Like me, he had the reaper sewn to the back of his leather cut, but where mine married me to the road his tied him to Brooklyn, New York. I had heard the stories floating around about his club. Heard the Brooklyn chapter was on the balls of their ass and this poor bastard was hunting for new blood to join their dying breed.
Silently we danced with our demons and shared the bottle of whiskey. He didn’t share his troubles with me nor did I. We were just two brothers sitting in hell until he broke the silence.
“You ever want to make something right?” he slurred.
Every fucking day of my life.
“That’s all I wanted, but now I gotta go back to my brothers with my dick in my hand and tell them I fucking failed them,” he continued, downing the last of the whiskey.
Slamming the empty glass down, he casts his beady eyes on me.
“I gotta hand them their death certificates and show them where to sign,” he rasped, shaking his head in pure disgust. “Couldn’t even get one brother to come back with me.”
I allow him to ramble on without interruption as I pull a bud of weed from my cut and begin crumbling it between my fingers.
“I can’t say I blame them, and if you repeat a word of this shit to anyone I will cut your tongue right out of your mouth. The truth of the matter is…anyone willing to follow me back to Brooklyn would have to be a sick fuck. A brother who ain’t afraid of death, a brother who ain’t got shit left in this world. You know where I can find a sucker like that?”
“Yeah, you’re fucking looking at him,” I told him as I brought the joint between my lips and flicked my zippo.
I wasn’t serious—not really, but something flickered in his eyes…hope. It was something lost to me, yet I appreciated seeing it in someone else. After seeking revenge for years and always falling short of my ultimate goal, I finally gave up. Laying the driving force of my existence to rest, I surrendered and declared my enemy the winner.
Yankovich won.
With a handshake I signed my death certificate and followed the lunatic back to his dying club, and the place where everything I ever loved I lost…back to my hometown.
I cut the nomad patch from the worn leather of my vest, replaced it with one that read Brooklyn, and as I vowed to have the backs of my new brothers I learned that the crazy fuck, Wolf, had played me.
I wasn’t the lone ranger stupid enough to help these fuckers in their time of need.
There were three more assholes just like me that bought the bullshit Wolf fed them. Three former nomads who traded their patch for Brooklyn and a chance to call the Dog Pound home and Jack Parrish their president.
Assholes.
Fucking assholes we were.
Yeah, I wanted to kill the fucker for playing me, but now months later all I want to do is thank him. I might not get the fucking chance because he’s fighting for his life and I’m standing in the emergency room holding a pair of red shoes that belong to my brother Pipe’s dead wife.
Choices.
They’re not always ours to make and the ones that aren’t are usually the ones that kill us.
None of us chose to be here today. Today we should be at our clubhouse celebrating Jack and Reina’s marriage, not occupying a hospital deciding if Wolf should have a DNR or if Linc should have a risky surgery that might leave him paralyzed. Reina should be crying tears of joy not ones of fear as she fights to keep her baby safely inside of her. Jack should be listening to his new bride’s laughter and not wondering if he’ll ever hear her voice again.
Pipe should be teasing his wife instead of standing alongside the black body bag that holds her decapitated body.
And I sure as shit shouldn’t be covered in her blood carrying her shoes.
But the choice wasn’t ours to make.
A man with a fucking bomb strapped to his body walked into our home, disrupted Jack’s wedding before he could make Reina his wife, and robbed us of our choice. For some he stole their lives and for all he stole hope.
Hope.
Right there in the pair of brown eyes staring back at me.
Eyes I’ve been trying to avoid since I got back to Brooklyn.
Eyes that belong to Celeste.
History isn’t supposed to repeat itself, but tell that to fate.
The hope diminishes as her gaze sweeps over me, spotting the blood covering my clothes and the shoes in my hands. When she finally looks back at me all I see is horror, but it quickly fades into realization.
I’m not the guy she used to love and she’s fully aware that the man standing before her, painted in another woman’s blood, is the man she despises most—Cobra.
