Chapter 1
Commando
I felt the whisky burn as it travelled down my throat. I could still remember when Dad gave me my first taste. I was eleven years old. The juice of life, he’d said.
“You still thinking about that blond you banged yesterday?” Slade interrupted my thoughts, thumping my back; which nearly spilt the whisky out of the glass in my hand. Fucker.
“Which one?” I asked, swiveling around on my bar stool to them. The others laughed, Slade grinned.
“There were only two blonds last night,” he said and my lips curled in a smile. Slade was a jokester, but wasn’t exactly great at taking a joke. Although, I wasn’t kidding. I’d meant to tell him earlier, but then I forgot.
“Exactly,” I said and he lunged at me, knocking the glass out of my hands.
There were two blonds last night. Claire or something, the one with the big tits, and I didn’t even remember the other one’s name. She had plump red lips and I remembered the way they fit like a latex glove around my cock. She was the one Slade had been working for the past week.
Girth and King got him off me, while he grit his teeth and flared his nostrils at me. I wasn’t going to fight him. I was having fun but he was family. There was no reason for me to take a punch.
He was breathing hard when they pulled him off me and he made a quick jerk with his hands to pull his shirt back down into position.
“This better be your idea of a joke, Commando,” he said and I looked sheepishly at the others. They were smiling but I knew were secretly hoping it was a joke.
Do I tell him she screamed my name as I plowed into her from behind? That she left me three voicemails this morning? It was so easy to rile Slade up. In the last year since he took Woods’ spot in the Club, he’d become the guy we used as a lovable punching bag. It wasn’t like he was a brother to me. I would have loved to see his face when I told him she was a squirter.
“Just kidding, bro,” I said instead and emptied the whisky down my throat.
Slade took a moment to buy it. He went from frowning and huffing to smiling and laughing in a matter of seconds. Did I really have that good of a poker face?
Hell yeah I did.
I caught King’s eye as Slade sat down on a stool beside me and ordered another round for the bunch of us. King knew what had happened. He saw me go to the back of the Club with both the women. He was warning me with his narrowed eyes. I raised my empty glass to him and smirked. What was life if not made for fucking anyone available? And that blond was available last night. It wasn’t like I would have batted an eyelid if Slade slept with her tonight. As long as I got to her first.
“Y’know, you guys could give me a hand with these,” Big D brought us our glasses. He’d always worked alone at the Club. Word was that he was known as ‘Shrink’ on the inside, because apparently, he used to lie down on one of the bunks and listen to these big tatted up men pour their hearts out to him. Now that he was outside, he was the perfect bartender at the Club.
King whistled at Girth like he was calling a dog.
“Take him,” he said and we all burst out laughing. Big D rolled his eyes, giving the counter a swipe with the rag on his shoulder.
“You want to put the two biggest guys in here behind the bar?” he said and crossed his bulky biceps over each other on his chest. We still couldn’t stop laughing. Just the thought of Girth and Big D behind the bar, squeezing themselves in!
“We’ll hire an outsider, Big D, and don’t let these boys get to ya,” it was Dad’s voice that interrupted our laughter. He was sitting at the end of the counter, surrounded by Crawford and the other older members of the club. He’d overheard the conversation and had spoken in his deep voice, which had the power of silencing everyone in the room.
Those were qualities that were important to him.
Power
Respect
The Bike
Women
He’d tried his best to instill those qualities in me, to prepare me for when it was my turn to become President of the Rogue Rebels. It was just that sometimes I got the order of things mixed up.
“Yes, Sir,” Big D said and went back to working the bar. A lot of people liked to call Dad Sir or just Elwood. He never corrected them. We were one big family, a family of brothers as Crawford used to say, but Dad made sure that everyone knew who the head of the family was. It was him. And it was going to be me.
He caught my eye and raised a glass like a salute, I did the same and we drank to that.
“So how was she?” Slade had sidled up to me while I wasn’t looking. I turned to him, a little confused. Who was he talking about?
“The tits you scored last night. Man, I heard her screaming!” he said with a chuckle and drank some of his beer. I couldn’t help but wondering which one’s screams he heard.
“You want me to invite you to watch the next time I have a girl bent over my bike?” I asked. King and Girth laughed. Slade shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his chair, tipping it dangerously backwards but keeping it balanced perfectly.
“Maybe I’ll learn something,” he said with a laugh and I shook my head.
Slade was all right. He was new to the Club, just a pup, but he had my back. Which meant, that I would always have his.
xxx
We were fucked. How long had we been drinking? Time had overlapped and meshed together, to form one long stream of booze and bad jokes.
