by Zoe Hill
An uncomfortable hush blooms in April’s absence. I ignore everyone, intent on getting through this meal with as little interaction as possible. Dad falls silent, and apart from my mother’s occasional sniffle, the only sound to be heard is the ticking of the oversized grandfather clock. When I feel Stirling’s hot gaze on the side of my face, mentally begging me to say something, I decide that it’s time to put us all out of our mutual misery.
“As much as I like awkward silences, why don’t we get business out of the way so I can slink back to my dungeon, and you can all enjoy what I’m sure will be a lovely meal, without me making anyone cry.” When I mention crying, I watch my mother dab her eyes with her napkin. My chair screeches when I stand and ask, “Give me the target’s dossier and I’ll leave you to it.”
The cutlery bounces and rattles on the table when my father slams his fist down on it. He points at my seat, and commands, “Sit. We’re having a family dinner, then we’ll discuss business. In that order.”
I exchange a loaded look with Stirling and he silently pleads with me to listen. I shake my head to ward off the disappointment that’s billowing from him, but it infects me anyway. Dad leverages this as hostile threat by glancing between me and my brother, my resolve begins to cave. My twin has always been my weak spot, and our father loves to hold it over my head whenever I step out of line. Twin streams of tears rolling down her cheeks, Mom reaches over the table and tugs my shirt sleeve. I shake her off to glare at my dad. He lowers his gaze to my seat, then picks up his steak knife and points it at my heart.
“Sit. The. Fuck. Down.”
I retake my seat seconds before April bustles back into the dining room with three tuxedo-wearing servers on her tail. Pasting a grin on my face, I grab a big bowl of vegetables from the middle of the table before it’s completely set down. I spear a cauliflower floret with my fork and jam it in my mouth.
Smirking around the half-chewed vegetable, I drawl, “Thanks for the vegetarian options, sis. Dinner looks delish.”
Everyone stares at me with various degrees of displeasure in their expressions until Stirling starts laughing. His reaction breaks the growing tension and takes the attention off me. While they eat, I watch them interact. Everything about this scenario is stilted by an undercurrent of unease that doesn’t bode well for our upcoming discussion. Everyone, including my normally impenetrable father, is on edge. Instead of ignoring me, he throws questions my way and does his best to act like he’s truly interested in the hermit-like existence I call a life.
Shit. Apprehension settles in my gut like a lead weight and it takes every iota of acting skill I possess to stop Spenser from pushing past the persona my brother named Trigger fifteen years ago.
Considering that my father rarely includes me in his vaunted family dinners, and he never speaks directly to me if he can help it, it’s clear that something big is going down. If Dad is making an actual effort, then that means that whatever the Coalition needs from me is going to come with a hefty price tag and a giant serving of trouble.
I’d bet my twin’s life on that.
SIX
“We're not perfect, but we want to do the right thing.” ~Charlie Bell~
POPPY
Two men riding Harley’s fall in behind my SUV when we finally pull out of our underground parking garage. Dusk has almost completely set in because Chester had demanded that we wait at our apartment for his escort to arrive from New Haven. As much as it had rankled my pride, I could see the sense in his plan. We needed to swap from my motorcycle to my SUV anyway because it’s too soon to determine who’s behind my brother’s death and riding our Harley’s to my family’s MC compound like me and Bella had planned would’ve been stupid.
Adding to my parents’ worry wasn’t something that I felt like doing right now.
Instead, I’d sat in my bedroom with my best friend and screamed Ollie’s name over and over. Clinging to Bella, my grief had threatened to swallow me whole, but I’d managed to switch off my heart and engage my brain long enough to pack a bag by the time the call came that our escorts had arrived.
Getting home is paramount.
I know how my mother thinks and I need to be there to stop her from allowing my brothers to make this situation worse than it already is.
“We need them,” Bella tells me softly when I grumble under my breath about the bikers. She reaches over to the passenger seat and squeezes my hand. “Chester’s doing his best to get you home safely.”
