by Kiki Leach
After a few seconds of hesitation, one by one, seven of the eight members went around the table and lifted their hands high in the air while shouting 'I'.
Wolf turned his eyes to Tiny, who remained still in his chair. "What say you, brother?" he asked.
Tiny looked over at Wolf in disgust, then turned his eyes to River. He pulled up the corner of his mouth into a worthless grin and placed his hands on the table. "This bitch better have a goddamn pussy made of fuckin' gold." He stood up from his chair and eyed the room.
"Guess that's the motherfucker's way of tellin' us he's with us by default," muttered Blue.
"Then the 'I's' have it," replied Wolf. He slammed his gavel onto the table to adjourn the meeting and sat back in his chair.
Tiny kicked his chair from beneath the table and headed straight for the door, damn near ripping the handle from it as he yanked it back and stormed out. The other members, with the exception of River and Blue, immediately followed after him.
River leaned over the table and glanced between Blue and Wolf. "Thanks for havin' my back on this," he said.
"I still think you're eager to get all up inside that bitch no matter what bullshit you spew to us or anybody else, motherfucker." Blue smirked. "But I also believe in the shit you said. And besides all that, I don't think any bitch or her kid should have to suffer just 'cause Fontaine is one sick, twisted and crazy fuck."
Wolf turned his eyes to the table. "You mind givin' us a minute?" he asked Blue.
Blue looked at River and nodded. "Yeah, Prez. Sure." He grabbed his cigarette from the ashtray, got up from his chair and quickly removed himself from the room.
River suddenly became agitated and physically uncomfortable at the thought of actually being alone with Wolf. Most often when the other brother's weren't around, bad shit would happen between them that would oftentimes take more than a few good weeks to finally recover from.
Wolf leaned back and swiveled in his chair. "For the sake of the club.”
River rattled his head. "I ain’t stickin' around here for this shit." He leaned forward in his chair.
Wolf’s grey eyes darkened. "Sit. Down,” he said. Reluctantly, River dropped back down to his chair and groaned. “Now look, I'm not plannin' on startin' in about how you maybe wanna fuck this bitch, son. Like the others said, I know that maybe you thought with your dick at first, but I also believe you're seekin’ out real solutions to a problem the club as a whole has had for far too fuckin' long now. Fontaine and his crew have been a thorn in the Shadow Riders’ side for nearly a goddamn decade; even if our charter hasn’t been directly affected by him since the fire, other places around the city have. This bitch comin' out here now works for us. She's the excuse we need to finally put this motherfucker to ground."
"Never knew we fuckin' needed one," River muttered.
"We didn't. Before he got locked up." Wolf folded his hands and placed them on the table. "I've got your back on this, but we need to start gettin’ all our goddamn pigeons in a row before those motherfuckers decide to fly south. For starters, how the hell do you plan on playin' this with the other charters? A piece of goddamn cloth and the word of a bitch they've never met or even heard of is not gonna get these motherfuckers to come back around or sway them as easily as it swayed the brother's here, sans Tiny. Maybe some of our boys who went nomad will be willin' to drop their shit and rejoin officially, 'cause they've been wantin' to come back for years now, they've just needed a damn good enough reason to stay. And the idea of finally droppin' Fontaine inside a black hole is as good as any. But the other charters are gonna need some legit reassurances from us, promises all but written in blood. If we say we're gonna end Fontaine and let them know the reason why, we better fuckin' fall through with it and have unbreakable proof." He bent down even further. "So again, how the fuck do you really plan on playin' this shit, VP?"
River placed his hands on top of his head and locked his fingers. He fell back in his chair and turned his eyes up to the ceiling. "I don't even fuckin' know."
Wolf nodded knowingly and lowered his eyes. "That's the shit I was afraid of, son." He looked over at him. "Tiny's right. This bitch's pussy better be made of fuckin' gold, with a goddamn mouth to fit around your giant ass cock match." He reached out his hand to pat River on the shoulder, then got up and left the room.
River dropped his hands to his lap and stared down at the table.
"Shit."
Aside from Mia staying at the club and his goal to get the other members to agree to it, he hadn't truly thought through a single goddamn thing since leaving her back at home that morning, which was becoming more and more evident by the way it was continuously being pointed out to him. And that pissed him off more than Tiny’s hesitations, more than the club’s suspicions, and even more than the reason he truly wanted her there in the first goddamn place.
Chapter Eight
The ride on the way back to Crescent Beach started out quiet, so much so that even with some of the club members sputtering in front on their bikes, while the rest hovered in the back to keep an eye out for anyone following us, you could actually hear a pin dropping to the carpet inside the truck.
Avery had fallen asleep with her head in my lap and Styx had refrained from saying a single word to either one of us from the moment we piled inside and hit the road. I started to wonder after maybe about an hour or so if he was actually some kind of mute, given what seemed like such a limited set of vocabulary skills; then I pushed the thought aside and figured he had been told by maybe River or someone else with a much higher ranking that it was best not to speak to me at all, aside from a few words here or there.
