It’s been days since Avery disappeared. My truck was found abandoned at a supermarket with no signs of anyone. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I just get high, or drunk, anything so long as my mind doesn’t concoct terrifying scenarios.

I’ve searched everywhere, uncovered every stone and she’s just fucking gone, like Rhiannon. How could I fail them both so royally? I was never husband material, thinking I could have someone like her, protect and have a small slice of peace within her. Fucking idiot. This life, my position, my sins. Why would I get to have something precious, untouchable?

A part of me knows if she ever comes back to me, she won’t be the same. We won’t be the same. I know in my heart that Axel will destroy her in any way he can. To him, she owes him. I have my pride, and I know how much it can shape your actions, but there’s one difference between Axel and me, I’m not a sadistic cunt. And that’s precisely what steals sleep from me, the constant sickening images my mind refuses to cease torturing me with.

I haven’t stopped searching for her. All the brothers have scoped the whole of Sleight Falls and surrounding districts looking for them Avery, Rhiannon, and Brenner. It’s like they’ve all been consumed and shit out in another galaxy. Even Brig has joined in the search, each Cutter brother joining with Lilith’s Army brothers to hunt high and low. Brig will want retribution, and by fuck, he’s owed it. We took his daughter, married her into our club and then let her be tortured by my sick brother, cutting her birthmark from her neck. And now his treachery is linked to a betrayal from his own camp. Axe is being put to ground. I just hope I’m the one who gets to put him there.

How can five people just evaporate into thin air?

I feel incomplete, my heart and soul now only a fraction of their former fullness, the richness Rhi and old lady gave my life now buried in the soil along with my mother.

I want to hurt Brenner until he can no longer take my wrath and begs me to stop.

I want to hug Rhiannon until I feel her heart beat in sync with mine again.

I want to make love to Avery until our souls dance with one another once again.

I’m fucked.

“Drink this and sober up!” my dad barks, his outstretched hand containing a steaming mug.

The aroma of lemon tea drifts into my senses. Mindlessly, I take the cup from him and swallow a sip of the hot liquid. My taste buds recoil at the first flavor to touch them in days, but the churn that has been present in my stomach since the moment I woke this morning eases.

The club is full to the rafters, the many brothers from every MC club in the county coming to pay their respects to Echo on the day he’s to be put to rest.

I hate funerals. I suppose every other person does. I can’t help comparing each one to my mother’s. They make me reflect, and today of all days, I don’t want to reminisce. I don’t want to evoke memories of my mother. I don’t want to think of Avery or Brenner. I just want some fucking peace.

My stomach rumbles and I think back to when I last ate. I can’t remember.

I look at the Prez. His face is distorted by the high that obscures my vision, but I can still see the fresh lines around his eyes and forehead. His skin is pale, and the bags under his eyes bare his exhaustion. At times, I forget Brenner and Rhiannon are his family too.

The room suddenly goes quiet, and all heads turn towards the main doors. I can’t see what everyone is looking at, the mass of bodies are screening my view.

“Darby,” my dad welcomes as he makes his way through the crowd.

Following him, I feel the weight of dishonor on my shoulders when Echo’s sister nods her head to both my dad and me.

It’s been years since I’ve seen Echo’s sister. The last time she was a raven-haired eleven-year-old. Now she’s a raven-haired twenty-year-old. She’s definitely outgrown her childhood body, her ample chest and wide hips reminding me of how many years have passed. Her body is encased in black leather, from her boots right up to the biker jacket she wears. As far as I know she’s never been associated with any MC and had even tried talking Echo out of signing up to be a Lilith brother once or twice.

She’s stunning, even more so when she smiles widely and greets us both. “Tank. Frost.”

“I’m so sorry about your brother,” my old man apologizes as if Echo’s death is his fault.

Darby waves off his apology. “It’s not your fault your son turned out to be a psychotic prick.”

Well, she certainly doesn’t mince her words.

Prez’s lips twist in amusement, and I know he hasn’t taken offence at Darby’s declaration.

“We all ready?” Scorch barks out, taking all the attention away from the newcomer.

I want to answer no. I want to hide back while they all bury a brother. I crave more of the oblivion only coke can give me.

My old lady should be by my side today of all days. I need her support, the warmth of her hand in mine and the softness of her eyes on mine. I miss her. Who’d have thought all those weeks back, when we’d been forced into a sham marriage, that I would now feel like I had lost my right arm without her?

“Frost.” Darby falls into step beside me as we make our way out to the parking lot. The asphalt is crammed full of bikes; every make, color and size imaginable sat in rows as if they themselves are showing their respect to another bike now laid redundant in the garage to the rear of the building.

