by Penny Dee
But all I could see was my brother’s coffin, and all I could think about was how I had let him down.
Rosanna began to sob into her hands. I wanted to comfort her, I did, but I had nothing to give her.
Last night, we had cried together. Clutched each other in a desperate embrace as we’d slid to the floor in tears. She had held me, and I had held her, and then we’d gotten drunk together. Fall-down, angry drunk.
She didn’t blame me, she said.
It wasn’t my fault, and she still loved me more than ever, she said.
But I could already feel the gulf widening.
It was only a matter of time before what we had died too. Because one day, her pain would sink further into her soul, and she would come to realize that this was all my fault.
Those bullets were meant for me.
Not the man we loved as a son.
I was a King, and we were at war with rival bootleggers. The attack against the club happened because we took exception to the Iron Fury trying to pedal their moonshine and weed in our territory, so we had burned down their stills and destroyed their distribution lines. The shooting was retaliation. It was the first blood to be spilled, but it would not be last. Because I was going to find every single motherfucker responsible, and I was going to put each and every one of them in a hole in the ground.
Agony clawed at my heart, and as my brother’s coffin disappeared below the grass line, I couldn’t stand it any longer. With a cry I couldn’t control, I fell to my knees.
How could this be it?
How could he be gone?
The pain was like a torturous hot poker searing a blistering path through my heart. They say tough men are forged by blood and pain, but sometimes it felt like I was dying beneath the weight of it. Like I couldn’t endure one more moment of the excruciating pain moving through my veins.
Now was one of those moments.
A pair of strong hands lifted me to my feet. It was Bull, the Kings of Mayhem MC president. The King of Kings. He drew me in, and I gave into the unbearable agony and broke against him, my fists balling against his leather cut as I let my grief consume me.
“You’ve got this, brother,” he said.
Later, back at the clubhouse, he poured me a shot of whiskey. Decades ago, he lost his wife and unborn baby in a car accident. The years that followed were dark for him, but he survived his torment and grief and was happily married now with a kid on the way.
I threw back the shot, my nerves frayed.
“How do I fucking do this?” I asked him. “He deserved more than this.”
Bull put his hand on my shoulder and fixed me with his supernatural blue eyes. “You get through today,” he said, his voice gravelly and thick with a heavy Mississippi accent. “Then you go after the motherfucker who did this, and you make the sonofabitch pay.”
JACK
Two Years Ago
“I’m leaving.”
I look up from the table where my face has been planted since I passed out on it the night before. Spilled whiskey from an overturned bottle of Jack pools on the tabletop, and the acrid smell makes my stomach churn. I try to focus but my head is pounding like a motherfucker. Squinting, I see Rosanna standing in the doorway, her face pale and gaunt and stiff with determination.
“I’m moving in with my folks, and I’m taking Hope with me.”
Somewhere inside of me, I want to fight her because she’s walking out on our marriage and taking our daughter with her, but even that part of me knows she is doing the right thing. Hope is better off with her mother than she is with me. I’m not even here. I’m a ghost. Even when I am present, I’m not really here. The twins, Bam and Loki, will be fine. They’re in college, and the fact that their old man is a fucking shell of a human being doesn’t affect them anymore.
Still, it doesn’t stop me from asking, “Why?”
“I’ve tried, Jack. I really have. But you’re never here anymore. You’ve given up. You’d rather be with the club than here with me.” She leans against the doorjamb. “I used to lie awake worrying I was going to get that call, the one telling me your recklessness had finally claimed you, and you were dead. Then I used to lie awake praying you’d come back to me. Praying you would find the strength to pick up the pieces. Now I just lie awake alone, my body aching because my husband hasn’t touched me in months. I don’t know if there have been other women, club girls—”
“There hasn’t been.”
She nods. “I didn’t think so. That’s not really your style, is it? But your grief might as well be another woman, Jack. Because she is your mistress, and she has taken you from me.”
“I love you,” I croak out. And I do. I just can’t seem to muster the strength to show her anymore.
She smiles softly. “You love the memory of me. Of us. But when Cooper…” She stalls because saying his name still hurts. “When Cooper died… you died, too.”
She is right.
I died on that goddamn pavement right alongside my baby brother.
“I’ve tried, but I can’t reach you anymore, and I’m tired, Jack. My mind. My body. My soul. I lost Cooper, too.” She picks up her bags. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stand by and watch you slowly kill yourself with liquor and guilt.”
I need to say something…
… anything to stop her from leaving.
But words fail me.
And even after the initial surprise of her telling me she’s leaving fades like smoke, I realize she is right. I love the memory of her. Of our relationship. Our marriage. But nothing has existed since that fateful afternoon. Everything died, and I’ve been too overcome with grief and too marinated in hard liquor to notice.
“You need to find a reason to live again.” Rosanna places the crown pendant I’d given her on our wedding day on the table. Every king gives his queen one when they marry. If she gives it back, you know it’s over. “Take care of yourself, Jack.”
