CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bear
The plan was simple. We’d hop the back fence and once inside, we’d spread out and search for Ti. “If anyone tries to prevent you from getting to her, pull the fucking trigger, we don’t have time for hesitation,” I ordered. Munch would stand guard by the ladder while Stone and Wolf swept the first floor, leaving King and I to split the second.
I wasn’t halfway up the steps when the alarm went off along with the first sounds of gunfire, but I didn’t stop. There was one place I was going to search first because somehow, I knew that the motherfucker would be there, and he was there, chances were that Ti was there too.
“I wish I could say it was good to see you, son,” Chop said after I kicked down the door to his office.
“Don’t fucking ‘son’ me, you cocksucker,” I warned. “Where the fuck is she?” I held my gun on him and rounded the desk, pulling out the gun he kept hidden underneath, tossing it to the couch on the far side of the room.
“You’re gonna to have to be more specific than that,” Chop sang, turning around in his chair to face me. It had been a long time since I’d seen him and the only thing that had changed was that his belly had grown a little larger and the bags under his eyes were so dark it looked as if he had gotten into a fight and had two black eyes. “’Cause, as you know, we’ve got a lot of bitches around here.” He laughed. “Well, had.”
I would of ended him right then and there if I didn’t need him to tell me where Ti was. Instead I settled for hitting him on the side of the head with the butt of my gun. “You sick fuck! Don’t fuck with me, old man. The only way you prolong your fucked up life is to tell me where the fuck she is right now or it’s motherfucking lights out.”
Chop rubbed the side of his head where a knot had already started to form. “Aaaahhh, the girl? Is that who you’re looking for?” he asked. “She probably realized she’s too young and pretty for you and ran away. Really, she’s too fucking innocent to be all dirtied up by a son of a bitch like you.” He leaned back and rested his hands behind his head, his elbows high in the air. “My time with her was short, as well. We were going to have so much fun playing together before we were so rudely interrupted by whoever you sent to bomb me the fuck out.”
Gus had done that on his own but I wasn’t out to correct him, there was no time. I pressed the barrel of my gun into his forehead, and growled, “Where the fuck is she?”
“Do it,” Chop said, pushing his head forward against my gun. “Go ahead and do it, you ungrateful little cunt. I gave you everything. Everything I had was yours, but it wasn’t enough for you, was it? Now you show up here with the other fucking traders and expect me to what? Roll over? If that’s what you want then pull that fucking trigger, boy, because it’s not going to fucking happen!” His face reddened, saliva flew from his mouth.
I shook my head. “What is it that you think you’ve given me, old man? ’Cause you haven’t given me shit. Nothing. Not a childhood. Not a family. NOTHING.”
Chop pointed at me. “That’s where you’re wrong, boy. I’ve given you everything I ever had to give. This club? This was for you. The gavel was for you. The power was for you. You were born to be a Bastard, but it wasn’t enough for you. Your brothers weren’t enough for you.” He pointed to himself. “I wasn’t enough for you.”
“You’re right, you weren’t enough for me. I needed a dad not a fucking Prez.” I paused, the idea that he gave me everything was so ludicrous that I laughed. “I don’t know what part of history you’ve decided to rewrite in that demented fucked up head of yours, Chop, but let me remind you of what you’ve taken from me, starting with my mother.” I neglected to mention the fact that I knew she was alive.
Chops shoulders shook and I answered his laugh with a kick to his shins. He paused, his eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t matter what I did to that cunt of a mother of yours. You seem to think I was so horrible to you growing up but I never had the heart to tell you who she really was.” Chops jaw ticked. “She was a fucking RAT.”
I rolled my eyes over whatever game he way playing at. “Bullshit. You were just pissed she was—”
“Because she was trying to take you away from me,” Chop finished for me, looking amused that he knew exactly what I was going to say. “If that was the case, she would have felt my wrath. I know that killing women and kids is against code, but killing a woman who’s a rat? Well, that’s not exactly frowned upon,” Chop said.
I scoffed. “You’ve probably said that same line over and over again that I really think you believe your own fucking lies, old man. But here’s the problem with your lies. We both know that my mom wasn’t the rat.” I paused and made sure his eyes were on mine when I added. “And we both know she’s alive.”
“What the fuck do you know about that?” Chop said, abruptly standing up.
“Easy, old man,” I said, nudging him back down into his chair with my foot on his chest. His mask temporarily fell from his face, and for a second, I could have sworn he looked, concerned? Sad? Whatever it was, it was something I’d never seen from him before. “I don’t need to here more of your bullshit anyway. I didn’t’ come her for a fucking reunion or a nice chat with Daddy.” I cocked the gun. “Just tell me where the girl is,” I said through my teeth.
