Blackjack

by Elizabeth Knox

  Dex’s eyes went wide and for a moment, I felt my anxiousness peak. The boy stood up from his seat and opens his arms to pull me into a big hug. “That’s fantastic news!”

  I felt astonished that he was taking everything so well. Like a balloon, I was filled with so much relief that it felt so unreal. Dex pulled away from me for a moment, that smile pulling across his features.

  “You have to figure out a good way to tell him” Dex tells me, his face going stern. “I don’t think he was very happy when he found out about me so…you have to do something fun this time for him!”

  “Oh honey, don’t say things like that, but what did you have in mind? I agree, we’re going to make it fun for your Dad”

  After a couple of bottles of root beer (complimentary of Edd himself), we debated on the ideas together. It was amazing how relief came easily the more I talked about it with Dex. I had spent so much time thinking “couldn’t”, “never”, and “impossible” yet the entire conversation just made me think “what if” but rather… “I’ll try”.

  I wanted so much more in this arrangement…marriage… than I had originally thought. Maybe this pregnancy wasn’t a simple accident, but it was a sign that I could try again.

  On the way home, Dex and I finally came up with the best option on how we were going to tell Blackjack. The idea was simple but sure to send a clear message. Sure, we had to take a detour from the house to the closest craft store, but it was well worth it when we found what we were looking for.

  That night, I spent a good two hours making sure the message was intact so that it wouldn’t come undone or pose as miscommunication. If I was going to do this after all, I wanted to get it right the first time. Night time came faster than I thought and although Blackjack still wasn’t home from the run, I was able to slip into bed and fall asleep with ease.

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of Blackjack’s Harley pulling into the driveway. My heart started running faster than the thoughts in my head and I pulled myself out of bed. Jesus, how was I going to go about this…

  I was just about to slip into a pair of sweatpants when I heard the door shut downstairs.

  Alright, I think to myself as I pulled on a thin long sleeved shirt, It’s now or never.

  I darted downstairs although I couldn’t help but feel like my own tension was returning faster than ever. I felt like my whole body was lighter the more I moved across the hallway into the kitchen to the man waiting for me. When I walked inside to find Dex sitting at the breakfast table and Blackjack nowhere to be seen, my tension disappeared completely.

  Dex saw my stressed expression and gestured with his hand over to the garage, telling me that his father was going to take his sweet time coming inside. I gave him a nod before turning my attention to the counters where our coffee maker sat with a new blue mug waiting beside it.

  The kitchen door leading to the garage finally opened just as I was already brewing a fresh cup of coffee. I restrained every muscle in my body from turning around to see him. If he even saw my face I was sure I’d ruin it. Gosh, it had only been a day and it felt like I hadn’t seen him in weeks.

  “What are you two doing up so early?” I hear him ask, his footsteps venturing into the kitchen.

  “Hm?” I look up from the coffee drip, “I couldn’t let you come back home so early without a cup of coffee, Rob. You boys must have been riding all night.”

  “You shouldn’t have, Ash… I was planning on taking a morning nap with you when I got back anyway.” He says before wrapping his arms around me from behind to give me a kiss on the cheek.

  “A morning nap, pff.” I snort as I poured coffee into the mug.

  “And what’s your excuse, boy?” Rob jokes with his son.

  “Last I checked, I have school in the mornings, Pops.” Dex responds with amusement. “How was the run?”

  Blackjack shrugs his shoulders against my body.

  “Decent. No hiccups during the set up.” He responds simply, “I guess that means our guys are doing their jobs right.”

  The very touch of him overwhelmed my skin in tingles. There was nothing more that I wanted than to hold him right here and now and tell him everything that happened the day before. Instead, I shut myself up and topped off the coffee.

  “Here.” I say before turning around to hand Blackjack the full mug. A smile emerged from my lips as I looked up at him, nearly purring. “Just the way you like it.”

  The man takes his mug, returning the smile with an odd look of notice in his eyes. “Thanks, Monroe” He leans down to take my lips in a small kiss.

  I return the kiss before sending him off to the breakfast table to join his son. When he took his seat and resumed his report of the night, I turned my back to the two of them and made myself busy with the kitchen the way Eddy always seemed to at the bar.

  Apparently, the new warehouses were so well hidden that no one had tracked where we’d been keeping our supplies. Blackjack mentioned how Dad opted to install motion sensors around the properties, as well as adding cameras to take photographs whenever the sensor was activated. So far, they’d only seen a cougar and a few foxes.

  After I was done cleaning off the counter, I took some orange juice from the fridge and poured a glass to take to the table. Blackjack’s eyes went from his son to me as he watched take a seat with the two of them. When his attention returned to his son, even he noticed the apparent eagerness in his expression when his father was less than a third done with his coffee.

  “And how is school by chance?” Blackjack asks, putting aside his skepticism.

  Dex shrugs, “Same as usual. Mrs. Dixie is driving me nuts”

  “She liked me too kiddo, best to stay on that good side of hers”

  “Whatever you say, Dad.” Dex smirks before displacing his eyes down to the kitchen table.

  Blackjack’s brows furrowed in confusion as he looks from me to his son. “Am I missing something here? Did something happen when I was gone?”