I watch her walk out the door, and when I hear her car pull out of the driveway and disappear down the street, I drag the bottle of Jack to my lips and take a deep mouthful. The taste is harsh, and the burning liquid is like fire as it carves a flaming path through my chest. But it feels good because it’s the only thing to remind me I am alive.
I look at Rosanna’s crown pendant on the table in front of me.
She is gone.
But nothing has really changed.
Cooper is still dead.
And I am still broken.
JACK
One Year Later
It’s one of those dark nights when nothing good is going to happen. A sinister feeling hangs heavy in the air. There is no breeze. No life.
Leaning against the large willow tree across the road, I watch the screen door open and the looming figure step onto the porch. It walks across the moaning floorboards to lean against the weathered porch railing, the glow of a cigar the only light in the darkness. From where I stand, I don’t see his face, but I know who he was. His name is Rasputin, and tonight he is going to die.
Music drifts out of the house, but it is the only noise in an otherwise quiet night. Rasputin puts a booted foot against the railing, his fat beer belly pushing through his Iron Fury cut as he stares into the darkness and enjoys his cigar. They are Crowned Heads, ripped off from a warehouse heist two weeks ago. Oh yeah, I know what he’s had been up to. I know everything about him. More than I fucking care to.
Rasputin isn’t an educated man. Grew up poor. Had his first kid before he could legally drive. Joined a motorcycle gang because it was either that or work the mines or die in prison because he had a rap sheet a mile long. We could be brothers. Except, we are fucking worlds apart.
I think about Cooper, about what my brother would be doing now if the piece of shit enjoying his cigar hadn’t ordered the hit on me. The familiar sickly rage takes up inside me, the heat of it polluting my veins and staining my vision. My hands fist at my sides. Enjoy that cigar, motherfucker, because it’s the
last one you’re ever going to have.
I’m going to make him pay for what he did.
I’ve saved the two men I hold most responsible for Cooper’s murder for last.
Rasputin and Ghost.
The latter has proven elusive. Blinded by my grief, I’d gone after him first because he was the trigger man, but he’d disappeared like an apparition, just like his namesake.
So I’d gone after every single one of the motherfuckers in the small club of bootleggers who called themselves the Iron Fury, and I had broken the club apart, piece by piece, man by man. Some are in jail. Some are dead. And after tonight, all but one will remain free.
I am a bad man.
Fueled by hate and darkness.
Driven by tragedy.
But if I’m honest, it isn’t just about Cooper’s death anymore. My lust for revenge has grown into a living, breathing thing. A creature of its own. It’s who I am, and it is my reason for living.
The man who’d held his dying brother in his arms is gone. The man who’d lived inside a bottle of whiskey and let his marriage die a slow, painful death, is gone. In his place is an entity of merciless vengeance and fury made from blood and bone. With little care or thought for what I am doing, I eat, I drink, I fuck, and I exist.
But I live and breathe retaliation.
It’s what keeps me alive.
That and the ferocious determination to keep my other children safe from the scum who’d preyed on our family.
By day, I am the president of the Kings of Mayhem, Tennessee Chapter. By night, I hunt my prey alone, moving in and out of the shadows with ease, stalking, waiting, watching for the right moment, then pouncing at precisely the right second.
Tonight, is one of those moments.
It is time for retribution.
My target is alone on the porch while two of his friends party in the old weather-beaten house behind him. They won’t hear what is about to happen. They won’t know anything about it until someone wonders where he is and comes looking for him.
By then, it’ll be too late.
I reach for the sheathed blade tucked into the back of my jeans.
It’s time.
I start to move toward the house but just as I’m about to leave the shadows, a pair of headlights cut into the darkness, and a car pulls up in front of the house. Sheathed in darkness, I watch as two men climb out while a third drags a girl from the back seat. I can hear her whimpers over the gag in her mouth and the amusement of the men who hold her captive. They laugh at her, their cold, callous chuckles floating across the darkness and igniting a match to the dry kindling already smoldering inside of me.
My eyes shift to Rasputin. He takes a final suck on his cigar before discarding it in the dead flowerbed in front of the house. He moves like a man made of size, thick heavy steps clomping across the porch. He chuckles when he sees the girl, and it’s a deep, throaty sound born from years of heavy smoking. When he reaches her, he grabs her by the chin and yanks her face toward him. She whimpers again, and in the dim light I can see the fear in her eyes.
“Pretty,” he growls, followed by a nefarious groan. “Take her to my room. I’ll have her first.”
Fuck.
The men do as he commands and disappear inside the house with the girl. But before he moves to follow them, Rasputin pauses and looks around him in the dark as if he can sense me, and every cell in my body wills him to walk toward the shadows where I’m waiting for him. My hand grips the steel handle of my knife with anticipation, itching to run the blade across his throat and to smell the metallic tang of his blood as it runs from his body. But after a moment of checking his gut instinct, he turns back toward the house and vanishes inside.
I exhale heavily because the circumstances have just changed—there are now six men in the house.
Leaving the shadows, I tuck my knife back into my jeans and pull the Ruger from my cut. With the arrival of three extra men and a captive, I don’t have time to fuck around.