“Sir, you can’t come with us,” the paramedic tells Pipe as he brings the stretcher carrying his wife to a stop.
I peel my eyes away from Celeste and turn to my brother, watching as he lifts his bloodshot eyes and pins them to the paramedic denying him.
“The fuck I can’t,” he sneers.
Choices.
They keep taking them from us.
“We’re sorry for your loss, sir, but you’re not allowed in the morgue,” the officer behind us intervenes.
Pipe’s whole body shakes as he grabs choice by the balls. His grip loosens on the rail of the stretcher and reluctantly he takes a step back. The shit thing about choices is, the ones we get to make are the hard ones, the ones that fuck us up—like choosing when to let go.
Deciding he doesn’t want to let go of his wife he reaches for her again, but they quickly drag the stretcher away from him out of his reach.
With his broken heart on his sleeve, he reaches for the shoes and takes them out of my hands. Cradling them like they’re all he has left, he turns around and starts for the automatic doors. There is no question, no hesitation as I turn and follow him.
I may be one of the new guys, but I’ve been around these men long enough to know the driving force behind each of them is their heart. It’s what pushes them day after day. It’s why they wake up and fight for the brotherhood they believe in. Pipe’s heart is now in a bag on the way to the morgue and it’s that brotherhood he blames for putting her there.
Deuce, another former nomad, follows Pipe alongside me until we’re standing in the parking lot of the hospital with nowhere to go. We followed the ambulance in the back of the patrol car, and since our whole fucking compound blew to smithereens, none of us have a means of transportation.
No bikes.
No cars.
Nothing but the clothes on our backs.
Deuce elbows me demanding my attention, but I’m too busy staring at the reaper on Pipe’s back, silently vowing to do whatever it takes to grant this man the peace he deserves.
I don’t know how to console him and won’t pretend like I do.
All I know is revenge and I will deliver it to Pipe.
It’s my solemn promise to my brother.
I watch as he drops to his knees on the asphalt and releases a soul-wrenching scream that echoes through the parking lot. The shoes fall to the floor beside him as he lifts his hands to his face and cries.
“It should be me,” he shrieks.
Guilt.
I know that shit too.
Guilt and revenge go hand in hand.
I hesitate for a moment, knowing he wants nothing more than to be by himself, to crawl into a hole and forget the world we live in—well, aside from wanting to see his wife again. He wants to hold her, cherish her and a chance to say goodbye to her. But his choice has been stolen from him, leaving him hollow.
He’s angry.
He wants a face to blame, a name—a fucking body to put in the dirt in place of his wife’s.
I step around him, crouching down so I am level with his eyes and I place my hand on his shoulder.
“Pipe,” I call.
He drops his hands, snaps his gaze back to me and the words I was about to say are lost on my tongue.
“Get the fuck away from me, boy,” he hisses.
“I’m not leaving you like thi
s,” I retort. “Tell me what to do, brother…tell me what you need and I’ve got you. You need to forget, pick your poison and I’ll move Heaven and Hell to get it for you. You need to hit something, I’m right here, take your best fucking shot, brother—”
My words are cut short when he fists my shirt and pulls me forward. I fall on my knees as he releases his hold on my shirt, smacks me across the face and clutches my head in his hands, forcing me to stare back at him.
“You’re no fucking brother of mine,” he sneers. “You’re shit to me. All of you motherfuckers, every last one of you bastards wearing that fucking cut are dead to me,” he continues, tightening his grip on my face as he glares at me. “All you fucks worship is that motherfucking reaper, think it makes you a man, gives you a fucking purpose. It ain’t shit, boy. It’ll destroy you, take everything good in your life, rob your soul and fuck your conscience six ways to Sunday.”
He roughly releases his hold on me and leans back, diverting his eyes between me and Deuce.
“You fellas made the biggest mistake of your lives taking that patch on your back,” he hisses. “Don’t let Parrish fool you fucks into thinking this is a brotherhood, that this is your family, because it’s not. It ain’t nothing more than an excuse to call yourself an outlaw. I gave my life to this fucking club and what did I get in return?”
