CHAPTER SEVEN
Bear
A horn blasted overhead, calling yard time to an end and not a moment too soon. Miller and I went to the nearest exit, never taking our eyes off our new company. “Not you, McAdams,” the guard manning the gate said, pushing me back out into the yard after Miller had already gone back in.
“What the fuck?” Miller asked, looking back as the guard slid the gate closed leaving me alone in the yard with my three former brothers who were making their way across the yard. Miller shot me a sympathetic look as another guard shooed him back inside the building.
“Thought you guys needed a moment alone. A little reunion of sorts,” the guard said with a sneer.
“Fuck you,” I spat, the mother fucking guard knew exactly what the fuck he was doing and I had no doubt he’d been paid off to do it. “Why don’t you come in here and we’ll see how fucking funny you think this is.” The guard chuckled at the hilarity of three against one, twirling a set of keys around on his fingers. With a mock salute he followed Miller back into the cellblock, whistling as he went. The heavy door echoing across the yard as it slammed shut.
I cracked the bones in my neck, preparing myself for the fight of my life. I met the pussies at the picnic table I’d just vacated, and to my surprise, Wolf leaned against the table while Stone and Munch took seats. I’d kind of just assumed they’d get on with it already. Although Miller had just given me a pack of smokes, when I spied a pack in the front pocket of Wolf’s jumpsuit, I reached in and plucked it out along with a book of matches. “Thanks for the smoke,” I said, lighting one and tossing the matchbook onto the table. “You girls ready to try and do this, or what?”
Try being the most important word.
I wasn’t scared of these motherfuckers. The only fear I really had was not seeing Ti again.
I was more annoyed than anything.
Agitated.
All those years and all that time wasted trying to make my brothers better outlaws and this was the best plan they could come up with? “I swear I taught you bitches better than this,” I said, shaking my head. “Taking me out in an open yard in front of a shit ton of cameras. Chop’s been losing his fucking touch for years, but I expected more than this sloppy shit from you three.” I expected them to stand up, puff out their chests, and make their threats against me.
Something.
Munch and Stone looked to the ground while Wolf lit his own cigarette. Before the flame met the paper, I punched him in the eye, and he immediately dropped to the ground.
I was always better at offense.
“Chop sent us, but we ain’t here to take you out, fucker,” Wolf said, rolling on the ground with his hand over his eye.
“Then what the fuck did he send you here for? A fucking tickle fight?” I breathed out the smoke through my nose, and although I had no idea how the next few minutes were going to play out, I felt relaxed amongst the familiar conflict.
At peace.
At home.
Adrenaline built as each second ticked by until I was positive I could flip a fucking truck over if I had the chance.
Or take on three guys at once and win.
“No, he did send us here to take you out, but that’s not what we’re gonna do,” Munch said, standing up and helping Wolf off the ground.
“You’re going to go against your Prez’s orders?” I clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “Now I’m actually disappointed. I must have been a real shitty teacher for you guys to make that kind of call.”
“We ain’t going against Prez’s orders,” Stone chimed in, standing up from the bench, “’Cause he ain’t our fucking Prez anymore.”
“Come again?” I asked, unsure of what weird alternate universe I’d just stepped into.
Wolf released his eye, which was already starting to swell, and unzipped his jumpsuit. Pushing it down, he revealed his bare chest, which used to be covered with a full chest piece tattoo of the Bastards’ logo. Now, it was an oozing wound, tissue and strands of damaged skin stretched across his chest, only a fraction of the tattoo remained.
He winced as he zipped back up.
“What the fuck? Chop do that?” I asked, pointing with my cigarette to Wolf.
He shook his head as both Munch and Stone revealed their own recently burned off tattoos. “No, he didn’t. We did. We all did.”
“Why?” I asked, standing there in complete disbelief that three of the Bastards’ most loyal soldiers had turned on their club. “What the fuck did Chop do that made you feel like you had to go all pyro on yourselves?”
“Stone, tell him…” Munch said with a reassuring nod. “He’s gotta know if we plan on making this right.”
