RAFE
If the information Tristan passed along to me was right, then the Hell’s Spawn had everything to do with Jason’s murder, just like I thought. His text confirmed he saw one of their prospects at the club house earlier in the afternoon Jason was gunned down. When I tried brining the information to Gray, he shot me down.
“You leave them the fuck alone, Rafe. Unless you have real proof, I’m not starting a fucking war over your gut feeling.”
My fists begged to push his nose a bit to the left, but I managed to keep my cool. I couldn’t get to the bottom of the shit pile if I didn’t have the club’s backing. “Fine.” I growled at him. “Tell me what you’re doing to look into it.” I placed my hands flat on the table and leaned over, giving him my undivided attention.
He ran his fat tongue over his yellow tinted teeth and shook his head. “We need to shift our focus here, Rafe. We need to get this club united, pull together like the brothers we are and start working our way out of the shit storm. Now, I want us to get out of the gun running and all that other mulling we do, but first we need the funds. First we need to get our bankroll large enough to finance the strip club. This town needs a good titty bar, and once it’s in place we’ll be rolling in the cash. Between the liquor sales and the cut of the dancer’s tips, we’ll never need to run guns again.”
He almost looked convinced of his own fucking lie, but I knew Gray, and he loved the gun running business. He probably did want to start up a titty bar, but only so he wouldn’t have to ride clear across town to get to the other one. I’d been on a few runs with him over the years, and he got a high off the thrill. If the cops showed, all the better for him. I wasn’t buying his load of bullshit.
“What does any of that have to do with Jason being gunned down?” I shoved away from the table and walked around the meeting room, trying to get my temper back under control. Why did it seem like I was the only member who gave a shit that Jason was killed? Our new president didn’t seem all that intent on finding his killer.
“I’m saying we’ll keep looking, but you don’t even have a description of the guy. Only that he was on a bike.”
“I had my back to him, and when I turned around he shot me,” I snapped at him. “But Jason knew who it was, he saw him clear.”
“And he didn’t tell you who it was.” Gray nodded along with me.
“So what, we just let it go because there was no fucking eye witnesses? Who the fuck else knew he was out there at that warehouse?” I started pacing the room while he just watched me with an almost bored expression.
“Rafe, you’re grasping at straws, man. Look. Let’s get the club in order, then we’ll play detective.” He stood up from his chair and ran his hands through his hair.
Knowing when I was getting the run around, I nodded. I didn’t need his help anyway. “Fine.” I headed out of the room, ignoring his outstretched hand. The clubhouse usually had a dozen or so members at any given time, having a beer or trying to talk up one of the girls. I noticed that only three guys were in the house, and prospects at that. Sweeping up the floors, changing light bulbs and shit.
I put it out of my head and hopped on my bike, deciding to head over to Tristan’s. One the ride over, I started thinking about the woman I left behind that morning. No matter how I turned my thoughts, she ended up front and center. And not just her fucking body either. That little smile playing on her lips when she caught me playing with Madison’s dolls with her. Well, I held up the doll and Madison made it talk. The way she was patient when the five-year-old had a tantrum over her breakfast reminded me of my mom, long ago before the double shifts and late rent took their toll on her.
I never considered myself as a one-woman man. I loved fucking women, and never did I double dip, but I could see getting comfortable with Beth and that little girl of hers. JC had checked in twice to let me know that she was staying put and there was no activity around the house. I wasn’t sure the assholes from the mall were really gunning for her, or just trying to scare her off, but she definitely had something to do with their presence.
After I left and called JC and Tristan to head over to the mall and check out the activity, they found only tread marks near where she was parked. Even the cops weren’t all that concerned as no one had been shot. All injuries had to do with flying glass from stray bullets, and all the bullets came from the same direction. There was no war, or brawl, just a bunch of guys shooting off into the air. Something didn’t sound right.
If something had happened to her in that parking lot, it would be on my head. If it weren’t for me, she’d have no connection to the club. She would just be going along with her hospital shifts and taking care of Maddie. How could I even think of pulling her into my life? What if Maddie grew up and turned into a club whore? No fucking way. I wouldn’t allow it. That girl would get her ass to college and make something of herself like her mom.
Why? So some fucker like me could show up one night, drag her to the back office of a bar and fuck her brains out? I revved my engine and tore down the highway, heading over to Tristan’s, forgetting about the speed limit. I needed to forget about long-term shit with Beth. It wasn’t going to happen. Even if I could settle down with just one woman, she deserved a hell of a lot better than a biker. She deserved a man like my brother. Educated. Stable.