I find the first one taking a leak off the back porch and knock him out before he knows I’m even there. The second is passed out at the kitchen table with a needle on the floor close by and the loosened rubber tubing still around his arm. I glance over at him, wondering if he is going to be a threat later on. Deciding he isn’t, I keep moving—I’m pressed for time. Someone has turned down the music so they can hear whatever hellish things Rasputin is doing to the girl.
I need to get to her.
I need to stop him.
So when the three other men come for me, I don’t waste any time. I raise my Ruger and shoot them.
One, two, three!
Done!
Hearing the commotion, Rasputin comes barreling out from a bedroom, his fly open, his face flushed. When he sees me, his eyes narrow.
“Fucker,” he growls.
“Yeah,” I say with a maniacal grin before shooting him in his big, fat belly.
It isn’t a kill shot.
It’s simply meant to take him down.
Painfully.
He collapses against the wall and slides to the floor with a heavy thud. I take my time walking over to him, stretching the moment out, determined to make him endure the agony of a stomach wound for as long as possible. When I reach him, I crouch down so we are at eye level. Up close, he’s even uglier—gray, pitted skin, sickly eyes, his teeth rotting from years of mountain meth and bad living—and he stinks, worse than roadkill on a hot summer’s day.
“You know, I wondered how it would feel when this moment finally arrived, and I have to admit it’s pretty fucking satisfying.” My dark gaze sweeps over his pockmarked face. “Seeing you sitting here, fighting to live and wondering how you’re going to stop me from killing you. But you’re not going to stop it from happening, do you understand me? I am going to kill you now, you sick sonofabitch, and there ain’t nothing in this world that is going to stop me.”
“You motherfucking—”
I jam my gun into his chin. “What?”
“I didn’t kill your brother. That was Ghost’s doing.”
“No, but you ordered the hit on me.”
“It was business,” he spits, blood coating his lips.
“It might have been business to you. But it was very fucking personal for me.”
“Fucking shit happens.”
I move the business end of the Ruger to his forehead, and he whimpers like a child as I say, “Yeah, I suppose it does.”
Panic sets in. “I g-got money,” he stammers. “Two thousand in the mattress. It’s yours if you don’t fucking kill me.”
“My brother’s life for two thousand dollars? Are you fucking kidding me?” I press the gun deeper into his skin. “You insult me, you piece of shit.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to die.”
There is something satisfying in those few moments before they realized they were about to pay for their crimes.
Rasputin’s fear turns to anger.
“You think you’re so fucking innocent,” he spits. “Ask yourself why I put that hit on you, you fucking prick. You think you could claim Appalachia as your territory like you’re some kind of god. Fuck you. It was all about money and greed. That’s why your brother died. Because you’re just like me.”
In a way, he is right. I am like him. I want to protect my club, I want to make money so we can put food on the table, but I’m not depraved like he is.
Yes, I’m a killer. But it isn’t for enjoyment. I kill out of necessity.
And I sure as fuck don’t rape.
I rise to my feet and aim my gun at him. The time for talking is done.
I fix my gaze to his. “This is for my kid brother.” And I shoot him right between his sickly, yellow eyes.
From the bedroom, the girl cries out. I find her cowering in the corner of the room, thankfully still clothed.
“It’s going to be all right,” I say, trying to muster a calming voice. But it isn’t easy after taking
down six men. The venom is still strong in my veins. “I won’t hurt you.”
She looks vaguely familiar.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Her big doe-eyes brim with fear. “Arianna. B-but people call me Ari.”
“Do you know who I am?” I ask.
She nods. “Y-yes. You’re the president of the Kings.”
Meaning she can easily identify me to the cops.
“Did he rape you?” I gesture toward Rasputin lying in a pool of blood near the doorway.
“No, but he was going to.”
“That’s right. And then he was going to share you with his buddies.”
Her chin quivers. “I know.”
Rasputin’s phone is on the bedside table. I hand it to her. “You call Sheriff Pinkwater and you let him know what happened here tonight. He’ll make sure you get somewhere safe. But when he asks you how this happened—”
“I’ll tell him I didn’t see who did this to them.” Gratitude is warm in her voice. “You saved my life.”
I look at her for a moment, trying to place her face when it strikes me. “You work at the grocery store over in Gray Rock.”
Gray Rock is a blink-and-you’d-miss-it town a few miles north of Flintlock.
“Yes, you come in from time to time. You like those fresh mints with the soft centers.”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You were always real nice to me. Gave me a tip once… a ten-dollar bill. And Mrs. Bramble, who works at the diner, she said you sent a doctor around to treat her husband’s shingles when they couldn’t afford to see to it. Said you always tipped real good when you rode through town.”
I don’t remember any of those things, so I simply nod toward the phone in her hand. “You’d better make that call.”
I sit with her while we wait for the sheriff, and she tells me how Rasputin’s men had grabbed her off the street when she was walking home from her shift at the store. She shows me the marks on her arms where one of them seared the end of his cigarette into her skin while the others laughed and taunted her with threats of what was to come.
