by KJ Dahlen
Greg looked over at Grizzly.
He nodded. “It’s true. When we first saw her, it took my breath away, then someone pulled her hat off and her hair was visible, the streak was definitely there. She claimed to be Milly’s daughter, but she also claimed she didn’t know who her father was.”
Greg nodded. “And you think the white streak makes her yours, don’t you?”
“Dad, she is my daughter. Mine and Milly’s. She’s twenty-three years old and timeline fits,” Bam Bam insisted.
“How did she end up here though?” Greg wanted to know.
“A few days ago,” Deke answered this. “Turnkey attacked one of my men and Nix stopped him. She then got him back to us so we could help him. That’s how we found everything we know about this out.”
Greg just shook his head. Looking over at his son he said, “You told me the last time you saw Milly was in Phoenix. How the hell did her daughter end up here in New York?”
“The MC she was with moved to St. Louis, that’s where they ended up at. I spoke to the leader of the Reckless Hellions in Phoenix and he said Moses wanted his own chapter and they agreed as long as he stayed away from the mother chapter he could keep the name. Nix was born in St Louis and even though she doesn’t have a birth certificate she was raised there until Milly overdosed when she was thirteen.”
“Nix?”
“Her name is Phoenix but she’s known as Nix.” Bam Bam shrugged.
“What happened after her mother died?” Greg asked.
“Moses told her that she could take her mom’s place in the club,” Grizzly stated with a sneer.
“What the everlovin hell?” Greg growled. “And she was just a kid?”
Bam Bam nodded. “That’s why she left the compound and made her own way. She traveled all this way by herself.”
Greg swore under his breath and glared at the whole group. “So now what? What happens next and how did she get involved with this Turnkey again?”
“Turnkey is Moses’ brother and he was sent to us as a plant. He wanted to find our weak spot so when Moses came for the club, he could just walk in and take over. Of course that would require him to off half of my top men but I don’t think Moses would have a problem with that. But Turnkey fucked up about four years ago and he got booted out of the club when he murdered a man and Nix saw it. She told the police everything and there has been a warrant out for him since. We were going to strip him of his cut but he never came back to the club.” He looked over at Deke and nodded. “We were brought in when we got a phone call from them about Turnkey being one of us.”
“And now he’s out there waiting to finish what he started isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” a female voice called out from behind the table.
Everyone turned to see Nix standing there with Shadow and Wiley.
Greg looked her over carefully. Her hair was visible and he took note of that. She did look like her mother but he could also see Bam Bam in her as well. She was just a little bit of a woman barely five foot tall but she was Bam Bam’s child. Even he could see that much.
He also took note of the fact the big guy behind her was laying claim to her.
The man glared at everyone and didn’t care if they knew it.
Greg glanced over at his son and took note of the disapproving look in his eyes. He chuckled at the sight and when Bam Bam looked at him he nodded but didn’t say anything. That was the difference between sons and daughters and he knew Bam Bam was finding that out the hard way. He then looked back at the girl and shook his head. She was a beautiful woman and Greg smiled at the thought. From what he’d already heard about her, he also knew she was going to be a hard nut to crack.
Bam Bam got to his feet and motioned to Nix. “Nix, I’d like you to meet my father Greg, your grandfather.”
Nix stepped forward and held out her hand but shook her head. “That has yet to be established doesn’t it?”
“Not in my mind, it doesn’t,” Bam Bam told her.
She gave Greg a nod and looked over at Deke. “Did you find anything out yet?”
Deke shrugged his shoulders. “We found a connection but we don’t know what it all means. Maybe you can fill in some details for us.”
Wiley pulled up a chair and sat down pulling Nix down into his lap.
“What kind of details?” she frowned.
“Well, you know Moses better than we would,” Sam suggested. “What kind of man is he?”
Nix trembled and clenched her hands together nervously. “He is the devil incarnate if you ask me. There is nothing about the man that anyone could admire. He’s mean, crude and not a good man at all. He used to hit my mom all the time for no reason other than he really didn’t like her at all.” She looked down at her hands and wouldn’t look at the men in the room at all. “I think that’s why she did the drugs. Being high gave her a way to escape the hell she was in.”
“What about you?” Greg asked.
Nix shook her head. “Mom barely had time for me. I wouldn’t leave the room we shared when the men were around. I didn’t trust them. I was afraid of them too.”
“What about school?” Sam asked.
“I never went to school. No one outside the compound knew I was even there. And everyone in the compound ignored me completely. I was like a ghost trapped in between the world of the living and the world of the dead.” She paused then shrugged. “It was a lonely way to grow up.”
“Did you ever overhear Moses talk about his business? His club business?” Gator asked.
“Actually, I did overhear quite a bit of his business. He ignored me the same as everyone did. He and his VP, Brick would argue long and hard about a lot of things the members did. Brick was all for expanding the club business right there in St. Louis and Moses always told him that St. Louis wasn’t where they needed to be. He told Brick that they would expand on the East coast. That there would come a time when he would take what he’d learned and go off on his own. He would tell him that I was his key in and he would be glad when the time came to use me.”
