Falcon
“Sorry about the clouds,” Nathan said when he met me outside the prison. He greeted me with my MC colors and a pair of shades. I threw the vest on across my shoulders and slid the shades on my face despite the overcast sky.
“What clouds?” I asked my vice president with a smile. It was my first day of freedom in over five years. A cloudy sky wasn’t about to dampen my spirits.
“It’s good to have you back, brother,” he said, grabbing my hand and embracing me with a pat on the back.
“It’s good to be back. Now, let’s get out of here before they change their minds and decide to take me back in,” I told him, only half joking, as we walked over to his bike. I was relieved to see he hadn’t shown up in one of our cars or SUVs to pick me up.
Instead, we climbed on the back of his sweet black Harley Davidson roadster and tore ass out of the prison parking lot, heading for the headquarters of Rogue Demons MC. He knew the first thing I wanted to do was get up to speed on what had been happening within the MC since I’d gone into prison on those false murder and larceny charges. Of course, my parole officer wouldn’t be happy that I was heading straight to HQ, but he would be all right. We would make sure he was taken care of.
Walking out of that prison wasn’t freedom. Freedom was riding through town on the back of a finely tuned motorcycle purring and growling like a predator ready to take down anyone or anything threatening the freedom it offered its riders.
We pulled up to HQ and hopped off the Harley, but I pulled Nathan aside before we walked in. I didn’t want to be blindsided by anything once we walked into the building. I knew things had changed since I went in. I had heard rumors on the inside over the last few years of members dropping out, getting themselves killed, or getting locked up. I needed to know what was really going on.
“Hey, before we go in there, catch me up,” I told him.
“That’s what this meeting is about,” Nathan assured me. “No one is trying to set you up, man. We’re pretty desperate to have you back at this point. It’s been a rough time since you went in.”
“Believe me, that’s what I’ve heard,” I said, watching my words register in his eyes. “That’s why I’m asking you to tell me what’s going on before the others see me.”
“We lost a lot of members when you got locked up, brother. They got spooked, and they hit the road. We had a few get ahead of themselves on some things, and they got locked up for stupid shit. We also had a few who thought they didn’t have to answer to anybody anymore. They didn’t think we’d do anything, so we handled them. Now you know. Everyone who is here today has helped me make some hard decisions in your absence, and they’re all ready for you to return. We need a president again,” he explained with a firm grip on my shoulder.
“All right, let’s go in,” I said, accepting Nathan’s story. I held my hand out to invite him to enter before me. I may have bought the bulk of his story, but I wasn’t about to let myself get set up. I had already known to watch my back at every turn, but prison had simply reinforced that instinct.
It felt good to be back in the old headquarters building. We used an old abandoned fire station as our clubhouse. The bay where the single fire truck had been housed was perfect for us to park our bikes and still have room for a hangout. The small fenced-in parking lot on the side was good for when there were too many bikes for inside the building. Upstairs had plenty of room for a boardroom and several bunks for when members had to stay to watch the place or sleep the night off.
The fire department had moved when they realized the need for better accommodations. Basically, once they realized they needed more than one fire truck at a time, they had to vacate or expand. The city had held onto the property for decades, and when they let it go, we stepped in and took it off their hands.
“Home sweet home,” I said under my breath as we started up the stairs from the first floor.
I walked into the boardroom to find the rest of our leadership standing around the round wooden table with our name and logo carved into it, waiting for me to return. They applauded and cheered as I entered the room behind our vice president. They patted me on the shoulder as I walked past them to take my seat at the center of the table.
“Thanks for the warm welcome, guys, but let’s go ahead and get down to business,” I addressed the five men sitting around the table.
“All right, boss, what is the first order of business?” asked Luther, sitting directly to my left. His tone sounded eager. I imagined he already knew what I was going to say, because he sounded like he was ready to handle business for me.
“Well, now that I’m back on the outside, I think we all know full well what my first priority is going to be. I’m going after Leo.” Leo Richards was our biggest rival. The little stunt he pulled, pinning those crimes on me and getting me thrown in prison for some shit I didn’t even do, was supposed to wipe Rogue Demons off the map. Judging by the five faces staring back at me and the handful of guys downstairs working on their bikes, I would have been forced to say he failed. Miserably. All he’d managed to do was help us trim off the dead weight while pissing off the remaining members.
“How do you propose we do that?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah, we’re all ears, brother,” Luther chimed in, looking at the other men at the table.
Everyone nodded at me. They were all on board with whatever I told them. I knew what they were thinking, though. They wanted to go shoot him up or something drastic like that, while I wanted to demoralize the bastard, just as he’d done to me. “I’m going to hit him where it really hurts,” I told them.
Their eyes gleamed with the promise of violence while they looked back at me.
“I’m going after the one thing he cares about most in this world,” I continued. “I’m going after his little sister.”
“What’s that going to do?” Zeke asked. “Leo doesn’t care about anybody. What makes you think he’s going to give a damn what happens to his sister?”
“Guys, I’ve known Leo as long as I’ve been doing this. Clementine Richards is the one thing he cares about most in this world. Now, when I went in, she was barely more than a legend. She wasn’t even quite eighteen at the time, I don’t think. But I heard that she’s of age now and out of college. I’ve also heard she’s still a pretty little virgin,” I explained, educating my men.
“How do you know so much about her?” Luther asked.
For a moment, I considered telling him about the photos I had commissioned from my cell. I’d had someone track Clementine down and trail her for a few days to get photos for me. I used the photos to figure out where she worked, where she liked to eat, who she hung around, and everything else I could learn about her while sitting in my cell. I let my mind drift back to those photos.
