by Zoey Parker
I remember what I heard on the yacht about the informant inside the clubhouse who’d been feeding information to the Diablos the whole time. How could I have been so stupid as to overlook her? When Rose was taken, I swore to myself I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. And I hadn’t—the mistake I’d made this time was far, far worse.
“So, Vince,” Carlos continues, “the surrender. Do I have your cooperation?”
The only things I can hear are the sobs pouring from Rose’s throat and the buzzing air conditioning unit overhead. I tighten my grip on the butt of the gun in my hand. “What’s stopping me from emptying a clip into your stomach right now?” I ask.
Carlos rubs the heel of his hand into his eye tiredly, like a parent struggling to put a resistant child to bed. “That would be a stupid thing to do. Firstly, you would be killed.” He raises a finger and points to the adjacent tables. The old man, who before had seemed so innocent as he labored over the Sunday crossword puzzle, now holds an automatic rifle tucked under one arm. It is pointed directly at me. I’m cornered yet again.
“Secondly, as I mentioned, Mortar and Steezy are being held by my men. Here, take a look if you’d like.” He slides a cell phone across the table. Lit up on the screen is a picture of my president and my best friend, bound and gagged, with blood dripping from welts and slashes across their faces. I look away, unable to bear the image.
“As you can see, you have no recourse. Your friends are captured, your territory is surrounded, and your woman has proven to be a liar and a backstabber. There are no other options but this one, Vince. Surrender and I will let the Inked Angels leave this state in one piece. Otherwise…” he shrugs, “…you will get hurt.”’
I let the gun fall in my lap. Why is it that when things are at their worst, everything seems so quiet? It’s like the volume on my thoughts has been cranked to maximum and everything else around me silenced. All I hear is the same word in my head, repeated ad nauseam. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“I suggest you go gather your men and get ready for the evening,” Carlos says calmly.
I stand up and holster the gun. My whole body is numb. I feel like a hollow shell. I thought God looked after drunks and idiots. Turns out that He can only do so much.
“Vince…” says Rose as I turn to leave.
I look at her, ice in my veins and hate in my heart. Her face is blotchy and red, those massive blue eyes an ocean of salty tears. The backstabbing bitch. She’s the reason all of this happened. I was too blind to stop it, but she was the driving force.
“You’re dead to me, Rose.” I look at Carlos. “We’ll be there at midnight.”
Chapter 20
Rose
Just like that, everything crumbles to pieces.
Carlos looks at me after Vince has gone. He’s not quite smiling, but there’s no mistaking the fire dancing behind his face. It’s a dark fire, like an oil rig burning. It’s the shadow I remember, cranked up to a temperature I never imagined was possible.
“You liar,” I say softly. The tears are gone, though they’ve left behind a crushing sadness that immediately seems like a part of me, as immovable as my heart or my bones. “You fucking liar.”
He tilts his head. “I did what I had to do, Rose. Besides, even if you weren’t working for me directly, you did as good a job as I could ever have asked for.” He reaches out and pats my hand where it rests on the table. I recoil immediately. I don’t want him anywhere near me.
“I never worked for you,” I repeat dumbly. “You lied to him.”
“Of course I did, Rose. There was a plan. That was part of it. You were, too. Flawless execution, I must say.”
“How could you do that?”
He smiles thinly. “Let me ask you something. Did you enjoy our life together? Did you?” I don’t know what to say. Carlos pauses, then continues. “Because I fucking hated it.” A menacing edge I don’t recognize creeps into his voice. The shadow darkens. “Every time I took that goddamn bike for a ride, I thought about how I could get out of it. After a while, I came up with a plan.”
His hand is pressing hard on mine, squeezing the life out of it. I can’t shake free. “I didn’t want just a slight change, like most unhappy men do. A little more time at the bar or a move to a new city wasn’t going to be enough for me. No, I wanted a new life entirely. I wanted to control things. Important things. Money. Men, women. I wanted a kingdom. The Diablos needed a leader. I saw a chance, and I took it.” He lets go of me. Welted bruises begin to rise up where he had crushed my hand. “That’s how we ended up here.”
I’m at a loss for words. This is an utterly different man than the one I married. How could he have hidden this darkness for so long? To suppress it for years on end is mind-boggling. Everything about the scene we’re in—the restaurant, the old man with the rifle, the cold-blooded psychopath sitting across from me—seems jarring and surreal, like an out-of-body experience. I’m desperate to wake up.
“You lied to him,” I repeat for a third time.
“For Christ’s sake, Rose, will you get over it? You should have told him about the baby! Did you not think I was watching you? I’ve had eyes on you since the day I left! All this time, I’ve known what you were doing and who you were doing it with. I knew when you were fucking him! When you through this thing out the window,” he exclaims as he raises up the pregnancy test, “did you not realize that I had men stationed outside, watching you? You threw a golden opportunity into my hands yet again! You really are gifted. You’ve been tremendously useful. I can’t thank you enough. You made all of this possible.”
