fuck off without ever seeing him again. Roost nodded, seeing I was catching on, even if I hated it.

  “So you think that Chuck got out in order to give the Black Falcons Eve back? That he’s out there trying to get her back to cover his own ass? Doesn’t fucking surprise me, but Jesus.”

  “Which makes more sense?” Roost offered with a groan. “That that’s the case? Or that Chuck managed to slip free on a legit technicality, decided to stick around, and has just randomly decided to fuck with ya two jus’ for fun?”

  Anyone that hadn’t gotten their skull bashed in before or didn’t have a vested interest in lying could clearly see what the answer was to my quandary. Chuck literally had no reason to stick around here, especially with me eager to teach him more lessons, unless he had someone who was even more willing and eager to teach him lessons if he failed to comply.

  Yep, Chuck was here to get Eve back to the Falcons. Which meant he was as much my enemy as Rock and any of the traitors who had left the Saviors, whether in the past few years or the past few days.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Fuck,” Roost agreed.

  I sat down on the couch that waited along the side wall for just this sort of “I need to sit down” moment. My vision blacked out as I dropped my face into my hands. I violently rubbed eyes with the heels of my palms, finding the hot pain exquisite.

  “How in the hell can someone hate their little sister like he does so much,” I mused, more out of frustration than anything else. “What is it that makes someone sell their little sister into a life of prostitution and crime? What is it that turns someone like him into such a psychopath? I mean, Dustin and I had some pretty serious fights, and Dad had to whup our asses, but I don’t think anyone ever thought of turning the other in to the police or anything like that. It’s just…”

  “Fucked up, yep,” Roost said. “Family can be the worst kinda war at times. Couldn’t tell ya why, Derek. Can just tell ya what is, as fucked up as it all is.”

  I shook my head as the anger began to build even more, back to the point where I was losing control of myself.

  It wasn’t that Chuck was a threat to me or to the club. That was an idea that didn’t even merit a laugh it was so ridiculous. It was that Chuck, sheerly by being born from the same mother as Eve, had a psychological control over her that no one else did. If Chuck so much as had the last name Keller instead of Kellerman, he’d be a random John that Eve could ignore.
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  But damnit, Eve had just had a weakness for family. She couldn’t refuse him. Even if she had sounded stronger and more defiant about hanging with him in our most recent conversations, I knew she couldn’t avoid him forever.

  “Fucking hell!”

  Roost watched all this, sympathetic but passive as he waited through my outburst.

  It made perfect sense: send Chuck to collect. Either he managed and the Falcons had regained their asset without having to spend any of their own time or money to do it, or they finally got to drop another name from their books six feet under.

  And then they’d start investing their own time and money to regaining their asset, to getting Eve back.

  Desperation.

  The name of the game was “Desperation.”

  The Falcons were desperate. Chuck was desperate.

  And now I was desperate.

  I was desperate to kill Chuck before he so much as laid eyes on Eve again. I was desperate to find more meth labs to blow up on the Falcons’ side. I was more desperate to help Tara get her brothel ring set up so I could siphon off girls from the Falcons. I was desperate to protect Eve.

  And when I became desperate… I became emotional.

  And when I became emotional… those same demons who had driven me to drink, drive recklessly, and make an ass of myself at my deceased wife’s grave returned. When we aligned in our goals, we could become a truly unstoppable monster that anyone with the insignia of the Black Falcons would shit their pants upon seeing.

  But—

  “Stop those thoughts right there,” Roost said.

  I was surprised to see that he was standing over me, his hands on my shoulders.

  “Stop?” I croaked, not realizing that perhaps I was a little more obvious than I had anticipated.

  “I can tell what ye’re thinkin,’” Roost said, squeezing my shoulders tighter. “This ain’t yer fault and neither was Maggie’s death. Ya gotta stop blamin’ yerself.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking.

  But both trains of thoughts do tug at my emotions and do make me feel a little sick. Both make me think about the possibility of failure. Both… both can get me in that state…

  “And if I fail again?” I said.

  I was trying desperately to calm down, but perhaps that very desperation was what was driving me insane, making it too difficult for me to do much of anything but start to go all Hulk in my mind.

  “Ya didn’t fail nobody, Derek,” Roost said, shaking me slightly. “Get that through that thick skull o’ yers. Ain’t nobody blamin’ ya fer what happened.”

  Goddamn. Roost could be such a psychologist sometime.

  But he was wrong. And he was too late.

  “Nobody is left to,” I said, shooting him a glare. “Except me. And I blame myself every day for the deaths of my family.”

  “Ya think this is what Eve needs?” Roost asked.

  I stopped.

  Somehow, it had taken that to shake me out of my emotional stupor.

  “It’ll be alright, ye’ll see,” Roost said, patting my back. “Ya just have to keep it together a little longer. Then, ya two can be happily ever after.”

  “You getting sentimental on me now?” I asked, feeling a halfhearted smile on my face.

  He really does know how to treat my moods. No exaggeration to call him a therapist of sorts.

  “When the time calls fer it.”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. It didn’t seem fair.

  I finally felt that I was on the right track. That the Savages were doing what they could with the Black Falcons. That Eve and I were back together. Things had seemed so good again.

  Then everything came crashing down. The realization of why Chuck had come out perhaps should not have been surprising in retrospect, but that didn’t make the impact of hearing it any less stronger. It was like upon hearing the man who had killed my wife and his background—I already knew that he’d killed my wife, but hearing all of the details had a cruel way of making it all seem real all over again.