“I can’t man,” Stone said, punching his open palm and shaking his head. His eyes became glassy and he sucked in his lips, rocking back and forth slowly like he was willing the memories of whatever he didn’t want to tell me. Stone got his name because when it came to taking people out he was a stone cold killer. The type of guy who barely had his gloves off, the body still warm, when he’d pipe up and say ‘I’m hungry, who wants a sandwich?’ To see him reduced to almost tears made me very curious about what the fuck it was they wanted him to tell me.
“You can do it, man. Just tell him,” Wolf said.
“The BBBs, they’re just fucking whores,” Stone said like he was reminding himself of that fact.
“Really? Is that what Em was to you? Just a fucking whore?” Wolf snapped, kicking his foot up onto the bench resting his elbow on his knee.
“Fuck! No,” Stone said, dropping his forehead to the table and running his hands over his shaved head, the black triton tattoo on his temple shimmered with beads of his sweat. “She was… Shit!” Stone stood up so abruptly he almost took the table with him. “They’re just supposed to be whores. Hangers-on. You know that. We all fucking know that.” Stone paced back and forth as he spoke, wringing out his hands and looking between the grass and me. “They’re there to suck and ride cock without question. If they question, they are out. They can’t say no. They can’t deny a brother. Those girls lived for the party. For the adventure of the club.”
“Yeah, until they stopped living altogether,” Munch chimed in, lighting a cigarette.
“What the fuck are you guys getting at?”
Stone looked at me straight faced but there was more pain in his eyes, more emotion, then I’d ever seen from him and I’d known him for over ten years. “What I’m getting at is Em.”
“Em?” I asked, not recalling a BBB by that name.
“Yeah. She had jet-black hair and weird purple grey eyes. She came to the club shortly after you left. She had nowhere else to go, her mom died in some sort of accident. Anyway, after the parties when everyone was all passed out we talked. She wasn’t like the others. She listened. She actually liked me. We grew kinda close.” He breathed out a sigh. “Too fucking close. She was my girl. Despite what she fucking did with the other brothers before she came to my room at night she was still my fucking girl.”
“So what the fuck happened?” It wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever heard. Over the years I’d seen a few BBBs become old ladies. It was no secret that Sadie was one of them.
“Chop caught wind of it, although it’s not like we were keeping it a secret. He found out that I planned to take her out of the club and the life, and set her up in a place. He shouldn’t have cared. Tons of brothers have done it before. He didn’t even know her fucking name. But just like with all the other codes or club law Chop had been adding or taking away to suit his own damn moods, suddenly a club whore as an old lady was forbidden.”
“Keep going,” I said, although I was pretty sure I knew exactly how the story was going to end. Because with Chop all the stories ended the same way and most of the people in the stories were no longer breathing.
Wolf lit a cigarette and passed it to Stone, who continued. “Chop called me into his office. He asked me to close the door. I did and took a seat and that’s when I noticed the stilettos poking out from under his desk. I knew it was Em. I’d bought her those fucking shoes.” He paused and ran his hand over his mouth. “I asked him what he needed, although I felt like I was gonna either puke or fucking kill him or both. The fucker smiled the entire time. He made me wait. He knew was he was torturing me and he was enjoying it.”
“Cock sucker,” Munch said, banging his fist on the table.
“I racked my brain to think of what I could have done to ask for this type of punishment but I came up blank,” Stone said. He sat down on the bench again, dropping his head to the tabletop and spoke to the floor. “I was a good soldier. I was the best soldier. I never asked questions. I did what I was told.”
“Tell him the rest. It’s almost over,” Wolf said.
Stone took a drag of his cigarette and a tear fell from the corner of his eye. The guy whistled while killing and he was crying over a club whore? It made no sense. “Then he told me that he didn’t need anything from me but that he had something for me. I asked him what he had. He told me it was a lesson.”
Stone bit his lip and his face grew redder and redder as his sadness turned to anger. My own heart started pounding. “I panicked because I left my side arm in my room, but I never figured I’d ever need it against my own life with Prez ’cause I was a good soldier,” he repeated. “Real fucking good.”
“I know you were, brother,” I said.
