One thing I can’t do is dismiss this roomful of men without saying anything. Though it’s lame, to buy time, I decide to pretend it’s just a normal meeting and that I haven’t interrupted everyone’s evening.
I bang the gavel. “Right, let’s get this meeting started. When’s the contract being signed for the new premises for the tattoo parlour? Any progress?”
“That’s where you’re starting?” My father, brother is sending me an incredulous look. “You call us in for a special meeting, then start as if it nothing unusual? Think we’d like to have an update on Violet and the kid.”
Fuck. Of course that’s the reason for this meeting, can’t pretend otherwise. But not only am I belatedly considering tackling Angel on my own, looking around at their critical and inquisitive faces, I realise I’m also loathe to discuss Violet’s painful truths and bring everything out into the open. I brazen it out, staring at Hellfire. “I’d say our new business, getting it up and running as soon as possible, is the most important item on the agenda. I propose we start with something that affects us all.”
“As does the woman you’ve been questioning,” Bomber, sitting beside Hell, insists.
“Yeah, Prez. Is she our prisoner or what?”
“You gave the kid back to her, Prez, is that wise?”
“Is this a meeting of MC members or the ol’ ladies?” I snarl, ignoring the questions from Mace and Sparky. “Let’s talk about business, and then I’ll fill you in on what you need to know.” I glare at Hellfire for raising it. He just shrugs, but one corner of his mouth is turned up. Yeah, he would appreciate not being in the hot seat.
“Any chance the kid is yours?” Thunder asks.
“No, there fuckin’ isn’t,” I roar.
Unrepentant, he shrugs, holding up his hands. “Look, as your acting VP, I’m only askin’ what everyone is thinkin’. Come on, Prez. I know there were personal reasons you wanted this bitch here. But you’ve brought her into our house. Can’t blame us for being curious.”
At the other end of the table, Hell raises his eyebrow. If I was to try to interpret the expression on his face, it’s a mix between I could have told you this would happen, and What are you going to do about it?
Shit. I’m still finding my place at the head of this table. Someone has to lead the MC, and that’s fallen to me. While I can well understand my brothers’ curiosity, it’s me who needs to take the helm. Heading into a fight, you can’t decide which way is up by way of a democracy.
I’m just about to try and get the meeting back on track, when Bomber speaks.
“Prez, I speak for us all when I say we just want to help. All we know is there’s a woman here who tried to abandon her kid. Not many of us are family men.” He grins, that’s an understatement. The only person who could ever qualify for that title is Hell. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t get concerned when someone walks away from a child.” As I open my mouth, he continues without letting me speak, “Now, you’ve spoken to her, obviously decided she has good reasons. You might think we’re getting up in business which you think is yours, but all we want to do is understand how we can make what’s obviously a bad situation right.”
I catch Thunder’s eye. He’s mouthing VP to me, but I shake my head, my own lips forming the words, I’ve asked. Yeah, I’d approached Bomber with a suggestion of him playing that role, but he’d turned me down, saying he wanted no such pressure at his age. He was content to ride at the back of the pack while he can still handle his big two-wheeler. Like it or not, Thunder will have to put up with sitting on my left for a while yet.
While he’s there, I’d best listen to him. He thinks I need to explain. As it seems no one’s going to leave the subject alone, I better just get on with it. Taking a deep breath, pushing my hastily aroused temper back into the box, I lean my elbows on the tabletop. As they settle in to listen, Mace gets out a packet of smokes, and lights up. When he passes them around, Sparky, Liz and Ink are the only other takers. Hell looks tempted but pushes the pack on when it gets to him.
“To understand, I have to give you some history,” I start, as the air becomes tainted with smoke. “When I was a kid, I had a friend, a best friend, named Nathan Palmer. We were inseparable from the time we met and right through our teens, and remained close beyond that. At eighteen he signed up, joined the Marines. Wasn’t a way out of a shit upbringing; he’d had a good family life. Being in the forces was all he’d ever talked about doing from when he was little more than a toddler. It was going to be his life, same way as all I’d wanted was to join the MC.” I break off. Even though nine years have passed, getting out the next words remains hard. “He lasted eight years before a stray bullet took him out.”