“Which one of you is gonna tuck my man into bed tonight?” a woman’s voice interrupted us. We all turned to the door of the bar in unison and saw Jewel Elwood standing there, with her hands on her hips. Her wispy brown curls were framing her face, and her eyes were stern.
Mom.
“Elwood, your old lady’s here to collect you,” I heard Crawford joking and Dad passed him a smile. Mom’s gaze searched me out in the dark crowd of the bar and she rolled her eyes at me. She’d married a biker. She’d raised a biker. This was the life she’d had to settle for, not the one she’d chosen and sometimes, I felt sorry for her.
I saw Dad lazily slip off his stool and reach for his leather jacket, while Mom remained standing at the door, watching Dad’s every movement.
It took a lot of trust and a lot of guts to forge the solid marriage that Mom and Dad shared. It wouldn’t have been easy for her. Dad’s code of life included women. They were at the bottom of his list of priorities, but they were there. I didn’t have to rack my brain hard to recall how many times she’d caught him with someone else, and how many times she’d threatened to leave.
I blamed Dad then. Blamed him for how much pain he caused Mom, and I vowed that I would never put another human being through it. I wouldn’t put my kids through the heartache of watching a family fall apart. It was why Moira left the first chance she got. She couldn’t stand to see Mom being broken, over and over again. Even though Dad hadn’t been unfaithful to her in over eight years now, Moira had just always expected it to happen again. She didn’t want to be around when it did. Now she lived in the other part of town, and secretly I was glad she stayed away from the Club. It gave the boys less chance to drool over her.
Some of the guys hooted and cheered when Dad walked up to Mom. I’d seen photographs of the two of them together when they’d just met, before Moira and I were born. They were hot stuff and probably still were.
Dad grabbed her by the ass and pulled her to himself, before kissing her. I rolled my eyes and looked away. I’d grown up watching the two of them slobbering over each other. Fucking gross.
“Go home!” I barked at them, and the others continued to cheer. When Dad released her, she looked directly at me and arched her eyebrows, before turning to the others.
“You all should go home. It’s late, boys,” she said, in a threateningly authoritative voice. Over the years, she had slipped into her role as the matriarch quite well, and I knew it had only strengthened the marriage between the two of them.
“Jewel is a gem, get it?” Slade joked and I shook my head indulgently.
“How’s Moira?” Girth asked, knowing exactly the effect it would have on me.
My head was already swimming with alcohol and I was fighting the urge to take Mom’s advice.
“Safe now that she’s away from you,” I said to him and he sniggered. Moira was off-limits and they all knew it, but that didn’t stop them from taking potshots at my peace of mind.
“Hey, aren’t you satisfied with one guy’s sister?” Slade was quick to interject. Girth had recently started seeing Sophie, Slade’s sister, and they had embarked on a strange life together. A relationship that none of us thought was going to work. Sophie was sweet and knew what she wanted. Girth was young and scruffy and had too much going on in his family to recognize he had a good thing with her.
But he enjoyed how much this was annoying Slade, nonetheless.
King made to stand up. I could see it on his face that he was done. Since Dad took him under his wings four years ago, we’d been best friends.
“Where are you going?” Girth asked him and King pointed to his watch. It was three in the morning.
“Do you have to say your morning prayers?” Slade said with a laugh, and Girth, King and I all shot him threatening looks. King’s religion was out of bounds, just like Moira was. Even I thought it was a little weird when I first met him, but by now we knew it was what kept him sane. He used to be a street kid, the gang was going to kill him if he didn’t get out and he believed it was his religion that had brought him to Elwood. We respected his beliefs. Slade seemed to be a slow learner and hadn’t caught on.
“Remember what your Mom said,” King said to me, and gestured a salute to me with two fingers. I smirked at him.
“Pussy,” I called after him as I watched him exit the bar, taking his leave from the others as he went.
Now it was just Girth, Slade and me at this end of the counter, still swirling our drinks. At least Girth had Sophie to see if he wanted to. All I had was Sheila, and she wasn’t exactly a human being. It was late and I’d had too much to drink but it was too early to go to sleep as well.
I slipped my cellphone out of the pocket of my jeans and I scrolled through the voicemails.
Meet me behind the bar
I texted the blond. The one who Slade had undoubtedly been calling all night. I could tell from the shifty look in his eyes that he was waiting for her to respond to his messages.
I’ll be there in ten minutes, hun - Barb
She replied almost instantly.