Haruka tilts his head towards the boys he’s going to lead and the four of them leave the office.
Ziggy gathers the papers into a pile and continues, “The race—“
The rest of my boys bang their fists against the table as the rumble of their enthusiasm tears at the air.
“We need some fun, right?” I say.
“Aye,” my boys say with one voice.
There will be vodka, whiskey, fights and, of course, the race, a crazy celebration bringing other clubs to our forgotten little town. Bringing money and goods to our little town.
“Ash and Punk will be responsible for the security this year,” I say and they salute me. “Boulder and Blaze as well.”
My sons straighten and widen their eyes at me. It will be their first serious assignment. Boulder, the older one, will be a perfect president when I’m unable to perform my duties while Blaze will be a perfect vice. He’s calmer than his older brother, more like Stanka. Boulder is like me-he’ll be a good leader.
“Grant will keep an eye on our bikes,” I say as the boy salutes me. I rest my palms against the table. “Now, get lost you all. It’s a Friday night. Go get drunk.” I look sternly at all the teens around me. “Only the adults. If I as much as see you...” I don’t need to finish.
I’ve never caught my boys drinking moonshine. They know the rules and obey them. They have good grades at school and respect their peers. I’m proud of them.
Stanka
I wipe the counter with a dampened cloth as Etsuko flashes me a warm smile, sweeping the floor of the bar with the broom. She lost her husband two years ago and she’s been working in the ‘Jilly Jet’ since then. We’re friends. She knows my every secret. Our chats are always a bit weird though. I talk and she listens to me, or sometimes nods. Sometimes she’ll give me a piece of advice. I guess I learnt to be with her in silence. There is a thread of unspoken understanding and respect between us. I call it friendship and I cherish it.
The men pour out of the office and spread out in the bar, taking their seats. Munroe drops onto the bar stool and grins at me.
“The meeting went okay?” I ask.
“As always,” he says, takes my hand and plants a kiss on my knuckles.
I watch Blaze approach the red jukebox, insert a coin and press the yellow button. Elvis Presley’s song fills the air with fever and joy.
I lean towards my husband. “Beer?”
“A dance with my wife?” Munroe strokes my cheek.
He is never embarrassed to show his affection for me in public. I’m his equal and his club know this. My husband respects me and so do his club.
I wave my hand to Etsuko and she replaces me behind the counter. Munroe takes my wrist and guides me to the dance floor. The black and white chequered pattern shines like a mirror. My red skirt overlaying the black petticoat rustles with my each step. The boys whistle and hoot as Munroe tugs me to him, wrapping his arms around me, and we bend. Then he straightens, grips my waist and lifts me off the floor. I jerk my arms down and wrap them around his neck. Munroe lets me slide down and presses his lips against mine, evoking another wave of whistles and howls. We sway slowly as other couples join us, twirling around the dance floor. It’s a Friday night, after all. I tear my lips off my husband’s, and I see my sons and Grant sneaking out of the bar out of the corner of my eye.
Munroe hooks the back of my neck with his hand and slams his lips on mine. I suspect he made a difficult decision during the meeting. He wants to shake it off. I know that dark glance of his so well. I slide my hands under his leather jacket and run them up and down his back. Munroe growls into my ear.
“You need a walk, princess.” He nibbles on my earlobe then bites my neck lightly.
“A walk?” I tease him.
“A walk.” He grabs my hand and rushes towards the exit, pulling me behind.
We move across the veranda and down the stairs then towards the back of the ‘Jilly Jet’ where his bike is parked. He’s kept this German motorcycle that carried us through Europe for all these years.
The night is surprisingly warm as stars twinkle in the cloudless black sky.
Munroe settles himself on his bike and helps me onto his lap.
“That was a very short walk,” I say.
Munroe sinks his fingers into my hair and undoes my low bun.
“Your hair is beautiful,” he says, untangling my long tendrils. “Have I told you that already?”
He has. Not once, many times. He says it every evening, in fact.