They’d been quiet, listening, but the silence becomes more intense for a moment, and serious looks come over their faces. If they hadn’t done a tour themselves, most knew someone who had. Some of those hadn’t returned, just like Nathan; some had, but as changed men. Ink’s face has paled, his fingers tapping fast on the tabletop. His PTSD is mostly under control nowadays, but sometimes something can send him back.
“Nathan had a little sister,” I resume, hastily moving on. “She was ten years younger than us, and an absolute pest.” I soften my description with a smile. “She was fifteen, no, sixteen when he died. Well, to step back, when Nathan signed up, he wasn’t stupid. Knew his life could be cut short. Made me promise to keep an eye on Violet if anything ever happened that meant he couldn’t.”
“I take it that woman out there is the sister?”
It’s Hellfire who answers Bomber. “Yeah. That’s Violet.”
“So you’ve been watching out for her all these years?” Rusty, quite reasonably asks.
“Not closely enough,” I admit, then come clean. “Actually after the first few years, and when she moved to New York, I lost touch with her completely. Didn’t know she’d come back to Pueblo a year and a half back. Not until I ran into her by accident, last Wednesday. When we’d been at the mall, Liz.”
Lizard nods. “So that’s why you hurried off. What, you met her, talked to her, knew something was wrong immediately, and put a prospect on her?”
“That about sums it up. I had a feeling, okay? Things just didn’t seem right. I admit, it was part guilt from having been out of touch with her. I didn’t know she’d returned, didn’t know she had a kid, and while I was there, the way she treated him seemed off.” Now I know she was pulling away, trying to do the impossible, turn off a mother’s love. A gut reaction to a threat she’d received only that day.
There are frowns, anger. I realise I need to bring them up to date. They hadn’t all been down in the basement when Vi had blurted it out. From my reaction, Thunder and Mace would have kept it to themselves. “Theo, the kid, was the result of a rape.”
“Jeez,” Pyro strokes his hand down his face. “Can understand why it might be hard to accept a kid…”
“She couldn’t cope with the thought?” Bomber’s eyes flare as he cuts into Pyro’s statement. He glances toward Hell, then at me.
Before they all start joining the dots and coming up with the wrong picture, I cut them off. “That’s not it. Problem is, the rapist walked free, and has claimed parental rights to the child.” I go on to qualify it as Vi had explained to me. “If he’d been convicted, he wouldn’t have been awarded anything. But, as he was cleared, he has every right to co-parent. Violet’s view is that he’s the last person on earth who should raise a child. Wednesday, just before I met her, he went one step further. Told her he was going for full custody. Served her with a court summons for the week after next.”
Bomber’s sucked in air. “Club has a history of dealing with rapists,” he says before I can stop him. “Reckon our way is best. When we going to kill him, Prez?”
His comment is echoed around the table. The night Moira, my mom, had been raped, Hellfire had been patched in, and Blackie had taken his last breath. But I’m going to have to tell them who they’re dealing with. When I do
, they’ll vow to be behind me. What’s most concerning, this battle may be one greater than we can afford to take on.
I glare at Bomber to silence him. “Violet’s had a hell of a time of it recently. Her father died; that’s why she came home. Her mother’s brain has gone, she doesn’t even recognise her daughter anymore, and has spells where she can be violent. She’s all but homeless, as her house is up for sale to pay for her mom to be properly cared for in a home. On top of that, she had to deal with a rape and a pregnancy alone.” I break off, then realise they need to know the full story. “She’s lost twice in the courts: once when he was cleared of rape, and the second time when he was awarded co-parenting rights. She thought he’d be successful a fuckin’ third time and declare her an unfit mother. I think you can say she wasn’t thinking straight. Rather than let him get near Theo, she arranged a private adoption, one that couldn’t be traced. Not doing things legal meant there’d be no paper trail to follow. Even she wouldn’t know where Theo had been taken.” As it had when I’d first heard it, a chill runs down my spine.