Chop twiddled his thumbs. “Son, if I had her, don’t you think I would have delivered her fingers and ears to you in a fucking box by now?” The gunfire outside the office grew louder.
Closer.
Apparently Chop didn’t get the message that it wasn’t fucking story time. “You were five years old,” he said, pouring himself a glass of whiskey from the bottle on his messy desk. His eyes were fixed on the glass as he spoke. “Your mom was acting fidgety. Had been for a while. Should have suspected something sooner, but believe it or not, I loved that stupid bitch. Gave her an old lady’s cut. Even gave up other pussy for her.” He finished his drink in one swig and set down the glass. “She was family, and almost as much of a Bastard as I was. She loved the life, or at least I thought she did.” Chop looked back to me. “But then she started asking questions. Questions about meetings. Money. Where it came from, where it was going. Things old ladies didn’t need to know shit about. I didn’t even think anything of it for a while. She was always more involved than the other bitches who hung around. She was smart too, so I never thought she’d actually be dumb enough to cross me.” I’d never heard Chop talk about my mom. Not since the night in the woods.
Not once.
Chop rested his hands on his desk and looked absently at the door. “Guys started to go down for shit we’d never had heat about before. We owned the fucking law but the county sheriff was suddenly all over our asses. I wised up. Hurt like fucking hell, but I tested her. Leaked something to her, something I made up. Told her that we were making a gun run. Told her the when and where and what route we were taking. I went with Tank and a few of the other boys who weren’t on probation. When we got there, no one was there. No FBI no ATF. I was so relieved and so fucking happy. Waited a full hour just to be sure.” He poured himself another glass, emptying the bottle and downing it faster than the first. “Came to the conclusion that it was all in my head. Convinced myself that we’d just been unlucky.” Chop slammed his fist on the desk. “It wasn’t until we were pulling out that the ATF swarmed the van.”
Chop laughed, but in a way that told me he didn’t find shit funny about what he was saying. He cracked his knuckles. “The only good thing about that night was the look on the ATF’s faces when they opened the doors and only found a bunch of bicycles we had fixed up to donate to the Y.”
I stood over him, searching his face for any traces that he could be lying. “That’s not true,” I said, although something deep in my gut told me it was.
Chop reached over to the shelf behind his desk and I cocked my gun. “Just getting a drink, son.” He grabbed a fresh bottle of Jack and poured himself a glass. He tipped it back and downed the entire glass in one swallow. “If you’re going to blow my fucking head off, I at least want a last drink.” He slid a cigarette from the open pack on his desk and lit one. “And a smoke.”
“You’ve got three fucking seconds before lights out. I’m done playing your games. We do this my way. Tell me where Thia is or I’m pulling the fucking trigger.” My jaw was clenched so tight it hurt. My anger solely focused on Chop.
Chop threw his hands in the air. “You know what? I wish I had her, but I don’t. I wish I could have finished what I started and show you what real hurt feels like. Betrayal. It broke my heart when I found out your mother was a rat, but not nearly as much as when I found out that you were just like her. Like mother like son. Dirty. Fucking. Rats,” he hissed.
I scrunched my face. “What the fuck are you talking about, old man?”
Chops lip raised in a snarl. “You’re more fucked up in the head than I am if you really thought that I wouldn’t find out what you and King and that Preppy kid were up to. Well, guess again, because I have eyes and ears everywhere. We started taking more heat again, losing runs, losing work. It was like the shit with your mother all over again. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”
“I never betrayed the club. Not fucking once. Not fucking ever,” I seethed.
Chop rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. But you know? I didn’t believe it either at first. Don’t you see what I was doing? I was giving you another chance. I was giving you one more shot to prove to me that you weren’t the dirty fucking rat I thought you were, and just like your mother, you disappointed me. You chose them over us. You chose going off on your own over your club and turned your back on me.” He finished his glass again and slammed it down on the table, the bottom of the glass cracked, a crooked line snaked up the side. “If Gus hadn’t told me what he saw? What he’d heard? What you had confided in him? I would have never believed it. I’d still be searching for the rat to this day. But lookey here,” he said, staring up at me. “I don’t have to search anymore. ’Cause the rat is right in fucking front of me.”
“What the fuck did you say?” I asked, his words still ringing in my brain. It didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t until he mentioned Gus that I started to piece it together. “Who told you I was a rat?”
