by Lake, Rae B.
"Speak." I answer.
"Wire, hey brother." Brendan breathes a heavy sigh.
"Yeah, what did you find out?"
"You're not going to like it."
"What the fuck more am I not going to like? I already found out that most of my childhood was a fucking lie. Did something happen to Keeley?" I ask thinking maybe that is why he was holding back on the information.
"No, I didn't find anything more on Keeley. I did find out the names and locations of your father and twin sisters."
Twin sisters, I had sisters. I wonder what kind of life they had growing up.
"Do you want to know the names?" Brendan asks hesitantly.
The names? Is that what he thought I was going to be upset about? "Fucking spit it out Brendan."
"Fine, your sisters are, Lyrica and Simone Ryans, they are both located in New Orleans Louisiana. Right now, they are at the Inferno's Clutch MC Clubhouse. It's not far from Archer and them."
"Ok, that's not bad. I can reach out and maybe speak with them if they want."
"Yeah, I think that could work out."
I waited a second for him to continue, when he didn’t, I urged him on. "What of my biological father?"
"Fuck, ok, the man that came up as your biological father is one Charles Whitten."
My stomach nearly lurches out of my mouth. "Fuck out of here. You're wrong. That's bullshit!" I gag and continue to scream at him through the phone. "You got the test wrong."
"Wire, DNA doesn't fucking lie. He's your father. It’s a 99.9999% match. I can forward you the documentation if you fucking want." Brendan barks back through the phone.
"What the fuck ..." I can't say anything else. I lean over and put my hand on my knee. This can't fucking be right.
"Listen, brother I don't know if he knew. Maybe he didn't-" I hang up the phone before he can say anything else.
The apprehension that I felt before is nothing compared to the fucking rage rolling through my body right now. Charles Whitten is my biological father. Even though there were years that I would have done anything to make sure that I was in his good graces, he never once told me that I was anything more than a member of his fucking club. I make my way over to my bike not even bothering to tell Clean that I was leaving. I had to get down to Florida and ask Prime, the founding member of the Wings of Diablo, why the fuck he never told me I was his son.
Dillon
It took me three days on the road to make it down to where Prime is. I don't know if anyone has told him that I am on the way or if anyone has reached out to Clean. Despite that there is absolutely nothing that’s going to stop me from getting the fucking answers I want. I spent years in that man’s company and never picked up on anything. I thought he treated everyone like a son. Come to find out maybe I was just a bit more special than the rest.
It's been a few years since I've been down here to see him. Even then he never said a thing. As the founder of our club, he would always be held in high regards, but he chose to leave the life in order to focus on his family.
A family that didn't fucking include his illegitimate son.
I pull my bike to a stop at the edge of his walkway, I don't even verify that it's fucking secure. I see that there is another bike here. A custom one for someone that has problems with their legs. There is only one other biker I know with a bike like that. Ryder must be here with Cherry. It didn't matter either way, if Ryder decided to try and stop me, I was just going to have to go through him as well.
When I turn the corner, I can see the four of them on the porch—Cherry, little LJ, Ryder, and that fuck Prime.
"Ha! Would you look at this shit. Is this a fucking family reunion or some shit? Y’all going to have to learn how to call before you just show up. I don't have enough booze for this shit." Prime jokes as he gets up from his seat and starts in my direction. A huge smile on his face. He's happy to see me.
"Oh shit, Wire what are you doing here?" Ryder asks from behind him as he gets up too and heads in my direction.
I clench my jaw hard trying to get a grip on myself, but even as I continue to make my way towards them, I know that I don't have any control. I want to kill this fuck. I want to ram my fucking hand through his face until it comes straight through to the other side. He had lied to me. It feels like I've been lied to my entire fucking life.
Prime's face falls and his eyebrows clench together as he gets a good look at my expression. I’m not slowing down. "Wire, what's up?" He braces himself, he must know what I'm about to do. Ryder doesn't though. I have to get to Prime before Ryder figures it out or he would never let me do it.
When I get close enough, I take off into a run. Tackling Prime to the ground, I quickly raise my hands over my head and start pounding into the old man's face. He blocks a few times and tries to flip me over, but even with him above me I manage to knock the air out of him with an elbow to the ribs. Prime isn't a match for me. I roll us back over and press down on Prime’s face as I hammer away at his sides trying to get his ribs to break.
"Wire what the fuck!" Ryder rushes to where we are and tries to pull me off, but I'm not fucking through. I push Ryder off, and he falls on his ass tripping over a rock. I charge Prime again, but this time he's more prepared. He wraps me up in a choke hold stopping some of my momentum.
"Boy, have you lost your fucking mind? I will end your life."
"No! Stop! Oh God, stop it!" Cherry screams from where she is standing on the porch watching the entire scene play out, a crying LJ clinging to her leg.
My mind goes into that numb state and a hum descends over me. This is who I am, a fucking killer, no matter the target. Pain, they need to feel the pain I feel.
I hurl myself backwards landing completely on top of Prime forcing him to let go of his hold. Pulling my hand back again I punch him directly in his face. The next time I raise my hand Ryder grabs me from behind and throws me off Prime.
