It seems like the older I get, the faster my life goes by. Almost to the point that, while I’m conversing with someone or in the middle of doing anything—you name it, even jacking off—my train of thought bounces from one end of the broad spectrum to an entirely different one. With nothing more than a tick of the second hand. It’s like colors changing in a prism. The goddamn thoughts ping around in my head so fast. And the closer King and his men get, the more unstable I feel. I can hardly keep up with the pace these days.
Not with these scattering thoughts. And not with my constant frustration of having to deal with all of these motherfucking imbeciles my father called his “men.” I shudder as Gordy, the current pussy in front of me, whines again as he explains why I should stop the sale of his five-year-old niece to the Russian club’s auction next Saturday.
“I’ll find her. I’ll drive to fucking New Orleans if I have to and get the damn O’Malley girl back. I’m sorry, Bentley. I swore I could trust the guy my brother knew at the coroner. He said he looked at the paperwork. He said it was fucking Rox. I didn’t know the kid didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about!”
I cocked the gun before shaking my head back and forth. “No. That’s not going to work. You and what army, you fucking moron! There’s not enough of us! I told you to hand over the BIKES, Gordy! Not our fucking men! We’re down to what?” I grip the hair on the top of his head as I shove, walking him backwards towards the living room wall by the front door of the old barn house. “That puts us at three men now? Four including me?! And I can’t fucking go down there. I can hardly get on the main highways without a cop or a gang of bikes circling my shit. They’re everywhere! If it’s not the law, it’s the fucking outlaws! I can’t breathe, Gordy, and YOU are supposed to be my eyes and ears!” I stab at his forehead with the barrel of my gun. “But the info you’re giving me ain’t worth shit. And that makes you, worth shit.”
I press the gun harder against his skull and wink. It’s all threats at this point though, but he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know I can’t afford to lose another man. And, if he does, he doesn’t show it.
What he does do is piss, which leaves a growing wet stain running down the front of his jeans.
I shove him the rest of the way away against the wall. “Get the fuck out of here.” I jerk my head at the door. “You’re not welcome back. I don’t give a shit if this was your pops’ land. It’s mine now. All of it is.”
“N-no! No! Fine! You can have it! Don’t kill me though, brother. Let’s get that shit in writing. Okay? Come on. Logic and reason. Let’s start there. I’ll leave. Quietly, I’ll leave,” he sputters before coming up onto his knees and placing his hands together as though he’s praying. “Please.” His eyes squeeze shut, and I roll mine before lowering the gun.
“Fine. Stand the fuck up. Finish telling me what the fuck you were saying before you fell the hell apart and cried and pissed yourself. I’m hungry. And horny. And I’m ready for you to leave. Stuttering Shawn just brought in a new stripper who needs an attitude adjustment. Nothing my eight inches and a branding iron won’t fix.” I chuckle, rubbing my hands together after holstering my gun under my cut. “Now.” I kick his knee, and his weight buckles before he can catch it, but he doesn’t fall. “You were saying about Rox? Is she alive? Or isn’t she?”
I don’t think I can accurately describe to you how vital his answer is. I need Rox to be okay. I need her to be safe and just unusually silent as of late. She’s the one who’s been with me. This entire time. She’s the one who helped me that first night when I ran into Pops in this same house, in those same basement quarters we kept Eve in all those months ago, for all that time. The same room where I found out my father wasn’t just as bad as Satan—that he was the man incarnate himself.
I’ll never forget how afraid I was that night. I’d fallen asleep in the back of my father’s old pickup truck. It couldn’t have been more than a week after those guys outside the compound had roughed me up while looking for my old man. The ones with the van? I’m not sure why, but other than kicking the shit out of me, something must have scared them off, because I heard Clutch and some of the older men holler, and a beat of time later, I was coughing up the dust as their van sped away.
I told Jacques about it, but he thought I was lying. Then the same shit happened the very next weekend. Except, this time, Aunt Jacqueline was so bad off that they admitted her to the hospital. And that’s when I wandered outside to make sure Jacques got into his father’s truck safe and sound and his pops came and picked him up. But, that night, when the van came screeching to a halt in the parking lot of the boneyard, I didn’t hit the bushes—that night, I hit the back of my father’s truck. And lay as still as I could for what felt like forever.
I didn’t move a muscle. Hell, I fell asleep! And I didn’t wake up until hours later, when the sun was coming up around the back side of this barn house.
I slowly crept inside the old house, slowly as I possibly freaking could. Never having been inside before, I didn’t know who or what I’d see first, but I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to be seen until I was ready.
And, at first, I suppose I saw exactly what I was supposed to see. Nothing. From the outside looking in, it just looked like a vacant house. One that had been abandoned if not for years then surely months. Only it didn’t smell abandoned, which I remember thinking was odd. Actually, if I recall...I think that’s the reason my feet carried me over the threshold even though I was scared to death.
I cleared the first floor and checked the second, and I was on my way out the way I had come in when the sound of a small child crying stopped me. Then I heard my father growl before he muttered something in a low voice from what seemed to be behind the old-timey fridge. When the broken board moved and revealed the light below, I hesitantly stepped forward. And the sight I saw... Even now, it causes bile to rise in my throat. The shit I saw my father doing to that poor little blond-headed girl crying, begging to know where her mother was... I still have a hard time believing it took me as long as it did to make him pay for the shit I saw him do to Eden that night.
That was before though. Before Rox and I had the boards removed and replaced with a hidden door that led to the basement. The very perfectly situated basement, too. As it’s come into use many times since. As it had been used many more times before that night by my old man.