“He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her mouth off of his dick. ‘Don’t be rude, Em. Say hello to our guest.’ She turned to look at me and her lips were still all wet from him. Her eye was swollen and her bottom lip was split open with blood dripping down her chin. I thought I was going to be sick right fucking there until I saw the fear in her eyes. It wasn’t just fear though. It was like she was blank. Like she’d already given up. Whatever happened before I got in there had to have been bad enough to make her think there was no fucking way out. I think that might have been the most brutal thing of all. Because she was right.” Stone was now sobbing.
Munch put his arm around his shoulder. “We’ll get that motherfucker, I promise.”
Stone continued through the tears. “He told me that what he wanted was for his soldiers to be soldiers and not fall in love with the ‘cum-dumpsters’ every single brother in this place had sprayed his shit on a hundred times. I asked him why he was doing this. I didn’t understand. He was my Prez. A fucking king to me. The Bastards took me in off the street and gave me something to believe in. I wouldn’t have ever crossed him, no matter what. Even when you left and I thought he was wrong, I stayed by his side. Not because I thought he was right, but because you taught me not to question my Prez, so I didn’t.”
“Skip to the end,” I said. I hated that I had to wait for what I already knew was coming.
“‘Because whores aren’t your family,’ Chop said. ‘Your brothers are your only family. Whores are fucking disposable.’ I didn’t even realize he had a gun in his lap until he held it to her head ‘See? I just came down her fucking throat’ he said, ‘and this whore thanks me by bleeding on me.’ Then he pulled the fucking trigger.”
“Fuck!” I said. Now I stood up and started pacing.
“That’s not all,” Wolf said. Leaving Stone and Munch on the bench as he walked over to me and lowered his voice like he didn’t want to upset Stone any further.
“How is that not all of it? That cocksucker killed Stone’s old lady right in front of him to teach him some sort of sick lesson about his views on family?”
“Not even close to all of it.”
“Just fucking tell me already,” I said, thinking about how Chop roughed up Ti made my own stomach start to churn. It could have been her. He could have killed her.
“He didn’t just kill Em,” Wolf said, looking back at Stone who was face down between his elbows.
“He killed another one?” I asked, wondering why the fuck Chop would kill two BBBs.
Wolf shook his head. “No, brother…he killed them all.”
“Holy Fuck,” I said, taking a seat on the bench. Wolf sat next to me.
“We took off our cuts and burnt the fuck out of our skin because a Prez, a real Prez, wouldn’t do that kind of shit. He wouldn’t kill people you love,” Wolf said, looking me square in the eye so I could see he was telling the truth. “And I get it now. Why you left. ’Cause he asked you to chose between the club and people you think of as family and that shit ain’t right.” He shook his head. “It ain’t fucking right.”
“Executed,” Munch piped in. “In the court yard, one by fucking one. We tried to stop him. He shot a prospect in the leg and told us to mind our own fucking business while he took care of his.”
“Why the fuck would he kill BBBs?” I asked, thinking of the innocent fucking girls whose only crime was wanting to be part of a world they shouldn’t have wanted to be a part of.
“We got no clue. All we know is that he called them all out into the courtyard and put a gun to their heads. He kept yelling at them, asking them where she was, and when they would ask who he was talking about or tell them that they didn’t know, he’d lay them out and kick their bleeding bodies into the pool.”
I held my face in my hands. “He didn’t stop until they were all gone,” Wolf said, lighting another cigarette with the one in his hand.
“It happened so fucking quick. One minute he was fine and the next minute he was murdering all the club whores. When he was done, he walked around muttering and then locked himself in his office. When he came back out, he acted like nothing had happened. He told the prospects to clean up the mess and he played a game of pool. It was real fucking bazaar,” Munch said.
“He killed my old lady,” Stone wailed.
I pulled on my beard and glanced over to Stone. “Chop’s been trying to go after my old lady since before she was even mine,” I admitted. “I can’t tell you I know how you feel brother, but I can tell you how it feels to be afraid of that happening every fucking second of the day.” Remembering the bloodied mess Gus had dropped off at King’s doorstep that was Ti made me grit my teeth until I thought they’d crack.