He wraps his huge arms around mine and speaks directly into my ear. "Wire, don't do this. We're your family, remember who you fucking are."
"Family?" I roar out and try to buck out of his grasp. They told Ryder a few years back that he would never be able to walk again, but he had made a full recovery. He was just as strong as he was years ago. "He's no fucking family of mine. The lying piece of shit! How could he keep it from me? Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" I yell and try to turn back towards Prime. Ryder keeps a good grip on me as Prime stands up. Blood is dripping from a cut on his eyebrow and from his lip. He is holding his side, but he's not hurting enough.
"What the fuck is this crazy motherfucker talking about?" Prime wheezes out.
I feel Ryder shake his head behind me. He doesn't know anything either or does he? Ryder is one of the first generation of Wings and is very close to Prime. Did he know all these years that Prime was my father? I finally pull out of Ryder's grasp and turn to him.
"Did you fucking know too? Did you keep the secret for him as well?" I peer straight into his eyes, but get nothing.
"What fucking secret are you talking about asshole? I could have your patch for the shit that you just pulled. I created this fucking club. Whatever beef you have means shit when it comes to me. I don't care if you were the president, I can have your kutte." Prime yells at me.
"Fuck you! You think this is about a fucking kutte right now? This is about you being my fucking father and not saying shit!"
Prime cocks his head to the side, "Boy, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"You know what the fuck I'm talking about. You 're my goddamn father." I say it again this time a bit calmer.
"You hit your head or some shit?" Prime shakes his head again still trying to deny it. "How the fuck do you figure that shit?"
"I figure it, because your DNA is my fucking DNA. Imagine my fucking surprise when I have someone look into the system to try and find my family to have your name pop up."
"Fucking bullshit. I would know if he had a son." Ryder says from behind me. "I knew his o
ld lady."
"I'm assuming my mother wasn't his old lady." I pull my phone out and swipe to the photo that Brendan had sent me of my mother when she was younger. Probably in her early twenties. I show it to Ryder.
He examines the picture. It took only a second for his face to pale and the words, "Oh shit." to pop out of his mouth.
"Oh, shit what?" Prime asks.
"His mother is Sadie."
"No, the fuck it's not! He said his mother's name was Lissette or something like that."
"Bro, this is Sadie." Ryder turns my phone in his direction.
Prime's chest begins to rise up and down even faster now than when I was beating his ass.
He takes a few unsteady steps in our direction his eyes glued to the phone in Ryder's hand.
"No, no, no. Fuck no!" He snatches the phone from his hand and stares at the picture.
"If that isn't enough ..." I swipe the picture away and show him a screenshot of the DNA results that plainly state that he is my father. "Now explain that shit to me." I growl at him waiting for him to continue to try and deny it.
"Oh fuck. Oh no." He flips back to the photo and stares at it for a second before his eyes dart up to mine. "No." he gasps as the phone slips out of his fingers. He raises his hands to his own head and pulls at his hair. "It can't fucking be!"
I expected to see anger or disbelief or even recognition in his eyes when I told him that I knew, but what I saw there was pure destruction. I had just destroyed him with this information.
Prime turns and basically stumbles into the house. When the door shuts behind him, I hear him screaming in rage with furniture crashing and windows breaking.
I turn back to Ryder who is standing behind me in the same position that Prime was just in. Hands in his hair completely flabbergasted.
"He didn't fucking know. She never told him."
"How could he not know? You fuck someone, a baby comes out and the baby is yours." I just didn't see how there was misinterpreting that shit.
"Sadie was just another bunny." He put his hands up in case I was going to get upset about him basically calling my mother a slut. "She was there for a year then she vanished for a year. When she came back, she didn't say anything about having a kid. She did end up pregnant by Prime almost a decade later, but the baby died."
"Are you serious? She told you I died?"
He drops his hands down and rubs his face, "That can't be true, that was only about 24 years ago. You would have already been at least 8 by then. I don't fucking understand this shit at all."
My brain went into overdrive, "Yeah someone is lying."
"About you being his kid, I know."
"No, I'm his kid. Someone is lying about the pregnancy my mom lost. I have younger twin sisters too; they are twenty-three and live in New Orleans."
"What!" Ryder roars out. "You're fucking kidding me! Don't fuck around. There is no way! That's bullshit! She brought him the fucking ashes! He still has the goddamn urn."
Oh, this was fucked up. I’d spent all this time thinking that it was Prime who was holding back all this information when it would seem like he truly didn't know.
"He never had a clue?" My anger fast turning into sorrow. I can't imagine finding out you have a grown man for a son after you thought that your kid had died. Not to mention I was going to have to tell him that he had more children.
"No man. Not one fucking clue. I can't say he loved your mother, but he did want that baby. Now to find out that he had three that he didn't know about. Fuck, I don't even ..." His voice trailed off as he turned his gaze back onto the cabin. Prime was still in there screaming. I’d set out to make him feel my pain and from the sound of his voice I can say that I’ve succeeded.
* * *
After we all settled down, I sat down with Prime to tell him the information that Brendan was able to dig up for me.
