Maz

by Jessie Cooke

  “Yeah.” She rubbed her arms again. “They’re a street gang that runs the Hyde Park area. The Neponset is a river that runs through Hyde Park. These guys moved out of Detroit a few years back because they were getting wiped out by rivals and the police were hassling them. I guess they came to Boston to start over. The first thing they did was start a war with the gang that already controlled the territory, and they won. It was a bloodbath, and the gang task force was beating down doors looking for them. They went underground for a while and just recently started popping back up. They’re real bad news but up until now they stayed out of the Skulls’ territory. So anyway, I saw them and tried to get back inside the bar. My hands were shaking hard, though, and before I got it unlocked, one of the assholes had a sawed-off shotgun stuck to the back of my head. They made me unlock the door and pushed me inside…and then they raped me and beat me…one of them cut me with a blade.”

  Maz could taste the bile in the back of his throat and he could tell by the looks on his brothers’ faces that they were feeling the same way. It made him want to rip someone apart with his bare hands, so he wasn’t surprised when Kiera said, “Long story short, Jammer found me and I described the guys and the car…less than twelve hours later, those three were dead. Jammer’s gone ghost and the Nikkas have declared war on the Skulls now…all because of me.” She said the last softly, looking at the floor as she did.

  “From what Dax told me, the punks have been testing the waters for a while. Fuckers used you, Kiera. They left you alive to make sure the Skulls would know exactly who hurt you…they just didn’t count on Jammer going Rambo on them.”

  “Or maybe they did,” Bruf said. When Wolf looked at him questioningly he said, “Sounds kind of like a setup all the way around. I hope Dax is looking into that coworker. I mean, how did they know she’d be alone, or for how long? And that gang had to know the Skulls would come after those three, especially since they left Kiera alive.”

  “So you think they set their own guys up too?”

  Bruf shrugged. “Maybe…or maybe they knew she’d tell who had done this to her, and they weren’t counting on her old man being ex Delta Force.”

  “You know Jammer?” she asked Bruf.

  He nodded. “We’ve met, and other than Dax Marshall, I’d say they picked the most dangerous man in Boston to fuck with. Are the police looking for him?” Bruf asked.

  She shook her head. “He didn’t take me to the hospital, he took me to the club. Dax said he talked to my boss at the bar…as far as I know, my…attack wasn’t reported to anyone. That gang is always messing with someone, so the three scumbags being dead wouldn’t be a surprise, or a priority to anyone…other than their own,” she said.

  “So, does Dax need us in Boston?” Sledge asked.

  “He’s just looking for us to keep an eye on Kiera for now,” Wolf said. “He knows if he needs us, all he has to do is reach out, though…am I right?”

  That question was met with nothing but affirmation from the room. None of them were bloodthirsty or in any hurry to get into a war, but having the backs of their brothers on the East Coast was unquestionable, since they knew without a doubt that the Southies would be there for them just the same.

  “Kiera, I’m going to have one of the girls show you to one of the rooms upstairs. She’ll get you whatever you need, food, clothes, toiletries…just let her know,” Wolf said. “The gates will be locked and the shop will be the only part of these grounds that the public has access to while you’re here, or at least until we hear differently from Dax. I don’t want you around the shop, but you’re free to come and go on the grounds as you please otherwise. As long as you’re here we’ll make sure you’re treated like family and nobody hurts you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, softly.

  “I also need you to understand this,” Wolf said. “If you don’t stay on these grounds, or if you notify anyone that you’re here without my approval, you’ll be putting my club at risk and that won’t be tolerated. So, I’m going to need a list of anyone that might be looking for you, and we’ll talk to Dax about what it is we’re going to tell them.” She nodded and then said:

  “There’s nobody looking for me.”

  “Family? Close friends? No one who is going to alert the police you’re missing?” Bruf asked. As SA it would be his job to make sure he knew everything about her as long as she was associated with the club. Maz knew that as soon as church was over, Bruf would be calling together the enforcers and they’d be getting a plan in place in case they had to take any kind of action. It had been a while since the club had any real drama…and as much as Maz hated to admit it, sometimes he missed it. He liked the adrenaline rush that solving real problems gave him.

  “Nobody,” she said. Bruf looked skeptically at her and then toward Wolf. Wolf picked up his phone and sent a text message and a few seconds later, Holly, one of the club girls, appeared in the doorway. She smiled at Kiera and said:

  “Hi, Kiera, I’m Holly. Come on with me and we’ll get you settled.” Kiera stood up and looked at Wolf.

  “Thank you,” she said, meekly. Wolf nodded at her and as soon as she and Holly were gone, and the door was closed behind them, he looked up at Bruf and said:

  “She’s got a kid. He’s three. She hasn’t seen him since he was a few months old. I guess he lives in Maryland with the baby daddy. Dax has some people looking for him, just in case, but she didn’t even have a last known on him.”

  “So why did she just sit here and say she didn’t have family?” Maz asked, directing Wolf’s attention in his direction.

