I used to think having a brother meant I’d always have a friend, someone always there to have my back, but I didn’t understand what having a brother truly meant until I became a patched member of the Satan’s Knights Motorcycle Club. Those men were my brothers, men that never left my side or my boy’s side. They were the men who would always have my back and they would be the men standing beside me as I say goodbye to my child. We didn’t need blood. We had loyalty. We had respect. We had the stuff that held people together when blood didn’t.
I knew it was just something they did out of respect and they would do it for any of the brother’s but watching them as they stood guard over my boy brought me a sense of comfort. They didn’t think it was my fault.
They didn’t blame me for the things I couldn’t control.
There were two people that blamed me for everything. My mother who was dead and my ex-wife who sat beside me thrashing.
My mother hated me. She looked at me and saw her father reflected in my eyes. I wish she would’ve looked at me and saw I was just a boy that couldn’t control himself. Maybe if she had, she would’ve been the kind of mother who sought help for her damaged child. Instead, she inflicted more pain, made me believe I was the devil reincarnate and not someone who needed help. Maybe if she had, then my son would be alive.
“What is wrong with you?”
“You’re crazy!”
I could still hear her shouting at me, taunting me, until I doubted myself. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me but the more someone tells you you’re crazy, the more you wonder if you really are.
After, she died no one called me crazy. Not the same way she had.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker, Bulldog!”
“You’re fucking crazy, brother.”
Sure, I did some fucking things that would have my brothers thinking that maybe I had a screw loose somewhere but they didn’t look at me and ask me what was wrong with me. They just made me think I was a badass motherfucker who didn’t give a shit. They wiped away the doubt my mother instilled in me and gave me back the confidence she stole from me.
I turned and watched Connie rise to her feet, her body trembling as she started for the coffin. I wanted to reach out to her, to wrap my arms around her, desperate to grieve with her. She was the only one who knew exactly how I felt.
But she hated me. She blamed me.
“Please, get help!”
“There is something not right with you, Jack.”
“I’m begging you.”
I leaned back in my chair, watched her boyfriend wrap a steady arm around her waist as she kneeled before our son, and sang him a lullaby. I blinked, tears falling from the corners of my eyes as her voice traveled through the quiet chapel.
Sleep, baby, sleep
Your daddy’s away
Sleep, baby, sleep
And mommy will pray
I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand as her voice hitched and she sobbed. I hated seeing her cry, always did. We were one another’s first love. I watched her turn from a girl to a woman and then made her a mama. We were twenty years old when our daughter, Lacey, was born, twenty-one when we married, and twenty-two when Jack Jr. was born. Twenty-three was the year it all fell apart and twenty-four was the year it ended. Now, twenty-five, and we’re burying our baby, both of us dead inside.
She leaned over the coffin, peppering Jack’s face with kisses as she cried and pleaded with him to take her with him. Her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her, prying her away from the coffin. She turned in his arms, buried her face against his chest, and let at out anguished cry that tore through my heart. She lifted her head, her eyes met mine, and she stilled.
“This is all your fault!” She shrieked. “My baby is in that box because of you!” She slapped her boyfriend’s hands away and stepped closer her green eyes lifeless as they pierced me.
She used to look at me lovingly.
She used to look at me sympathetically.
She glared at me with hatred.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
And I was. Because she was right. Jack was dead because I was too proud to accept the things I couldn’t control. My son paid the price because I was too ashamed to get help.
The demons in my head stole my son.
But I allowed them to.
*****
He was a fucking Fed, a fucking federal agent out to destroy me. If that wasn’t a slap in the fucking face, nothing was. I gave him everything. I tried my best to do right by him. And this is how he repaid me? I put that spoiled prick through school, busted my ass so he could get a head in life.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Lacey asked, scared.
I lifted my arms above my head and swung the hammer against the sheetrock.
“Go inside, Lacey,” I muttered, dropping the hammer at my feet and stuck my arm in the gaping hole. I pulled at the sheetrock with my free hand, widening the hole.
Where the fuck was it? Where did that bastard put the fucking bug?
“Daddy, you’re scaring me!” She cried.
I was sure it was there. I just needed to find it.
He wasn’t going to bring me down. No fucking way.
“Jack?” She sniffled, wiping at her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. “Daddy, I don’t know where Jack is.”
I lifted the hammer over my head and took another swing this time a different wall. I beat the sheetrock again and again until the hole was wide enough for me to stick my head inside. I felt out of control as if I was grasping at straws but I was so sure he played me. I didn’t just imagine it. Did I?
I was fucking desperate.
I needed to know I wasn’t crazy.
My brother was a fed.
I was an outlaw.
He was out to get me.
I slid down the wall, my body falling to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest.
I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t.
“Daddy!” Lacey screamed her shrill voice pulled me away from my manic state, forcing me into reality. “Come quick!” She sobbed.
I lifted my head and scanned the room for my daughter.
“Lacey?” I called out.
She didn’t answer me.
Tires screeched across the asphalt, a crash sounded and then there was silence.
I stood, slowly walked towards the front door, and noticed it was wide open. My steps quickened, my heart raced and then it crashed the moment I stepped foot outside. My daughter stood frozen at the curb, staring in shock at my two-year old son that laid perfectly still in the middle of the street.
I ran down the porch steps, split in two, not knowing which child to tend to first. I tripped over the curb, fell to my knees, and crawled to my son.
I frantically checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
“No, no, no,” I whispered hysterically, searching around for help. The car that had hit my son crashed into the stop sign, the driver confined to the car. I looked back towards my daughter.
“Lacey, call 911!”
She didn’t move. She was in shock. She just watched her baby brother get hit by a car.
She watched him die.
I closed my eyes and gathered my boy in my arms, rocking him softly; I stared up at the heavens and screamed for help.
Please God, hear me. Hear my cry for help.
Table of Contents
Dedicated to
Dear Reader,
Prologue: May 2012
Chapter One: 8 Months & 6 Days Later
Chapter Two: June 2005
Chapter Three: 2013
Chapter Four: 2013
Chapter Five: 2013
Chapter Six: June 2005
Chapter Seven: 2013
Chapter Eight: 2010
Chapter Nine: 2013
Chapter Ten: 2014
Chapter Eleven: 2014
Chapter Twelve: 2014
Chapter Thirteen: 2014
Chapter Fourteen: 2014
Chapter Fifteen: 2011
Chapter Sixteen: 2014
Chapter Seventeen: 2014
Chapter Eighteen: 2014
Chapter Nineteen: 2014
Chapter Twenty: 2015
Chapter Twenty-One: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Two: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Three: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Four: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Five: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Six: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Seven: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Eight: 2015
Chapter Twenty-Nine: 2015
Chapter Thirty: 2015
Chapter Thirty-One: 2015
Chapter Thirty-Two: 2015
Chapter Thirty-Three: 3 Months Later
Chapter Thirty-Four: Present Day
Epilogue
Other Books By Janine
About The Author
© Copyright
SNEAK PEEK
Forbidden Temptations (Tempted Series Book 2) Page 32