  Dex shakes his head, “Not really. And if it did, you’d know.”

  “Something’s happened and you two haven’t told me.” Blackjack growls.

  I could tell the Dex was just about ready to laugh his ass off at the irony in the morning. Hell, even I didn’t know if I could stand it for much longer. As soon as Blackjack raised his coffee cup to take another sip, I could feel my own heart trying to jump out of its chest.

  He took his sip with closed eyes, surely because he was tired of the trip. When he put the cup down, he hadn’t even bothered to look down much to my disappointment.

  Instead of waiting around for him to notice, I placed my hand up to his wrist.

  “Would you like another coffee, dear?” I ask playfully.

  “We won’t be takin’ that nap now, babe. But yeah, pour me another”

  In that moment, he looks down to his empty cup and grows confused by what he finds inside. Seconds passed between us in silence until his eyes widened and the table was abruptly shifted when he got out of his seat with a start. He couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t even believe it as I saw the corners of his lips rip into the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.

  “Seriously?”

  I nodded quickly, tears of joy practically ready to burst from the corners of my eyes. He pulls me out of the chair at once and into his arms, giving me what felt like the warmest embrace I had ever felt in my life. I held him in my arms, my own smile determined not to falter as I saw Dex look up at us with the same boyish smirk.

  Blackjack pulls back from his hug and looks down at me with what I could describe as pure happiness. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me hard, filling up my heart with a weightless relief until the only thing I could do was accept it. We laughed in that moment. All of us.

  At the bottom of that little blue cup was a single phrase that made everything from here on out okay: “You’re going to be a Dad!”

  Chapter 17

  Blackjack

  Finding out that Ashley
was pregnant was the best news I’d ever heard. It may not mean a lot to some men, but to me it meant everything. This was a second chance for me to do right be her. A year ago, no one could have told me that I would’ve ended up having a child with the one that got away, yet here she was, standing right before me.

  Another month flashed by in the blink of an eye, it was still too soon to know the gender, but we decided to decorate the room on a neutral color scheme––mint green. Ashley was keen on betting that it was going to be a rumbustious boy, but I stuck with my guns in saying we were probably going to end up with a beautiful girl. Dex didn’t care either way. Whether he ended up with a brother or sister, he was happy for the two of us.

  We waited to tell Fist for a few weeks. Ash had been so worried about something going wrong with the pregnancy and I wasn’t about to argue with her.

  “Hot damn.. you’re not pulling my legs, are you?” The old man looks us both dead in the eye.

  “No, Sir.” I respond, squeezing Ashley’s hand as she winds her arm around mine. “We wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

  He looks from me to his daughter before taking her spare hand. “Is this true, sweetheart?”

  I watched Ashley nod, biting her bottom lip before her mouth slip into an eager grin. “We’re having a baby, Daddy.”

  The man squeezes her hand and the smile we’d been waiting for the entire day had finally emerged from his stoic expression. A laugh escapes him, and he stands up to open his arms, grateful for the news that walked into his living room. The two of us were pulled into his hug while Ashley cried her eyes out into her father’s chest. I patted the man’s shoulders, feeling closer to him than ever before.

  “This is good news.” The man laughs before releasing us to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye, “I needed to hear this after the shit that went down last night.”

  “Last night?” I ask.

  Fist shakes his head and lifts his arm up to take my shoulder.

  “It’s good you told me about this now. I just hope that what I have to say won’t spoil your happiness in this moment.”

  “What’s going on, Daddy?” Ashley looks up at him with an expression mixed in confusion.

  The man closes his hands down on his belt, looking down to the floor sternly. “This has gone on long enough. I’ve finally made a decision regarding to our issue.”

  “What issue?” She blinks.

  I cross my arms over my chest, “The Bears?”

  “Correct.” The man finally looks up at me, somber as could be. “It’s unforgivable what your ex-husband did to you, Ashley.”

  Ashley stepped back, her eyes more alert than before. I couldn’t pull my eyes from Fist with the way he ended that sentence. “Now, I know we’re blessed that you’re able to be with child––” Fist continues, scratching the back of his head. “But this man cost you your first baby. On top of that, he nearly cost you the possibility of bearing children at all.”

  “That’s none of your business, Daddy.” She shakes her head, her voice growing sharper than her old man’s razor. “I thought we were done with this. I don’t want to see that son of a bitch’s face in this town again.”

  “Which is why we have to seek compensation.” Her father emphasizes, opening his hands up. “It’s one thing to get a restraining order. It’s another thing to make him accountable and punish him in a way that he truly deserves”

  “Dad...” She says lowly, warning him.

  I take her arm in mine, giving it a soft squeeze before she could look up to me. With an assuring glance, I calm Fist down as much as I can, while still giving us the ability to go after Harry.

  “We don’t know what could happen if we make demands from the Bears.” I say to Fist, “This is a personal conflict that could result into a war between us and the Bears. We’ve only just started getting back up on our own two feet after the drugs, shit, we had to use cash out of the reserves to fix alla that”

  “With the rate we’re at, we can take them, Son.” He reaffirms confidently.

