CHAPTER 1
MALICE
We pulled our bikes up to the curb of the clubhouse with a roar that only three loud Harleys can produce. After we cut the engines and pulled off our helmets, we slowly sauntered up to the locked gates with slumped shoulders.
“I can’t believe this shit,” my brother, Mayhem, muttered. He lit a cigarette, shaking his head.
“Did you know they were locking us out today?” Fury asked. He’d been our friend since sixth grade when Mayhem punched a kid who was picking on him behind Chapman Hill elementary school.
“Nope,” I replied, shaking my head. I picked up the heavy lock that was keeping us from our home, inspecting it. “But I figured it was any day now.”
“I left a bag of weed in there,” Fury said.
“You can get more,” I said, shrugging, staring past the chain-link fence that separated me from the concrete jungle that Mayhem and I had grown up in.
Three buildings.
One for living in. One for the bikes. One for club business.
Now, the property and everything in it would most likely be sold to some slick businessman from California and turned into some kind of twisted biker-themed hipster pub or some shit. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but we’d done a lot of work over the years.
Dad carved the bar with his own two hands from ancient old growth Doug fir. It took him almost a year to finish it. We’d laid the concrete floor in the garage ourselves, me and Mayhem working for days to get it as smooth as ice.
Mayhem stood beside me now, no doubt plagued with all the same sorts of memories as I was. He pulled a couple of beers from his pack and handed one to me and the other to Fury.
“To the Gentlemen!” he said, holding his bottle up. “We had a good run!”
“To the Gentlemen,” I replied.
“The Gentlemen!” Fury repeated.
We touched bottles and drank. The beer was bitter and cold, a taste I hadn’t experienced in years. I poured the rest onto the pavement.
“For Dad,” I said.
“And Uncle Rebel,” Mayhem said.
We stood there, silently showing our respects to our dead past, as we finished our beers.
“I need something stronger,” Mayhem finally said, breaking the silence.
“There’s an entire bar in there,” Fury said, pointing to our now forbidden sanctuary.
“That’s not ours anymore, brother,” I said.
“What are we going to do now?” Mayhem asked, the uncertainty that had been growing in his eyes for days now flashing like lightening. “Where the fuck are we supposed to go?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t fucking know, brother.”
“I ran into an old friend the other day,” Fury said. “I was waiting to tell you, but I had an idea I wanted to run by you two.”
“What?” Mayhem asked.
“Ever heard of the Gods of Chaos?”
“Of course,” I said. “Club outta Portland, right? They used to do a lot of business up and down the Five. Think I met a few of them once. Been laying low the last few years, haven’t heard much about them.”
“I knew Slade when we lived on the streets of Portland together that year I ran away from my folks,” Fury said. “He’s a God now. He’s also settled down with an old lady and a kid, but we ran into each other last week when I went up to Portland to visit my sister. I asked him about the Gods, and he told me they don’t really run the illegal stuff anymore. They’re in the business of taking down shady shit now. Helping girls out, shit like that. Some kind of undercover job, so don’t tell anyone I told you.”
“Well, what a bunch of saints,” Mayhem said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “How the hell does that help us?”
“Well,” Fury said, shrugging, “I thought maybe we could ask them if they need any help.”
“Help?” Mayhem said. “Saving chicks?”
“You said you were tired of all the bullshit, man. It’s just a thought. Look what happened to your family, you know? Look what the life did to your father and his brother. It tore them apart. Sure, Rebel fucked up, in a monstrous fucking way. But what turned him into a monster? He wasn’t always like that. The club changed him. The club fucking killed him. Rebel would still be alive, and your old man would still be free, if we weren’t constantly involved with such dangerous fucking derelicts.”
“I don’t know a life without fucking danger,” Mayhem said.
“Well, maybe you could have a little danger mixed in with doing good. Aren’t you tired of looking over your shoulder all the time, man? Don’t you want to just go to sleep and not worry about who’s coming to kill you or arrest you, and knowing you did something good that day?” Fury asked, his voice rising. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m tired of this fucking life, man. It’s all we’ve known, for a really long time, and I’m ready for something different. We’ve got an opportunity for a new start. We should take it.”
“What makes you think they want a bunch of assholes like us?” Mayhem asked.
“We aren’t so bad, man,” I said.
“Our old man was just sentenced to life in jail for killing his brother. We’ve got the same DNA,” Mayhem said. “You think the Gods are just gonna overlook that tiny detail?”
“Slade’s not like that, man,” Fury said. “And I bet the others aren’t either. Just let me call him, alright?”
“Portland, though?”
“Change of scenery might be nice,” Fury shrugged.
I glanced over at my brother and he nodded slowly.
“Fuck it. What have we got to lose?” I said, shaking my head.
I knew he was right. Staying here was useless.
We were lost.
Like a blank slate, we had no future, no path forward, no plans, no fucking clue which way to turn.
I threw the bottle over the fence, the satisfying sound of breaking glass stirring something inside of me.
“Fuck it. Let me know what Slade says.” I threw my helmet back on my head. “I need to be alone for a while, clear my head. I’m gonna go for a ride.”
“See ya, man,” Mayhem said.
“See ya,” I replied.
“I’ll call you soon, brother,” Fury said, his voice drowned out by the roar of my bike’s engine, the only true and loyal thing I’d ever really known in my life, besides my brothers in the club.
But that was all gone now.
All I had was myself. This bike. And the open fucking road, just waiting for me. Something else was waiting for me, but I hadn’t found it yet. Or, maybe it hadn’t found me.
Either way, I knew this wasn’t the end.
I was too young for this to be the end. Hell, I’m barely thirty. I have a whole life ahead of me.
If this is the end, if there isn’t anything better out there waiting for me, I might as well die right now.
The throttle vibrated in my hand, an almost certain death only a flick of the wrist away as I flew down the road, soaring past traffic as I wove in and out of lanes. I had a bad habit of thinking about that when I rode. About how easy it would be to just jerk the handlebars and lay the bike down, sending my unprotected body under the wheels of a semi and ending all this fucking misery.
It would be so easy. It would be over so fucking fast.
But honestly, killing myself was the last thing I wanted.
I’d lost everything I’d ever known, everything I’d ever been taught to be. Without our club, I really had no idea who I was anymore, but I was ready to find out and I was definitely going to stick around for the final chapter.
The thought of joining up with the Gods rattled around in my brain as I drove aimlessly through the city. They say with every closing door, another opens. And Fury was right. Being a prick just to make a buck wears on a man after a while. I’m no pussy, and I can handle the weight of it all just fine, don’t get me wrong. But it might be nice to do some good in the world, balance out the karma a little, just in case.
Who says a man like me can’t have a happy fucking ending, too?