Clementine
“I should have known,” Thomson said quietly, poking his head into Falcon’s room to check on the sleeping MC president.
“Should have known what?” I asked, sitting up on my elbows. I was blushing and smiling, and I couldn’t help it. I knew what he meant. I knew I had been caught in my overnight vigil.
“Should have known you were going to sleep in here. Come on. I made Nathan cook some breakfast for everyone. He’ll make a good old lady for a biker one day.” He chuckled and shook his head.
“Hey, at least he’s good for something, right?” I said as I slid out of bed.
“Damn, you’re still dressed and everything. And you’re talking like one of us already. This is too good.” He continued laughing.
I checked behind me to make sure Falcon was still asleep.
“He’ll be fine. He’s doing better than the rest of us right now, I promise you,” Thomson grunted as we walked into the hallway.
“Where is everybody?” I asked as we walked into the living room. The living room and dining room were both empty, and the kitchen was spotless. It didn’t look like anyone had cooked anything in there in months.
“They’re out on the patio.” Thomson was grabbing another beer.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked him.
“Yeah, just grabbing a little hair of the dog,” he answered. “Need anything? We keep some whiskey here, too, in case we need it. Nathan doesn’t drink it.” I could hear his opinion of his fellow member in his tone.
“So, all joking aside, what’s the deal?” I asked him.
“The deal?”
“Yeah, with Nathan. What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you over breakfast,” he said, standing up and opening his beer.
We walked outside through a glass door behind the dining room. Nathan’s patio wasn’t right on the backside of his house. There were stairs leading down from the house to where the patio sat along the bank of the river. It was very exotic, and the whole set up seemed like it belonged on a beach somewhere, not hovering precariously over a polluted river used only for industry, but I wasn’t about to complain.
He had a pool and a hot tub on the patio along with a raised garden where he had lots of exotic and brightly colored plants growing around the edges of the deck. He also had a fully functional gas kitchen. It was ridiculous.
What was more ridiculous was to believe that he had been able to afford all of this as a member of a motorcycle gang. A lot of my questions about Rogue Demons were answered just by the luxury in which the VP lived. It made me wonder why I hadn’t seen Falcon’s house yet.
We had bacon, eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Yes, he even had an oven in his outdoor kitchen. Thomson and I were both greeted with plates when we reached the bottom of the stairs. Nathan didn’t smile as he served us, but I could tell he was in his element. He obviously took a lot of pride in his home, and especially in his patio.
Thomson nudged my arm with his elbow and walked me over to a table away from everyone else so we could sit and talk.
“Hey, does everyone in the MC live like this?” I asked him as we sat down.
“We make sure all of our members live comfortably,” Thomson answered, “but most of us don’t have anything like this. Nathan has a nice house. Luther has a large house, but it’s nothing as extravagant as this. Mine is pretty nice. I call it my bunker.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I blurted out, laughing.
“What?” he asked with a goofy grin on his face.
“You just seem so military. I can imagine you stockpiling weapons at home just in case society crumbles around you or something,” I explained, and I noticed he wasn’t laughing anymore. In fact, he had a very serious look on his face. I expected him to tell me that he truly believed society was about to collapse around us, and we all needed bunkers.
“I’m a former Marine,” he said. “I just take my weapons seriously. It’s not even about defense. It’s about toys for me. I have a firing range and a little homemade training course. Those things take up most of my property, along with my arsenal. No, I don’t expect the collapse of society. I’m not one of those guys. I just enjoy fighting, and I’m glad I have the training to enjoy it even more.”
“Wow, that’s a relief actually. For a moment there I thought you were about to explain to me why society really was about to crumble,” I said, laughing nervously. “What about Falcon? What’s his house like?” I asked.
“He didn’t tell you?” Thomson replied with his own question.
“Tell me what?”
“He gave it up when he went to prison. He put it on the market when he went to trial and sold the property, the house, and everything in it,” Thomson explained.
“What did he do with the money?” I followed up.
“No one knows. See, one of the problems guys like Nathan have with Falcon is that while he’s the president of Rogue Demons MC, he can also be very private. If he feels like he needs to keep something quiet, he can. He’s been known to go outside of the MC to handle MC business quietly. I think it’s brilliant. Like, we had no idea he was working on you while he was in prison because he didn’t reach out to us or to any of our guys in the pen, and yes, we have a few old-timers serving life sentences. They basically decided they could serve us better by serving time, and they’ve created a prison network for us. They’re geniuses, but it’s also kind of stupid. They could be out here living the good life, but whatever.”
