I watched as the guys looked at each other.
“Straight patch over?” Rogue asked. “I'm to fucking old for that prospect bullshit.”
I laughed. “Made sure of that, Brother, I said the same damn thing.”
“1%'er club?” Hatchet asked.
“Yeah, it is.”
Slade queried, “Wouldn't we be walking right back into the same problems?”
“No, Son, made sure of that too. They aren't into any illegal businesses. They just don't always wait for the law to take care of problems.”
“Can you tell us a little about them?” Screw asked as he cleaned on one of the bike frames.
“That I can do. They are out of Arkansas. There are twenty-three patched members and two prospects. Their Clubhouse sits on a compound of a hundred acres. All the land that abuts it is privately owned by some of the members. They have a garage and a construction company, both club owned. Most of the men work there. The Clubhouse is massive, upstairs it has over forty individual rooms with their own bathroom for the members and ten rooms for officers and anyone visiting the MC. There is pretty much anything you can think of to do there. And for you single men, there are four club girls.”
“Nice,” Cotton said. Hatchet popped him in the back of the head.
“What? Admit it. You like the idea too.”
Hatchet glared at him, “You're always thinking with your fucking dick.”
“I'm a man, aren't I?”
“That's fucking debatable at times, Cotton. You act more like a perverted teenager.” Hatchet stated.
“Sue me. I like sex and lots of it.”
I sat there shaking my head. Damn kids still had a lot of growing up to do, some not as much as others, thank goodness.
“For those that need or want it,” I ignored Cotton and continued on, “Most of the married men live on the compound. They have a nice housing set up situation.”
“Fuck, that's sweet.” Rogue murmured. “That will help out with the Old Lady for sure.”
“What about mine, Slade and Screw's situation?” Hatchet asked.
“Pretty sure, we could get you a house there as well.”
“That would be fucking awesome,” Hatchet stated.
“Agreed,” Screw commented. “Although, Mom is talking about living with Rogue and Aunt Liz. If she does that, then I’d live in the Clubhouse.”
Slade spoke up next, “Yeah, it would be nice to have somewhere comfortable for Mom as long as she’s still here. But after she’s gone, I will move into the Clubhouse.”
“I'm sure we can get the housing squared away. The Prez's name is Mad Dog. He's a good man.'
Rogue pulled out his pocketknife to clean his nails, still his go to when he was thinking.
“How did you find them, Vip,” Rogue asked as he continued pulling the tip of the blade under his fingernails.
I chuckled, “By way of Reb and Pred. Mad Dog's son is in the same unit as they are. The boys have been going out there and visiting with them for the last two years. I went out there in June, and let me tell you, I was impressed as hell. The whole compound was like a resort. But what I liked more than anything, were the men. The atmosphere between them was unreal. It was a true brotherhood.”
“How the fuck can they afford all that if they aren’t running anything illegal?”
“They can support it with just the businesses, that being said, when Mad Dog's old man was Prez, he bought stock in a local company that made it big, and those stocks made the club quite a bit of money the way I understand it.”
“That's fucking sweet.” Slade said as the other guys murmured in agreement.
“What's the catch? There's got to be one, this sounds too good to be true,” Hatchet said.
“Felt the same way, Brother, but it's on the up and up.”
“Well fucking sign me up,” he said.
Everyone else agreed as well.
“Okay, the boys get out in about three months. Give us another month after that to make my plan work, then we'll be able to leave. Don't do any packing right now. I don't want anyone to start asking questions. Understand?”
Every head nodded.
“Good. Now, let's work on these bikes.”
And like the Harley lovers we were, we loved working on our bikes. The rest of the day was spent rebuilding engines, cleaning frames and enjoying brotherhood.
~***~
Chapter 14
Adversity toughens manhood, and the characteristic of the good or the great man is not that he has been exempt from the evils of life, but that he has surmounted them.