He raised his eyebrows. I stayed still as stone, fearful that if I moved it would be my trigger finger first. “Gus. Surprised, eh? Thought he was loyal to you because you didn’t pop him in the head when you had a chance? Guess again. That little fucker was more loyal to me than you would ever be, and you think that—”
“Chop!” I shouted, but he wasn’t listening.
“You are owed everything you selfish—”
“Chop!” I shouted again, getting his attention. He finally paused long enough for me to get a word in. “Gus. When the shit went down with Isaac here, when he killed Preppy, I knew someone on the inside had to have leaked that information.”
Chop shrugged like what I was telling him wasn’t new information. “It was me. I didn’t want the brothers to know outright that I was taking you out. Thought I’d kill three birds with one stone.” He smiled. “Literally.”
Hearing him admit to what I already knew didn’t make me any less pissed about it. “I already knew it was you because—” I started, with Chop finally cluing in.
“Gus,” he said, sitting straight up as the realization hit him that we’d both been crossed by the same brother.
A voice boomed from the doorway. “It’s so nice that you two are talking about me.” He looked at me, his semi-automatic at my head. “Put your fucking gun down.” I reluctantly tossed my gun to the floor, half hoping it would go off and kill the motherfucker, but no such luck.
“Glad to hear you two fucking idiots finally figured it out.” He looked right at me when he said, “I was kind of hoping you’d kill your old man before you put it all together. But, oh well. That can be fixed.”
“You little shit,” Chop said, standing up from his chair.
Gus gritted his teeth and switched his aim from me to Chop. “I really fucking hate it when you call me that!” Gus roared, tapping the barrel of his gun on top of his head before pointing it back toward us. “And I’ve been good. So, so good. But I’m done being good. I’m done being your bitch. I can’t wait to take you apart piece by piece, just like she said I could. I can do whatever I want, because you’re mine. You both are. You’re my gifts from her.” Gus said, with a huge manic smile on his face.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I spared your life and took you in, and this is how you fucking thank me?” I asked my one-time protégé. “I should have pulled the fucking trigger when I had the chance.”
Gus took another step into the room. “Yeah, but you didn’t.”
“Who the fuck are you talking about, boy?” Chop chimed in. “Who the fuck is she?” I already knew who he was talking about and I had a feeling Chop did too.
“He’s talking about me,” said a feminine voice. The clank of heels against the concrete echoed in the hall until she appeared in the doorway.
My mother.
“Sadie,” Chop said, dropping his already broken glass. It shattered on the floor, cutting through the momentary silence as Chop and I both glared at the woman in the doorway. “You evil fucking bitch.”
She rolled her eyes and waved Chop off dismissively. A curt smile on her once again red lips. “Here,” she said, tossing a pair of handcuffs on the floor and kicking them over to us. “Cuff yourselves together.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
Her voice was sweet and high, like she was practically singing when she said, “Cuff yourselves together or I will make a call right now that ends with your darling Thia being dumped off the causeway within ten minutes.”
“If you so much as fucking—” I started, taking a step toward her. Gus held out his gun and Sadie held up a phone.
“Save it, Abel. Cuffs. Now. Or the girl dies.”
I picked the cuffs up off the floor and did as she asked, cuffing my hand to my old man’s whose gaze was still fixed on Sadie.
“Can I kill him now?” Gus asked, shifting from foot to foot. “Is it playtime yet?”
“No, sweetheart,” Sadie said, like he was a toddler that needed to be taught a lesson. She sauntered over to Gus and planted a kiss on his lips. He closed his eyes while she kept hers open, tugging the gun from his hands. “You’ve been a very, very good boy to me all these years. You took very good care of me while I was that pig’s captive, and I thank you for that.” She patted him on the top of his head and raised the gun. Gus opened his eyes just long enough for the shock to register. “But I’ll take it from here, baby.” She pulled the trigger, firing off multiple rounds, sending Gus’s brains splattering against Chop’s old trophy case in a mist of pink and red.
* * *
“What the fuck?” I asked as Gus’s brains slid down the glass and fell on top of what was left of his forehead. Sadie pulled her own gun from a holster on her thigh and held one on each of us.
Sadie not only acted very different from the woman who visited me in County, she looked different too. She wore a high-waisted red skirt with a tight black blouse and shiny black pumps. Her long hair was now an auburn color, void of silver streaks. Instead of flowing down her back it had been cut short to her chin. She looked easily fifteen years younger than she did only months before.
“So what? You’re here to seek revenge?” Chop asked, and I wondered if she would really shoot if I took a run at her. I glanced down to Gus’s bloodied corpse and decided that it was highly likely she would.
“Something like that,” she purred, perching herself on the edge of the couch.
