by Trent Jordan
Perhaps he had been a fraud all this time, utilizing his age not to provide wisdom but cover.
“We’re not going to have descendants if we become a pile of corpses in the hospital!” Axle shouted.
For whatever reason, that became the trigger that erupted the entire room into complete and utter chaos. Red Raven accused Axle of being sluggish in his role as a VP. Axle chose his words very carefully, accusing Red Raven of being reckless and hungry for a resolution not yet ready to arrive. When Lane tried to intervene, Patriot jumped down his throat.
Father Marcellus and I were left to just stare at the chaos of the meeting, trying to figure out if we should say anything or just let the whole thing run its course. In some sense, a civil war of sorts was the last thing we needed, but on the other hand, maybe this in-fighting would get all of our skeletons out of the closet, and we could move forward—clean.
“Enough!” Lane finally roared, banging his gavel repeatedly until everyone shut the hell up. “As much as I am in favor of not taking action at the moment, I want us to refrain from action not because we are split, but because we as a group reach a consensus of understanding, even if half the group hates the decision. I don’t give a fuck about us holding hands and saying we will rise as one. I just want us to understand the group decision instead of defaulting to it. We will be aggressive about waiting if that makes sense.”
“And how the fuck are you going to come to that, man?” Patriot said. “You want to explain how someone can be aggressive by sitting on their ass? Kaitlyn can give me all the info I need—”
“And even if Kaitlyn and Devon are gone, all of their doctor and nurse colleagues might get caught in the crossfire,” Lane said. “We want to keep this town intact. The Saints don’t give a fuck about collateral damage. You want an incident like this to make nationwide news? You want the Feds to come in here and place us on lockdown? Or you want our fighting to remain controlled, and for us to have freedom? Because that’s what the fuck we’re fighting for, right? Freedom from the evil of the Saints? What good is that fight if a worse kind of evil appears?”
Damn. I couldn’t ever recall Lane speaking so passionately and so ferociously before. But it was about damn time.
“This is bullshit,” Red Raven said.
Speaking of things I couldn’t recall ever happening before…
And speaking of things that you need to do that have never happened before…
The thought came to me unfinished and rough. It was a thought that I’d need to sit on for a little bit before I acted on it. But it was a thought that, the instant it entered my mind, I knew felt right.
It was a thought that, if carried through to the logical end, would give me the redemption and the chance to be the good man I knew I could be. It would allow me to showcase my good side, to show I wasn’t the murderer of my youth, to show I could sacrifice my well-being, perhaps my entire being, for the greater good of the club.
I would set up Red Raven myself.
I would get him on a mission of some kind in which we would take matters into our own hands. I would make sure that the evidence against him was irrefutable, and though it would put me in mortal risk, maybe even mortal certainty, it would work. It would trap a desperate Red Raven into a desperate move in a situation he considered desperate.
I was the only one who had the guts and the willingness to do it.
And it was going to be the thing that brought this club together.
That was the idea, at least. Remembering that Red Raven’s son was just a few dozen feet away at the shop, I knew that his exposure, no matter how evidence-laden it was, would create some fissures, perhaps even some separation in the club.
But you know what?
If it purged the Reapers of the sickness that had infected us for over a year, maybe we’d get the best of all worlds. We’d have the health to fight the Saints. We’d not have our plans revealed.
We’d finally be back to fighting on even ground—and with that even ground, we could finally end the threat of the Saints once and for all.
Thea
Monday Evening
Whether because the club wanted to give itself the weekend off or because the family party enabled people to be more low key, no more major parties were planned for the rest of the weekend.
Which was a damn good thing, too. After the time I’d had with Brian, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend it with anyone else. Even if Axle had called, I didn’t think I’d want to see him.
Instead, I decided to focus on someone that I hadn’t given anywhere near enough positive attention to—me.
Oh, I’d given all sorts of negative attention to myself since my life fell apart. I mocked myself, told myself I was a failure for becoming a club whore. I told myself that I would never become the type of employee, let alone the successful businesswoman, that I had believed I was destined to become. I ridiculed myself for not seeing how my ex could have been the type of guy to undercut me in the most Machiavellian move I had ever experienced.
That attention was unending and pretty damn frequent in the morning and at night. It was little wonder that I had to put on so much makeup for how bad my eyes looked—if I didn’t, everyone would know I was just one of the walking dead, or at least one of the walking dying. If someone had gotten that kind of abusive attention from someone besides themselves, they could have prosecuted on the grounds of emotional harassment.
But with Brian’s treatment, I had the confidence to recognize I still had a little bit of self-worth. I still had the chance to make myself better.
But if Brian was the antidote, I couldn’t overdose on it to the point that I became dependent on it. I didn’t want this to turn into an Axle situation where I got hurt because I was being used. No matter how much Brian had helped me, I had to remind myself that I only knew a sliver of the man, and there was much more to him than what I had seen.