~Patrick Henry~
Rebel
January 24th, 1998
I didn't move when I woke up. After the last four years, I learned to listen and learn what type of situation I might be waking up into. Sometimes that could be the difference between life and death. I felt the movement of the Blazer, heard the whine of the tires, the same movement and sounds that put me to sleep, woke me back up. Without moving, I cracked open my eyes and looked at the man who was driving.
If I can become half the man Pops is, I will consider myself to be a good man. He has virtually given up half his life to make sure my mom and I were safe and taken care of. He did it with a devotion to us that is unlike anything I have seen of another man.
I knew the story of how Mia and Pops talked and decided for him to stay in SoS in order to keep a watch on Mom and later on us boys. Mia had even begged him to make my mom his Old Lady as well. So, I knew she played a major role in keeping us alive. But I also know that once Pops decided to stay in SoS, from that moment on come hell or high water, he was going to do whatever it took to keep us alive.
I'm pretty sure he fell in love with Mom long before he claimed her, but being the type of man he is, he wouldn't have acted on it, because he wouldn't have ever done anything to hurt Mia. Mia's idea for him to claim Mom was fucking brilliant. And if my bastard of a bio father, Devil, hadn't kept all those records of the Brothers actions over the years, the evidence Pops had on him would have been enough for him to have gotten us all out of there long ago.
Pops could have given up and just let Devil keep Spawn and me, I think if he had, Devil would have let Pops leave with his family and Mom, but Pops had known that was a non-issue, because Mom wouldn't ever leave us behind. And besides that, Pops had loved and treated me as his own son ever since I could remember. He'd even tried with Spawn, but Spawn had always been Devil's son, unlike me. Pops gave up having a normal life just to end up with more burdens on him. But I knew if I even hinted that we had been a burden, he'd argue otherwise. So yeah, I have always admired the hell out of him.
Pops proved to me that blood doesn’t make you family, love does, and that he would always be there for me for absolutely anything. He has proven that time and again over the years, and I am so fucking grateful to have him as my old man that there aren't enough words to express my feelings for him.
My childhood might not have been a conventional one, but it was pretty fucking awesome to have two moms, Pred as my brother and best friend, four other little brothers and a spitfire for a little sister, and the best fucking dad that any boy could ever have. We had wanted for nothing, our house was always filled with laughter, loud noise and so much fucking love, I could have happily drowned in it. I may be twenty-three now, but I will always need my family, especially my dad, Pops.
I think back on all the stupid ideas and decisions Pred and I had when we were younger; but none was as bad as the one we made when Pred and I were seventeen. We were so fucking young and naive. We thought we knew it all and decided to prospect for the club. Even knowing he'd have to go up against Devil because of the agreement he'd made years ago with him, Pops had still tried his best to convince us not to prospect. He tried to tell us how it would be, that being a Brother of SoS wasn't worth all the risks, especially with all the shit the club was into or the shit we would see. We never realized how much Pops managed to keep from us about the MC, but
we learned the hard way. We didn't listen and prospected. God, how I wished we had listened to him.
Pred and I started our official prospecting the day we turned eighteen. However, he and I thought we had basically been prospecting our whole lives. We knew about the shit jobs that would be given to us, because we thought we had pretty much been doing them most of our lives anyway. We had stars in our eyes about the women we would nail. Sure, we got tail in high school, but we were talking serious pussy once we earned our patch. Women willing to fuck us anytime, anywhere. We were eight-fucking-teen, and the only thing we thought with back then was our dicks and not our brains.
Until we started prospecting, we had never been allowed to come to any of the club parties. Usually prospects weren't allowed to touch a club whore, but Devil encouraged us to. Looking back now, I know he encouraged Pred as much as he did me, because I wouldn't have done anything unless Pred was able to do it too. Devil was trying to make us think becoming a patched member would be fucking great. Pops tried to discourage us and talked until he was blue in the face with arguments against it. He even fought with Devil over allowing us to be with the girls, but in the end, Devil won, much to our delight.
