by Trent Jordan
“What will it be, brother?” Cole said. “Will you join me, reunite the family, and help defeat the Fallen Saints forever?”
He gulped.
“Or are we going to be destined to remain apart forever, uniting only temporarily, and ultimately falling prey to this cancer that has consumed our towns and our clubs?”
Preview of “Cole”
Cole and Lilly
Cole Carter
Under one roof sat everyone living who had ever been a member of the Black Reapers motorcycle club.
At the front of the church—in this case, a literal church, not the one that served as the meeting grounds for the Reapers—stood the most prominent recent defect from the Black Reapers. The man, once known as Pink Raven and now going by Phoenix, had every reason to hate a good half of the room. His father had died at the hands of a Black Reapers; whether justified or not, one had to imagine that Phoenix would never forgive.
But these were no ordinary times.
“Father Marcellus…”
His voice trailed off. About six feet behind and to the left of the burly man my age, in an open casket, sat the body of the Black Reapers’ club chaplain, Father Marcellus. Despite having his life ended by a Fallen Saint, the chaplain looked as put together as I had ever seen him. And Father Marcellus was not like many of us, who preferred to wear cuts, white shirts, and not much more; he was a man who could easily slip into a wedding at any moment.
“Father Marcellus is the reason we are all here,” Phoenix said, pausing to take a deep breath. “Father Marcellus is the reason that all of us can be under one roof, standing in unity, rather than glaring at each other across the aisle.”
I looked down at the far side of the aisle. At the same time, my older brother, Lane Carter, did the same.
The past few months had changed Lane for the better, but the last week had changed us all for the worse. Lane didn’t look like he’d bothered to shave at any point, and the bags under his eyes looked weighed down by a feeling of sorrow and perhaps regret. He had his somewhat-new girlfriend by his side—I would always see anyone other than Shannon as new for him—but that only provided him someone to hold hands with, not someone to ease his suffering.
It would have been nice to have someone. But I had learned in the last year that the very act of wanting such a person, of hoping and praying that someone like that came around, was precisely what prevented me from having such a person. I would never be as gruff and tough as some of the other guys here, but I had learned a subtle sturdiness that didn’t make me such a yearning person.
“Father Marcellus showed me the power of forgiveness,” Phoenix said.
I shifted my gaze from Lane to Axle and Butch. Axle’s girlfriend, seated next to him, was pregnant. I recognized Butch’s as one of the Black Reapers’ bunnies; I suppose she had upgraded herself to old lady status. Of course, on my side of the aisle was Jess, Phoenix’s new lady.
The front row was integrated. But I only needed to tilt my head slightly back to see that the rest of the church was integrated, with Gray Reapers and Black Reapers seated together. The color of one’s cut did not matter here; it was I, actually, who had suggested we sit split down the middle at the front, the better to convey two sides of the same coin.
“He showed me that holding on to bitter rage and anger…”
Phoenix paused.
“He told me that bitter rage and anger would never do me any good,” he said, but the tone of his voice had shifted. He sounded like he was about to disagree with himself. “But the fact is, I cannot think of the Fallen Saints and not have bitter rage and anger. I am not here to talk about the death that Father Marcellus helped me with; I am here to talk about the death of Father Marcellus, and I cannot help but feel an unbridled rage that...that…”
His breathing intensified. I saw Lane trying to decide if he wanted to stand up and cut Phoenix off. I tried to put my hands up and lower him, a physical indicator for him to just calm down, breathe, and not lose control.
The problem with a passionate guy like Phoenix, though, was that he got swept up in his mood. And once that happened, you might as well have been trying to corral an actual phoenix without protecting yourself from its fire.
“I feel an unbridled rage to annihilate the Fallen Saints, and I think everyone in this room can agree with me on that,” he said, slamming his fist into the lectern. “Father Marcellus preached forgiveness and understanding. But when the devil shows up on your doorstep, he’ll manipulate your beliefs in those to his advantage. He doesn’t give a damn! He doesn’t!”
I stood up. I needed to cut Phoenix off before he lost control. We actually had a plan to address this—and it didn’t involve people losing their sense of control as Phoenix was.
I could feel people’s eyes falling upon me. Even I felt like I was taking a bit of a bold step, cutting off a speaker at a funeral. Sure, doing so at a club meeting was one thing: but at a funeral?