So, with what little money that I had, I drove out of town to an electronics store and bought myself something that I’d meant to give myself long ago.
A camera.
Holding a camera in my hand felt like something that I was always meant to do.
Although I had done it many times in my life, I had not shot any footage since I got promoted to my content manager job; it was like my childhood self understood the drive and desire to capture the human experience, but when “adult matters” got in the way like money, relationships, and time constraints, I left it behind in the name of career advancement. But here, holding the camera, with its flip screen out from the side, it felt like my spirit had found peace through the lens.
I was still a hooker for the Black Reapers; I was still working crap waitressing and bartending jobs in Springsville for income; I was still hated by my ex and all of the other people who might have helped me but now saw me as worthless. I was still all of the external indicators of failure.
But even though right now, my camera was just pointed at the parking lot of Ed’s Electronics, capturing a variety of small, compact cars, I felt like I had found happiness.
You wanted to capture some moments on film, right? Better get to it.
The camera wasn’t just my connection to peace. It was also an excuse to get around town. I knew Springsville well, but I didn’t know it quite like I really wanted to. What better way to understand the town than to just start filming? If nothing else, it might provide me with some B-roll footage for future films and shorts.
I started by going to the downtown portion of the city. I parked my car at one of the paid meter spots, didn’t see any parking enforcement vehicles nearby, and got out without paying. I filmed from the edge of the downtown, where Bottle Revolution was, down past the yoga studio, the barbershop, the Mexican restaurant, the sushi restaurant, the electronics store, the grocery store… it was kind of funny how I could pass these places every day and just think of them as “there,” but when captured in the moment by art, it felt like much more.
Admittedly, with
it being near sunset and the town starting to come to life, whenever someone looked my way at the camera, I hid it or pointed it somewhere else. I was very conscious about not filming people that didn’t want to be filmed, which was something I probably needed to get over, especially since this was still for my personal use only. I was sure there were some issues of self-confidence there too.
But it was just one blip among what otherwise was a joyful experience.
I wound up walking, instead of driving, to other parts of town. I walked so much that I came awfully close to the spot where Brewskis had once stood, the bar where Fallen Saints and Black Reapers alike would go to have some drinks, keep a respectful if not tenuous distance from each other, and enjoy their own company. But now that the Fallen Saints had burned it down—while blaming the Reapers, no less—it was all but Fallen Saints territory.
I tried to stay out of club drama, but it seemed like the best way to describe the current difference between the two was to say that the Saints stood on fallen territory, while the Reapers stood on established territory.
On the way back to my car, though, I almost discovered just how underdeveloped my view of the Fallen Saints was—just how brutal and cruel they could be.
I was beginning the walk back, about a half-mile away, under the darkness of night, with only the occasional street lamp to light my way. Springsville had always been something of a two-faced place, peaceful and calm and small-town America during the day, while dangerous, poorly lit, and hazardous in the night. Any parent worth their salt kept their kids in after sunset, and only the bold and the reckless stayed out at night. For the most part, this only included anyone who was in one of the MCs.
For me, I mostly stayed inside unless called, but if I wanted to capture the grimier parts of life, I knew I had to keep filming even when it endangered me. I passed by the Mexican restaurant when I heard two whistles overlapping each other. Hearing two whistles wasn’t unusual—at the risk of sounding arrogant and haughty, I was sort of used to people catcalling me for my looks and how dressed down I usually was.
What I was not prepared for were two people in Fallen Saints cuts, beers, and empty plates in front of them, looking at me with untamed, sexually-charged eyes.
“Hey, ain’t that one of the whores of the Reapers?” one of them called out.
“Looks mighty yummy,” the other said. “Damn shame she’s with the bastards. We’d treat you much better over at the Saints, you know!”
Like I said, I tended to stay out of the way of the politics of the club, but one thing I knew for sure was that life would be much, much worse with the Fallen Saints than it would with the Black Reapers. The Reapers were by no means a club that would make a list of the best companies to “work for” or anything even approximating that, but the alternative was as close to hell on Earth as you could get.
I knew of too many girls in town who went there who suffered beatings on the regular. They would try and hide their bruises and wounds, but a trained eye knew where to look. And they were the lucky ones.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, turning back to walk.
Then I heard the chairs scooting back, and I did something on instinct that I hadn’t even thought I would do.
I started recording.
My body froze, which was probably the worst thing to have happened. But the red light turned on, recording every little thing that the Saints did. They crossed the street, smirks on their face, and approached me. Only when they got to my side of the street did they stop.
“The hell is that?” one of them said.
“It’s a camera,” I said.
My voice was steady, but I think that was more of a function of being fearful of expressing any emotion than anything else.
“The fuck you got a camera for? What are you, the news?”
