Sitting up, Tilly looks at me with a sad smile and a hint of disbelief.
“Is that what you really think? That I’d use the girls as an excuse. God, you can be such an asshole sometimes. It’s like you flip a switch and go from sweet and caring to King Douchebag in five seconds. It makes me dizzy how fast your mood changes.”
Can’t argue that. I’ve always been a moody bastard, I’m just adept at hiding that shit usually.
“Yeah, you and me both.” I reply casually with a shrug.
Crossing my arms behind my head staring at the ceiling, I remember the other added complication to our already fucked up situation. Thankfully this shit isn’t related to the issues we’re facing tracking Demon down, or half as important, but it is something that’s going to impact Tilly.
Just when I thought our lives couldn’t get any more messed up, my dad calls. It’s like he had a radar on when the worst possible timing could be and used it. I don’t know how he got my number, because I sure as shit didn’t give it to him seeing as I haven’t spoken to him since I left home at eighteen. But somehow he managed to get his hands on it, deciding it was a good idea to finally try and reconnect after years of nothing. Once I got over my initial shock, and yeah that’s exactly what I was, shocked, I got pissed. Pissed he picked now to do this shit, unwittingly or not. Pissed he hadn’t tried before now. And fucking pissed he clearly wanted something from me. Something I didn’t know if I could give him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tobias
“Please keep making excuses for each other’s bad parenting.
It seems to be working out well for you.”
- Rotten eCard
If you go based on peoples’ definition of normal I probably had the most normal upbringing out of all my brothers. Some of them lost parents’ young, or never had any to begin with growing up in the system. Tank grew up in a wealthy, obnoxiously wealthy family, which sounded more like prison full of social engagements and society functions than a home. Sure, his parents’ are great, I’ve met them and they’re good people, but that doesn’t change the fact his circumstances were far from the norm. Not even Kendall, Cage, or Steel grew up in what could be classified as an average all-American household. They were raised by a bunch of FBI agents posing as bikers, who eventually outed themselves and continued on in the MC they’d dedicated more than half their lives to.
Me on the other hand, I had two parents’ who married young, but were still very much in love with each other. A Sister, Finley, who at only seventeen months younger than me, was my best friend and the most important person in my life. I had friends, the guys on my football and basketball teams, girls who wanted a piece of me, even if it was only for one night, and a chance at getting a full-ride football scholarship to the college of my choice. I loved my life. Until the day that irrevocably changed it forever and I wound up hating it.
We lived in the upper-middle class suburb of, Burbank, on the outskirts of, Los Angeles, about a twenty minute drive from the heart of L.A. depending on traffic. My dad’s an attorney with a reputable and highly sought after firm, and my mom’s a CPA for some of the wealthiest people in Southern California. We lived more than comfortably, Finley and I having everything we needed and most of what we wanted. I’m not sure if our parents’ happily handed over gifts and cash because they felt guilty for working so much, or because that’s just the way they showed how much they loved us, but to a teenage boy in his senior year of high school it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t what I’d call materialistic, but I didn’t hate my parents’ for being overly generous either. And I certainly didn’t discourage them doing it.
Finley was different though. She was sweet, kind, compassionate, and completely disinterested in our parents’ lavish gifts and offers of cash. She would’ve preferred to have them sitting round the dinner table so she tell them stories about her day rather than have them constantly absent, and a few extra dollars lining her pocket.
I think that’s one of the reasons I was drawn to Tilly from the beginning. She reminds me so much of Finley it’s uncanny. Both of them could compete for the title of ‘most thoughtful’, and it would come in a tie. Finley took it upon herself to make sure my football uniforms were washed, my gear organized and repacked, dinner was cooked every night and the house was clean. She didn’t do that shit for recognition. She did it because she knew no one else would. Finley wanted us to be proud of what we had and in turn take care of it.
I asked her about why she busted her ass to do it along with the endless cheerleading practices, helping to edit the school newspaper, sitting on the student council, getting straight A’s in all her subjects, and trying to have a social life. I didn’t get why she’d want to take on all that extra work and responsibility, because I know I sure as hell didn’t. Sure, I helped her out because there was no way I’d let my sister do all that shit alone, but I did it begrudgingly.
“There are lots of people who aren’t fortunate enough to have what we do, Tobi. It would be a shame to be blessed with a life like this and not appreciate it. This is how I show my appreciation for what we have. I don’t want anyone to think we’re entitled brats. I want people to know we respect our parents’ for what they provide for us, and that includes the roof over our heads, the food in the cupboards, and the clothes we wear.”
That was her reasoning and while I got it, I still hated she had such a grown up approach to life. Finley should be talking about makeup and boys, not that I’d let any of the assholes sniffing around her anywhere near her, but even her thinking about dating and prom was preferable to her playing housekeeper and cook. Finley would make the most magnificent mom when she grew up. She was kind, patient, and nurturing, and I could imagine her having a whole hoard of kids, at least four or five. Or that was what I thought she’d do, but less than two months later Finley was gone and what I considered her destiny was cruelly ripped out from under her. She didn’t even get the chance to finish being a kid herself before her life was cut tragically and heartbreakingly short.