Tristan’s garage door was up when I pulled into his driveway. His bike laid on its side, the engine cut off. Pulling off my sunglasses I looked around the empty garage. “Tristan?” I pushed the door to the house open. “Tristan! It’s me, Rafe.” I put on hand on my gun, ready to pull it at the slightest movement. “You here man?” I took one step into the kitchen.
Two steps in and I saw him. On the ground, keeled over to the right was his lifeless body. I felt the familiar twist in my gut and carefully stepped around him to get a better look. A gunshot to the back of his head. Blood splatter covered the dining table and walls. Executed in his own fucking kitchen.
Tristan had been the only one to say anything funny happening around the clubhouse the day of Jason’s murder. He’d seen a prospect hanging around the clubhouse, and now he was fucking dead. Hell’s Spawn.
Clenching my fists, I left Tristan and jumped on my bike, tearing out of his driveway and heading to the other side of town.
***
Halfway to the Hell’s Spawn clubhouse I spotted a few of their members hanging outside Dunkin’s Dive. I pulled in, parking beside their line of bikes. Damien, their president, appeared to be among them.
The bar reeked of cigar smoke when I stepped inside. The place was half empty; since our clubhouse reopened none of our guys hung out at the townie bars. I spotted Damien right away, sitting in the middle of several half naked club whores. They had their own clubhouse, why head out into town and bring the same girls he could have been fucking at home?
I could feel the eyes on me as I made my way across the room in his direction. No one would touch me, not without Damien’s say so, unless they wanted to feel Anarchy’s Reign heating up their asses. One of his girls saw me coming first and angled her body toward me, shoving her tits at me. The skimpy thing she called a dress barely covered her body and I could see some of her nipple poking out of the dress.
“Rafe.” Damien nodded to me when I stepped to his table. Two of his guys stood up from the table next to his, but took their seats again when Damien waved them down. “It’s fine,” he told them. “Girls, go get something to drink.”
“But we have our beer right here.” The short redhead picked up her beer. She must have been new to his little circle and didn’t understand a dismissal when she heard one.
“Janey, let’s go.” The blonde rolled her eyes at her. She pulled her by the arm over to the bar, carrying their drinks in their hands.
“I heard about Jason. My condolences.” He pointed to the chair across the table from him and I sank into it, keeping my eyes fixated on him. Some men spent their entire lives lying and hiding the truth, it was harder to make out when they were sincere or not. He gave the appearance of not bullshitting me.
“Thanks.” I waved off the waitress that ventured to our table. “He didn’t deserve to go down like that. Being shot in a drive by like some little gang rivalry.”
“Rivalry? You don’t think we have anything to do with that shit, do you?” His eyes narrowed, but other than that his expression remained stoic.
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying Jason deserved better than to be gunned down like some street thug.”
“I’ll agree with you on that.” He nodded. “Hell’s Spawn had nothing to do with it.” He grabbed his beer and took a long pull. “I’m going on record with that shit. We didn’t touch Jason. No reason to.”
“No one’s accusing you,” I reminded him, and folded my hands on the table. The image of Tristan’s body lying in that thick puddle of his own blood entered my mind, and I clenched my fists. Who the fuck else would want one of us dead? “Business okay?”
“Why you asking? Of course it’s fine.” Damien leaned a bit toward me. “I hear Gray got the votes. That must have been a kick in the gut for you.”
I cleared my throat, every muscle in my body wanted to jump across the table and shove my fist through his teeth, but it would have to wait. This fucker knew something about Jason’s murder, and probably Tristan’s.
“Nah. He got the votes, I’m still VP. I’ll get my time. Or I won’t.” I shrugged. “You talk to Jason recently? I mean before he was killed?”
“Why would I?”
“Maybe you were working out a deal with that Javier asshole and wanted Jason to help set it up since we’ve worked with him before? Not sure, but one of your prospects was poking around the club that afternoon.” As a probe it was pretty thick.
He flattened his hands on the table and stood up. “I’m not talking club business with you. If your president wants a sit down, you can tell Gray to give me a call.”
The tight smile I’d managed to hold onto since walking in dropped. The chair scrapped along the peanut shelled floor as I pushed away from the table. “Not official conversation here, just having a chat.” I put my hands up in front of me. “I didn’t come in here looking for you, I was looking for Tristan. He was supposed to meet me. You seen him?” I watched his expression closely, looking for a flinch, a change of posture, something to tell me Tristan’s name threw him off balance. Nothing.
“No. We’ve been here all night. Fucking gas leak at the club house kicked us out for a night.”
