Six

 

KYLE

 

It was a couple of hours later, after Jagger and I made use of the shower and each other, and we were all about to start eating that my phone rang. Knowing it was Bo, I put it on speaker phone and waited.

“You’re not being smart, Kai,” she murmured. “I can’t take this risk.”

“Bo, it’s Hunter,” he interrupted, desperate to get information.

“She’s okay, Hunter,” she whispered. “I’m working on it.”

I felt relieved that we had her on the inside, but Hunter was understandably pissed off. In his shoes, I have no doubt that I’d feel powerless, and no one deals well with that feeling.

“That’s it? That’s all you can say?” He snapped.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” she continued whispering, reminding us of the danger that she was in. “I didn’t know what they were planning until it was done. You need to clean shop, Preacher,” she ordered.

“How did you know I was here?” He asked, leaning against the wall and looking around the room as if we were being watched. What he didn’t know was that Bo wouldn’t need that shit to know what was going on.

“You were part of the retrieval. You need to clean shop,” she repeated, stressing it more this time.

Noah spoke up as we all sat trying to figure out what the hell she meant.

“Bo, when I see you…” he started, but was cut off by a dismissive tut.

She gave a quick goodbye promising to be in touch again soon, leaving us to continue stewing over her cryptic order.

“Oh fuck, I know who she meant,” Jagger said, just as my phone went off again with Data’s name flashing on the screen.

Grabbing it, I had just hit the answer key when he said what we’d been desperate to hear. “Got em…”

 

KAI

 

Walking around the bitch that I hated for years, I tried to cut out the old emotions and focus on the new ones. She had been selling out the Knights and helping the pieces of shit out, but why? If I went off half-cocked, I could miss vital information, so I would have to keep my ‘Kai mentality’; the rational and stable minded soldier.

“Ahhh, Store,” I walked around the chair she was sitting on. Right now, she wasn’t showing me any fear, but I could easily change that.

“What are you going to do, Kai?” She sneered. She was still immaculately put together, but I’ll be changing that.

As it turns out, we weren’t far from one of the MC’s other chapters, where this slut had been. Once Jagger had figured it out, we’d made a couple of calls and had come straight here. The President had kept her distracted until we arrived so the element of surprise had been on our side. It had been fantastic!

“You know, your Daddy has always been great with his dick. How he made you I’ll never know. But then again, he always wanted a boy, didn’t he? Couldn’t face having a daughter, so he named you like a guy.”

For years, I hated this bitch in front of me. The words my mom had put in her letter, knowing what Preacher had done with this piece of shit, the fact she was responsible for what happened after mom found them, but also for how she treated me. What I was about to do to her would bring me great pleasure.

“That’s nice, Store,” I yawned and sat back looking at her bored. “But it’s not me who’s gonna be the one to do it. See, my daddy,” I choked on the word and calling him that when he’d been nothing to me for so long, “has something he wants to say to you.”

“Probably the same thing that he was saying to me two nights ago. The same thing that your bitch mother walking in on years ago and then blew her brains out…” she broke off as I stood up and walked slowly over to her holding her eyes with each step. She did well to hide her fear, but I saw it flash in her eyes.

“Oh no, no, no,” I tutted as I bent over. “See, I know where my father was two nights ago, and it wasn’t with you. In fact, you’ve been a fucking nothing for a long time now, haven’t you.” I smirked at her, knowing I’d scored a direct hit when her ugly face twisted making it even uglier. “That’s why you did it, isn’t it, Store? Figured you’d get some payback because you weren’t looked at as anything in the MC. Been a while since any of the guys, even the prospects, would touch you, right?”

“You bitch,” she lunged and tried spitting at me, but I’d already moved out of the line of fire. Fucking hell these bitches were predictable.

She was stopped from saying anything else by Preacher entering the room.

“Well, isn’t this interesting,” he murmured as he walked over to me. I was fighting against the instinct inside of me to move away from him, but we had to present a united front for this piece of shit.

Pulling up a chair, he turned it around and sat on it, leaning his arm across the back of it.

“She’s lying,” she whined. “She’s lying, Preacher. I went to see Dragon because I needed a break…”

The man himself walked in and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed in front of him. I didn’t remember him from my childhood, but he was the kind of guy you didn’t fuck with and the look he was giving Store just now would make most men shit themselves.

Hunter walked into the room followed by Coleman and Mace. I turned back to face her, aware that even more bodies were filtering into the room behind me.

“You were saying?” Preacher said, looking relaxed, but I knew that he had a hair trigger and that it wouldn’t take much for it to spring.

With her mouth opening and closing, Store just stared behind me at the guys lined up.

“Jesus Christ, Preacher,” Jagger said, sounding sick to his stomach. “You fucked this?” His tone sounded slightly off, but I wouldn’t take my eyes off her to look at him.

The guys all let out a snort, but the jab had hurt something inside of me. Yeah, this was what had led to my mom killing herself. And no, she wasn’t fucking worth it. No one was.

Renewing the disgust and hatred that I held for my sperm donor, I straightened my shoulders and drew on every bit of training and experience that I’d had, making sure to stay expressionless and be ready for quick movements from anyone. We’d been taught to remain vigilant at all times, something which would save your life in the pits given how many times the man who was fighting at your back turned around to stab it.

Jagger’s jab had also struck a chord with Store, though, because she snapped. Her face twisted in a way that shouldn’t have been humanly possible, but I guess with all that cheap makeup on it, gravity would be acting in weird and magical ways for her.

“Fuck you, Jagger. Fuck you all. You don’t know who you’re up against, you don’t know what he can do,” a smug sneer crossed her face. “He’ll come for me and you’ll be fucked.”