“What kind of business did the club do?” Sam asked.
“They were running drugs and guns via the Mississippi river. They already established a route and wanted to expand it east via the Ohio River basin. Then Brick found a chemist to make their own brand of designer drug and they were opening up a whore house of their own.”
Sam shook his head at her words. “Typical MC business. Did they have any connections in the cartel or the mob?”
Nix shrugged. “I don’t really remember that. I left ten years ago. None of that stuff made any difference to me one way or the other back then. I had enough to worry about just getting through every day.”
“Did Turnkey ever visit St. Louis?” Deke asked.
Nix nodded her head. “Once a year, he would come to town and the two of them would disappear for three days. No one thought to ask where they went as Moses would punish them if they ever even thought about it. But once they returned, Turnkey would never stay around.”
“What time of year was that?” Bam Bam wanted to know.
“Around the middle of September.”
Bam Bam and Grizzly nodded.
“That’s when he would take a week off. He left town but never said where he was going,” Grizzly told the group. “He always came back meaner than a snake for the first week then he settled down to just being his usually mean self.”
“There’s a difference?” Greg asked.
Grizzly shrugged. “For him there was.”
Deke reached for the pile of papers Trudy and Zipper dug up. He’d read something in there and he wanted to double check it before he said anything. When he found it, he sat back in his chair and leveled a look at the whole group. “Michael Turner died the middle of September. He was buried next to his stepson Travis Paulson in Phoenix.”
“That could be a three day round trip,” Gator acknowledged.
“Did you take anything from the clubhouse other than your c
lothes when you left ten years ago?” Bam Bama asked.
Nix visibly trembled again. Glancing over at Wiley, she finally looked over at Bam Bam and nodded slowly. “I did. It wasn’t mine to take but I didn’t want to leave it behind for Moses to find.”
“What was it?” Bam Bam asked.
“It was a diary my mom had.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “She kept it secret from everyone else but sometimes at night when I would be laying there staring at her she would take it out and write a few words in it. I dug it out from where she hid it and took it along with me.”
“Did you ever read it?” He asked.
Nix flushed bright red and shook her head. “No... I never did.”
“Why not?” Sam asked. “Surely, you would want to know why your mom did the things she did.”
Nix dropped her head. “I didn’t read it because I can’t read. I don’t know how.”
The room was filled with an awkward silence at her admission. No one there remembered that she admitted not being able to go to school.
“I’ve carried the book with me this whole time,” she told them. “I can give it to you if you like.”
Bam Bam nodded. For a moment, he could speak past the lump in his throat. How could anyone have treated a child like that? All those years, she grew up without school even? Finally, he said, “Yes I would like that, very much.”
“Maybe Milly knew something about why Moses would do this,” Grizzly suggested.
Nix got up and went back to the bedroom she shared with Wiley. When she returned, she handed him the diary her mother had kept. “I don’t know what’s in there but my mom kept it hidden for a reason. I hope she wrote something that can help you figure this out.”
“Thank you. I hope so too,” Bam Bama told her. He looked down at the book in his hand and thumbing through it, he recognized the hand writing as hers. The book was stuffed with thoughts and pages of notes she’d written. He didn’t know where to start. The past was slamming into him hard. When he walked away from Milly at the other compound, he closed his heart to her and everything associated with her.
Now twenty-four years later he found a living breathing reminder of the one woman he turned his back on years ago. He was just disgusted that she had run off and was with other men. He wanted to forget her and what she’d done to their marriage. He hadn’t even thought about fighting for her. Shaking his head, he couldn’t believe he had done that. It was like he turned his back on his child as well.
When Grizzly’s hand clamped down on his shoulder Bam Bam looked at the other man.
“Stop it man.” Grizzly growled. “You couldn’t have known she was carrying your baby. She probably didn’t know yet. This is on her not you. I know if you had known, you never would have left her there with them. You would have fought for that baby whether Milly wanted her or not. You never would have left your kid behind.”
No one said a word for a moment then Nix asked, “Is that true?” When Bam Bam looked over at her, she asked again, “Would you have fought for me if you had known?”
Bam Bam stared sadly at her and before he could say anything she begged, “Please I need to know. Would you have fought for me if you had known about me?”
“Yes.” He growled. “Damn right, I would have fought for you! I walked away from your mother because if she didn’t want me and everything I stood for then I didn’t want her. But for you, I would have dragged her away from them and kept her until you were born. Then it would have been her choice. Stay or go I would have given her, her freedom but you would have stayed with me.”
Nix laid her head back against Wiley’s chest. When she heard his words, a hole in her soul began to fill. The emptiness inside her was beginning to fade. She felt hope in her heart for the first time in a long time.
Wiley wrapped his arms around her and she looked up and smiled at him. “I think I’m ok.”
He leaned over and brushed his lips on hers. “I know.”