He shakes his head as he rises to his feet and stumbles. Deuce reaches out his hand but Pipe quickly brushes it away and straightens his stance, bending down to grab Oksana’s shoes.
“A dead wife, that’s what I got,” he rasps. “A wife who my brothers picked apart any chance they got. You all thought my marriage was a fucking joke, took your jabs whenever you could and now you want to offer me your condolences,” he yells.
His eyes fly back to me, narrowing as he snarls in disgust.
“You want to offer me some drugs thinking I’ll forget the sight of my wife’s head hanging off her neck?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I protest.
“Fuck you. Did I say you could talk?” he roars.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I let him continue on his tangent and take the brunt of his grief. It’s the least I can do for the faithless man before me, questioning his beliefs. None of us Knights have a strong pull to God, but we all have some kind of faith in our club. We believe in brotherhood and the beliefs that founded the Satan’s Knights. Right now I’m standing before a man who is losing the only religion he knows. I haven’t been around these men long, but I’ve seen their respect and loyalty to one another. I’ve seen them take jabs at Pipe’s marriage but never thought for a second it was in harm. I guess we all have our breaking points and being the butt of a joke takes a toll on everyone—even the badass motherfuckers you think can’t break.
“The man upstairs gives us one fucking life and what do we do? We piss it away for the sake of a patch and take an oath to be one percent of the motherfuckers who no one gives a shit about if they live or die. Today you cheated death, and tomorrow you’ll piss on that gift by throwing on that cut, thinking a piece of fucking leather defines you. You want to worship something, give your life some kind of fucking meaning then you find yourself a good woman. Parrish will think you found your heart, and maybe you will. I guarantee you, if you ever think for one second you can have both, you’ll lose your heart because Satan doesn’t let any of his soldiers keep theirs. If you got any smarts left in you, then do yourself a favor and run the fuck away from this hell.”
His grip tightens on the shoes and he glances between me and Deuce one final time before shoving both of us out of his way and walking away. Quickly, I turn around to walk after him but Deuce grabs the back of my cut.
“Just let him go, man,” he argues, pulling me back. “Nothing you say is going to make it better for him. You and I know better than anyone that sometimes a man just needs to wander alone for a bit so he can find himself.”
Yeah, I know all about it.
I know being a wanderer is the death of a man.
Chapter Seven
Age: 26
Place: Brooklyn, New York
It was supposed to be an ordinary day. Like usual, I woke up twenty minutes late, spilled coffee down my shirt and raced around my apartment preparing for my twelve hour shift at the hospital. Of course, I hit every light on my way and by the time I got to the hospital I was twenty minutes late. I hurried to my locker, threw my scrubs on backward and cursed my alarm clock from here to kingdom come. It was my alarm clock’s fault I was late—it shouldn’t have come with a snooze button.
As if my day hadn’t already started off crappy, I learned I was scheduled to work the emergency room. Twelve hours in the emergency room was as close to torture as one could get. Especially with the ridiculous cases I would see—like the man who fell off his roof because he was spying on his neighbors, or the young girl who came in because her tampon went MIA in her vagina. My personal favorite was the wife who didn’t realize her husband was behind her when she was backing out of the driveway and ran him over. There was also the pill seeking junkies that filled the ER. The people who most likely sold the script on the street or threw themselves into oncoming traffic hoping a trip to the hospital would score them a fix.
Yeah, the ER sucked on a regular day, but there was nothing regular about today.
Today was a day full of senseless terror, a day that stole lives and ruined the ones left behind.
The days that change our lives never come with a warning—you never see the chaos coming until it implodes around you. Some people freeze, some pray, and some close their eyes until it’s all over. A nurse doesn’t do that. A nurse forgets her fear as her body switches into autopilot and assists the doctors, making sure every patient gets the care they deserve.