There’s silence. “She’d prefer an unknown stranger to care for him, instead of his sperm donor?” Rusty asks at last, the first to break it.
“That plan has more holes than a piece of mesh,” Pyro puts in.
Paladin, who I have to remember comes from a club where babies are the norm not the exception, is looking disgusted. “Her story’s a sad one, but there must have been something else she could do. How the fuck can a woman give up her child? She could have gone out of town, hidden herself and the baby.”
“As I said,” I start sticking up for her, “she was fuckin’ desperate.”
“That little girl’s had so fuckin’ much on her plate,” Hell glares at Pal. “Her mind must have been all over the place.”
“If this fucker’s as bad as she thinks, could well be he’d find her, and use her to trace the kid. No one disappears completely,” Cad puts in wisely.
I lower my head into my hands. “They do if they’re dead.”
Stunned silence greets my words.
“He’d kill her?” It’s Hell who tries to clarify my meaning.
My eyes meet his. “She was going to do the job for him.” Dead women tell no tales. I shudder, remembering the chilling way she’d said it. My eyes meet Paladin’s, who seems to have been shocked into silence. I nod. “You were right, Pal, she knew she couldn’t live without her son. But she thought she was doing the best for him. His sperm donor wouldn’t have been able to find her and beat the truth out of her. If we hadn’t been there, it would have been as if Theo had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
No one speaks for a while as that settles in. Knowing my brothers, these fiercely protective men, they’ll think as little of the solution Violet had come up with as I do myself.
“She gonna be yours?” Ink, quiet up to now, asks. Taking out his own pack of cigarettes, he passes them around.
I sit up with a jolt. “No, I told you. She’s Nathan’s little sister. Completely off-limits to me, and anyone else here. So get any ideas out of your head before they get planted.” As I should get it out of mine.
“The question none of you are askin’ is the one bit of info that the Prez should have started with,” Hellfire states, his voice as deadly as when he used to sit in this chair. “Who is the piece of shit that got that little girl pregnant?”
As all eyes land on me, I’m not surprised it’s my father who’s gone straight to the heart of the matter. I raise my chin. He’s not goading me, just taking me where I would have gotten to eventually.
“Hesitated to tell you this, Brothers, as this is a personal matter. Due to my debt to my friend, Violet’s under my personal protection. I know you’ll want to have my back, and this is somewhere I hadn’t planned on asking the Satan’s Devils to go.” I pause, I’ve certainly captured their interest. “We have to be smart about this. No raiding party, we’re circling the wagons until we have an airtight plan, and one that’s a fuckin’ improvement on Violet’s. The rapist is Angel Silvestri.” As I let the words leave my mouth, I look around the table, worrying I might have signed any of my brothers’ death warrant. Or worse, the whole club’s perhaps. The Silvestri organisation is not one any sane person would approach head-on. It’s the local Mafia. Already mouths are forming the handle Angel goes by. The Angel of Death.
“I’ve wanted an excuse to go after that little shit for years,” Rusty pronounces, his eyes gleaming as he nods at Bomber. His response is exactly the one I hadn’t gone looking for or wanted.
“Hold up.” I bang the gavel to get their attention. “No one’s going after anyone.”
“How can you say that, Prez?” Cad sits up straighter.
My fist hits the table. “This isn’t a small street gang we can use our muscle on. This is organised crime. I’m not proposing stepping back and doing nothing. But think for a second what happens if we go after Angel? They’ll come for us. I’m not convinced we can handle them.”
“Prez is right,” Mace puts in. “They heavily outnumber us. We know they’ve been itching to get rid of the club and take over our territory. One sniff that it’s war, and we’ll have a fight on our hands that we might not survive.”
“This would have come to a head anyway, Prez. I was going to bring it up at the next church. They’ve been getting blasé, stepping on our toes. Found a load of needles behind Tits Up the other night. I have no proof but wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think someone’s dealing inside. Been on the lookout, but not spotted anything yet.” Ink looks annoyed. Since Taser has gone, he’s taken over running the strip club.