“So, he kept the money private?” I insisted.
“Yep. In his own private account somewhere. No one knows where it is or how much he sold the house for, and I, for one, don’t care. As long as he’s not doing something to hurt the MC, he can do whatever the hell he wants with his money and his time,” Thomson explained to me.
While we talked, I got Thomson to tell me a lot about Rogue Demons. He wasn’t going to try to keep me out of the MC the way Falcon had tried to do. Falcon wanted to protect me. Thomson treated me like I was one of them.
He told me about their history. They had started with Falcon’s old man and a few of his buddies who rode. They made enough money selling drugs to keep themselves afloat. Falcon had grown up in the business, so when he took over, he saw an opportunity to expand the MC, which he had done a good job of up until he went into prison.
“It was just too big to last once he was gone. There was no direction. You should have met Nathan back in those days. He was a badass. Nobody stepped out of line when he was in the room, but losing Falcon broke him, man, and he’s never been able to return. He sort of gave up on the MC once people started leaving. I don’t think he’s going to be around much longer. Now that this situation with Leo has been handled, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these guys were axed.” He took a sip of his beer and looked around the patio.
I could see what he meant. It was like they had just grown too comfortable with the luxury of it all. They let the good life overshadow what got them there. The good life wasn’t what I had seen at the warehouse. The good life didn’t build the MC. It was the rough life of the streets that had built Rogue Demons. It was taking down competitors like my older brother that allowed them to have nice houses like Nathan’s and Thomson’s.
For the first time, I could honestly say I wished my brother had really taken me in all those years ago. I wished right then that he had shown me the ins and outs of his business so I would have understood everything that was going on. I could have applied myself to what he was doing.
At the same time, if I had applied myself to my brother’s organization, I would have been stuck working with him and the robots who served him instead of sitting at a table with someone as real as Thomson sitting across from me.
He was a good person, a genuine person. I knew he wouldn’t shoot me a line of bull, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t care enough to do it or if it was because he cared too much to do it. Either way, it was good to have someone like him on my side. He had singlehandedly taken me under his wing.
While Nathan had asked me many times if I was okay, it seemed like he was just asking because he was supposed to or because he needed someone to talk to himself. When Thomson checked on me, it was because he genuinely wanted to make sure I was all right. If I said I was or if he could tell I was, he left it alone. Now, by telling me about Rogue Demons, it seemed like he was really just trying to make sure I was included and not left out.
“So tell me,” I said after a few moments of eating in silence, “why don’t I see any old ladies around here? Do you guys have some strange rules against women?”
Thomson snorted and covered his mouth like he was about to spit out his beer from laughing so hard. “Clementine, I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “It just has not been a big part of our culture, you know? From what I can tell, there have never been a whole lot of old ladies hanging about the MC. Now, I know for a fact that Falcon and Luther love the women. I’ve seen a few other guys pop up here and there with one from time to time, but you’ve probably been around us longer than anyone else, if that tells you anything.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
“Nope, not at all. It’s like everyone’s just too devoted to the MC to have anyone hang around that could distract them from the work at hand, but I think all of that is about to change.” With a nod and a wink, he grabbed our empty plates and took them to Nathan.
After breakfast, everyone went back up to the house and lounged around in the living room. Nathan turned on the TV so we could check the news for what happened in the warehouse.
“Wait, that’s not the local news,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Thomson agreed thoughtfully.
We were watching one of the national news channels as they reported on the raid that took place at the warehouse after the shooting. They showed video of all the drugs they had found in a storage room on the second floor. Several millions of dollars’ worth of heroin, cocaine, meth, and even marijuana had been uncovered in different parts of the warehouse, they were reporting.
I looked down from the screen and saw that all of the MC members present were looking at me, as if I had some knowledge of it, as if I was supposed to have known what my brother was up to over at the warehouse all those years.
“What? I had no clue,” I told the guys. “No clue whatsoever.”
Then, behind me, I heard the groan.
“They found all that?” Falcon asked, leaning against the wall. “In the warehouse?”
I turned and looked at him. He looked rough. His eyes had dark circles around them, and his skin was a pale, almost sickly color. His cheeks were sunken in and he just looked emaciated all around.
I was frozen to the spot where I stood. I couldn’t move. Thomson quickly darted over to him, though, thankfully.