“You should be thanking me for not killing you,” Chop said flatly. He hadn’t once taken his eyes from her since she’d stepped into the room. Not even when she blew Gus’s head clean off. He barely even blinked.
She moved back a few inches, physically putting more distance between herself and Chops statement. “Thanking you? I should be thanking you?” she yelled, getting up from the couch and pointing the gun at Chop’s head. “You hunted me down and shot me!” Sadie screamed, pointing to the faded scar on the side of her forehead. “You left me on the side of the fucking road for hours before you came back for me, but only so you could keep me prisoner you sick, SICK FUCK!” Her hands visibly trembled. So did her lower lip. “The humane thing would have been to kill me! The only human interaction I’d had in decades was that piece of shit,” she said, pointing the toe of her heel at Gus, the pool of blood growing beneath his body. “And the wails of whoever else you decided to torture.”
The bigger picture was coming together, but not fast enough. “Why Gus? How?” I asked, and when I raised my hand, I raised Chop’s as well, reminding me that I was still cuffed to the cocksucker.
Chop spoke up. “Because he was the one who fed her,” he muttered. “I thought he was the only one I could trust with that type of thing. Given his…oddities and all.”
I looked at Sadie as it all fell into place. “Chop was right. It was you. You were the rat,” I said, pausing only to watch as Gus’s blood reached the toe of my boot. My eyes darted back to her. “Well, you and that fuck,” I said. “It was you all along.” Still not quite believing what I knew then to be true.
Sadie nodded and her hands stopped shaking as she switched her attentions from Chop to me. “Yes. I’ve spent every day of my long captivity, when I wasn’t being raped by your father, or beaten, or tortured,” she said, slowly emphasizing the word TORTURE. “I was trying my damnedest to bring this club down.” She smiled like she’d just remembered something funny, or at least, funny to her. “The cartel pulling out? That was me,” she said proudly. “The deal with the Miami mob falling through? That was me. The fucking ATF at your door? THAT. WAS. ME!” she screamed, jabbing her gun in the air at us. “And I regret none of it. I’ve been putting the two of you against one another since the first day I met Gus, and it looks like it worked.” She looked to me. “You thought Chop was the rat, and Chop…” she said, turning to my old man. “…thought it was you. It was brilliant, really.”
“If Gus was your little bitch boy then why didn’t you just have him kill Chop?” I asked. “Why go through all this trouble? Why try and kill me too?” I stared her down, daring her to answer my questions. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?” I wanted nothing more than to snap the neck of the tiny woman holding the big gun.
“Because,” Sadie said, her eyes glassy. “You were my little boy. My Abel. I couldn’t let you be just like him. I wouldn’t, and when Gus told me how much you really were like him, the things you did. I knew I had to end it.”
“So you would rather Isaac or Eli kill me?” I asked, feeling sick. “You wanted them to kill me so I wouldn’t end up like Chop? Do you even know what those sick fucks did to me?”
She didn’t answer. Stepping over Gus she briefly peered out the window to the soldiers below, oblivious that the person they really needed to kill was one floor above them and wearing a fucking skirt. “Yes. I failed you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late now. It’s all too late to change it now.”
A realization hit me. “You’re the reason Preppy’s dead. I should fucking end you right fucking now you fucking cunt!” I said, pushing the desk aside and almost knocking over Chop, who I was inadvertently dragging with me.
Sadie aimed her gun at my chest, and if I didn’t care about ever seeing Ti again, I would have ran right through a spray of bullets to rip my mothers head off. “See?” Sadie asked, pointing at me. “Just like him.” She sighed. “All I ever did was love you and try to give you a better life, and then he took it all from me!” Sadie paused, her eyes glassed over. “I loved you!” she cried, her hands again shaking. To my surprise she wasn’t looking at me when she said it this time. She was looking at Chop. “I love you and I gave you a son and you ruined it. You ruined everything! All I wanted was for you to leave the club, the life. I wanted us to be a family. To be together.”
“So that’s why you turned rat in the first place.”
Chop cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. I took Sadie’s temporary silence as an admission.
“I love you, too, you know,” she said, this time to me. “I—”
I cut her off. I’d already heard more than fucking enough. “YOU are NOTHING to me!” I roared, pulling at my own hair in frustration. “I don’t give a fuck where you’ve been or for how long or what the fuck Chop did to you. There’s only one fucking thing I care about right now.” I narrowed my eyes and gave her one last warning. “You better tell me where the fuck she is, and if you so much as laid one fucking finger on her—” The sound of bullets grew even louder, but I didn’t care. They could be sailing through the room and I still wouldn’t have taken my eyes off of the bitch who had my girl.