I nodded, looking around at the guys starting to circle behind him. “Yeah. Okay.” I nodded and stepped away from the table.
If Damien knew anything about Tristan, he didn’t’ show it, and if he had anything to do with Jason’s murder, he was holding it real close to himself, too. I needed more information, more of a reason for them wanting Jason dead.
Damien and Jason hated each other, but they respected each other. But respect didn’t mean shit if Damien was looking to get into a trade Jason didn’t want to see happening around our town.
“Gonna swing by the club, maybe he went there.” I waved my goodbye and headed to the door. I almost made it through when I heard one assclown mutter something under his breath. “What was that?” I turned around, stepping up to the half-drunk asshole.
He craned his neck and stuck his face right up to mine. “I said. If you hadn’t been such a pussy, you’d have taken that president’s gavel from Grays’ fucking hand. You had more right.”
“A vote is a vote, you asshole. You should fucking know that.”
“Fuck that. You were crying too hard to do what you should have done. And now you’re sniffing around here about Jason getting gunned down. You were there, weren’t you? Right there when he took a bullet to his gut? Bet that sucked to see your best friend die right in front of you, and then you fucking turned his club over to Gray.” He shook his head and tsked his tongue.
Enough of that bullshit. My fist landed on his left jaw. Blood spewed out of his mouth before I heard him grunt. He stumbled off his stool and lunged at me. Too drunk to put all his weight behind it, it only knocked the wind out of me. I tossed him to the ground, ready for him to spring up.
Another fucker, larger and soberer than the first, stepped between him and me, grabbing my kutte. “Get the fuck out before you get your ass handed to you.”
“Fuck you.” I pushed away from him and got in two solid punches to his gut before I felt large hands on my shoulders yanking me back. I could hear Damien yelling something in the background but between the sharp pain heating up like a fucking furnace in my bad shoulder, and the big guy’s fist contacting with my face, I couldn’t make it out.
Getting free of the hands holding me, I kicked my foot out and booted the clown behind me. I managed to get a few more licks on the guy putting his fist closer to my face than I’d like. My hands wrapped around the neck of the bigger guy, squeezing as hard as I could I watched his eyes widen, his hands flailing against mine trying to get a breath of air. I held him until he back down on to his knees and I stared into his eyes.
“Okay! Okay!” Damien launched through the crowd watching us. “Enough!” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You made your fucking point. Back off.”
I broke my stare with my prisoner and looked up at Damien. “Your guys so much as look at me funny again, and you’ll feel Anarchy’s Reign all over your asses. Got me?”
“I got you. Get the fuck off my VP.”
I relaxed my fingers, letting the asshole gulp in a few breaths before I gave one more squeeze and let go. “If I find out you had anything to do with Jason’s murder…"
“We had nothing to do with it.” Damien helped his VP off his knees. “Get the fuck out before I let them loose.” He nodded toward the members behind him looking hungry for a fight. Three on one, I could handle, but not all of those fuckers.
“Yeah. Fine.” I backed out of the bar, slamming the door as I left. It was tempting to play dominos with their fucking bikes, but common sense managed to make its way through to my brain. Hoping on my bike I peeled out of the bar, and took off to home. Where Beth was waiting for me.
A car sat in Beth’s driveway, behind hers, when I pulled up to the house. It was already past eight, Maddie would be asleep. Who the fuck was in the house?
I grabbed my gun, glad I hadn’t lost it in my idiotic raid on the Hell’s Spawn, and ran to the house. As I came up to the front door, I heard giggling. Then I heard Beth’s laugh. Light and genuine.
I turned the handle of the door expecting to find it locked. It turned with ease and I shoved the door open. There sitting in the kitchen around the table was Beth and those twins from the bar. They stopped laughing and looked over at me. Beth’s eyes moving to the gun in my hand and then to my shoulder.
“What the hell did you do?” She leapt up from the table and was on me in an instant, pulling my shirt sleeve up to see the damaged. “You ripped your stitches.” The accusation in her voice wasn’t lost on me, but I had some accusing to do of my own.
“I told you not to open the door for anyone.” I snapped at her then nodded to the twins. The one with the purple streaks laughed.
“We aren’t anyone, dipshit, we’re family.” She took a sip of her wine, keeping her eyes locked on me as she tipped the glass.
“Didn’t I say to stay inside, and not let anyone in?”
Beth put my sleeve back down and glared up at me. Those wide green eyes of hers didn’t look the least bit scared or put out, if anything she looked more annoyed than I probably did. “I have to clean this back up. You might need your stitches put back in”
“Just take them out.” I shook my head and shoved my Glock back into my pants. “Maddie sleeping?” I looked over at the closed bedroom door.