I feel sick again. Worse than the morning sickness, this is a full-body shakiness that starts in my core and spreads outward to every extremity. My muscles feel limp, stringy. I’m a useless husk.
“I’m going to go, now,” he says, touching a soft hand to my cheek. I don’t move. I can’t. “You’re free to do whatever you’d like. I don’t have any use for you anymore.”
Tears flow unchecked down my face. They’re stupid tears. They won’t help anybody. But they come nonetheless.
Carlos stands. “Congratulations on the baby, by the way,” he tells me. Then he leaves.
* * *
It takes a while before I find the energy to move. I stand and walk outside in a daze. The sun has begun to come down from its zenith, hurtling towards the far horizon. What have I done? Why didn’t I just tell Vince about the baby? I can’t let that thought go. It feels so important, so pressing. If I had just told him, maybe none of this would have happened. There’s no telling for sure, but my mind won’t let me escape its thorny grasp. Why didn’t I tell him?
I walk to the end of the pier, down the steps, and out onto the sand of the beach. It’s hot and empty beneath the glaring sun. I fall to my knees and sob. But crying doesn’t make me feel any better, and it damn sure doesn’t solve any of my problems.
I’d stabbed Vince in the back without ever meaning to. It wasn’t intentional, but my hesitation is costing him everything. His friends, his business, his life here, all gone in the blink of an eye because I was unsure.
I flash back to lying in bed with my head on his chest as he told him about his past. A father who left his mother, a childhood spent shipped from foster home to foster home until he was old enough to say fuck the system and survive on his own. I was scared of the same thing happening to me and my child. A man like Vince can’t be a father, a husband.
Or can he? How much will it take for me to let go of what I think about Vince and instead trust what I know about him? He saved me time and time again when I thought I would die. In the parking lot, in the club, on the yacht. Each time I was sure that I had met my end, he came swooping in and plucked me out of it. He was truly an angel, one that I didn’t deserve. If I can’t trust him, then who in this world can I trust?
I feel a weight settling in my chest. I do trust Vince. Countless times over, he’s proven to me what type of man he is. Forget my doubts, fuck my uncertainty. I love him. I want him
to be a father for this child.
I want to be his. Utterly, completely, permanently.
But if that’s going to happen, I have to do something to stop Carlos.
Chapter 21
Vince
I storm into the clubhouse, caught in a confusing whirlwind of depression and fury. I want to smash everything in sight, but the urge to just lie down and never move again is equally as strong. Back and forth, back and forth, my mind whips like a tree branch in a hurricane, unable to find any sense of comfort or stability.
I fucked up. My one promise to myself was never to fuck up like that again, but I did. I let the Diablos get back on top. What a fucking idiot I am.
Boulder is behind the bar at the clubhouse, stocking glasses and cleaning up. I see a few other men arranged along the bar top and seated at various tables in the main room. “Call it in,” I tell Boulder as I walk past him. “All hands to the clubhouse, right now.”
His eyes bulge. “All hands? Did something happen?”
I look at him grimly. “The Diablos have Mortar.” Before he can ask another question, I walk to the president’s office and slam the door shut behind me.
I spend the next hour hunched over in the seat behind the desk with my head in my hands, brooding. I can’t get past the hatred in my head. It’s like a venom in my system, tearing through me and leaving scar tissue wherever it goes. I hate everything.
Carlos. I hate that lying Judas of a cop for tricking the club into arranging our own self-annihilation. Playing us like a spider on a web, using our own panicked thrashing to ensnare us further and further, until we’re tangled and there’s no way out, at least none that I can see.
Rose. That bitch. How much blood had been spilled to save her? How much had I risked on her behalf? I couldn’t even begin to calculate the debt she owed me for rescuing her time and time again. And how had she repaid that? In cold-hearted betrayal. She took everything I told her and passed it right along to our sworn enemies, men who were coming to take all that I had to my name. The inside source was right under my nose the whole time. I was just too stupid to see it. To do that to me is bad enough. But to do it while carrying my child…I don’t have words for the blackness of the rage overwhelming me. Even the raw astonishment of learning that the thing I’d had on the back of my mind for so long—an heir, a legacy—was on its way to becoming real wasn’t enough to temper my wrath. What could I do about it, though? She was beyond my reach now. Surely Carlos had her tucked away, stowed safely amongst his men so that he could use her however he wanted. In all likelihood, I’d never see her again. There’d be no satisfying my anger. She stabbed me and ran. I’ll never catch up.
Most of all, I hate myself. I let down my brothers with my blindness and my pig-headed folly. Chasing what I wanted had gotten me out of the foster home, but it has only led me deeper into this mess. Now, I am floundering in a shitstorm of my own creation. And what’s worse, I’m taking good men down with me. Innocent men. Proud men. Men who deserved better. I’d let them down.
A knock at the door stirs me from my thinking. It creaks open and Boulder sticks his head in. “Everyone’s here,” he rumbles quietly. I rise from my seat and follow him into the main room.