Twisting in my seat, I stare back at the riders until I’m certain their eyes are on me. Once they’re looking, I flip double-barreled birds at them. “I know... doesn’t mean I have to be gracious about it. Everyone knows it’s their fault Ollie’s dead.”
One of the bikers speeds up to pass us. I keep my gaze on them, ready to rain down a mouthful of profanities if they gesture for Bella to lower her window. Hanging level with us, I observe the patch on the left side of their cut and frown. After a sharp nod, they overtake us and settle in front without slowing. Running my tongue between my top lip and my teeth, I open my glove compartment. My spare revolver sits on the top shelf, and I pull it out then flick off the safety.
Bella sits taller in the driver’s seat when I place the handgun on my lap, then glances between me and the rider ahead. “Who is it?”
“It’s Seb,” I reply.
“Well, then.” Bella makes a whistling sound reminiscent of a nuclear bomb landing and exploding. “Isn’t this going to be fun.”
“Undoubtedly. Sending him means this is worse than I first thought.”
We lapse into a heavy silence because there’s really nothing else to say. The presence of my ex-fiancé as an escort means my family thinks we’re all potential targets. Knowing my dad, my uncle David is the rider behind us. Both men are senior enforcers for the MC my family leads. Their job is to literally protect us at any cost. Right or wrong. Legal or not. It’s not something that ever sat comfortably with me, so I never prospected for my family’s MC when I turned eighteen like my brothers did.
I left Connecticut to join the NYPD after finishing my degree and my sister’s studying to be a criminal prosecutor at Stanford. Once our little sister, Violet, took the same path as me, we both became excluded from their disaster management plans.
We aren’t so much the black sheep of our family, as the lily-white do-gooders that they all scoff at and label as naive and immature.
Despite my family’s assertions otherwise, believing in upholding the law doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of looking after myself.
Thinking about my strained family dynamics makes me tear up again. Oliver is—was—our common thread. He was the voice of reason whenever our differences became too much to handle. Without him, I don’t know how my family is going to function.
We’re all officially adrift.
I need to be home... yesterday.
The trip from New York to New Haven normally takes just over an hour and a half. I’ve made it so often since I joined the force that I can nearly do it in my sleep. Thankfully, Bella is driving tonight because the adrenaline I’ve been running on is beginning to desert me. Dizzy, I slump down in my seat with my gaze pinned to the back of my ex’s helmet.
I shouldn’t feel this way, yet I’d be full of shit if I said it didn’t make me feel safer knowing that Seb is leading me home. After our relationship ended—well, it was more like an implosion coupled with bitter recriminations on my behalf and a bunch of insults about how I needed therapy thrown at me by him—I swore that I’d never use him as my security blanket again. Eight years of pretending that I was capable of loving him like a normal person had been long enough. Mismatched from the beginning, we’d wasted enough time trying to protect our egos from the cold fact that while Seb was happy to protect me, he also found me lacking.
It wasn’t fair on either of us.
Yet, here we go again.
I’m wilting, and Seb is stepping up.
Damn it all.
My eyes burn
with suppressed sorrow. I let them droop until they’re closed and the tears I couldn’t stop from building roll down my cheeks. Although I’m determined that I’m not going to fall asleep, I wrap my fingers around the grip of my pistol and sink lower in my seat. My chin meets my chest and I’m out like a light by my next breath.
***
“Don’t shoot me,” a male voice croons in my ear. It’s a familiar sound. Soft and loving. It rouses me from my slumber. “I’m just going to carry you inside, flower girl.”
When I’m lifted into the air and cradled against a well-developed chest, my eyes fly open, and I press the muzzle of my handgun under his chin. Laughter rumbles through Seb’s chest, then he lowers me to my feet. Our height difference immediately becomes apparent, and I take a step back, so I don’t snap my neck looking up at him.
