Chapter Nineteen
(Chloe)
“That motherfucking-cock-sucking-bastard! AHHHHHHHH!” a male voice cursed and howled from outside.
I opened the clubhouse door slightly and glanced around at the foreboding area. The air was thick with dust and shotgun smoke. The Bloods were gone. Their bikes were gone. Two men and two bikes remained in the parking lot. Cautiously, I stepped outside from the main door of the clubhouse.
“Jaxson?” I called and took a few paces forward. I could hardly believe Jax was here in the parking lot and alive.
I could only just see Jax’s face from the door; he was down on his knees yelling uncontrollably. I could tell it was him for sure by his voice. Dino was right beside him, his back turned on me, which gave me a clear view of the back of his Black Devil’s jacket, which had Dino’s street name: ‘Thunder.’
What the hell had happened? Where the hell had Jumper taken him? And why was Jax here now and the Bloods were gone?
Jax’s head turned toward my voice as his mouth opened to speak and the words died in his throat.
The two men glanced up and down my body at the silver dress I was wearing. They had a look of utter disbelief, as though they’d just seen something impossible.
“Are the Bloods gone?” I asked, hastily.
Jax and Dino nodded, mute while still staring at me like I was a ghost or something.
Several seconds later, Jax exchanged a look with Dino. Jax got up to walk towards me, and Dino took his place where Jax had been kneeling, which was a little bizarre maybe, but nothing to cause alarm.
As Jax approached me, I joked with tears of relief and happiness, “Do you mind if I come home with you two? I have a feeling I’ve overstayed my welcome here.”
“Y-you’re okay?” he asked, shaking his head. “You’re okay!” Jax exclaimed as he threw his arms around me and we embraced.
He crushed his lips to mine, and I couldn’t have felt any safer and calmer than I did at that moment. He held onto me tight, almost too tight. His breat hing was accelerated. All of our fears and problems were drowned out as we kissed. I stroked Jax’s cheek and gazed into his eyes. He was alive. I was alive. We were going to be ok.
Half a second later, I stepped backward and slapped him across the face. Hard.
“Fuckkkkk!” He winced. “Can’t you see that I’m already beaten up?” He paused for a beat and then asked, “Did I miss something?” He looked stunned but as he stared at me, his eyes sparkled with an odd joy.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You left me for business with your MC. You nearly got the both of us killed!” I exclaimed.
He stared at me and kept smiling like a dumbass.
What is the matter with him?
He seemed to get a hold of himself and nodded his head. “I know, Chloe. I was set up. But I came back for you, didn’t I?”
By way of reply, I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know what to think. He was acting so odd. Like he was happy to see me but jumpy and not himself at all.
He let out a huge sigh and squared his shoulders. “Look. We need to get going. Jumper is pissed as hell at me. The Bloods’ could come back any second.” He looked over at Dino who still knelt on the ground.
He too, still looked shaken up as he slowly nodded in agreement. “What are we going to do about the girl?” Dino asked Jax.
Confused by his question, I narrowed my eyes at Dino. What girl?
Dino stood up and stepped to his left, unveiling the horror that lay behind him—the pale, unmoving body of Lucy on the ground. I jumped back in shock.
For a moment, nobody said a word. We all stared at Lucy’s body.
“A guy brought her out blindfolded. We thought it was you. Jumper thought it was you. He wanted me to suffer,” Jax commented solemnly.
The belated realization of what had happened came to me with a brutal force. Lucy had been shot in my place. Lucy and I were a similar age, with similar hair color, wearing the same damn silver dress that Jumper had forced me to put on.
“He knows how we feel about each other. I guess he figured if I came to rescue you, then I must love you,” Jax added.
“I know,” I replied numbly as I understood but didn’t want to understand at all.
I stood a minute.
The only person who knew I was hiding in the toilet was Jumper. The lights on the ceiling had flickered and then went out completely when a bullet came through the open door, must have been one of Jax and Dino’s bullets, which hit the fuse box just inside. The lights went out. The place was pitch black. Jumper loosened his grip on me then sprinted out. He’d had new priorities and went outside to Jax and Dino.
Lucy must have finally come down the stairs after being hit by Jumper earlier on. I was in the toilet hiding, and she was dragged outside by one of Jumper’s brothers who mistook her for me. Then, she was shot in front of Jax in my place.