  “There’s going to be casualties.” I point out.

  Ashley’s arm tenses at the sound of that. Fist looks down to his daughter, taking a moment of thought to consider the fallback of this proposition. When his eyes came back to me, I knew it wasn’t enough for him to stand down.

  “I know this. After everything Harry Vale has done to our girl he deserves what’s coming to him. My only regret is that I didn’t act sooner”

  I looked down at Ashley but deep in her eyes, she already knew. No matter what we told him, Fist insisted that this was the way to go. I wanted to argue with the old man, but I couldn’t – I wanted to hurt Vale just as bad as he did.

  ***

  Fist called an emergency meeting in church. By the looks of it, he had our men ready to rip at Grizzly himself and send the son of a bitch’s hide to his loved ones.

  “Blackjack––… Blackjack!” Fist called out to me from the head of the table. My eyes lit up from where I sat and I saw that everyone was looking at me. Every single man in this church was looking for answers.

  I blinked, “Yes, sir?”

  Fist’s expression grew harder. “I asked what your thoughts are on the meeting being set into the middle of next week.”

  “That’s too soon, Fist…” I thought to myself but dismissed it stubbornly before saying aloud, “How long ago did Ashley come to us?”

  His heavy brows furrowed and I didn’t know as to whether he was unsure or disappointed in my response. “Why does it matter?” He asks at last.

  Slowly, I crossed my arms over my chest as the men watched me in silence. I didn’t want to rush any assumptions and put a witch hunt for information out in the club. But, I couldn’t stay quiet about it either.

  “It matters.” I look up at him, recognizing my affirmation. “Because I’m pretty sure things didn’t start getting better around here until she came around.”

  “Save your sweet talking for the bedroom” Booger scoffs under his breath.

  The brothers chuckled lowly after the joke. I narrowed my eyes at him, but Fist was the one to cut him short while he was still laughing.

  “Boog, you cut him off again and I’ll cut off your whoring pecker.” The old man threatens before acknowledging me again. “Elaborate, Blackjack. If you please.”

  I nodded, swallowing down the lump in my throat.

  “If I’m correct, we were going downhill with our supply records. It wasn’t until Ashley came home that we started doing something about it. We became more alert with who was messing around with not only your daughter but––”

  “With us.” Fist agrees. “Ashley came here mid-April. We had our meeting in early May to talk about what we were going to do about the missing product.”

  “But when did we notice those shortages in the first place?” I stood up, asking the men around me, “Who was keeping records with what was going on in our ammunition shed? Or the arms rack?” It was only discovered recently when Kade and Zane went through our supply that we weren’t just missing drugs. Our arms supplies had been impacted too, and greatly at that.

  Dixon’s voice came up automatically, “I oversaw ammunition and arms until New Years before the holidays.”

  “And after?” I throw my hands up, everyone recognizing my frustration.

  “We didn’t find anything significant missing until February…” Fist drifted off, his eyes looking down to the table of men before his hand slammed down on the wood. “Damn it! Who the hell is keeping our records!”

  That’s when it hit me. Who was the one person who had been metaphorically sitting on the sidelines while the rest of us were out doing the runs. They didn’t have access to records but that couldn’t stop them from getting their hands in the cookie jar. Records, records, record… recording!

  “Prez!” The old man’s surprised expression landed on me and I could feel the words slipping out. “I think we may have a rat and I’m pretty fucking sure I know who it i
s.”

  “Who?” He snaps out.

  “We’re gonna need some insect repellant”

  Chapter 18

  Blackjack

  After trial and error, we had finally caught on to what was going on right under our noses. We had to go back to the beginning and there we found out that not only were our supplies stolen, but so was information about our drug routes, and warehouses. I should’ve recognized this sooner, that our problem had to lay within our club. Out of anything, I never expected it to be one of my brothers.

  “That fucking son of a bitch!” Fist roared, his anger rolling through him.

  Zane and Kade were already out of their seats, ready to hold their father back. “Easy, pops.” Zane tries to coax.

  Kade already had his hand on his old man’s shoulder, the weight of it making Fist breath slow and easy. Booger couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut and cursed something awful behind me. Even Dixon was staring up at me without a word, speechless – something he never was. I looked back to him and shook my head, understanding his feeling. It was hard to imagine that anyone would stoop so low to betray their own.

  “I want that man in chains.” Fist’s voice rumbled, his hands clenched till the knuckles were white. “I want that miserable excuse of shit chained down to the floor until he can pick up the dead talking!”

  “We need him alive.” I insisted, coaxing the hot-headed bull in front of me.

  Fist looks down at me, his steel blue eyes cutting through the air like a hot knife in butter. “He’s the only proof we have that there’s been foul play in the club. Without him, you have no case.” I try to reason with him.

  “I honestly don’t know who I want to kill more.” He curses hotly, pulling his shoulder away from his son. “That useless son of a bitch Harry or this miserable piece of fuck.” He points to me, “If you think we’re going to abide by ancient as fuck bylaws you’ve lost your damn mind. This is our family, our fucking club and I’ll be damned if both Harry and that lowlife scum aren’t six feet under”