Not one person reacted to this last declaration. We all knew he had no intention of coming to help her. During my training, I did a course in language and its relation to emotions and inner thoughts. Right now, her sentences made up of basic words and the overuse of the word ‘fuck’ meant that she also had an inkling that the ‘he’ wouldn’t be coming for her. Her arrogance was overruling common sense, though.

Shifting his position so that he was more comfortable, Preacher calmly replied. “This guy?” He held up his cell screen with a picture of Demingo on it for her to see. Her smile and nod didn’t get the reaction that she’d planned on it getting. Looking back around the room, Preacher stopped on Hunter and asked, “Do you think he’s on his way?”

“No fucking way,” Hunter replied, shaking his head in humor.

Looking over at Jagger, Preacher merely raised an eyebrow.

“She’s off her fucking meds if she really thinks that,” he didn’t even need to be asked the question to answer. Looking up, we made eye contact briefly before I turned back to the show in front of me.

Jose Demingo had started off working for the government. He’d been a great guy who had a record for solving the most cases and intercepting a lot of drugs, munitions and humans. What no one had known at the time was that he was intercepting the shipments and then selling it on under his own organization.

Hunter had worked the case after two huge shipment interceptions had been hijacked as they were brought back onto US soil. There had been a grand total of twenty-six young women and three billion dollars’ worth of drugs and specialist munitions that had all gone missing. 

Hunter and some of his guys had worked with Demingo to try and track it all down. If memory served me right, nine of the girls and small amounts of the other shit had been recovered before three of the missing girls were found dead with a note pinned to them saying to back down.

Months later Hunter came to me after noticing something off about Demingo, and I joined the mission to take him down. We’d been exchanging fire with the hostiles when a ball of fire lit up where Demingo had been standing. We all assumed that he’d been double-crossed, but we knew he was involved since Perry’s snatching. We knew this old ghost well and his definition of loyalty and the bitch in front of us was screwed.

One-by-one, those of us who knew Demingo shook our heads. With each shake, Store started to panic more and more.

“But, he told me…he said…he’s…” she broke off sobbing. Walking around the back of her, I grabbed her hair and yanked her head back.

“Now, you’re going to answer the nice men and tell them what they need to know,” she almost scalped herself with the ferocity of her nods of agreement.

Twenty minutes later the men started to file out, and I had been promised this moment with her if I let her live and didn’t use my rifle on her when we realized who was responsible for feeding information back to Demingo. It had been unfortunate that she hadn’t known any information, but we didn’t actually think that he’d trust the likes of this cunt with any real information, anyway.

Walking toward her, I let the hatred and malice bleed onto my face along with a grin. “Now, it’s my turn.”

She started shaking her head frantically and screaming for help, but none would be coming her way.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she was hyperventilating as she jabbered out the same word over and over again.

Reaching for a knife off the table beside me, I pressed the tip against my finger making a satisfied noise when I felt how sharp it was.

I was about to run it across her chest when she said something that shocked the hell out of me.

“I wasn’t fucking him the day your mom killed herself,” she screamed. “He wouldn’t touch me and I deserved the fucking head of the MC. He was mine, but she knew what she was doing when she got knocked up.” She sneered at me. “She came in and lost her shit so Preacher kicked me out,” the fight went out of her and her head slumped forward.

For the first time in my career I couldn’t use my skills to figure out if she was telling the truth. The words that mom had put in her letter were on repeat in my head, along with the image of her body with the gun in her hand still. If it had all been a lie, Preacher would have told me or gotten Duke to tell me. She was lying!

Moving forward, I grabbed her hair again and raised her head to my lowered knife and cut the dry bleached strands off as close to her scalp as I could. I switched off to her screams as I lifted the clump of hair and grinned as I dropped it in front of her.

 

 

Walking out of the room and nodding at Dragon, I took in the expressions on Jagger and Preacher’s face. Duke’s was blank as he took in my appearance. I hadn’t done what I’d wanted to, sometimes the MC’s methods of dealing with traitors was best.

My head turned back toward Preacher as he pushed away from the wall and walked toward me. “You okay, honey?” He asked it like he gave a shit.

Unable to deal with this even more than normal after the lies the slut had spouted, I turned and walked away toward where Hunter and his team were. I didn’t want to deal with any of this right now.

 

JAGGER

 

We’d all heard what Store had said to Kyle as we waited outside. The door had been slightly open in case Kyle had any problems and as the truth had been told, Preacher’s body had tightened. The fact that Kyle blatantly didn’t believe it had made him tense up even more, but what did he expect given the circumstances?

“You need to sort that shit out,” Duke growled as he stopped in front of his brother. “It’s killed me lying to her all of these years. And, before you start your shit, it is a lie even though it’s one of omission,” he held his hand up as Preacher had prepared to interrupt. “Grow a pair and put that poor girl out of her misery,” he ordered before he stalked off in the same direction as Kyle had.

Turning to face my President, I spoke to him in a way that I never had before. “She’s filled with hurt and is putting herself into positions that could kill her all so that she doesn’t think or feel because of what happened. I told you what she told me about her mom so you know how much of a cancer this is eating away at her.” Leaning close, I looked him straight in the eyes, “It’s the same cancer eating away at you.” He turned his head sharply away from me. “I can’t keep this much longer. She trusts me and I care about her so I’m not about to fuck that up. Either you tell her or I will.”

I walked away leaving him to absorb what I’d said. I meant it though, I couldn’t lie to her for much longer regardless of the fact I’d be breaking my President’s orders and trust. Kyle’s was more important.