My childhood came to an abrupt end the night Finley died. Gone was the easy going, laid-back football player, and in his place was the lonely, grieving, heartbroken teenager that expressed his devastation at his sisters’ loss through violence, brooding, and withdrawing from the world around him.
Nightmares about the way Finley died, the last words she ever spoke to me, and the screams I heard from that second floor window plagued me for years after. I didn’t think I’d ever stop seeing her face staring up at me, covered in blood, with eyes pleading for me to let her go night after night. It wasn’t until I started sleeping with Tilly curled in my arms that I realized the nightmares had become dormant. They weren’t forgotten, but they were few and far between. Just another way Tilly helped to heal me.
Mom and dad had gone to Indianapolis to see dad’s parents’ for a long weekend claiming to need a break from the rat-race. They said we were old enough to hold down the fort for four days and three nights, so they decided to leave early Friday morning and were due to return Monday afternoon. Brent, a good friend whose parents’ were also away for the weekend, decided to throw a house party on the Sunday night. Not an unusual thing for him to do seeing as his parents’ were even more absent than ours. I’ve got no idea how he got away with it time after time though.
I mean, the place was always trashed by the end of the night, shit got broken, carpets stained, and his Dad had to notice his liquor cabinet had been drained nearly dry. But apparently they’d never said anything, and if I had to hazard a guess, they knew what was going on but seeing as Brent always got cleaners in, replaced what he could, and there’d never been a complaint made about the noise to the police, they let him get away with it.
When the unthinkable happened, I was upstairs in one of the guest bedrooms getting my dick sucked by some trashy whore I wouldn’t remember in the morning. Again, not an uncommon occurrence, but this time I wished I’d been able to keep it in my pants for just on
e night. I wished that I’d been downstairs where I would’ve heard her calling for me, or so someone could’ve told me Finley was there looking for me. But I didn’t keep my cock in check, and because I didn’t the guilt that bombarded me became part of who I was. It changed me, eating away at me from the inside out until I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I blamed myself for years for not being there for her when she needed me, and to some extent I still do. Honestly, I don’t think there’ll be a time it won’t.
Finley came to the party to find me and bring me home, because Mom and Dad had called home telling her they were arriving home early from their visit. Something about Grandpa needing to see to some unexpected business. It was late and Finley shouldn’t have been out. I’d warned her about being out by herself at night. I’d told her it wasn’t safe for a girl to be walking around by herself, but she hadn’t listened to all my lectures and came searching for me anyway. After scouring the party for me in vain, she was crossing the road, which wasn’t well-lit, (the estate Brent and his parents’ lived in only had those old fashioned Victorian street lamps), when a drunk teenager who’d consumed his weight in beer and was driving without his lights on hit her three-feet before she made it to the curb.
I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong if I hadn’t heard the screams of some of the girls downstairs and a few of the guys yelling for someone to call 911. Something niggled at me telling me I needed to detach the chick currently sucking my dick and check out what was going on. I don’t know why I felt it was so important for me to look, but whatever that something was, the something that compelled me to look out the window, I was fucking glad I’d trusted it. Because if I hadn’t, if I’d discounted it as an annoyance, I’d never have found Finley before it was too late.
When I made it to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes, I couldn’t see much. I could barely make out a person lying on the road and the car that was stopped diagonally in the middle of the street, but that was enough. Especially when I saw all that black, waist length hair spread out around the body of the person who’d been hit. I can’t tell you how I knew it was Finley, I still can’t to this day, but in that instant I knew. I just knew it was my baby sister lying lifeless in the middle of a cold, dark road, and she was alone.
On that thought it took me less than a minute to get down the stairs and through the masses of people drinking, dancing, and making out. I pushed people out of the way as I ran out the front door and was kneeling beside her in a grand total of maybe two minutes, but those two minutes were too long. Those were two minutes I’d never get to spend with Finley. They were two more minutes she’d had to be alone and in pain. And it didn’t matter how much I wanted them, I’d never get them back.
Passing the guy who’d hit her, his head in his hands crying openly as he sat on the curb, I catalogued who he was and promised myself after I’d seen to Finley he’d be getting a less than pleasant visit from me. I knew the guy, he actually played on my football team. Aaron Biggs was a good guy, or I’d thought he was. He was a linebacker, a ladies man, and now a murderer. And I had every intension of making him pay for what he’d done. Pay in a way he wouldn’t ever forget.
Looking down at Finley to see her covered in blood, bruises forming under her usually lightly tanned skin, skin that was now turning a ghostly white, I noticed her eyes were unfocused and heavy and that’s when I knew then she wasn’t going to make it. It was another on the long list of things I didn’t understand, how I knew she wasn’t going to make it, but it didn’t change that I felt it down to my bones I was going to lose her. It wouldn’t matter how quickly the paramedics got here, or what they tried to do to help her, my sister wasn’t going to live.