“Over an hour now.” Beth nodded. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We need to talk anyway.” I let her walk ahead of me and followed her to her bedroom, but not before pointing at the twins and jerking my thumb to the door. Highlights laughed, the other one just shrugged. I would never get used to people not doing what I fucking told them to do.
“I didn’t see JC out front, when’s the last time he rose past?” I shut the bedroom door.
“I don’t know, half hour. I stopped listening for him when the girls got here.”
“Yeah, the girls. They aren’t supposed to be here.”
“You don’t own me, Rafe.” She stopped digging through the first aid kit to give me a glare. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. I wanted them to hang out, I’ve been stuck inside all damn day. And then you come waltzing in with your shoulder all banged up, a split lip and a bruise on your jaw.”
She pointed to the bed for me to sit while she finished laying out what she needed to take care of my shoulder.
“You could have called me if you needed something” I pointed out.
She snorted. “Right. Call you and ask you if I could have friends over? What? I’m eight all of a sudden?”
“It’s not safe right now, Beth.” She needed to get it through her fucking head that if I was telling her to lay low, she needed to lay low.
“Why? Because I happened to be at the mall when some bikers decided to practice shooting? It had nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Maddie.” Her sigh blew through my hair. “Take your shirt off so I can clean the wound. I don’t have anything to stitch I back up with, so I’ll take the sutures out and use some butterfly band aids to help keep it closed up. It’s partially healed already.”
“Because it’s not safe.” I yanked off my shirt after laying my kutte on the bed.
“Because your president was gunned down? Or because your club runs illegal guns? Maybe it’s because of the drug dealers and other illegal shit you're into?” The burn of the cleanser she poured over my shoulder had my gritting my teeth.
“Someone’s been doing homework.” I glared up at her. “We don’t’ run drugs anymore.”
“But you do cart illegal guns all over the fucking place. Do you know how many kids get brought into the ER every week because they were playing with that garbage? Kids joining gangs at twelve years old! Last week we had an eleven-year-old die on the table from a gunshot to his chest. He was hanging out with some friends on his front porch when a car drove by, one stupid kid jumped out, ran up to him and shot him right in the chest then hopped back in the car and took off. Initiation the cops told us.”
I’d heard about those types of activities before, but we had nothing to do with those. All of our runs were done out of state. “I know it sounds bad…"
“Sounds bad?” She finished plucking out the last of the stitches. “I let you in my house! What the hell was I thinking? My daughter is here. I don’t need complications. I don’t need the drama you bring. Look at us already, Rafe. We aren’t even together, not really, and already I’m locked in my house because it’s not safe for me to go outside?”
I let her finish her job of placing the Band-Aids on my arm. No sense in arguing with her, she seemed pretty riled up and until I could get my hands on her properly, there wouldn’t be any getting to her. She had a point, she was in danger simply because she was my girl. Whoever killed Jason wouldn’t be wanting to leave any loose ends behind, and I was a loose end. Tristan being killed only made things messier, and until I saw the reaction of the club over his death I couldn’t be sure my own club didn’t’ have something to do with it. Tristan wasn’t a huge fan of Gray’s, he’d been pretty vocal about it, too. Having Gray as the president would make things difficult for Tristan, but he never would have betrayed the club or walked out. He would have dealt. So until I knew where the shit was coming from, I had to assume it was headed my way, too.
“I get that you’re pissed about being locked up inside today, and you’re right we haven’t been together long enough for me to really stake my claim on you.” I pulled her hands away from cleaning up the first aid gear and tugged on her until she stood in front of me, between my legs. “But that doesn’t change that you are mine.”
She sighed, but let me settle her on my lap. “You’re impossible.”
“Of course I am.” I grinned, tilting her head up by her chin on my finger tip. “But I’m yours, too Beth. Your claim on me is as strong as mine on you.”
“I’ve known you such a short time.” She shook her head. “You’re dangerous.” When her eyes caught mine I got the sense that she wasn’t referring to the mess with the club, or the fact that I was the VP of a biker club, no, there was something else she meant.
“I’ve never laid claim to a woman before.” I let my thumb run over her bottom lip, enjoying the way she parted her lips for me when I did it. Even when her mind wanted to push me away her body welcomed my touch.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’ve never had a girlfriend before?”
A knock on the door interrupted us before I could answer her. The door swung open and the purple haired twin poked her head in. Giving me a look of irritation she spoke to Beth. “We’re heading out, Beth. Call me in the morning, before you head over.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Beth slid off my lap and followed Brittany.