Fuck, we were so god damned fucking stupid. We were teen boys given rein to free pussy. We had blow job after blow job, and we fucked every willing pussy we could. But after a few months of this, the total debauchery of the club started registering with us. We started noticing club whores and some weekend party girls being forced to do things that they didn't want to do. Girls being forced to have orgies, anal sex, being beat during sex, pulling trains, the list was long and macabre.
Yeah some of those girls liked it and that was what they were there for, but not all the club whores liked to do everything. If they tried to say no, they were told they knew where the door was, and for a lot of those girls, they had no other place to go. And while some of the party girls were willing to party hard with a biker, most were just there to screw a biker and then go tell all their friends what they had done.
The Brothers were told not to force hard core sex with outsiders, Devil didn't want the law to look at them any harder than they already were. It shouldn't have ever been an issue, because there were enough girls willing to do anything and everything. But fucking Spawn made sure it became an issue. He had moved in with Devil when he was nine, much to Mom's dismay, and Devil had encouraged Spawn to become as twisted as he was. While Pred and I were raised that if a girl said no, it meant no and to back off. Spawn was taught pretty much the opposite.
The closer it got to patch in time, the more uncertain we were about patching in. But instead of listening to our guts telling us not to patch in, we did it anyway. And that night turned into a night that fucking nightmares are made of. Fuck, if only we had never patched in, maybe it wouldn't have ever happened, but that's something I'll never know.
I'm so fucking thankful that Pops has the ability to work out complicated situations fast and come up with a plan for whatever the problem might be. He saved our lives four years ago by being able to do so, because I'm pretty sure we'd have been killed when we tried to kill half the Brothers in the MC. Spawn set it all up just because he wanted to torment Pred and me, may God damn his black soul. What happened will always haunt me, Pred as well, and I will always live with the regret that I was still too much of a kid to figure out a way to have helped Elle.
~*~
1993
Despite our misgivings, Pred and I were excited, we just received our patches and it was time to party. I drank beer after beer, then graduated to boilermakers, before long I was shit faced drunk. I made my way to the bathroom where I promptly puked up everything I had consumed, plus I'm pretty sure the lining of my esophagus and my stomach. I got up off the floor, washed my face, drank some water from the faucet, which I promptly puked back up, and started the scenario over again, this time though I only drank a small amount of water.
I leaned against the bathroom wall, trying to determine if I was through puking or not. I had somehow lost track of Pred somewhere. It was easy to do, I had people pushing drinks at me left and right, and the music was so fucking loud that I could barely hear when anyone tried talking to me, and trying to think was gone many drinks ago. I waited for what I thought was about five minutes, then took another drink of water from the faucet.
I fucking hated being drunk, it bothered the hell out of me not to be in control of my body and actions. Why the hell I had let myself drink so much, I didn't know. Yeah, I was excited, but that wasn't a good enough excuse. I knew better. Pops preached to Pred and me to never let ourselves get so drunk that we would be useless to anyone if something happened, and up until tonight, that was pretty much what I practiced. After what I thought was about fifteen minutes, I decided to go find Pred.
I made my way back to the main room in the Clubhouse and started looking for him. Brothers were having sex, or getting sucked off, all over the damn room. That shit didn't bother me though. I saw a group of Brothers surrounding a table. I walked over to see what was going on and then wished to god I hadn't. They had a girl laying naked on her side on the edge of a table with her lower body barely on it, one leg hung down while a Brother held the other one straight up, he was fucking her pussy while Spawn was fucking her ass, another Brother had his dick shoved in her mouth and was fucking her face. The girl's face was swollen from hits and tears were running down it, her body had red marks and bite marks all up and down it from where she had been hit and bitten. As I looked into her dull almost lifeless eyes, I realized it was Elle, a girl Pred secretly had a crush on, she was also the big sister to Jemma's best friend.