I wiggle out of my panties, tossing them onto the ground, and unbutton his trousers, exposing his hard cock. Then I lift my hips and impale myself onto his length. His face sharpens and he rests his forehead against mine.
“Men stare at you, Stanka,” Munroe says in a menacing voice.
“Oh really? I haven’t noticed.”
“You little liar. You know very well how beautiful you are.” He gathers the fabric of my blouse and rips the front open then lowers my bra. “But you’re mine. Mine. Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours.”
“Mine,” he repeats and sinks his face between my breasts, heating my skin up with his kisses.
I know he’s aged. I know there are handsome young men around me. I know my origins could give me a good position in society and a lot of money.
Yet, I only notice my husband. He’s everything to me-the love of my life, my breath, my heartbeat. My happiness.
I kiss his unshaven cheek. “I love you.” My mouth touches his neck as I sink my fingers into his short grey hair. I bite his earlobe and swirl my tongue around it. “I love your big stiff cock.”
Munroe growls. “So, ride me, princess.”
I kiss his lips and ride him until he trembles and growls his satisfaction into my mouth.
Chapter 15
Stanka
We correct our clothes and walk back into the bar, holding hands. As we immerse ourselves into the murmur of rough male voices, my eyes travel to one of the tables. Three people are sitting around it, a woman, a man, and a boy about eight years old. The man locks his green eyes onto mine and my knees bend. I sigh as a whirl of white sparks fills my mind for a moment. My husband hooks me under the arms with his hands and steadies me.
“Princess,” he says in a sharp voice.
I raise my trembling hand and point my fingers to the family staring at me as though I’m a ghost.
“Sasha,” I whisper.
“What?” Munroe asks.
“Sasha, my brother,” I say as my voice falters and I can’t articulate more words even though they tumble in my throat.
The man who looks like an older, slimmer version of my brother rises to his feet and staggers towards me, his face white, eyes burning. A familiar smile raises the corners of his mouth.
An eerie silence layers the bar. Time stops. People stop moving. Only that man drifts closer and closer to me.
“Stanka Natalia Tesarik?” the man asks and I recognise the husky tinge of his voice.
I pull forward, all the emotions tumbling in my chest and threatening to rip it apart.
I don’t know how and why, but this man standing opposite me, pulling me into his arms is my brother.
“Is it a dream?” I murmur. “Am I dreaming?”
“No,” the man says. “I’ve found you, little bird. I’ve found you at last.”
If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up, but his embrace feels real. Strong and warm like I remember.
My body shakes as tears blind me.
Munroe
They’re so much alike that I have no doubt he’s her brother. The hell he’s gone through is chiselled on his face in the wrinkles under his eyes and the lines around his mouth. He looks old and young at the same time like his ordeal has aged his soul and marked him. He is like me. I can sense him. I know the true meaning of the lines on his face.
Strength and stubbornness radiate from him, mingling with the sadness and grief over the death he�
�s seen in life. He’s carrying this bag of experience like me, finding peace between his woman’s thighs. I know that woman at the table is his in the same way Stanka is mine.
“Let’s sit,” I say, afraid that my wife will collapse at any moment.
“It’s Sasha,” she says in a barely audible voice as I grip her elbows and lead her to Sasha’s table.
The woman with black hair rises to her feet and strokes Stanka’s arm.
“Alma,” Stanka whispers with her white lips.
We sit around the table and Sasha kisses my wife’s head.
“What?” Stanka stutters. “How?”
“It’s a long story, sister,” Sasha says.
“The partisans said you’d been shot dead,” Stanka says as Etsuko delivers food and drinks and takes Sasha’s boy to give him some sweets by the counter so we have more privacy to talk.
My employee is a smart woman. She’s quiet, but always knows what to do, invisible yet efficient like an ant.
“I was shot,” Sasha says. “Then I woke up on a pile of corpses.”
Stanka covers her mouth with her palm and freezes like an ice sculpture. I want to hide her in my embrace, but stifle that urge so she can listen to her brother’s story without any interruptions.