I limited my concern for it. Phoenix had gotten off-topic.
And when he saw me take just two steps, he seemed to realize what he had done. He took another couple of deep breaths, sighed, and wiped away a tear from his eye.
“Father Marcellus could not bring my father back, no one could, but he gave me something equally valuable—a sense of acceptance with that,” he said. “And for that, I’ll always love you, brother. Thank you.”
Phoenix took it upon himself to walk away from the lectern. I offered my hand, and he took it briskly. I could tell he wasn’t mad, just wanting to hurry back to his seat. He could have used that comfort of a woman that I lacked. But it doesn’t matter. The club chaplain’s funeral is not the place to be wishing for a woman to show up.
I remained standing and looked over to Lane. This was the real test, the real moment to see how much top-down club leadership could get everyone else in line. I had some optimism, but I also had to acknowledge a healthy dose of skepticism that a group perhaps best described as “antihero outlaws” would not exactly take kindly to any type of top-down leadership, even from within its own ranks.
Lane rose. Angela patted him gently on the back. Lane double-checked to make sure he had what I presumed were notes, and then walked over to me. Together, we walked to the lectern, sharing space, coming as close together as we had in a long, long time.
“Good morning,” I said.
“We stand here together as brothers, yes, but also as members of two related but separated clubs that need to come together,” Lane said.
However smooth it might have looked, we were improvising almost the entirety of this moment. We just trusted the fact that we’d grown up with each other for two and a half decades more than the fact that we’d been glaring at each other from a distance for a little under two years now.
“Ever since the Fallen Saints formed, deaths have followed,” I said. “For what seemed like a good deal of time, such deaths were minimal, and we were able to keep the Fallen Saints at bay.”
“But the past year has undone much of that,” Lane said. “For whatever reason, the Fallen Saints have chosen to increase their aggression.”
Not whatever reason. Ever since our father died.
“The death we mourn today is, for us, the final straw,” Lane continued. “We have lost soldiers and leaders, but when you lose a man like Father Marcellus, the rules change.”
I cleared my throat.
“We have let our squabbles and differences divide us into shades of Reapers,” I said. “At some point, those differences and quarrels will need to be resolved, and when that time comes, we will do so. But now, I say to you all, we must not focus on that.”
“We must focus on unification.”
It was a funeral, not a political rally, so of course, people didn’t rise up out of their seats to start applauding us wildly. But when I looked into the eyes of not just the officers but the rank-and-file members, of the ones whose personalities made them least likely to be leaders and most likely to be governed
by their impulses, I saw determination, properly channeled anger, and a willingness to follow. It was the best thing that I had seen on an otherwise tragic day.
“Lane and I are discussing plans to end the Fallen Saints once and for all,” I said. “I…”
I paused briefly when I saw a woman enter the church—but she looked like she quickly realized that she had come to the wrong place. She gasped, apologized, and left.
In any other context, she was awfully pretty and young, almost like a Southern belle. But, for what was painfully obvious reasons, at this point in the funeral, the thought of considering hitting on a woman, let alone actually doing so, was just awful.
“I have seen too many friends fall, and I know that Lane can speak to that as well,” I said. “And for that…”
“We are preparing the run to end all runs,” he said. “If we do this right, we eradicate the Fallen Saints, cut off any allies they have—of which I believe they only have forced partnerships—and bring peace to Springsville. If we do it poorly, then this town falls into their hands.”
And, left unspoken, we’d all be dead.
But even if that thought crossed the minds of the members of the audience, no one seemed scared.
“Regardless of whatever differences we have, regardless of past squabbles, we must now come together for the final battle between the Reapers and the Fallen Saints.”
With that, both of us returned to our seats. Lane squeezed Angela’s hand. I closed my eyes, took several deep breaths, and silently prayed to my father to give us the strength to win this battle.
Because if we didn’t, it would literally be hell on Earth.
Lilly Sartor
For such a beautiful day in the sky, it seemed like a tragic one on the ground.
I knew what I had been asked to do. I knew that if I did it, I would be promised a reward. I knew that I didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
But I did it anyway.
I walked into the funeral, pretending to be a churchgoer that didn’t realize a funeral was being held.
And the instant I did it, I regretted it so much.