“It’s good to see you, too,” he says with a chuckle as I flick on the safety. His dirty-denim colored eyes twinkle when he runs his gaze over my face. “You’re looking good. Still fierce as ever and hot as fuck.”
Biting back the unnecessary rebuke that’s formed on the tip of my tongue, I smooth my hair down. With a tight smile, I pat his arm as I pass him to head inside. Bella is behind me in an instant. She touches my upper arm—it’s an offer of solidarity because she knows this is the first time I’ve seen my ex since I threw him out of my apartment two years ago.
My family has wisely kept us apart whenever I’ve come home during that time.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I reply. Keeping my attention on the automatic gates as they rumble shut instead of my ex-fiancé, I try to ignore the residual anger I hold for him. It bubbles beneath the surface, at odds with my grief, yet potent enough to make me choke up. Once the gates stop moving, I force myself to meet his eyes. In his gaze, I find the wordless apology I need. It calms me enough to force a begrudging compliment past the lump in my throat. “I see you’re still bigger, badder, and braver than all the rest.”
Seb isn’t able to respond past a shy smile because my dad steps outside the main clubhouse and gathers me into one of his patented bear hugs. His embrace engulfs me in everything that it means to be home—worn leather, cigarette smoke, and unconditional love—and I accept every ounce of it for as long as I can. I try to come home for a weekend every other month, but overtime has kicked my butt for the last three months. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed my parents and my six siblings until I felt my dad’s hug again.
Thinking of my brothers and sister remind me that there’s only five of them left—not six. My shoulders shake, then the trembling takes over my entire body. When my knees buckle, Dad assists me inside and lowers me onto a bar stool next to my mom. While he whispers something to my mother, I look around the bar and discover that it’s not just my immediate family gathered here. The entire MC is present, dressed in their cuts, and brandishing enough weapons to arm a militia.
The wood-paneled walls, decorated with framed newspaper articles of the men, women, and children they’ve liberated from dire circumstances over the years, the main room of the compound is a monument to all the good the Samaritan’s Soldiers have done in the United States. With the smell of cigarette smoke and revenge tainting the air, I meet each person’s eyes to attempt to get a handle on the situation. Everyone has the same expectation in their expression.
They want me to join them in avenging my brother’s death.
My family, and the MC they run, walk the thin, blue line of the law with balance and grace. Occasionally, when they feel the situation that they’re dealing with won’t be treated justly by the courts, they dip a toe onto the bad side. I knew this before I joined the force, and I’ve always made them promise not to tell me secrets that I can’t keep.
Most of the time, it works. Mom and Dad argue that there are shades of gray between wrong and right and I pretend to accept their justifications.
Observing the anger and grief of the MC firsthand, I can already tell that asking them to allow the authorities to chase Ollie’s killers will be a hard sell. But I have to try because if I don’t make them see sense before they obliterate the line that separates good from bad, there won’t be an opportunity to come back to the right side.
“Oh, my girl.” Once she’s finished talking to Dad, my mom throws an arm around my neck and drags my head to her soft bosom. Her Samaritan’s Soldier’s MC Founder patch is rough against my cheek, but her well-worn leather cut is soft. She pats my back, and over the sound of my weeping sorrow, I feel the rest of my family crowd around us. “Don’t cry, bubba. Ollie wouldn’t want our tears.”
“That’s right!” Dad shouts after he overhears our conversation. “He’d want vengeance and he’d want it yesterday.”
“Hear, hear,” everyone else roars back. “We fight for Ollie.”
I push Mom’s arm off me and sit up straight. While I’m wiping my face dry with my sleeve, Chester nudges my shoulder in warning, but I glare at him and hop back to my feet.
“This is ridiculous,” I yell over the ruckus. My grief over Ollie energizes me enough to push past my usual reticence to speak up in a crowd. “Let the police deal with it.”
“Poppy’s right.” My twenty-year-old sister stomps over to me.