  “She doesn’t see the kid and she terminated her rights a few years ago. She told Dax she hasn’t had any contact with the baby daddy or the kid since then, so she is of a mind that they won’t go looking for him. She might be right, but Dax wants to be sure. He’s got Hunter working on finding them.”

  “Why doesn’t she see her kid?”

  “I don’t know, Maz, that part wasn’t my problem or business,” Wolf said.

  Maz frowned. He started to open his mouth again, but the look Wolf gave him changed his mind. He had no respect for people that didn’t take care of their kids. She seemed healthy enough, other than what she’d been through recently. She’s obviously healthy enough to be out fucking bikers and slinging drinks…so why isn’t she seeing her kid? What makes a mother give up access to her own kid?

  He was five when he discovered Elise wasn’t his real mother. He had gotten really sick and his parents had rushed him to the hospital. He woke up in the ER and before anyone in the room knew he was awake, he heard his father telling the doctor that his “real” mother was a diabetic, but he didn’t know much about her medical history other than that. After the doctor left, Maz let his dad and Elise know he was awake and he asked them what that meant…his “real” mother. They both tried to gloss over it that day, but he was a stubborn, relentless kid, and he wouldn’t let it go. Elise finally told him that she’d come all the way over from France and she’d chosen to be his mother because the lady who gave birth to him couldn’t take care of him. She said when he was two years old she had officially adopted him. For a while Maz asked a lot of questions; he even called his aunt in California multiple times, in the middle of the night when he’d think of something. The saddest part was that nobody seemed to know much about her, not even his dad.

  As he got older he got more of the story. His dad met her one night on Bourbon Street. She was there visiting New Orleans with her friend and they were both drunk. Her dad hooked up with her that one night…and didn’t see her again for almost a year. The next time he saw her she was on his doorstep with a baby. She told him she couldn’t take care of him and if he didn’t want him, she was giving him up for adoption. His dad took him, not even knowing for sure if he was his. His mother told his father that she was diabetic. She had been diagnosed as a kid…but the doctors had told her so far the kid was healthy. She and Maz’s father went to an attorney together and his dad h
ad to have a DNA test. It proved he was the father, and his mother had signed over her rights.

  According to his dad, that was the last he saw or heard from her. Elise, on the other hand, claimed to have seen her one day at the park across from their house. Maz was about four years old and Elise had noticed a woman watching them. Something about the way the woman looked at Maz made her nervous and while he was busy in the sandbox or something, she confronted the woman. She said that the woman had told her she was “Ronnie,” Maz’s biological mother. Elise told him much later that it had frightened her and Elise “hadn’t been nice.” Ronnie had run away, but Elise was still nervous that she might be lurking around and she would try to take Maz away. So, she hired a PI to track her down.

  He found Ronnie in California and Elise had spoken to her on the phone. Ronnie assured her that she wasn’t interested in taking Maz from them…that she’d just had a chance to travel back to New Orleans that one last time, and she wanted to make sure he was okay. The address Ronnie lived at then was the one Elise had given him when he left for California to find her. He’d driven past the house a few times when he first got to the West Coast but he’d never stopped, and eventually he’d given up on the idea of meeting her. He couldn’t see what difference knowing her as an adult could possibly make in his life. He had his dad and Elise and he had his Aunt Carol, who lived only a few hundred miles from him now. He had his brothers and sisters in the club. He didn’t need a woman that had no time for her own son.

  He forced himself to refocus on what was happening around him. Wolf was telling them that everything would be business as usual except that the gates would remain locked as if they were on lockdown and everyone in or out would have to be cleared by whoever was working the gates. For now, there was nothing for any of the rest of them to do except to make sure Kiera didn’t leave or try to contact anyone. In the meantime, Maz just hoped she’d keep her distance from him. He could do his job and make sure she was safe…but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pretend that he liked her.

  13

  “Have you ever been on an airplane?” Marissa and Maz were having pizza at his place. His meeting had run longer than expected and she’d suggested they skip going out and stay in. She was surprised when the guy at the gate had insisted on making a copy of her ID on their way in. She’d been at the club several times since she met Maz, and that was a first. Maz told her they had some VIP visitor from Boston and that made her think about the trip she was planning.

  “A few times,” he said. “Why, are you leaving me?” She knew he was joking, but there was something different in his eyes tonight…something sad, almost lonely.

  She smiled and touched his hand. “Not for long,” she said. “You know how I told you I’ve always wanted to see the East Coast. Well, now that Mom’s doing well and I have some vacation time saved up, I was thinking about maybe planning a trip.”

  “That’s awesome, baby. I’m happy for you. I’ll miss you, though, and you’d better come back.”

  “I’ll be back,” she said, “but…you could come with me if you wanted to.”

  His eyes softened. “I’d love that, someday. Someday we’ll get on the bike and go cross-country together, how’s that?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “Good. But this trip – you told me you’ve been planning it for years, and you should go do whatever it is that you planned. Have a great time, assert your independence finally…and then come back.”

  She put her arms around him and her head on his shoulder. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  She felt his body shake in a silent laugh. “Yeah, that’s what everyone says, Belle.”