There had been photos of her walking down the street in a black tank top and blue jeans, photos of her leaning over the counter at The Greeting Place, the locally owned card shop where she worked, and even pictures of her eating at different restaurants. I had spent hours in my cell looking over those photos. The backs had the time and place written on each one, giving me an idea of where she was and how often she went there.
I didn’t want to tell the guys I had sent someone outside of the MC to investigate for me, and I didn’t want them to know that I had targeted her so specifically. I could still remember how it felt the night those photos were delivered to me in my cell. I could remember the gruff voice that had called out to tell me my package was there and the scarred hand that passed it to me through the bars while I kept my eyes down, avoiding his face.
Flipping through those pictures had felt dirty. It felt like I was in possession of something I shouldn’t have had. In those pictures, her skin had looked so soft. It was hard to believe a body like that hadn’t been touched. It would have been more believable if someone had told me she used the whole still-a-virgin story to attract men.
Her virginity, however, wasn’t what had turned me on so much. It was knowing that taking her virginity and ruining that sweet little girl would destroy her brother. It wouldn’t compare to the havoc he’d wreaked upon my own life, but it would be a damn good place to start. Afterwards, every time he looked at his little sister, he would think of Jackson “Falcon” Urloch, the man he had tried to screw over for some shit he probably did himself.
“I did some digging over the years,” I answered, bringing myself back to the present.
“Care to clarify?” Thomson asked sharply. I got the feeling that he probably understood what I was keeping from everyone better than anyone else in the room did, but that also meant he was more likely to try to bust my balls about it.
“The world didn’t stop when I went in, so I didn’t stop either. I got word about some of what was going on with the MC, but I spent most of my time and energy working on leads I could use against Leo. Everything that came back to me pointed to Clementine as my best bet,” I explained further. I still wanted to keep my prison connections to myself. They were separate from the MC, and they needed to stay that way. I needed alternate channels in case things didn’t work out with the guys now that I was out.
“Alright, so, you go after Clementine. What then?” Nathan asked me.
“I’m going to ruin her,” I replied with a dirty little grin on my face. “She won’t be a pretty little innocent virgin when I’m done with her. But that’s not all I’m going to do. I’m going to make her fall in love with me. Then I’m going to crush her and toss her away like a broken little plaything that outlived its usefulness,” I told them, unable to hide my satisfaction with the plan.
“What is this, Falcon, middle school? Isn’t that the plot of some afterschool special?” Thomson mocked me.
“You don’t understand how much Leo loves his little sister, Thomson. Once I crush her pure little spirit, that’s going to be like crushing Leo himself,” I explained. “That’s going to break him. And once he is broken, he will be ours.”
“It just sounds like a lot of trouble to go through. Why break him down when we could just ambush him and kill him?” Thomson asked.
“Well, if it’s so easy to kill Leo Richards, why the hell haven’t you done it?” I snapped, standing up from my chair and slamming my hands down on the table.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was he really going to challenge me on what the best way to get my revenge was? I was going to get my revenge, whether I had the MC’s support or not. I had spent five long years sitting in that cell, waiting for the day when I would get out and have my chance to get back at Leo for what he’d done to me. For what he’d done to Alan. I had spent long nights fantasizing about what I was going to do to Clementine. Nothing was going to get in my way of exacting revenge on that sick little coward, especially not a member of my own damn MC.
“Look, if this is the way our president wants to approach this situation with Leo, then that’s how we’re going to have to handle it,” Nathan stepped in, addressing everyone, not just Thomson.
“Right, thank you. Once we get him broken down, we’ll see if there’s anything else we need to do to take him down. If he makes a move, which he probably will, we’ll kill him,” I told the room.
“So what, we sit around here and wait for you to fuck his little sister, and then, if he does anything, we take action?” Thomson challenged me again.
“Pretty much. So, I guess what I’m saying is, since you guys couldn’t handle it while I was in, you really don’t have to worry about it now that I’m out. When the time comes, if need be, I can get eyes on him so we can see what he’s doing before he does it,” I explained.
Thomson grumbled and looked away. I could see that I really only had one person on my side in the room, and that was Nathan. The rest didn’t seem too thrilled that I had been gone for five years just to come back in and try to take charge. Their welcoming had been forced. It was all just a show.
“Look, Leo set me up to take the fall for something that didn’t even need to happen. In the meantime, while I was plotting from my prison cell, I kept up with what you guys were in here doing. I’m not happy with what I heard. I heard you went soft.” I looked at everyone, including Nathan.
“What else were we supposed to do?” Thomson snapped at me. “We didn’t have any leadership. The club just fell apart around us.”
“You were the leadership, Thomson. Each of you sitting in here today. You are here because you have the ability and the authority to lead this MC if anything were to happen to me. Now, if you were too busy sticking your heads in the sand to hide from the reality of what we do here, I don’t blame anyone for leaving. I wouldn’t stay and serve under a bunch of cowards afraid of their own shadows.” I paused to let my words sink in and to watch them shift uncomfortably in their chairs. “But I’m back now,” I continued. “If you want to move forward and handle the single biggest threat to the MC, then by all means, let’s do it. If you’re just going to challenge my authority every step of the way and try to hold us back, let me know now.”
Everyone looked at me and nodded, letting me know they were still in, even Thomson. We were all still Rogue Demons, and soon enough, we would get our chance at revenge. It felt good to be home.