She takes up a position at my left flank and lays a hand on my shoulder. I place my hand over hers and feel Bella do the same when she moves to stand on my other side. I feel vaguely stupid leading these two warriors in this coup. I’m the smallest of my family—a throwback to my maternal grandmother, my mom reckons. Violet is five-eleven, and Bella is seven inches taller than my five-foot stature.
I look like one of the seven dwarfs leading an uprising by two beautiful Queens.
Something my brothers would tease me about, if they weren’t so busy glaring at our trio with hate in their eyes.
“Ollie is dead. There’s nothing we can do to bring him back. What we can do is protect the rest of our family, so we never have to feel this pain again.” Violet puts voice to the words that I can’t manage to say as she rebukes our dad through her tears. Our four surviving brothers stare us down however, it doesn’t deter my youngest sibling from having her say. She pulls the cuffs of her Stanford sweatshirt over her hands and dabs at her eyes. “Please, please, let’s just stop this crusade and think for once.”
My bottom lip trembles when she squeezes my shoulder. Our family left New York to hide from the Greaves family and their tentacles of power in Connecticut before she was even born because of what was done to me when I was seven. My little sister has never had a normal life because she was born into this crazy MC life and has grown up surrounded by the Samaritan’s Soldiers.
When Chester steps forward with our brothers, Eli, Archer, and Levi, hot on his heels, Mom hops off her stool and stands in between her kids. She places a finger over Chester’s lips when he opens his mouth to yell at us, then lays her hand on my heart. Her expression is hard. Her bearing is stoic.
Mom means business.
“Stop it,” she demands. I look to my dad for help. Along with Ollie, Dad would usually jump in to protect me and Violet whenever we voice our opinions about the MC. This time he shakes his head and, with a shuttered look on his face, he steps back and leaves us to face the rest of our family alone. Mom turns away from my brothers. She leans close to my ear and whispers, “Ollie was killed by men connected to Harrison Greaves. We’ve been slowly shutting down his organizations sex trafficking routes, and this was their payback. I’m so sorry, bubba, but they need to be stopped. The other chapters are traveling here, and we will be going to war with him... with or without your support.”
At the mention of the man who sexually abused me when I was seven, my eyesight tunnels in on itself and my mind separates from my body. Somehow, I seem to be standing outside myself far enough to see my father rush toward me with my brothers right behind him.
They’re too late. The darkness that’s invading my vision has won.
My legs give out beneath me and I do nothing to stop
the black from taking me under.
It’s the only escape I have from this cruel world that never sees true justice served.
SEVEN
“How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.” ~Alexandre Dumas~
SPENSER
“Dinner was excellent, April.” Dad offers my sister-in-law a tight smile after he looks at me and tips his head toward the door leading to Stirling’s office. I head in the direction he’s looking, only to freeze on the spot, when he adds, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to borrow your husband so I can have a quick discussion with my boys.”
Fifteen years ago, hearing him refer to me as his boy would’ve filled me with warmth. At this juncture, all it does is turn my blood to ice in my veins. His behavior is confirming my suspicions that this meeting will be less of a democratic discussion and more of a dictatorial demand. Ultimatums are going to be issued, and threats levied if I disagree.
Mark my words. I haven’t been wrong about my family’s motivations since I was abruptly taught the reality of my life as an angry, untethered, eighteen-year-old. It’s instinctual. Some people use their gut as a barometer for their intuition. I use my amputated trigger finger, and I know I’m right about my dad since my left hand is pulsing like a distress beacon right now.
April gives my father a sweet smile and smooths down her artificially brightened hair like she’s a beauty queen. He grins at her until she scuttles out of the dining room. I roll my eyes. Her simpering personality grinds my gears on the best of days. Her family, the Vertes, have wanted a place at the table with the founding families of the Coalition for the past generation. April’s marriage to Stirling was arranged to test the waters, so she’s already known as a social climber of the highest degree. Somehow, she’s managed to up her blatant pandering tonight to a whole new level, and one look at Stirling alerts me to the fact that she’s privy to whatever’s about to go down.
