Blow Out (Steel Veins Book 1)

by Jackson Kane

  It was over for him.

  The parking lot was deathly silent as they stripped the vest off the former national president. Deadeye looked only at me the whole time. I was expecting venomous anger, but all I saw in his face was weariness. Disgraced and stunned, he stood there for a moment and took it all in. Decades of his life were ripped away. What would his life be without the club he founded?

  When he walked to his bike, the crowd parted for him. Without his colors, Deadeye just looked like a weathered old man, a broken war vet who needed to go home and rest. The old man started his bike and left. The old guard was officially out; it was a new beginning for the Steel Veins.

  It was the end of an era.

  “The fuck do we do now? Can’t have a chapter with only two members,” someone in the crowd said, breaking the silence. They all looked to Chig and Loose, the two remaining members of the parent chapter.

  “I’m still putting in for Longwood either way. My wife got a good job up there. So I guess the clubhouse is going dark,” Loose offered with a shrug. “Maybe we should designate a new mother chapter? Leslie’s been kickin’ around a while, right?”

  “Hell, we have reps from all the other chapters here, I say we put it to a vote!” Chig shouted to make sure everyone could hear him. “Leslie chapter is one of the oldest the Veins have. All in favor of making it the new parent chapter?”

  I had never heard of anything like this happening in any MC. Usually, the parent chapter was the last one to fall in a dying MC. We had the opposite problem. Most of our other chapters were strong. If the Steel Veins as an institution was to survive, we’d have to adapt.

  We had to make up the new rules on the spot.

  Hands slowly started going up all across the parking lot. For something this big, it had to be unanimous, and it looked like it was. It was history being written right in front of me, and I was damn proud to see everyone come together for the good of the club.

  For the real good of the club.

  Then everyone looked at me.

  “Raise your hand, you stupid fuck. You’re killing the moment,” Tee said to me with a sly smile. Seeing the utter confusion on my face, he explained why I needed to vote. “We never kicked you out. You were just, ya know, dead. Nothing in the charter says the dead can’t vote.”

  I shook my head disbelievingly and raised my hand.

  “It’s official. Leslie chapter is the new host club.” Tee clasped me on the back and pulled me in for one of those one armed, side-by-side hugs. “The Steel Veins live to see another day!”

  There was hooting and cheering and a sense of relief that was like stumbling out of a burning building and finally breathing fresh air. For damn near all of us, this club was all we had, and today it was nearly destroyed. Without a unifying parent chapter, the individual chapters would’ve eventually split off, been invaded, patched over, closed, or wiped out.

  Watching a big club fall was a chaotic time and some scary shit. No one ever made it out unscathed.

  I started walking over to Star when I felt Tee’s strong, brown hand clamp onto my shoulder.

  “C’mon, man... what now?” I asked, finally feeling the exhaustion of the fight… and the six months before it.

  It was on them to elect someone. All I’d wanted to do was save my club, and that was done. The club was stronger in that moment than it had been in the last ten years. I was even allowed back into my home chapter. Granted, officially, I was never even kicked out, but they’d still have to remove me as “deceased” from the books.

  Better yet, I had my girl. I looked over at Star who was beaming with pride at everything we’d accomplished together. It was all thanks to her support and her being the one person I could count on that made this happen. It also didn’t hurt that she was a natural with a gun. For the first time in my life, everything felt right.

  As far as I was concerned, we had won.

  “Everyone listen up!” Tee shouted. “As one of the motherfuckers in charge now, I’m calling one last club-wide vote. With the passing of our brother, Top, the Leslie chapter doesn’t have a president. Which means that the whole US branch of the Veins doesn’t have a fucking president.”

  Shit, Tee was right. In all the chaos, I was so balls deep in this crazy plan with the Lobos and Deadeye, and watching Top get killed, that I didn’t stop and think about what that meant for the club. We were leaderless.

  “I nominate Remy Daniels for national president,” Tee called out.

  Tee had caught me off guard with that. I brushed it off as him fucking with me. That was until other members started seconding him, and it looked like the motion was gaining momentum.

  Me as president? I’d never given it any thought before. What the hell did I know about running a club with thousands of members and affiliates?

  “All in favor?” Tee shouted.

  Throughout the parking lot, hands went up a lot faster for this vote. Jesus, an hour ago I was “dead.” Several weeks before that I was in a rough way with kill teams all over me, and now….

  “Always fucking waiting on you, Rem.” Tee elbowed me, snapping me out of my retrospection. Everyone’s hand was up. “What do you say? It’s gotta be unanimous.”

  “I don’t know, man. This is a big deal. I never wanted to run shit,” I spoke softly to Tee. “Give me a gun and a bike and I could kill the moon, but a soapbox and real responsibility... fuck, man. I don’t know if I can do this.”

  Of all the fucking things that should’ve made me nervous, I didn’t see this one coming. I looked around at all the raised arms and felt surprisingly apprehensive.

  “Rem, you’re the only one who can do this. These guys see what you’ve done already. They trust you. You want to save the club? Then don’t bitch out at the fucking finish line, man.” Tee elbowed me hard in the ribs.