A nurse doesn’t have a full blown panic attack in the emergency room when a bomb goes off twelve blocks away from her job.
I hadn’t had the chance to take the vitals on my first patient before the call came in that the tremble we felt minutes ago wasn’t a fluke thing, but in fact a bomb. Since 9/11 there is a protocol the hospital follows in situations like this. As bits and pieces of information come through, we immediately rush around preparing for the victims.
The victims were the wedding guests of Jack Parrish and his bride. Jack Parrish was the name of a man most people knew from the news. Being the president of the Satan’s Knights motorcycle club and a close ally to the notorious gangster, Victor Pastore, kept Parrish front and center in the headlines.
Victor also happened to be my cousin Gina’s uncle, and while our side of the family didn’t have much to do with the gangster, I, like the rest of the tristate area, knew how dangerous he was. Everyone knew that anything or anyone associated with him didn’t stand a chance. The Satan’s Knights were no exception. The news was already reporting that the attack on their clubhouse had resulted from either a rival motorcycle club or one of Vic’s enemies avenging the murder he committed while in prison. It wasn’t a far-fetched notion considering Vic’s family was at the wedding and his daughters were the first victims to be brought into the ER.
Immediately I thought to call my cousin to let her know the status of her cousins Adrianna and Nikki. Until I caught my first glimpse of leather, it didn’t dawn upon me she was also probably worried about the guy she was sort of dating, Stryker—the biker she dubbed the king of orgasms. Well, maybe not dating. I was about to sneak away and call her but I was quickly pulled in ten different directions by doctors and patients.
One resident ordered me to grab the victims with minimal injuries and bring them to triage where I could clean and stitch their wounds. My eyes scanned the packed waiting room and I made my way to the first leather cut I spotted—not caring who it was, only hoping I could help.
“Sir, we need to bring you into triage…”
My words fade as I reach for him and he quickly brushes my hand away, spinning around and piercing me with a glare. I stare back at Stryker for a moment before I ra
ke my eyes over him, checking for obvious injuries.
“I know you,” he says, breaking the awkward silence. “You’re the blonde from the other night.”
A few nights ago, I reluctantly let my cousin drag me out of the house. She was feeling down because the dope standing in front of me had basically slept with her once and had forgotten all about her. We wound up at the Crazy Taco, a Staten Island restaurant that made killer margaritas. My slick cousin never mentioned it was a place Stryker and his buddies frequented. It became all sorts of awkward when she tried to hide from him as we chowed down on tacos and guacamole. Lucky for me, the hospital called me in and the night was cut short before I could formally be introduced to the orgasm king himself.
Regardless of his situation with my cousin, he’s my patient, and staring back at him it was easy to detect he was experiencing repercussions from the explosion.
“My name is Celeste,” I tell him softly. “I’m a nurse here and Gina’s my cousin,” I add, hoping that comforts him on some level because it was obvious he would be a rough one to treat.
He stares at me blankly and I take that as my cue to nudge him toward one of the exam rooms. He doesn’t budge, crossing his arms against his chest as he stares back at me defiantly.
“I’m fine,” he states.
I bite the inside of my cheek and curse my cousin’s taste in hard-headed men.
“You were in an explosion,” I remind the dope.
“Thanks for the concern but it ain’t my first taste of terror, sweetheart,” he replies.
Before I can argue with him, I turn my attention toward the doors behind him and drop the tablet I’m holding.
It couldn’t be.
Not again.
The universe isn’t that cruel, is it?
I blink rapidly and stare at the man I walked away from two years ago—got my answer.
Yes, the universe is cruel. She is actually a vicious bitch.
Jagger stands behind Stryker, wearing an identical leather vest and the same somber expression as everyone else who was a member of the Satan’s Knights. Covered in blood, holding a pair of women’s shoes, the man that broke my heart twice stares back at me. He doesn’t stare at me long because a moment later the doors behind him open and all eyes shift to the black body bag rolling through them.
Wanderer (The Nomad Series Book 2) Page 5