The gut wrenching sorrow that hit me at the realization I was going to lose my best friend would’ve brought me to my knees if I wasn’t already on them. Pain like nothing I’d ever felt sliced through me, flaying me wide open. Open in a way I didn’t think I’d ever be able to put myself back together again. I couldn’t fathom how I was going to go on without her in my life. She was a more integral part of my life than our parents’, than my friends, my teammates, than anyone for fucks sake.
I didn’t bother praying for her to be okay because I knew it was pointless. But what I did do was try and bargain for her life. I offered myself in her place. I told whoever was up there, if they were listening, I would do anything if they would just take me instead. Obviously nothing I begged for worked, because while my beautiful, perfect sister might not have died instantly, she did pass ten minutes later. The paramedics who attended the scene said the damage done to Finley’s fragile body was too severe for her to have survived. That her injuries weren’t compatible with life, and they were shocked she’d hung on as long as she did. They didn’t try reviving her. No CPR. No attempting to shock her heart back to life. Nothing. She was gone and we all knew it. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.
It was almost impossible to watch them load her in the back of the ambulance and take her away from me. It felt final, too final. I wanted her to wake up and tell me it was all a joke. That she was going to be fine. It was wishful thinking and it didn’t happen, but it was something I hoped for nevertheless.
Hours’ worth of questioning by the police who attended the scene, statements being taken, parents’ being called, and crime scene technicians recreating the sequence of events all culminated in Aaron Biggs being charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. It carried a bullshit sentence of three to five years, six months of which he’d already served awaiting his trial. I couldn’t get my head around how you could kill an innocent girl who was intelligent, loving, and sensitive, one who had her whole life ahead of her, and get off with less time in prison than you spend in fucking high school. It didn’t make sense to me and it still doesn’t.
Aaron didn’t make it to lockup without a visit from me however. I caught up with him at his house three nights after he killed Finley, before he was taken into custody while he was taking the trash out and beat the ever-loving-shit out of him. I broke his nose, one of his arms, fractured what I expect was a few ribs, and gave him a severe concussion, but it wasn’t enough for me. Not nearly enough. I wanted him to feel every ounce of the pain he’d caused my sister. He deserved that and more, and I knew just where to find someone that’d make sure he got what was coming to him.
In Covina, about thirty-five minutes from where we lived in, Burbank, is a known biker bar called Broken Road. I’d driven past it with friends a few times on our way in or out of town, but we’d never been inside. Not to mention if we had we’d have been kicked out for being underage and too clean cut. The guys we’d seen hanging around outside leaning on Harley’s, Triumph’s, and Indian’s were covered head to toe in denim and leather vests, and looked like they’d eat teenagers like us for breakfast. Long hair, bald, beards, goatee’s, tall, broad shoulders, covered in tattoo’s, these guys weren’t guys you messed with, but they were exactly who I needed now.
There was no working up the courage to go inside, I just did it. I was past having fear for my safety. My sister was gone and whatever would happen to me paled in comparison to the pain of losing her, so I was all-in no matter what it took. The inside of the bar was exactly what I expected. Dark, musty, the smell of beer, leather, and cheap perfume hung heavily in the air. Rickety looking tables filled the space the booths weren’t and a long, abused, timber bar ran most the length of one of the free walls. Old road signs, framed Harley prints, and neon tube lighting was scattered throughout the place haphazardly, and the floors were sticky with spilt alcohol and fuck knows what else. All-in-all it was the perfect place for me to find what I was looking for, or should I say who.
Scanning the dimly lit interior, my eyes narrowed in on a group of three men who looked more imposing than the rest of the patrons by far. They all looked to be the same age, in their early forties, with dark hair and over six-foot tall. The one of whose hair was cropped short on the sides with a three-inch Mohawk
down the center was the most menacing. He was giving hard looks to anyone who walked within a two-foot radius of their booth. They were also hugely muscled and not from working out, or not entirely. Their bulk was honed from working and living hard, not exercise machines and weight lifting like most of the men I knew.
What I noticed on a secondary sweep of the booths inhabitants was the leather vests they were wearing. In the center on the back was a large skull with pistols crossed in front of it and a scythe behind. The writing above, which I figured identified the club they belonged to said Devil’s Spawn MC, and what I would later learn is the bottom rocker stated they were from, Blackwater, Colorado. I had no clue where that was, nor did I care. I was there to get a job done not get a lesson in geography.
As I approached the table the menacing guy took one look at me and growled,
“Fuck off.”
I didn’t have any idea what the etiquette for dealing with bikers was, but I doubted crossing my arms over my chest or being disrespectful would go down well, so I left my arms at my sides and widened my stance to a shoulder width apart saying,
“I need someone to do a job for me and I’m hoping you’ll be interested in taking me up on my offer.”
The guy with the longest hair and a kickass goatee chuckled, telling the menacing dude to calm the fuck down before turning his laser sharp eyes to me.
Forged: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel Page 14