  “You know he’s right. No one is a better fit for this than you. They need you, Remy.” Star squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. Then she whispered into my ear, “Besides ‘first old lady’ has a nice ring to it. Or would it be ‘old first lady’?”

  For a long time I felt like it was the danger and violence that defined me, that without it I was nothing. I was always worried that I was just a hammer or a gun, a tool or weapon to be pointed and used, then discarded. I stayed distracted because I knew when I stopped moving, the way I was living would catch up.

  Looking out at all the support was heartening. My club believed in me. After the longest ride of my life, and with the love of my life… I was finally home.

  I raised my hand.

  Epilogue

  Star

  The yellow, orange, and brown leaves gently dusted across the long, curvy rural road. Remy eased off the throttle to take in the multicolored overhang of fall tree branches above us. The forest was still and traffic was sparse on this sleepy Sunday morning. The country road was peacefully quiet, save the loud, dull roar of Remy’s new motorcycle.

  Remy had found and restored a 1984 Kawasaki Ninja that was the same year and model of the one that was destroyed, and this was its maiden voyage.

  We’d just gotten off the highway and were taking the back roads through New Hampshire. I smiled when I caught Remy’s head snapping around like a tourist. I really couldn’t blame him. The uneven and chaotic New England landscape was bursting with color, life, and beauty.

  While I lived here, I’d always poked fun at the “leaf peepers,” the people who would fly in and fill up all the good Airbnbs in the area just to gawk at the changing trees in autumn. But seeing it again after so long made me understand why those camera-clad tourists came back year after year.

  I didn’t realize how much I missed it too.

  It’d been a little while since the “changing of the guard,” as it was now referred to. Remy’s first act as national president was a majority vote to drop all members with less than three years in the club back down to prospects. It was an extremely close vote, but Remy won. A lot of the new members outright quit rather th
an have to prove themselves as prospects again. And I had a feeling we’d just inadvertently created a rival MC, but we’d burn that bridge when we got to it.

  The ones who were knocked back down and were determined to stick it out were the ones the club deserved. Everyone started trusting the people they surrounded themselves with, and the Steel Veins already started to thrive again because of it.

  My life had also begun to change dramatically. I helped Remy vet the prospects in our Leslie chapter and took over the club's bookkeeping. Deadeye had left it in a fucking mess, but I really didn’t mind going through it all. It was actually kind of a nice change of pace, and it turned out I was really good at it. I got the chance to use some of that college training to begin solidifying the club with the government and to restore faith in the eyes of the people of Leslie. It was my mission to keep our town happy and prosperous by donating to events on behalf of the club and organizing fundraisers. Also, effective immediately, the Steel Veins no longer ran drugs. Instead, we started devising plans to invest in infrastructure jobs and unions.

  Remy kept the town safe by doing other things we didn’t tell the government about. The club still had its enemies, but Remy was aggressive when it came to squashing any trouble that came up.

  I hadn’t had to kill anyone again, which I was glad for. Still, knowing I was capable of it if I had to was an empowering feeling. I had come to accept my dark side; it made me strong enough to never back down. It made me feel like I belonged by Remy’s side.

  Everyone else saw that too. They all started calling me “Star Fire.” I’d never been more respected in my life, and I felt worthy of every damn second of it.

  A sign for the Merrimack River blurred by. We were getting close to my childhood home now. For weeks, Remy had been insisting that I contact my parents, but every time I picked up the phone, I couldn’t find the words and hung up.

  Remy eventually convinced me to let him take me to give them the news in person. The concept of family meant a lot to Remy, so he was encouraging about the whole thing and helped me get past my hang-ups. I thought part of that was him looking for an excuse to watch the leaves change color, but I wasn’t going to judge.

  We rolled to a stop at the end of the driveway. Dismounting from the bike and peeling off my helmet, I took a long look at my sleepy two-story childhood home. It seemed somehow smaller than I remembered. Not in size, but in stature. I thought about what it was like to actually live here. The various school, work, and relationship things that seemed so important at the time felt less than trivial now.

  How could I have possibly thought such little things mattered after half a year with Remy?

  “You good?” Remy asked, killing the engine.

  The window curtain in the living room pulled back to see what all the racket was in the driveway, then was immediately let go. Someone had definitely seen us pull up.

  “Nope.” I swallowed hard and started for the front door anyway. For as tough as I'd become, the thought of seeing my parents again scared the hell out of me.

  Remy asked if I wanted him to walk up with me, but I waved him off. This was one thing I needed to do alone.

  The door swung open before I reached the three steps that led to the front entrance landing. Mom paused when she saw me, as if to make sure that it really was me and not some mirage.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said with a nervous smile and upturned eyes.

  “Star. My baby. My baby,” she repeated over and over softly as she ran down the stairs and scooped me up into a big hug. The shaky words mixed with sobs of confusion, joy, and, above all, relief.

  Dad came out a moment later with his reading glasses, plaid button-down shirt, and sensible brown slacks. Even he started welling up as he joined Mom in the family embrace.

  “After hearing about your aunt and uncle, we thought—” Dad choked on the words, stuttered a breath, then continued. “We... God. We were devastated!”