Horror filled me and I looked wildly around for Pops. I started searching everywhere and ran outside to see if he was there. His bike was gone, so I ran back inside. Other than Spawn, different Brothers were taking a turn on her now. I looked around for someone to help me try to get her away from them, but all the Brothers that I trusted to do that weren't in the room. Most of them left when the party started getting wild.
Looking back at the table, I could feel vomit coming up my throat and I ran out back to a shed behind the club where I started puking again. After I finished, I leaned back and screamed in rage, pain and fury. I couldn't help her. If I tried, I knew the Brothers would kill me. Once I quit screaming, I heard a sound and looked down. Pred was sitting on his ass with his arms wrapped around his legs and his face was buried into his knees. He was sobbing. The pain in his cries tore a hole in my heart.
I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around him, he leaned back, and his face was a mass of bruises.
“I tried to stop them, I tried Reb, I tried, but they started beating me. Somehow, I managed to get away. I've looked everywhere for Pops and can't find him. I can't find my phone so I can call him. He'd stop them, I know he would.” His words were filled with an anguish so deep it went clear to his soul.
“I couldn't find him either Pred. His bike isn't out front. Something must have happened. He wouldn't have left us here alone at the party.”
I reached into my pants and found my phone. I tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail. I thought about calling our moms but knew they couldn't help me and if I told them I was hunting for Pops they would want to know what was wrong and I couldn't tell them. I tried Pops over and over, but each time it went to voicemail. Pred and I sat behind the shed for what had to be at least an hour.
“Come on, Pred. Let's go see if we can get to her now.”
We walked back inside and saw that the main room was mostly cleared out except where people had fallen over drunk or stoned. We walked around hunting Elle and found her in a corner lying naked on the floor. Her eyes were wide open but staring unseeingly. Fuck, it hurt to look at her. At first, I thought she was dead. Pred dropped to his knees by her side. He put his fingers to her neck to check and see if she had a pulse.
“She's breathing but it's faint, Reb. We've got to get her to the hospital.”
; I pulled my t-shirt off and we managed to get her covered, then Pred picked her up and we walked out front. There was no way we could carry her on a bike, so I started hunting to see if anyone had left their keys in the few cars and trucks that were sitting in the yard. No keys were to be found anywhere. I called Pops again, and thank God, he answered this time.
I was crying as I tried to tell him what had happened.
“Calm down, Reb. I can't understand what you're saying.”
“Pops, Elle was here, and... and Pops they raped her brutally. We have her out front, Pred is holding her, but I can't find any keys to the vehicles here. Pops she needs to go to a hospital.”
“Motherfuck. Reb run back in and go to my office. The key to that old truck around back is hanging on a hook behind the door. Bring her to the house.”
“Alright, Pops.”
I hung up the phone, told Pred I'd be right back and hauled ass back into the Clubhouse and Pops' office. Once I got the key, I ran out back and started the truck and pulled it around front. I got out and helped Pred get in the truck with her. He wouldn't let go of her, he just held her tight to him and was whispering words of comfort to her. I flew like a bat out of hell out of there and all the way home. Pops was waiting for us outside when we got there.
He ran over to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. Once he saw Elle, he lost it. He hit the side of the truck over and over then screamed in rage.
“I'm so fucking sorry boys, so sorry.” He said once he calmed down. “Pred can you get out holding her?”
Pred stepped out of the truck and Pops said, “Let me have her, Son.”
Pred shook his head.
“I know you're hurting and want to protect her, Son, but I need to get her to the hospital and neither one of you need to go.”
“I'm going,” Pred stated.
“No, Son, you can't. They'd crucify you. Think you did it. Trust me, Son. Let me have her.”
Pred reluctantly gave her to Pops, then Pops laid her gently back down on the truck seat.
Viper (Angel’s Rebellion MC: #1) (Angel's Rebellion MC) Page 18