I could only guess why, seeing as the others seemed to have no trouble in running off at the mouth to me or at me about one thing or another as they packed up the rest of my stuff from my bedroom; the "another" part of their conversations gave me a strong whiff of misogyny wrapped up in a thin blanket of bigotry. The odd thing (or not, I guess?) was that I don't think they were all that much aware of being either one.
But unlike the rest, Styx could barely look me in the eye. And the only thing he managed to get out to me word wise as the rest of them stuffed my junk into the back of another moving truck, was "ma'am". It annoyed me given that we didn’t seem to be all that apart in age. Then again, I guess “ma’am” was better than being referred to as 'bitch', which seemed to mean something entirely different in their world than it did in mine.
For them, a 'bitch' was either someone you respected or detested. It was apparently dependent on the manner in which the actual word was being used and how it was being said. I didn't like it much either way and I sure as hell had no desire for Avery to grow up thinking that a man calling a woman a 'bitch' for any reason was just 'A-Okay'. But I also knew the consequences of the risks I was taking in uprooting myself from the home I had made for us both nearly a decade ago; and this was in fact one of them. Maybe not one of the biggest, but enough of one for damn sure.
As I leaned closer to the window, I felt a shift beside me and glanced over at Styx. His eyes remained on the road, with one hand on the wheel and the other resting in his lap. I peeked down at Avery and rubbed her back when she began to squirm. She had always been something of a light sleeper from the time she was born, so I was surprised as all get out that she was out like a light before we even made it out of Tampa.
"You, uh..." Styx brought his hand up to his mouth and cleared his throat. When he started to speak to me of his own free will, I was almost nervous as to what was actually going to come out. "You like listening to music?" he asked. His voice was deep, rich and smooth. If it had a color, it'd be like pure chocolate; the kind without the extra sugar and preservatives used to weigh it down.
I took a deep breath in and dipped my head left to right while trying to figure out a way to answer his question without sounding completely stupid or inept. "Sure, I like it," I replied. "I mean, I guess it depends on what kind it is, really." I turned straight ahead and a
djusted Avery's position on my lap as her elbow began jabbing me in the stomach. "I haven't listened to much of what's out there lately. I didn't have a radio in the house and the one in my car has been busted for the last three or four years."
"Never bothered to get it fixed?"
I snickered. "You sort of need money to do that, and temp jobs in Tampa that barely paid me enough to cover my rent didn't exactly put a 'car radio' at the top of my list in terms of things I actually needed."
"Sure, but... some shit is actually worth listening to, you know?" he said.
I quickly slid a hand over Avery's ear. "Yeah, I know. But--"
"Other shit's necessary, and--" He stopped and glanced over at me, then looked down at my hand and made a face of regret. "Shit... sorry."
"Sure, just... try to keep it clean as best as you can, thanks."
"Sorry." He turned his eyes back to the road. "You ever thought about getting music off line from that computer we packed up, or your phone? Some shi-- stuff, can help to ease and clear your mind when you've got a lot going on."
"No... I mean, I guess I could've but I didn't. I just didn't have enough of an interest in it." I sat back and sighed. "Music sounds like it's something that's pretty important to you, though."
"Sure, darlin', yeah, it is. Music has gotten me through a lot of hard shit in my life from the time I was her age." He knit his brows and rattled his head while nodding toward Avery. "Sorry."
"Do you have any kids?" I asked him.
"No. God doesn't seem too fit to cure or bless me with any of those rugrats yet." He chuckled.
"What about the other members of the club? Aside from River, I mean."
"Yeah," he said. "Every member of the club's got one or more kids running all around out there someplace, except for Wolf and Verna. She could never have them for herself and Wolf never thought to try and get another bitch pregnant in the process." I wrapped my hand even tighter around Avery's ear. It was clear that this was his way of speaking and no amount of pleading from me or apologies from him was going to change that, at least not overnight. "It's not to say he never stepped out on her, 'cause he did--"
"Of course," I replied mockingly and slightly rolled my eyes.
"But each time he did, he used protection. He never wanted to bring home what he got from the outside."
As if that somehow made it better.
"Hm." This conversation had taken a detour straight into a ditch I tried like hell to avoid sinking any further into. Avery shuffled in my lap again, but didn't open her eyes. I leaned my head back and thanked God she was probably too asleep to even hear what was being said between us. "So how long have you been trying to become a member of this club?" I asked, doing my best to reroute the subject.
He thought for a few seconds and tapped his finger against the wheel. "I'd say about a good two and a half years now."
"Two and a half years? Jeez. Wait lists for Harvard have a shorter time period. Why the length?"
"My old man used to be a member of the club when it first formed. A high ranking, Sergeant-At-Arms," he said. A smile formed, lighting up his entire face and highlighting the crinkles around his soft green eyes. But it faded almost just as quickly, as if another thought entered his mind and forced him to step out and stand beneath a dark rain cloud. "After the Shadow Riders agreed to start trading dope with other clubs in exchange for earning more money, my father refused to take part. But in this life, you can't just refuse to take part in shit like that, especially when it comes to making money for the club, and thus your brothers and their families. You either take part or you're out. But he couldn't get out, because it'd be over for him if he did, given everything he knew.”