My thoughts trigger my next words. “Echo would want you to have his bike.”

She snorts. “I doubt that, but the gesture is appreciated.” Her voice is low and gravelly with a hint of sadness to it.

“I thought you were close?”

Nodding, she smiles softly. “We are… were. But his brothers always came before me.”

I’m unsure whether it’s said with bitterness or just frankness, but I guess she’s right. “Maybe, but all the brothers here deem it yours. You’re his blood, the only living family he has left. It’s only right.”

“Then, thank you.” Her smile is more full with less sorrow than a moment ago.

Her bike is parked next to mine and I watch as she swings her long leg over the saddle and turns to me. “I heard about your old lady and sister going missing. I’m owed one or two favors around here, I’ll see what I can find out.”

Before I can question her statement, she revs the engine and pulls into the group of bikes slowly turning onto the road and establishing a procession in honor of their lost brother.

I’m the last to join them. I’m always reluctant to leave the club in case Avery finally comes back and I’m not there for her. I know in the depths of my soul that she will need me more than she ever has before.

And I’m reluctant to admit that as we put another brother into the ground, my thoughts are still on my wife rather than on the man that was a good friend to me.

* * *

Receptions/wakes. Why do they call them that? Every fucker that attended Echo’s funeral is far from awake.

I step over the many bodies littering the floor, unconscious from either drugs or alcohol and make my way outside.

The moon is high, and I study it for a moment as I light a smoke, wondering if Avery is also looking at it.

“You doing okay?”

My lighter drops from my hands when the Prez makes me jump. He chuckles and bends to pick it up. It’s strained movements and he’s getting slower every day.

I frown when he reaches to the packet in my hand and takes out one of my smokes and lights it. My dad hasn’t smoked for years.

He waits until he takes a long pull and blows out the smoke before he turns to me. “We need to come to some sort of agreement with Brig.”

My eyes widen but he doesn’t give me a chance to question him.

“Cash is strict, Slade. We’re gonna go down if we can’t figure something out. The Cutters own a lot of business round here, places we use to regularly wash hot cash through. It’s starting to become a hand around the throat, this shit between us. What with the shipments being seized on top. Our luck needs to turnaround.”

“Maybe,” I answer.

“If we’re still wanting to build this strip club we’ve wanted to for so long, we’re gonna need dough to do it, Slade. And we’re fucked if we don’t have palms to grease and high-ranking shits to bribe.

We both turn to the steel gates when a bike roars onto the asphalt and pulls up in front of us. Long legs swing off the bike, and Darby pulls off her helmet. Her long black hair falls free and she brushes if from her face.

She gives us both her wide smiles then shoots my dad a wink. “Got something for ya’, Tank.”

He doesn’t answer but nods.

“Have an address for Bullseye.”

Well fuck me, the girl came good on her promise.

“Good girl. I won’t ask how you found out, don’t need to know. Lots of brothers desperate for something to vent off their grief. And Bullseye will do.” He nods his head towards the club doors. “Go see Kiwi, tell her I said you can have as many drinks as will lubricate your gut.”

She laughs but positions her helmet to her head. “No worries, I have somewhere to be anyway.”

She gives him the address and before she’s torn out of the gates I’m already in the club, kicking the comatose fuckers back to life.

“Time for some ass whopping, guys.”

* * *

You can run motherfucker, but you can’t hide.

Bullseye didn’t know what the fuck hit him when me and four brothers kicked the prick’s door down and embedded four bullets into his gut. I took pleasure in telling him his Prez was going to take his kids as a lasting punishment for his betrayal. Death was too easy for a traitor. It didn’t matter that I knew the man my entire life. Thought of him as family. I’m sick of people fucking me over. Our club over. No mercy for defectors. The fucker bled out knowing his actions cost his kids.

Sin’s of the father and all that fucking Jazz.

He hadn’t even seen us coming. But then, we never saw the cops either, that were sat in the dark, staking out his digs.

The first bullet whizzed past my ear and took a chip out of the brickwork.

“Fuck!” Scorch bellowed doing a commando roll across the lawn like something out of a movie. It would have been hilarious if we weren’t in a gun battle.

The bullets followed his direction, and I could just make out two cops illuminated under the streetlight, hiding against a black Sedan. I move off towards the brush bordering the house and drop low.

The fuckers are just visible. I aim and shoot four shots at their feet just in view from my angle.

They shout out in pain and fall to the floor, giving us all a bigger target to aim for. Stupid cunts.

We make their deaths quick and move out before more law show up.

Bullseye’s death. A simple message.