  I had to stop Chuck. Had to find him no matter the cost.

  And I had to kill him.

  “What ya plannin’ there, Derek?” Roost said. “Take it ya plannin’ on somethin’ for yer dear friend Chuck?”

  I nodded. Like there was anything else that mattered.

  “An’ what about the Falcons?”

  OK, maybe one other thing that matters.

  I frowned and looked down.

  “I’m not sure,” I confessed, shaking my head. “But I know we’ll never survive a full-on war against them. The Falcons have got weapons and numbers—a lot of those numbers coming from our own, no less—and a direct attack would almost certainly ensure their win.”

  “Those are facts,” Roost agreed.

  I sighed and leaned back.

  “But the Falcons are cowards. From the highest to the lowest. They were created by cowards, and they’ve only ever grown by scaring others into joining. They’re a pirated ship manned by not a single member who’d be willing to go down with the vessel should it start to sink.”

  “Those are also facts,” Roost said, nodding.

  “So… how best to get a ship like that sinking?” I mused aloud.

  “Ship’s already sinkin,’” Roost pointed out. “That’s why they’re scramblin’ like mad to patch ‘er up. Ya landed such a blow when ya killed Rock, ya know.”

  “True, true,” I said, and while that was reassuring to hear, it didn’t really give me any new insights. “In the meantime, I was hoping you might get a few of your sources banded together to track down—”

  My phone chimed, and I paused to glance at the notification:

  FROM: UNKNOWN NUMBER

  Scowling at this, I opened the message, already beginning to shake with rage. It may have been unknown to my phone, but I knew damn well who it was. As I read the message, that only confirmed it:

  cornr of church

  an lyle. 10 mins.

  dont dispoint me

  boy toy

  I growled and shook my head. You’d think a manipulative little turd like that would learn how to spell, I thought, resisting the urge to take out my rage on my phone. But that only meant I had a whole lot more rage built up in me for that little shit.

  “Everythin’ okay?” Roost asked. “Ya sorta checked-out jus’ then. Eve send ya a dirty picture or somethin’?”

  “Cancel that last order,” I said authoritatively, starting for the door. “I know where he is. And I’m going to kill that bitch.”

  “What? What’chu talk—No!” Roost was following after me now. “Don’t tell me that weasely li’l rat-fuck…?”

  I interrupted him with a nod.

  “He wants to meet,” I said, offering a venomous grin over my shoulder. “Same way as before—same place even.”

  “That’s one dumb motherfucker,” Roost whispered, sounding almost sympathetic.

  “Sounds like the perfect candidate to be taught a lesson. We’ll worry about the Black Falcons later. First I’m gonna—”

  “Waste a bunch of time talkin’ when ya should be on yer bike an’ haulin’ ass out to kick his?” Roost challenged. “Boy, if ya don’t get out there and lay boot heels to that fag-fuck’s butthole I’m’a lay boot heels to yers! I’ll be right behind, givin’ ya cover like last time!”

  “Good!” I shouted over the noise to my bike.

  As I ran out of the shop and threw my legs back onto the chopper, I noticed the rain had started while I’d been inside. It splattered my face as I sped down the highway, working to keep a steady speed going without hydroplaning off the road. You know that promise I’d made to be a better driver and not speed as much?

  About the only reason I didn’t break that promise now was because of the obvious realization that it would take not just a suicidal wish but a strong suicidal drive to actually speed with the road conditions.

  I narrowed my eyes, fighting to see pas
t the sting of the rain as it slapped my face. I had worn the helmet I had usually reserved for Eve, but even with the helmet, my eyes weren’t completely safe from the rain. I continued forward, driving faster and feeling the tires threaten to lose traction of the roads. That suicidal wish had evolved into a murderous one, and it wouldn’t get quelled until one single person was dead—one Chuck Kellerman.

  I continued down the highway, desperate to end this all. I hated how trapped I felt as I continued to drive down the highway at a slower pace. I wanted desperately to drive faster. To end all of this now!

  “Damnit!” I roared over my engine, continuing forward.

  I knew that if anyone saw me right now, they’d think I was crazy. They wouldn’t be wrong, to be fair.

  I was crazy.

  Crazy to get to Chuck and end this once and for all.

  Crazy to make sure Eve was safe and in my arms again.

  But who could blame me? It was a crazy world, to be fair.

  The exit for downtown finally came and I took it, crying out as the bike nearly slid right out from under me. At the last second, the bike managed to find its grip again and I held on tight, maneuvering the best I could as I prayed that the bike didn’t hydroplane again.

  It didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was my guardian angel or my crusading devil on my shoulder that had helped me at that moment, but it certainly had seemed like divine intervention that had helped me.

  I got to the corner just ten minutes later. I cursed at this fact, but decided it likely didn’t matter in the long run. I looked around and then down at my phone, unsure if I was expecting to suddenly notice some unseen detail in the first message or if I was expecting to see a new message waiting.

  In either case, there was nothing there to see. Looking back out, I squinted through the rain, wondering if he was standing somewhere else. I needed him to be there. Needed to end this all.

  But—

  At the last second, I heard footsteps coming my way.

  Thanks to my training, I had turned in a fighting position, ready to crank a nasty cross with my right fist if needed. And it was a damn good thing, too, because if I had messed anything up in that process, I would have gotten knifed by Chuck.