Sadie’s shoulders fell, but it was like I wasn’t in the room. The conversation she was having was entirely one sided. I didn’t know what I needed to do to get her so she could tell me where the fuck my girl was. “I came back for you once, you know,” she said. “Escaped all on my own.” Chops eyes widened like he hadn’t known that. “I disguised myself. At first I was going to take you away with me, that time for good. You were sixteen at the time and when I finally found you, you were at some biker bar. Some whore was sitting on your lap. You were snorting that shit up your nose off of her legs. That’s the very moment I knew it was too late.” She searched my face, “You looked just like him sitting there. A spitting image. I knew then there was no saving you. I could have just left then. Disappeared. But I didn’t. I had to make sure that the two of you were put down and the best way to do that was from the inside. So I went back down into my hole before Chop even realized I was gone and I put up with his abuse every single day knowing that I wouldn’t stop until I took every last one of you leather-wearing psychopaths down.” She turned her nose up at us. “Especially the two of you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great speech. Now, where the fuck is my girl!”
Sadie laughed and stepped to the side of the door. “I’ll tell you. But you need to move, outside. NOW!” she ordered, and when neither of us budged she fired at the light fixture, sending glass raining down around us.
Chop moved first, and I followed. Sadie stayed out of arm’s reach, as we stepped through what was left of Gus and made our way out to the balcony of the second floor, which overlooked the courtyard where sporadic gunfire was being exchanged.
A monster of a man wearing overalls with no shirt underneath walked casually beside the pool on the floor below, holding a semi-automatic in each hand, and I could have sworn I heard him whistling, but when I looked down again, he was gone.
“On your knees,” Sadie ordered. I lowered myself to the ground but only because she still hadn’t answered my question about Ti, and Chop did the same, because we were cuffed and he didn’t have a fucking choice. “I’m on my fucking knees, bitch, now tell me where the fuck my girl is.”
Sadie clucked her tongue and moved to stand beside us. “Unfortunately for you, I needed the girl in order to get you here, and since Gus was so insistent on joining me here tonight, he hired outside help to do the sick shit he wanted to do her and tape it. I’d show you the tape, but something tells me you won’t be around long enough to watch it.”
“I’ll fucking kill you!” I shouted, rising off my knees. She fired, sending a bullet straight through my thigh and sending me crashing back down to the floor.
Chop remained silent, only watching as I flailed around on the floor, clenching my teeth together, warring against the agony tearing through my leg. “Where was this girl when I needed her?” Chop suddenly asked, drawing my attention away from the pain. I managed to sit up on my good knee and with my free hand I pushed against the wound to slow down the blood loss. “Where was this girl twenty-five years ago?” he asked. “Why, my Sadie girl? Why did you turn on me? You could have come to me. You could have told me what was going on. What you wanted to do. You had a choice, and you made the wrong fucking one. It’s your fault. You made me pull that fucking trigger!”
Sadie turned to him, her eyes rimmed with red like she was on the verge of tears. “I did what I thought could get us out from under your shit,” she spat.
“But don’t you see?” he asked. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you even when I should have after what you did. So I kept you. I kept you all to myself because you were mine.” Chop shook his head. His face reddened. “You were a rat who deserved to fucking die but I didn’t kill you!” he said, raising his voice to a scream. “You claimed to have loved your kid, but I can see right fucking through you. You never once asked to see him in all the years I had you. You didn’t love him, you were jealous of him. Of the club. Of anywhere else my attention was besides you, and you couldn’t fucking handle that, so you ran to the law with your tail between your fucking cunt like the bitch you are.”
“You still don’t get it do you Chop-Chop?” she asked. “None of that matters now.” Sadie stood behind me and pressed the gun to the back of my head. “I’ll kill your precious son first, so you can watch him die. Then it’s your turn, baby.” She blew him a kiss.
She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “I may not have had the chance to raise you up, baby boy, but I’m not going to pass up the chance now to put you down.”
“Let me do it,” Chop said. “Give me a gun. You can still kill me after. Just let me do this one thing right for you.”
“Fucking pussy,” I muttered.
Sadie was quiet and my head wasn’t blown off, but I couldn’t believe she was even considering what he was offering, and even after all the shit Chop had done, I was mad at myself for being surprised at the offer.
I couldn’t believe it even more when Chop raised up to his feet and was suddenly the one standing behind me with a gun, my arm that was cuffed to his was pulled backward at an awkward angle. “This is for you, baby,” Chop said with a sadness in his voice I’d never heard before.
Chop pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gun shot was fucking deafening.