“Hate to say it, Prez. But that might go for Devil’s Pins too.”
Dealing at the strip club was something that we’ve come up against and had to knock on the head before. The bowling alley, though, I like to think that has more of a family vibe. We pride ourselves that women feel comfortable enough to bring kids there on their own. Get a reputation for drugs and we’ll lose a large chunk of our clientele.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I ask, “They’re crossing the boundaries?”
“We have an arrangement with them,” Mace reminds everyone. “Goes back to the days when Furnace sat in that chair, Prez.”
Hell raises his hand. “Sorry, Demon. Knew I was going to have to deal with them, but, well, other shit blew up and it took a back seat. If you want me to lead on this, I will. Shouldn’t have left that shit for you.”
There’s the strange dynamics blowing up again. Hell’s stepped down from the head of the table, but he’s still here. If I accept his help, am I showing weakness that I’m not ready to be in the hot seat? Or am I failing if I let that possibility influence me? Hell has a wealth of knowledge and experience which I could tap into. As the previous VP and his right-hand man, I’m not entirely ignorant, but there are still matters where he probably knows more than me. I make do with raising my chin toward him. Offer acknowledged, but not outrightly accepted.
“I was stopped and searched a couple of days ago, Prez,” Sparky interrupts. “Obviously wasn’t carrying anything more than a bit of pot, but they were looking for something different.”
“You suggestin’ it’s not just us noticing increased activity? You think there’s more product moving into town?”
He might be our road captain, but when he thinks to use it, Sparky’s got a good brain, and not just for planning routes.
“Heroin’s cheap at the moment. So, yeah. Think the Silvestri might be upping their game.”
Possibly getting ballsy with it.
Thunder’s fidgeting and looks like he’s trying to get my attention.
“Yeah, VP?”
He grimaces when I use the title. “Like Hell’s handed the reins over to you, I’ve heard word Lucio has tapped Angel to take over from him. Out with the old, in with the new. Old man’s getting on now. Could be the reason why we’re seeing more movement. New hand might be flexing his muscles. It’s likely if your girl
hadn’t given us reason to go up against the gang, might have had to put them back in their place in any event.”
I raise my eyes to Hell. He shrugs. Get on with it, boy. I’m not at that end of the table anymore. Jeez. Thanks a lot, Dad. It’s times like these I remember I really hadn’t expected to have my ass in this chair for at least another few years. A moment of self-doubt while all eyes are on me.
Hell buys me the time to think. “Way the Mafia works is similar to us. Old man can put his weight behind his son, but it’s the captains, the capos, that have the final say when they cast their votes for the new boss. Angel’s underboss now, doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll step into his father’s shoes.”
Ignoring Hell’s words, which are just useful information for now, I consider what the temporary VP’s just laid on me. I don’t like what he’s said but admire the summation. Not for the first time I wish Thunder would take on the role permanently, but sergeant-at-arms is the most he wants to rise to. I could do with a good man by my side, as I’d been to Hell all these years, and Thunder would fill that spot admirably. His refusal, though, is final.
“Cad. Any more news about the new police chief?” While Sparky’s stop could have been a coincidence, we can’t rule out the MC could be the intended target.
“I’ve been keeping an ear to the ground. Nothing more has come up. Like when I looked into his background, I reckon he’s pretty straight. Nothing to say he’s out to take us down. Any focus on us could just be incidental. If there’s more product moving around, eyes could look our way for being responsible.”
Raising my chin, I take the plunge, “We’re clean. We don’t run drugs. Well, not hardcore.” We might dabble in a little weed, but Colorado was the first state to make that shit legal; there’s no need to keep it under the radar unless we’re shifting in quantity, which we don’t normally do. It’s in our charter, the club runs clean. Don’t want members hooked on the hard stuff; men like that become unpredictable, their loyalty to a white powder topping that to their brothers. But we would have been happy enough to turn a blind eye to someone else’s business. Up to the point it starts affecting ours, which seems to have now arrived. Dealing on our premises is a no-go.
Satan's Devils MC Colorado Boxset 1 Books 1 - 3 Page 45