The thirty or so men who make up the Inked Angels MC are arranged around the room. All of them, save for two. If I’m not careful, we won’t ever ride with Mortar and Steezy again. Their lives depend on making sure this surrender goes smoothly. A fuck-up could cost them everything. I can’t allow that.
I draw up a chair at the front of the room and sit. My eyes face the floor. The thought of looking these men in the face and telling them everything that has happened is almost too much. The sting of tears threatens, but I force them away. I don’t have that right anymore. This is all my fault. I have to do my duty now to salvage what little there is left. If my honor and my livelihood are gone, then all that remains is my brothers. I can’t let them down, too.
“The Diablos have captured Mortar and Steezy,” I begin. At these first words, a grumble breaks out across the men. They look at each other, stunned. I can hardly blame them. “They’ve been two steps ahead of us the whole time. They lured us in. They lured me in. I let everyone down.” Around the crowd, I see faces frowning as they look at me and process what I’m saying. The mood in the room is grim and still. “At midnight, we’re meeting the Diablos by the port to surrender our weapons and our territory. Their leader has agreed to let us leave the state alive if we do that much. But we’ll never be able to come back.”
“Bullshit,” calls out a voice. All eyes turn to look at Sliver, a scrawny, grizzled veteran decked out with tattoos. He looks angry. “They’ll never let us get out of here. Once we’re all in one place, they’ll mow us down and throw our bodies in the ocean.” Men murmur in assent. Heads nod.
I look at Sliver. “Maybe you’re right,” I tell him. “In fact, there’s a pretty damn good chance of that happening. But what other choice do we have?” I sweep my gaze around the room. “They have Steezy and Mortar. They know every move we’ve made so far. Fighting back will have one outcome and one outcome only: death for everyone. At least by surrendering, there’s a chance they’ll honor their promise to let us live.”
More voices surge forward, some agreeing with me, some arguing back vociferously. The disputes bubble up to the rafters as men turn and yell at each other. A few shoves break out, but the fights are quickly quelled by the older Angels.
One voice cuts through the chaos. “Tell us what you think, Vince,” the man says from the back. “Will they really let us go? Or will they kill us?”
I stand, slowly unfurling my body from the seat and rising to my full height. I take in a deep breath. When I speak, it’s with the full weight of the darkness, the venom and depression that are each coursing through my body like racing cars.
“I don’t know. And to be honest, I don’t really care.”
Chapter 22
Rose
Hours later, I’m walking down the beach. Ever since I came to a decision about Vince, my body won’t let me sit still. I have to move, have to think. The sand is soft against my feet. To my right, waves slurp in along the shore before receding, drawing out trash and leaving behind shells in their wake.
The farther I go down the beach, the seedier Galveston becomes. The public stretch of sand ends about a mile away from the pier. I switch to walking along the sidewalk, where the town turns into a mazy haven of closed-down restaurants, crack dens, and strip clubs burnished with neon signs. They look sickeningly familiar. The same squat, blank-faced buildings I remember from El Cruce stare out onto weed-stricken parking lots. I see furtive men slipping in and out of the blackened doors. Libido never tires.
I pause for a while and watch them. Most look hurried, embarrassed to be around and desperate not to get caught frequenting such establishments by people who might recognize them. Others saunter in, happy to let the world know what they’re up to. It would be too easy to hate them, these men who hide from their problems by camping out in dimly lit strip clubs while they fork over greasy dollar bills to women whose lives are just as luridly depressing.
The stream of patrons going through the front doors is steady, if relatively sparse. I see a few girls whose shifts have ended walking out of the back door of the club into the beaming street lights, sunglasses concealing their faces.
When I see a pair of men park a black SUV, exit, and approach the building, I do a double take. They’re tall, hair slicked straight back and glistening with gel. But what catches my attention is their clothing.
It’s all black, from head to toe.
Without stopping to think, I race to the other side of the street to get a better view. I notice I’m shaking and hardly daring to breathe. I don’t yet know what I’m going to do. All I can do for now is follow and hope that an opportunity presents itself.
As I watch, the men open the double doors and step into the dark coolness of the building’s interior. I hear snatches o
f R&B music thumping from within, then the door shuts and everything goes quiet again.
Seagulls cry as they circle overhead, looking for scraps of food. I think quickly. Do I go in after them? I can’t go through the front. I need a sneakier approach. I see a gaggle of dancers finishing their shifts and dispersing from the back entrance towards their cars in the lot. They kiss each other on the cheek and head their separate ways.
I lock in on one of them. She’s a short, curvy brunette with her hair cropped into a silky bob. The jeans she’s wearing are studded and embroidered. She’ll do.
“Hi,” I say breathlessly, stumbling around the corner. I make a big show, putting a hand to my chest and heaving, like I’ve just sprinted over here. She looks startled. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I hope you don’t think I’m a total idiot, but I’m one of the new girls, and I completely forgot the code to get in the back entrance. Would it be a super big deal if you let me in real quick?”