“Two young German soldiers were throwing soil into the grave and they noticed me wake up,” Sasha continues. “They wanted to shoot me, but somehow changed their mind and let me go. I was wandering in the woods, lost and sick. A peasant found me and took me to his house. I was teetering between life and death for four months. When I recovered, I had no memory. The family took care of me until my memory returned. The war was over, I was in Austria with no chance to return to Slovakia, so I decided to go to Edinburgh. On my way there, I saw my Alma in Vienna.” He turns his head to the woman whose black eyes burn with love for him as her cheeks flush. “We got married on the same night. Our meeting was a miracle. Magic. So we grabbed that happiness and never let it go.” He looks at me and nods. “We reached Edinburgh and visited the Krizs.” He raises his hand and pats my shoulder. “You left that dick, Dalimil, alive, but paralysed. What a piece of scum.”
“That’s even better,” I say as Sasha and I exchange glances. I know we’ll be good friends.
“We stayed in Edinburgh for a year until I found a man called Dave Brown,” Sasha says. “He told me about a gangster and his aristocratic captive then showed me the postcards you sent him from here. I decided to check this track. So here we are, around this table.”
I throw my arm over Stanka’s back. “Smile, princess. You deserve this reunion as hell.” I glance at my brother-in-law. “Where are you staying?”
“In the hotel, fifteen miles from here,” Sasha says.
“No,” I say. “You’re staying in my house. Scotch whiskey?”
Sasha nods. “Scotch whiskey.”
“My own recipe,” I say.
Sasha’s eyes widen and he blinks a few times then nods again.
Etsuko finishes her shift and I ask her to take Sasha’s boy to my place. My club surround us as we talk and get drunk.
I must admit my brother-in-law is a funny dandy. Alma and Stanka are holding hands and staring at us whilst we’re talking about the war.
My wife strokes Alma’s arm. “I don’t want to be rude—“
“I’m sure you’re only curious,” Alma says. “My family is Jewish and Sasha is a Protestant. My father was furious in the beginning. He didn’t speak to us for two years, but now we visit my family twice a year and it’s nice. A bit difficult but nice.”
I slap Sasha’s back. “It could have been worse. I’m a gangster and my wife is a little aristocrat.” My speech is a bit blurry as is my head. “My little wife taught me to read, but I taught her to enjoy life.”
Sasha raises his bottle to me. “Let’s drink. To life.” He’s so drunk I can barely understand him.
The bottle in his hand stirs and the alcohol pours down the front of his shirt so Ziggy delivers another bottle for him.
Blackness cuts me off from reality around midnight and I wake up on the floor in the kitchen of my house. Sasha is lying beside and he’s snoring. Somebody has thrown blankets over us, my wife probably. Thank God, I have her by my side. She’ll be moody the whole day I’m sure. She’ll tell me off. She’ll be shooting murderous glances towards me. But that’s fine.
I inhale deeply and a sense of peace surges through me. Everything is as it should be.
Chapter 16
Boulder
We’re old. Like really old. Dimitri needs a walking stick and I need a wheelchair.
My eyes sweep over the grave of my parents. The gravestone glitters in the dying sun, black granite with the inscriptions worn away by time and storms, but I remember the words ‘Munroe and Stanka, always together’.
“So, it’s over,” I say.
Dimitri, my son’s father-in-law, nods, and inhales his cigar then drops it and tramples it with his foot. “It’s over. So many years... But it’s over now.”
“The kids are happy. All of them.” My eyes travel to the red flare on the horizon.
Icy coldness creeps into the burial ground and a delicate mist slithers above the sandy ground marked by the patches of dry vegetation. A tumbleweed rolls in front of us.
A full circle I can tell. We’re back where everything started.
Dimitri clears his throat and inhales deeply. “Not all of the kids. Shay...” His voice falters and he sniffles like a chick.
I turn my face to him and see a tear trickling down his furrowed cheek. Fucking hell. Very rarely do I see any emotion on his face. I hate these moments. I hate them because I feel sympathy towards that motherfucker in these moments.