The fear was different then. I guess it should have been, however. Things like learning you’re the spawn of Satan seem to lessen such unnecessary things as fear. And I knew that night, when I first met that little girl, that she’d be important. I just didn’t know how so. And, in the end, in her end...I guess she was important. However, I had a hard time realizing it at first. Until Rox found me crying behind the house. Her boyfriend had seen me slip into the back of the truck and was laughing at me back at the club with all the other wannabe prospects who hung around the MC when Archer Cain wasn’t around. And she came to check on me all the way out here, in upstate New York. She somehow knew where my father would be, where his truck would be, and she saved me.
That’s how deep my devotion to Roxy Bell runs, if it’s any unit of measure to you and yours. That’s how long I’ve owed Rox. Since I was that fucking young. Since Eden was that fucking young.
And, now, the least I can do is find out if she’s fucking dead or alive. It’s the least I can freaking do.
“I’m sorry, brother.” Gordy’s voice pulls me from my racing thoughts, and I try so hard to focus on it. “I talked to the guy in charge at the coroner. That’s why I’m here instead of on I-95, hightailing it out of here. Getting the hell away from you, like I should. If I were smart, like the rest of the guys. If I didn’t respect the fuck out of you. Out of your pops. Because of the NNNC brotherhood he and my father created. The one we’re evolving as we speak! I wouldn’t still be here. But I am, as it stands. And I’m sorry, Ben...but Rox.” His throat wobbles before he swallows. Hard. Then he shakes his head.
After he awkwardly steps forwards and hugs me, slapping me on the back, he mutters, “You have my number, Bentley. You know how to reach me, yeah?” Then he steps away and turns to leave.
“Say it, you pussy,” I growl, pain slicing through me as the realization of my life and living it alone dawns… “Say she’s fucking dead. Tell me he fucking killed her. Tell me HOW he fucking killed her!” I shout, spit flying off my lips while I lose the little bit of regard I’ve reserved for myself up to this point. Up until this moment, when I’m forced to acknowledge the truth. That Rox and I may not make it out of this. We’re not gonna get to the end of this story with both of us together, safe, and happy.
Suddenly, making it to the end doesn’t seem as important as it did just moments before. Not if Roxy isn’t in the equation, anyway. And, for me, even before I knew the truth about Eden, Rox was always in the equation. Her roles may have changed, or I may have moved her around in my life. But she was always supposed to be there. Here, in the end...I always planned on Rox being here with me.
“But, now, she’s not,” I whisper as tears blur my vision, looking up at the only friend I have left in the world. “She’s not okay like Jacques said. Is she?” My voice wavers, and it causes me to wince. But, despite the pain, I need him to tell me the truth. “Is. She?” I bark, growling out the last word.
“No. I’m sorry, Ben. She’s not okay. And, yes, your brothers at SOS are responsible. They’re responsible for her torture and her subsequent death. I’m not certain whose hands she died at, but...it was her. In the casket. No matter what Jacques Cain says, it was her, man.” He shakes his head before finally leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Not that it helps. Not that any of it does.
I snort before slumping into the recliner off to the side in the living room. “Nope, none of it matters. Not anymore,” I mutter, pulling my phone from my back pocket. After I’ve pulled up Clutch’s number, I try to bob the crazy onslaught of thoughts that accosts my fragile mind frame.
For the first time since Rox stopped me from doing something stupid—like marrying my sister—and since I saw her step out of her black, jacked-up Jeep and glance over her shoulder before smiling as she brought her hand up to her face to block the sun’s glare, I realize I truly am alone this time. And there’s not even anything left to fight for. Not without Rox…
I concede. Bowing out a bit early—I, too, concur. But it’s at this juncture that I see no other way. Nor did I when I initially decided to come here, I think. At least on some level. I knew King or Jacques or one of the other chapters’ presidents would wise up, remember the first place I stashed Eve, and come back to double-check.
Had I known it was gonna be both King and Jacques, however, I’d have at least made sure my Glocks were within reach. But I didn’t have time. And I wonder if Eve and her kid had time. I wonder if they got the time mine and Eden’s kid didn’t.
I’d know the sound of Jacques’s bike any-fucking-where. The one I don’t recognize, I instantly assume is King’s, as it doesn’t sound like anything that’s ever come out of Jacques’s garage. And the only other bikes he’s been playing with besides his own are DDDs.
Other than the two bikes, I don’t hear anyone else pull up. No other cars, no trucks, no vans. After their wheels steady to a stop on the gravel, I hear both men slowly step off their bikes. Then I hear whispering, and someone snaps.
When the front door slams open, the setting sun shines through, blinding me and everything in the room for a split second. Then I hear the sound of bullets being loaded into a chamber just before I smell and taste gunpowder. My ears feel as though they’re going to split open when the bullets begin cutting through the air.
But, somehow...someway, I must've been wrong all this time. Because not a single bullet so much as grazes me. I always assumed that there was no God. There was no Satan—well, I mean other than my dad, I suppose. And my uncle Arch. I’ve always believed there was no punishment or reward for doing it right or wrong here on Earth. And maybe...I might have been wrong. Especially seeing as about a hundred bullets just entered before tearing through this room and not one of them hit me. Coincidence? I don’t believe so.
If it isn’t my father’s saving grace, which I highly doubt, it must be Roxy’s. And a split second later, that thought spurs me from my seat, and I slink around the corner before crawling down the basement stairs.
In search of the hidden tunnel behind the utility sink. It’s small, but it will work. At least unless they smoke me out.