  We thought you were dead. They didn't need to say it out loud; I could see the fear and shame in their eyes. They thought they failed me somehow.

  “Then the police called us,” Mom interjected, wearing the full range of her emotions from hope to despair openly. “They said you'd survived, but they lost you somehow. When I stopped screaming at them about their insane incompetence, they said something about a stolen police car. When they implied that you might've done it, I began right up again.”

  “Well....” I could barely contain the mischievous look that wanted to beam out of me. Not my proudest moment, but doing that told me a lot about myself, and for better or worse, I liked what I found.

  Mom's eyes flashed in disbelief at my admission, but was cut off by Dad's hand squeezing her shoulder.

  “Who is that?” Dad finally asked, his gaze having drifted over to Remy, who was sitting patiently on his bike. A mix of protectiveness and fear stiffened Dad's posture at seeing my tough biker boyfriend. In a lower voice, he leaned in and asked, “Are you in danger? That isn't one of them, is it?”

  “Danger? No, but he is one of them. Well, kinda.” I laughed, not knowing where to even begin, wiping the tears away from the emotional reunion with the leather sleeve of my jacket. I turned and waved Remy over to join us. “That's Remy. He's half the reason I survived what happened at the gas station and then everything else that happened after that.”

  “Half the reason?” Mom asked, looking past Remy and out toward the road to see if anyone else was with us. “Who's responsible for the other half?”

  My eyes hardened, and she quickly realized she had her answer. Mom's expression went from confusion to disbelief to curiosity in the blink of an eye. I might have been her baby girl when they sent me away, but no longer. That girl was gone. I was still their daughter, but now a grown woman in her own right.

  “Hello,” Remy said carefully, extending his hand. “It's nice to meet you both. Star told me all about you.”

  “She hasn't told us anything about you,” Dad replied suspiciously, not accepting Remy's hand at first. Mom elbowed him, which spurred him onto finally accept the handshake.

  “Thank you for whatever you did to bring our daughter safely home,” Mom said with a bit of nervous energy.

  “Yes, thanks,” Dad finally added, then suggested we all go inside.

  Over the next several hours, I laid out everything that had happened nakedly. I'd never talked with them about uncomfortable issues before, let alone nearly being raped, killed, stripping in front of strangers, and even killing a man. The horror and anger on their faces would've terrified the old me, but I thought it was important to be as honest with them as possible.

  The new me was bound to make people uncomfortable; I might as well start getting used to it.

  There was more crying, but to my surprise, my parents didn't berate or scold me. They were just glad I was okay. That acceptance felt nicer than I could've possibly imagined.

  As the night went on, the topics thankfully became much lighter, and as Mom and I made roasted duck for dinner, I was eventually even brought up to date with all the local gossip. It was frivolous, lighthearted fun to hear the juicy details of who was doing what—and occasionally who was doing whom—in the community.

  Dad and Remy had spent the hour trawling through Dad's modest library, sharing opinions on various authors and books that they'd each enjoyed. I knew how voracious a reader Remy was, so I was fairly confident that if Dad could get over the whole outlaw biker thing, then they'd eventually hit it off well. When dinner was done and the men returned, Dad was all smiles at the breadth and depth of Remy's literary knowledge. Remy, never one to brag, shrugged the compliments off and modestly offered that he just liked reading.

  Over dinner and after some heavy prodding by my mother, Remy opened up a little about his brothers and what happened to them. He also surprised me by sharing some of his childhood with us.

  Remy was his typical charming, endearing self, and it seemed like my parents, while initially hesitant about him, ha
d finally started to see past the biker to the good-hearted man beneath.

  Dinner was, of course, incredible, and afterward Dad returned to the table with a bottle of special-occasion wine that was always too sweet for me, but this time I didn't mind. Mom was the first to raise her glass and give a toast.

  “To the return of our beautiful daughter. It's hard to put into words how much we've missed you. We're so, so glad to know that you're okay and are very proud of the woman you've become—are becoming.” She got a bit flustered but quickly found herself and wrapped up the toast. “You know what I mean. We love you, sweetie.”

  “And it's surprisingly nice to meet you too, Remy,” Dad said brusquely. He looked at Mom, who gave him a flat look at his brevity. He replied to her, “What? It's true and you know I'm not a speech guy.”

  I chuckled, Mom shook her head, and Remy smiled politely.

  “I've got something to say, if I may?” Remy asked. Mom quickly waved him on. There was a flash of nervousness in his eyes before he began, which despite how willingly he faced death, was very unlike him.

  What could possibly worry Remy here? This was the safest, most boring place in the world.

  “I know you don’t know me well yet, but I hope to change that,” Remy started, a thoughtful expression crossing his rugged features. “I've lived a pretty troubled life, and for a long time I didn't make the best decisions. I was headed down a bad path until I met your daughter, and now that we've spent so much time together, I don’t think I can live in a world where she isn’t by my side.”

  Remy took my hand in his and stole a deep breath before continuing.

  “This is a big ask, but I’d like your blessing to marry your daughter.” Remy studied my parents' reactions.

  I gasped, having no idea what he’d been planning.