"What does that mean?"
"It'd be over for him, darlin'." He stared straight into my eyes long enough for me to realize just exactly what he meant.
"Oh."
"About a month after a few deals went down, making the club so much goddamn money they were swimming in it, the Feds came in and raided the entire place. But the club was tipped off about it beforehand, so by the time the boys in suits showed up, nothing could be found. By then, every member knew that there was a snitch amongst them, they just didn't know that my father was the one who ratted them all out. He didn't want the club to go down in flames because of what he had done, but he didn't want his life to end because of something he didn't believe in either."
"So what happened?"
"When he saw the newer members and prospects being threatened and knew he'd have to take part in all but beating the truth out of each one, he finally spoke up, not wanting anybody else to go down for what he had done. Nobody wanted to believe that a member of their own club had turned--"
"You mean had morals," I said. He glared at me, but kept his thoughts on what I had said to himself. "What happened then?"
"After realizing he had no reason to lie about it, knowing that he never wanted any part of the deals in the first place, every member of the club voted to have him stripped of his patches and of his cut. They burned off his insignias, the tattoos on his arms and back with gasoline and a set of matches--"
"Oh my God--"
"And threw him out." He stopped and for a few seconds, lowered his eyes to his hand as it gripped even tighter around the steering wheel. "They told my mother what happened, but never told her where he was because they didn't want her going to him."
"Was he ever found?"
He nodded. "About ten days later, some jogger found him in the woods covered in nothing but a skirt."
My eyes widened. "Why a skirt?"
"The club considered him a pussy for what he'd done in snitching on them," he told me. "He had already been dead long before she even got to him."
I sat back in disbelief, shaking my head and trying as best as I could not to throw my head out of the window and vomit. "How old were you when all of this happened?" I asked.
"Just turned thirteen."
"And you knew about it then?"
"I didn't find out shit ‘til just before I decided to switch from just being a mechanic at the garage, to actually joining the club itself."
I scoffed. "And what you found out didn't deter you from it? I mean, if these men did all of that to your father, why in God's name would you want to have anything to do with them or any part of the club itself?"
"Why did you?" he shot back.
"Me?" I threw my hand over my chest, shocked that he even asked. "I wish I had a choice. I literally exhausted every other alternative I had before showing up there this morning -- What's your excuse?"
He paused and wrapped his other hand around the wheel. "The club is a brotherhood," he replied. "Maybe not blood, but it matters all the same. Despite what my old man did, the club never turned their backs on us. They knew my mother would be in a rough place without him, mentally, emotionally, financially and they helped to carry us every step of the way. They didn't blame her for what he did and we were never banned from them like other families had been banned from other charters for the exact same shit." He stopped, allowing a single beat to pass. "I've had to prove myself more than anybody else, show them with each step I take that I'm not my old man which is why they’ve yet to patch me in, but I'm fine with that. So if it takes two years or five years or even ten or fifteen to show them that I’m better than he was and that I deserve a spot alongside them more than he ever did, that's what I'm gonna do." He gulped. "You don't turn your back on family and you don't betray them. I know that. But it's something my old man could never seem to grasp."
"Hm." I sank down in my seat. "This all sounds very... strange to me. It's like some kind of gang initiation and then when the person screws up, the only way out is jail or death."
"The club's not a 'gang'," he said.
“How the hell did you get all those scars?” I retorted.
He stared down at his hands, then quickly returned his eyes to the road. “I’m a mechanic.”
“Well then you must not be a very good
one because the most I’ve ever seen on the hands of even the most basic mechanics is grease and motor oil spilling out from an overheated engine.”
He grinded his teeth. “You’re pushing it.”
“Obviously not too far enough,” I said. "I’m sorry, but everything that you just told me sounds exactly like the things I hear about on the news every day. It sounds exactly like Ricky and the mob and cartels. The only difference is that it’s slightly more organized, or was before the fire. That and it seems to be so much more exclusive to the 'light brights' of the world."
Slowly, he turned his head to me and arched a brow. "Light brights?"
I ticked up the corners of my mouth in a slight grin. “Do you really need me to spell it out for you?”
He slid his tongue back and forth across his bottom lip and shook his head as he returned his eyes to the road. “No.”
“Okay then.”
Nothing but silence filled the car from that point forward.
Chapter Nine
A little less than an hour later, we finally arrived back to the Compound which was a hell of a lot more crowded than it had been earlier in the day, with bikes and cars covering nearly every inch of the entire parking lot. This made me even more nervous than I was when I first showed up to see River because I knew that not only would people I didn't know and had never seen before be looking at me and wondering who the hell I was and why I was there in the first place (and with a child in my arms on top of everything else), they would probably start asking me questions I was in no way prepared to answer, even for myself.
After parking near the back of the lot along with the other prospects and shutting off the engine, Styx quickly jumped out of the truck and raced around it to open the door on my side.
He nodded toward Avery. "You want me to take her?" he asked.
"No. Thanks." I wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and eased out of the truck.