There were just some sacred events on which one should not purposefully intrude, and a funeral had to top the list. I didn’t know what else that list included, but it sure as hell included that.
The second I stepped inside, the gasp and the mouthed apology that followed were not fake. They were very much a real byproduct of how I felt I had violated something holy by doing something very unholy and underhanded. As soon as the door to the church had shut behind me, I still had my hand over my mouth, feeling mortified at what I had done.
And the truck that I had come in still sat in the back of the parking lot, its engine on, visible to someone paying attention but looking like just another parked vehicle to the unsuspecting eye.
I didn’t want to go back to that truck. I didn’t want to go back home. I didn’t want to go back to anything that related in any way to Springsville.
I dreamed of moving to New York City, of making my own way. I dreamed of ditching my last name, maybe even also changing my first. I dreamed of becoming a stage actress, the kind whose performance wouldn’t remain permanently on camera for the world to mock and critique.
But dreams were dreams for a reason.
I headed over to the truck, keeping my head low, ostentatiously so I could better deal with the glare of the sun. I got to the driver’s side, opened the door, and sat down without ever lifting my head.
“Well?”
I sighed. I could not ignore the voice behind me. To do so would unearth a level of anger that no one should have to deal with.
Even if it came from my father.
“They’re all together.”
“What?” he snapped, the fury in his voice like a volcano threatening to erupt to the surface. “We did everything we could to drive them apart!”
I kept silent. In these moments, it was best just to let my father rant and rave through his anger until he eventually calmed down—or just exhausted himself, like a child throwing a temper tantrum until they lacked the energy to produce more.
“How the fuck is this happening,” he growled. “We specifically aimed for their two weakest points. And they’re uniting? I’m going to fucking kill Snake, thought he was so smart and smug for taking credit for those ideas. Fucking idiot.”
He then muttered something that he thought was silent but that I always heard very loud and clear, almost too loud and too clear.
“Wish I’d had a son I could’ve made my VP.”
I had never figured out if my father had said such a thing to antagonize me or play games with me, or if he genuinely believed I couldn’t hear him. On the one hand, well, he said such horrible things. On the other, though, he pampered and spoiled me at home so much that it almost became too much; someone who treated me like a queen and then said the same thing…
Well, let’s just say it wasn’t the only complicated part of dealing with my father.
“This is unacceptable, this is fucking unacceptable,” he said, his voice picking back up. “Dearest Lilly, did you see if they had weapons?”
I gulped. I knew why he was asking this—he wanted to launch a strike against these guys at the funeral of one of their members.
My father liked to pretend that I was just a naive pawn who had no idea what he did. When I was a child and had asked him what he did, he simply said he was an entrepreneur. When I got a little older and had a better understanding, he said he was an entrepreneur for motorcycles.
Now, I’d learned to stop asking questions. I’d either be lied to or just ignored.
But just because I’d stopped asking questions didn’t mean I’d stopped learning things. And the more I learned about my father, the more I struggled to understand how he could treat me so well and treat the world so cruelly.
Actually, it wasn’t a struggle. Sadly.
“They did,” I lied.
“Damn,” my father said. “Would’ve made a golden opportunity.”
And like this, how he spoke out loud...did he think I wouldn’t have picked up on it?
I swore my father was just deliberately dense with me. Nothing else made sense.
“Very well,” he said. “Darling, thank you for checking in on what was happening. We can head home now.”
I nodded.
“Good.”
“Good, indeed,” he said, the words sounding more than a little sinister.
He laughed to himself as we pulled out of the parking lot just as the funeral congregants had begun to spill out of the chapel. The laugh sent shivers down my spine and only further reinforced what I already knew.
My father might smile when I looked at him, but even when that happened, he was digging his claws into me, trying to use me for his own nefarious gains.
I had to get out.
“Cole” is now available on Amazon. Click here to read:
https://amzn.to/303pLom
Free Prequel
Learn how the Black Reapers story begins. Click here to read the free prequel:
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Also by Trent Jordan
Black Reapers MC, Season 1
Lane (June 2020)
Patriot (June 2020)
Axle (July 2020)
Butch (July 2020)
Phoenix (July 2020)
Cole (July 2020)
More to Come…
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Trent Jordan
Cover art copyright © 2020 by Talia RedhotInk
Editing by Sarah Bailey Martin
All rights reserved. Published by TJ Creations.
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