Chapter Nine
Turnkey glared at the clubhouse in front of him. His friends, JoJo and Bailer stood behind him. Not one of them said a word. Finding the Sin’s Bastards wasn’t all that hard. He had followed Bam Bam’s bike the day before to the compound. He was surprised to see his old president coming through Troy and decided to see what the fucker was there for. They had hidden in the woods all night and now, were watching the clubhouse. There was something going on here and they needed to know what it was. Turnkey had called his brother last night and Moses was already on his way.
“Damn it.” Turnkey swore as he kicked his foot in the dirt. “I need to know what’s going on in there.”
“How you gonna do that?” JoJo asked. “You can’t just walk in there. The gate is locked and they got guards walking around.”
Turnkey snapped his head around to glare at the other man. “I know that stupid. I got eyes in my head. But Moses is gonna be here before long with the troops. I need to get a head count of who we’re up against.”
“We don’t even know if she’s in there. We know Bam Bam and his boys are here but there’s only three of them. You and Moses can take them,” Bailer assured him.
While they stood there, they saw a car pull up to the gate. They saw how the gate opened and how it closed after the car pulled in. When a single older man got out of the car, Turnkey frowned and stared at him for a moment. Then his eyes widened and he began to pace. He knew the man but couldn’t believe he was still alive. “Come on, we gotta get out of here. I need somewhere to think about this.” Turnkey turned to walk away.
“Where you gonna go?” JoJo asked.
“I don’t know but I need to get the hell away from here right now.” He growled at his friends. He looked back at the clubhouse and said, “Something isn’t right here.”
JoJo looked over at Bailer and shook his head. Turnkey wasn’t always stable but this time, he was way out there.
“When do you expect Moses and his men to get here?” Bailer asked.
Turnkey glanced at his watch and groaned. “He should be here in about seven hours. He’s been riding all night.”
“We have to find a way to get the girl out of there and set up the battle ground,” JoJo reminded him.
“I know!” Turnkey yelled. “Don’t you think I know that? Christ, this is such a mess. I really need to call Moses but he won’t answer the phone if he’s riding.”
“What’s going on here Turnkey?” JoJo dared to ask.
“Did you see that older guy that just got here?” he asked his friends. When both of them nodded he told them, “That’s Bam Bam’s old man. The old man who supposedly died twenty something years ago.”
“So what?” JoJo shrugged. “What difference does that make?”
“He’s the reason my dad died in prison. He’s the reason we had to live with our grandfather. This whole war is his fault. He’s supposed to be dead.” Turnkey shook his head. “I need to go.” He went over to his bike and got on. Leaving his friends, he rode away.
JoJo and Bailer both hurried after him. Finally, they caught up and they followed him to the edge of town.
Turnkey pulled off the road and began walking in the field.
JoJo and Bailer stayed with the bikes and watched as he struggled with whatever he was thinking about. They had no clue what was going on with him, so neither of them said a word.
Two hours later, Turnkey came back to where they were sitting and looked around the area. Other than an old barn, the field was big enough for what they needed. Without a word, he got back on his bike and rode back the way they came. When they found their way back to the woods outside the clubhouse, Turnkey stared at the buildings. There was some action now and he could see the numbers they had been gathering.
Even as they stood there hidden, they saw more men coming to the compound. Turnkey growled at the cuts the other men wore. They were Hell’s Wrath men. Men he thought at one point would stand behind him. Men he lost to Bam Bam four years back before he’d fucke
d things up when he beat that man to death.
His own frustration got the better of him that night and that act had ruined his life. He’d been kicked out of the Wrath MC and Moses almost beat the bloody hell out of him for it. He’d come willingly into the Wrath MC and somewhere along the way, he found a place within the club. He never expected to actually fit in but he had. Then he let his temper get the best of him and ruined everything, for himself, and almost for Moses’ grand plan.
He’d just spent the last four years on the outside of the club and he found he didn’t care for it. Always looking over his shoulder, hiding in the shadows wasn’t something Turnkey was good at. Now came the time to stand up or step down. Moses was on his way to face the past and get revenge for something done over half a lifetime ago. Now he realized his grandfather had lied.
The rage inside him was building to unknown before levels. He felt as if his entire life had been a lie. He wasn’t in a good place at the moment but he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to get his emotions under control before Moses got here.
Just then, the back door of the clubhouse opened and Nix walked outside. He focused on her and he sneered at the girl that caused this whole problem. It was her words that got him kicked out of the Wraths. Her words that put him on the run, her actions that almost cost him everything he ever wanted.
He looked over at his friends and snarled, “Stay here and stay out of sight. I’ll be right back.” With that, Turnkey darted across the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side. The trees had been cut back away from the fence but there were still enough trees to hide his progress as he followed her as she walked away from the compound.
When she was far enough away, he approached the fence between them.
She looked startled when he cleared his throat. The gun in his hand was something she couldn’t take her eyes off of. When she finally lifted her head, she found herself staring into hate filled eyes. She tried to back away but stood still when he growled at her.