I didn’t say anything, but I could see it made the Fallen Saints uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I had no idea if this discomfort would result in them destroying what I had just poured almost all of my money into or if it would make them walk away.
“Bitch, you gonna ignore us?”
“It’s a camera. I told you that.”
“That’s not…”
I heard the sound of distant motorcycle rumbling. The two Saints glared at each other and then glared back at me.
“You’re fucking lucky your boyfriends are heading this way.”
How do you know they’re not your friends?
“Next time we see you filming us, the only thing you’ll be making is a gangbang porno.”
One of them snickered while the other spat on me before they turned and headed back to their food. I halted my breath, trying to restrain myself from saying anything inflammatory. At least he didn’t spit on the camera.
But they had succeeded in one regard.
They had made me feel like an enormous idiot for thinking that filming the underbelly of society, of capturing the disturbing parts of the world, was really a good idea. That’s what I had wanted to accomplish all this time? To get up close to men who would openly spit on me and declare they’d rape me on camera?
What the fuck was I thinking? That was a job for a paid crew that had security and could protect themselves. Not for a thin, tall girl who could barely afford to feed herself. That’s what you get for thinking you could find yourself some freedom with the camera.
And just like that, the whirlwind of self-criticism, self-doubt, and self-loathing came rushing back into my brain. My night was done. Maybe my little sojourn into film-making was too.
What, really, did I have left for me right now besides Brian? And even that… that I was saying that that was something I had… ridiculous.
As I walked back to my car, I actually caught sight of him walking into Bottle Revolution. It was impossible not to see a man of his size walking into the store.
It was also impossible not to see that Axle was inside the store as well, leaning forward and talking to his new girlfriend. I’d forgotten her name, but I could see that he was genuinely in love with her, even with another Black Reaper present. He didn’t feel the need to posture before Brian.
Which, sadly, was more than I could say for the man I’d last slept with, whom I’d last given up my body to.
I thought about crossing the street and walking inside. I thought about saying something—I didn’t expect much, but maybe just a friendly hello. Maybe just, I didn’t know, an acknowledgment that someone could treat me well in public.
But no. First, I had to believe that I was worth that, and after what had happened the previous hour or so, I wasn’t convinced I was worth that. I wasn’t convinced I was worth much of anything, to be honest.
I got in my car, sighed, and leaned my head back against the headrest. I checked my phone for any new messages, not expecting to see anything.
A number popped up on my phone that I didn’t have saved. But even though I didn’t have it saved, I recognized it instantly by the area code. There was only one person I knew who had that area code.
My ex, Shane.
The one that ruined my life forever.
Butch
I saw her.
I saw her standing right outside her car, looking hurried, with something in her right hand.
I saw her get in her car and then sit there for an eternity, like someone who didn’t want to go wherever it was they were headed to or had just read a text message that had shattered everything they thought they knew.
I saw these things, and I felt compelled to go to her.
But it wasn’t like I reasoned my way to seeing her. It was more like a magnetic pull of sorts, like something that I could not easily define was pulling me to her.
Fortunately, or maybe, unfortunately, depending on how this meeting with Axle went, I could easily overcome a magnetic pull. All I had to do was turn my head, see him searching for a beer, and recall why I had come to meet him in the first place. Of course, when he then kissed Rose, my mind returned to Thea, but only for the b
riefest of moments.
I did allow myself to look over my shoulder. She was still in the car. She hadn’t moved.
But I didn’t even know if I liked her. I didn’t mean like her presence or like the way she tried to get to know me. I meant her, the woman, the human behind the words. I knew I liked what she seemed to me and what she represented—a chance to connect again. But beyond that?
Sometimes, I was glad to be as cold and detached as I could be. It made life a lot easier to work with, especially when so many parts of me wanted so many different things. And some parts of me just want to watch the world burn.
“Looking for someone?” Axle said before I had turned back to him.
Annoyed, I flipped my head back around with a scowl. I pretended that I hadn’t heard him say anything and moved toward the back. I held the door open, but apparently, Axle hadn’t finished saying anything.
“I know what a guy looks like when he’s searching for a woman,” he said. “You gonna tell me who that woman is?”
“No.”
I hadn’t come to discuss rumors like a bunch of gossiping girls. I’d come to discuss the fallout from our earlier meeting and how we could handle it. I’d come to discuss club business, not personal business.
“Well, don’t think we won’t tease you about it,” Axle said. “Especially if it’s that tall bunny.”
I had to restrain myself from launching at Axle. Bunny. It was amazing how a seemingly innocuous word like that could suddenly be wrought with implications.
“Why did you back off from combat at the meeting?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject.
Axle took a second to realize I was not playing games, and his facial expression changed from serious with a hint of a smile to nothing at all.
“I wanted to see how Red Raven would react,” he said. “I wanted to see what would happen if support for his side fell through. And it’s exactly what I thought.”