  She pulled back so she could look up at his face. “Well, if they’re not saying it, they don’t know you very well. So…about that airplane ride, did you like it, flying?”

  “It was okay. I prefer my bike. I like stopping when and where I want and seeing the sights along the way. But if your destination is the highlight then yes, I recommend flying and getting there faster. I take it you’ve never been on a plane?”

  “No. No planes, trains, buses…I’ve never traveled out of California and even inside the state I haven’t been far.”

  Maz picked up his beer and took a sip. “Why? Didn’t you and your mother take trips when you were a kid?”

  “Not really. She took me to the amusement parks down south and to the beach and up to Yosemite…but nowhere that we couldn’t get by car. She absolutely refuses to get on an airplane. I’d love for her to go to Boston with me, but she won’t go. I even offered to drive.”

  “Wow, so has she ever been on an airplane?”

  “Yeah.” Marissa paused to finish her pizza and take a drink of her beer. “She said the last time was about twenty-five or six years ago. She had an anxiety attack on the plane.”

  “Poor Rhonda.”

  “Yeah, she gets really nervous just talking about it. My mom has some…dark moods, sometimes. Not mean or anything like that, just dark…sad, introverted. All she really told me was that she flew down South and something happened while she was there that upset her. She wouldn’t ever tell me what that was, but she said she was so upset that she really should have never gotten on the plane. She did, though, and the anxiety turned into a full-blown panic attack and they actually restrained her on the plane because she was so agitated. She has PTSD from that, I guess.”

  “I guess that would make a person leery of getting back on a plane,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine Rhonda having any ‘dark’ moods, though. Not that I’m doubting you. I’ve just only seen her so happy and upbeat.”

  “She has been, lately, which is great. I love seeing her happy.”

  “You said something about her having a rough life once. Was that when she was a kid?”

  “No…at least not from what she tells me. By the time I came along, her parents were gone and her sister…well, she had some drug problems and she disappeared years ago. But she tells me that she had a pretty normal life as a kid. Maybe it was losing her parents so early in life. She was only twenty-one when they died in a boating accident. And then several years later everything with her sister happened.”

  “So what about your dad…were they married?”

  Marissa knew Maz well enough by now to know he wasn’t going to judge her…but the story of how she came about was one that always left her feeling a devastating kind of pain in her heart, and tonight was about the two of them just being together. She didn’t want to feel bad tonight. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry, do you mind if we talk about something else? I’ll tell you the whole story one of these days…but it always makes me a little sad…and I don’t want to be sad tonight.”

  He put his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug. She felt his lips brush the top of her head as he pulled her backwards and they settled into the couch. “I don’t want you sad either,” he said.

  “Thank you. So…what’s up with the VIP from Boston?”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought she felt his body tense. “We have a chapter of our club in Boston called the Southside Skulls. They just asked us to look after one of their old ladies for a while.”

  “Is she in trouble or something?” When he didn’t say anything for several seconds she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know much about MCs yet. I should probably stop being nosy, huh?”

  He kissed her on top of the head again. “You’re not nosy. We’re just talking. But yes, I can’t really tell you why she’s here. I’m going to do my best to forget she’s here myself.”

  Marissa sat up again and when she looked in his eyes she saw it…that was the look she’d seen earlier, the one that made him look sad. “I’m okay with you not telling me why she’s here,” she said, “but can you tell me why her being here is making you so sad? Is she an ex or something? I mean, do I have anything to worry about?” As soon as she asked that, she felt stupid. She sounded like a jealous idiot.

  Maz looked amused. “N
o, ma chérie, she’s not an ex. I’ve never met her before today. I guess I’m making a judgment about her just from the little I do know, and that probably says more about me than it does her.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know her. What I do know is that she has a kid, a baby, really…and she hasn’t seen him in years. She gave away her rights to him. I don’t know why…it’s just a pet peeve of mine, I guess, thanks to being abandoned myself as a baby.”

  Marissa squeezed his hand and said, “That’s understandable. But can I play devil’s advocate?”

  “Sure.”

  “You won’t get mad at me?”

  He smiled, bent, and kissed her softly on the lips and said, “Never, Belle.”

  “I guess I just like to believe that sometimes parents who give up their children do it so that child can have a better life. Have you ever been in love, Maz?” She had to consciously hold back the shudder that wanted to rip through her when he looked into her eyes then. He looked like he was about to tell her he was in love right then…but he didn’t. Instead he said:

  “Yes.”

  “I liken it to being in love with someone and having to let them go because they’re not happy with you. We want the people we love to be happy…but sometimes letting go, so that can happen, is the hardest thing of all to do.”

  Maz pressed his forehead into hers and said, “You’re awfully smart for a twenty-four-year-old.”

  She laughed. “Almost twenty-five.”

  “Sorry, my bad,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sure I’m being too judgmental, but in keeping with the ‘no talking about stuff that runs the happy mood off,’ maybe we should change the subject, again. You want to watch a movie?” She smiled. She’d had an idea late the night before, but now that she was face to face with him, she wasn’t sure she could tell him out loud. He pulled back and looked at her face and smiled. “What’s that wicked little smile about?”