I really hate that dick, but I must admit he’s good to all the kids. He loves them all and he loved Shay as though the boy was his grandson.
I feel my throat tighten. “Shay is happy too. He must be happy. There must be something good waiting for us out there in the afterlife.”
Dimitri lights and inhales another cigar then coughs like his lungs are filled with thick glue. “Hope there will be vodka and cigars in the afterlife.” He loosens the collar of his white shirt as the ardent ash from his cigar burns a hole into his black trousers.
“And good company.”
“And good company.” Dimitri curses in Russian and shakes the ash off his thigh.
I look up at the clouds overhead. They’re floating like mauve cushions.
“My mother died in a car crash,” I say as her face flashes through my head. “I was thirty-one then.”
Dimitri looks at me with interest.
“My father shot himself dead on the same night,” I continue. “He didn’t want to live without her.”
“They are together. A very fucking creepy happily ever after, but they’re together. It’s all that matters.”
I nod. “Always together. My mother was much younger than my father was. He looked really old compared to her, but she loved every furrow on his face, every grey streak in his hair. She respected him so much. He was her wisdom and peace.”
“She was a true old lady.”
“She was indeed. And a very educated old lady. You can’t say the same about us.” I chuckle.
My mother tried really hard to make civilised individuals of her sons, but didn’t succeed I guess. My father taught us to steal, drink vodka, and run the garage and bar he owned. He taught us to love bikes and our club.
Dimitri’s eyes wander off to somewhere in the distance for an instant. “If Rey dies first, I’ll shoot myself dead too.”
“I can pull the trigger.”
“I hope you can help me in that matter. You’re my friend. I’d do the same for you.”
Fucking hell. He’s really old. Rusty and soft.
“So, we have a deal?” I ask.
“Da, we have a deal.” He extends his arm towards me and we shake hands. “Vodka?”
“Bourbon?”
“I hate bourbon.”<
br />
“I hate vodka. Beer?”
“Beer and our beautiful women.”
“Amanda is complaining more and more about her joints.” It just pours out of me.
What an old pussy I am. I’m sitting here, beside that Russian Mafioso, and I am complaining like a chick.
“My grandmother left me her book with some herbal recipes,” Dimitri says. “Some of them are very good for painful joints.”
I nod at him. “Thank you.”
“Tyler needs a wife.” Dimitri changes the topic abruptly and crushes the cigar under his foot.
“Yes, he really needs a tough woman by his side. He’s fucked every pretty chick in the world but none of them was good enough to keep them for longer.”
“Aphrodite needs a husband.”
“Aphrodite will surprise us all. You will see, Dimitri. She’s like Jax.”
“Something concerns her but she doesn’t want to talk to me. All the kids talk to me about everything and she doesn’t.” Resentment coats his voice.
The dick really cares for every kid in the family.
“It will be alright,” I say.
“I will make sure it will be alright.”
I know he will. He’s prying, rude and adored by all his grandchildren. He’s the roots of the family as are Blaze and I.
“Mike and his boy,” I start.
Fury darkens Dimitri’s glance. “Da, Mike and his boy. I should have taken my machete off the wall and chopped Mike’s head off. That suka, Lizzie...“ A coughing fit stops his monologue for a minute. He takes a wheezy breath as tears roll down his cheeks. “Mike should have put a bullet into her skull as planned. He spared that suka’s life and she hid the fact that she was pregnant with him.” Another coughing fit interrupts his outburst.
Mike was supposed to clean the problem called ‘Lizzie, the maid’ for the club many years ago. But Lizzie was so desperate to survive she rubbed and rubbed her body against Mike’s until Mike stopped thinking with his brain and started thinking with his dick. A typical scenario.
Mike sold her to the Devil’s Tears MC and almost fucked his whole life. The vice president of that club claimed Lizzie and she had a happy life until she died of breast cancer. Thunder, her old man, raised Rebel, her son, as his son, unaware that the boy was in fact Mike’s son. The bitch spilled the beans just before letting out her final breath.
Munroe and Stanka_The Beginning Page 11