"I don't know why she wouldn't tell me. " I don't think I have ever seen a grown man cry so much as Prime did in the past hour. If I had any doubts about him not knowing that I was his son, he surely put that to rest. The anger and heartbreak just intensify for him when I told him that not only did he have me, but he has two other children from my mother that he’d never met. I felt bad for the man that had lived his entire life just wanting to be surrounded by family, only to have it staring him in the face the whole time.
"Did your mother never tell you anything about me?"
"Nothing, I knew she had a thing for bikers even in her drugged-out state though. She would get excited if we were outside and someone would ride by. Besides that, there was nothing. She wasn't much for talking. It was booze and drugs for her all the time. I didn't know her name until I was about 12. My stepfather preferred the name bitch instead of Lissette." I shrug trying my hardest not to let the demons of my past catch up to me. The both of them were dead and there was no use dwelling on the way they used to treat me.
"What do they look like? Your sisters?"
"I don't know. I've never seen them. I didn't know anything about them until Brendan told me."
"Sorry, but how is that possible. I mean you were almost what 9 by the time she supposedly had the two of them, how did you not know about them?" Ryder asks from where he is sitting with Cherry on his lap.
"Honestly, I thought about that shit too. Right around that age she decided that she was going to get clean. She put on a little weight, but I just assumed it was because she wasn't stuffing shit in her veins. She left for two weeks and when she got back it was business as usual. That is the only thing I can remember. There were never any babies and I never saw a big belly. No diapers, nothing."
"It's possible she didn't show, especially if she were underweight and not taking care of herself in the first place. You may not have picked up on it at that age either." Cherry says.
"So, what happened to them then? She told me that they’d died?"
"Brendan said she gave them up for adoption, not the legal kind though, the kind that pays good money." I rub my fingers together. She had sold her daughters. I don't know if that makes me special because she chose to keep me or makes me the worst of the bunch. I wasn't even good enough to sell.
"Fucking bitch!" Prime roared out and another tear sneaks out of his eye. "I swear to God, I could kill her. I can't believe she did this to me. I can't believe she did this to you. So much shit would have been different."
"I hear you there." I nod my head.
"You would've never been a Wing."
"What? Why the hell not?" My eyes pop up to his. "Now I'm not good enough to wear the patch? What the fuck?"
"No, it has nothing to do with that. Now that I know who you are, do you think I want you running into a fucking fire fight or having to rescue your woman from psychotic bastards? Would you want that for Lily?" his eyes widened, "Lily's my granddaughter."
"Well fuck, yeah I guess she is." I focus back on what he was saying before. "I can take care of myself. I thought you would know that by now."
"Wire, I know you can take care of yourself. I know how murderous you can be, but if I had my way you would’ve never had to. I love my brothers and the patch, but that life of death and war is not something I would wish on even the worst of my enemies."
"How did you end up at the Wings of Diablo anyway if Sadie never told you anything?" Ryder asks still trying to find the connection.
"I didn't. He found me remember." I pointed to Prime. I was only a fucking teenager when I’d walked up behind a group of bikers and tried to steal one of their wallets. Momma always made a big deal about them; it must be because they had money. The wallet I had tried to steal was Prime's, talk about fucking serendipity.
"You two were just meant to be in each other’s lives it seems." Cherry says with a big smile on her face.
"It seems that way."
I look around his trashed house and then back to Prime's bruised and bloody face. I’d gone a little overboard. "Listen, I'm sorry about beating on you earlier. I thought you knew and was
just being a fucking asshole by keeping it from me. I'm tired of finding out that the people I trust have gone behind my back. I just want to be able to trust."
"Trust yourself then." Ryder says immediately.
"What?"
"There isn't anyone in the world that isn't going to let you down at one point or another. The only one you can fully trust is yourself."
"That is easier said than done Ryder and you know it." He knew the clubhouse and what it was about. I had to think about everyone's wants and needs, not just my own. I had to be able to trust them as well.
"Can I ask you a question, do you know where the phrase 'my word is law' came from in our club?" Prime asks me.
"Yeah, as the president you make the final decision. Everyone has to go with it and shut the fuck up." I've said and heard that shit so many times over my life.
"Yes, that's the bare version of it, but it goes deeper than that." He scoots forward in his chair before he addresses me again. "Those men chose you to be their president. They knew what they were doing when they said that you were the president. They knew that you would be able to make the hard decisions, they believed that you would make the right choices no matter the opposition. That is why the president chair is so fucking sacred … you are the be all end all of the club, you don't need anyone's opinion or input, you could run the club anyway you feel, and they would follow you, because they truly believe you know best. Over the years the club has become more of a democracy, but when it was formed it was solely a dictatorship. Ryder's right. You have to trust yourself, good decisions or bad decisions you have to trust yourself to make them."
I lean back in the chair and think on what the two of them are telling me and it seems to be the same shit that everyone else has been trying to get through my head. I was so hell bent on figuring out who I could trust that I forgot that I didn't need anyone to trust. I knew what the fuck needed to be done, I always knew what needed to be done. It's why they all flock to me. Why they chose me as President. Why they want me back. They have confidence in me no matter where my choices lead them.