“First of all, I’m shocked as shit that you, of all fucking people, have an old lady, but we’ll talk about that shit when we have less pressing matters beating on our fucking doorstep,” Wolf said, with a small smile that reminded me of how close we used to be. The familiarity of us sitting at a table, no matter how shitty the subject was we were discussing, was a welcome feeling.
“There are nine of us. Nine who burnt off our tats the night after the BBB thing. The three of us, Gus, Chump, and a few of the others. When Chop gave the orders to come here and take you out, it was the perfect opportunity,” Munch said, looking around to make sure no one was listening. There was only one guard and he was by the gate on the other side of the yard where they had come in. Well out of earshot.
“Opportunity for what?” I asked, still unsure of why they would follow Chop’s orders to come to County if they were no longer Bastards.
“Chop wants to go to war with you,” Munch stated. He held out his open hands and stretched his arms out to his sides. “You’re gonna need an army.”
Stone looked up from his arm for the first time. “We’re your army.”
“I appreciate that, but if that war ever happens it might be in here because I got something in the works to get me out, but if it doesn’t come through I’m looking at hard fucking time,” I said, wiping the beading sweat off my forehead.
“You in here because of the girl, aren’t you?” Munch asked. “’Cause killing two civilians ain’t really your style.”
“Yeah.” I inhaled deeply, needing the nicotine more than ever. “Better me than her. Would fucking do it again in a heartbeat. I signed a confession, so it don’t look like I’m going nowhere anytime soon.”
“You leave that to us, brother,” Munch said with a slick smile. The kid could always figure his way around shit, so I wouldn’t put it past him to really be able to get me out somehow. “We already have something in the works.”
“What Munch means is that a chick he used to bang got herself a job sorting evidence for the county,” Wolf said.
“That right?”
“Yep, and it seems that the guns used in the murders have just up and disappeared,” Munch said, making a poof with his hands. It’s not like those guns had my prints on them, but it was still enough to cause a big ripple in the prosecution’s case.
“They still have my signed confession.”
Wolf laughed. “They don’t anymore. Funny thing about that too. The prosecutor assigned to the case seems to have lost all traces of it. And the judge—being old and senile and not to mention deeply in debt to us for running his daughter’s fiancé out of town—swears he never even saw it.” He winked.
Wolf shook his head and smiled. “We also think that hot shot, shady as fuck lawyer of yours had the coroner’s report altered to say a whole bunch of conflicting things about the murder. She filed for a case dismissal, so now we just wait.”
Munch cracked his knuckles and slid an unlit cigarette behind his right ear. “That bitch is shady as fuck, and I’d like to show her how much I appreciate the way she looks in those tight skirts by way of fucking her cougar ass sideways. She prosecuted a couple of cases where I wound up on the wrong side of the courtroom, and I swear I didn’t care how much time I got as long as she kept bending that fine ass over her table to sort through her papers.”
The three of us laughed and even Stone smiled briefly. It all felt normal.
Well, as normal as I’d ever known.
Somehow I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be the last time Bethany Fletcher and I would be working together.
The prospect of getting out and seeing Ti made my heart beat stronger, faster, and more powerful.
And then suddenly it hit me.
“I think I know how to get to my old man,” I said, taking a long slow drag from my smoke, my thoughts firmly on my surprise visitor from that very morning.
“How?” Munch asked, leaning in close.
“Not how. WHO,” I said.
“Okay who?” Wolf asked, also leaning in.
“You said Chop was asking the BBBs where SHE was.” I stubbed out my smoke and pulled on my beard. “I think I know who SHE is.”
In the yard of the county jail on a day where the sun relentlessly beat down on us like it was trying to punish the occupants of the earth, a broken piece of me was put back together.
“So what do you say, brother? You want some new soldiers, so we can all wear a cut again? So we can all believe in shit again?” Munch asked, stubbing out his smoke. “We can be our own club, do shit right this time.”
I cracked my knuckles. “I ain’t putting a fucking cut on again. That part of me is fucking dead. I won’t be your leader. I won’t be your Prez, but I’ll be a soldier with you. We’ll go to fucking war together, and we’ll bring that motherfucker down.”
We may not have been an official MC.
But we were officially at war.