There I was, standing in front of Lucy, unscathed and unharmed. Why her and not me? I asked myself. I saw our roles reversed, I pictured myself in her place, dead in the parking lot of my father’s MC. I imagined the look of horror on my mother’s face when she found out the Bloods and indirectly, Jax—had killed me like they had killed my father.
Still trying to come to grips with the news that I had caused Lucy’s death, I turned to Jax. “That should be me lying there. She was a nice girl in a bad situation. She didn’t deserve to be killed,” I said, looking fixedly at Lucy’s dead body.
“This isn’t your fault Chloe. If Jumper hadn’t killed her, it would have been either you, me, Dino, or all three of us dead right now. Jumper is a horrible man with the morals of an alley cat. He’s the asshole, Chloe. Remember that, okay?”
I didn’t respond. I wondered whether I would ever forgive myself. I wondered how causing such a tragedy would affect me. I didn’t come from the same world as Jax and Dino.
“It’s not helpful to dwell on what we cannot change,” Jax said as he actually shivered.
It was a harsh reality, but I knew Jax was right. We had to focus on surviving our fucked up situation. Otherwise, Lucy had died for nothing.
Dino interrupted my thoughts, “There’s a back road out of this place, I suggest we use it and get the fuck out of here.” He leaned his head to the right to see around the side of the clubhouse. “We’ll take the long route to my place. They don’t know who I am and they don’t know where I live.”
Jax and I nodded.
Before we left the parking lot, I insisted that we move Lucy’s body out of the path of any vehicles that would drive in when the Bloods returned.
Jax and Dino picked up her corpse and lugged it to the side of the clubhouse with astoundingly calm efficiency. It was unsettling to imagine how many times they’d moved a body like that in the past. Murder and death to Jax and Dino it seemed, was as common as the whiskey they sold.
Afterward, checking his watch, Dino said, “We should make a move. The vote is in four hours, and we need to disappear before Jumper and his gang come back to finish us off.”
I mounted the back of Jax’s bike, trying my best to shake off what I’d seen. Jax and Dino zoomed out of the parking lot in a hurry. But for me, deep sorrow, deep guilt, and deep relief were all mixed up together inside me. I didn’t have time to process everything that had happened to me in the last few days and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Sometimes, it was better not to think at all.
We weaved in and out of traffic toward Dino’s place. Fortunately, we didn’t run into any of the Bloods on our way out of town. For the entire journey, I kept my eyes on the road ahead and my mouth shut. I could only picture Lucy’s lifeless body – her eyes shut forever. It felt surreal.
We arrived outside Dino’s place at twilight. He lived in a high-rise in downtown Coronado.
When we dismounted Jax’s bike, I asked, “Where did they take you?”
“Take me? You’re the one who was taken,” he responded, looking puzzled.
“You mean they never had you?”
He sighed. “No. That’s what I meant before when I said I was set up. Very bad and very dangerous people want my blood. And I don’t think they’re going to rest until they get it.” Jax reached for the apartment building door.
We stopped talking when we got inside the building. There were people around, coming home after work and many people were waiting for the elevator with us. When the doors opened, it was crowded inside. But we entered anyway. Dino’s apartment was on the fiftieth floor. By the 10th floor, finally the last few people other than us shuttled out of the elevator.
“I’m still upset with you, Jax,” I said.
Jax rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I know there is no apology that can touch what you’re feeling right now, Chloe. But as I said before, I did come back for you, didn’t I? That should count for something. I would risk my life over and over for you if I had to.”
I gave a heavy sigh. “I know that. But you lied to me about how my father died.”
“So that I could protect you, Chloe! If I had told you or your mother the truth about your father’s death in the past, you wouldn’t have allowed me to be in your life. I did my best back then, Chloe. And I’m doing my best now. At least, you’re still alive.” His eyes looked haunted as he sighed and ran his shaking fingers through his hair.
He looked so shaken and so forlorn. Cuts on his face, a bruised jaw, his eyes looking bloodshot with exhaustion. Like he’d been punched in the gut and in fact he must have had that happen several times in the last day for sure. I realized suddenly that he had thought I was dead when Lucy had been killed. What would I feel if he were lying bloodied, dead in the dirt? I shuddered as a bit of the misery he must have felt touched me deeply. At that moment, I chose to forgive Jax for what he’d done. “But, you’re not out of hot water yet, Jax. The Bloods are out for all of us now. And I don’t think they’ll stop until we’re all dead.”
“I know, Chloe,” Jax replied. “But listen. I’ve got a plan all worked out.”
I stared at Jax with concern. I could see he was still itching for immediate revenge.