Wolf didn’t speak after that. Not a word as we rode the elevator down to the lobby or syllable as he wheeled me outside. Nor did he say anything when Riggs jumped out of the parked SUV. Instead, he released his hold on the wheelchair and left me on the side of the curb as he made his way toward the passenger seat.
“There he is,” Riggs greets, pushing his aviator shades on top of his head. Grinning from ear to ear, he stares at the wheels on the chair and spreads his arms wide. Throwing in an eyebrow wiggle for extra emphasis, the always animated brother gives a low, approving whistle.
“Would you check out those wheels,” he croons, circling me. “You have no idea how much fun we’re going to have with this thing,” he adds as he moves to stand in front of me. “I’m thinking we master the fine art of wheelies first. Then, after the party, we’ll take this bad boy to the streets and work on donuts. I bet if I attach a motor to this thing we can figure a way to do burnouts too.”
While Riggs has always had a larger-than-life personality, part of me can’t help but wonder if he’s laying it on thick because he was the only Knight spared from the blast. With all the drama going on at the time, he and his woman were hiding out at his parents’ fancy mansion which scored him a ticket out of attending Jack and Reina’s wedding. I guess it pays to knock up a mobster’s sister. In my next life, I’ll be sure to go that route instead of offering to play the part of the wedding singer.
My eyes dart to his vest and I immediately notice the new patch sewn into the worn leather.
“Sargent at Arms?” I question, meeting his gaze. “That’s new.”
“It’s temporary,” he explains. “I’m just filling in for Pipe,” he continues, his face growing serious. “You know about that, right?”
Leather paraded the halls of the hospital for months and though I often threw every visitor out of my room, it didn’t stop them from showing up day after day. Most of the time they tried to lift my spirits, other times they caught me up to speed with what was going on in the club.
Sometimes I listened.
Sometimes I didn’t.
The day Blackie showed up I listened. I heard him loud and clear when he told me Pipe’s wife died in the explosion. Picturing him kneeling amongst the ruins and finding Oksana with her neck slit made me forget about my own misery for a brief moment and I found myself genuinely concerned for our Sargent at Arms.
Blackie continued to go on, revealing that it wasn’t long after the blast the club took to their bikes in search of retribution. All signs pointed to our number one enemy, Charlie Teardrops, and they rode up to Boston to take him and his club out. After Pipe carved the tattooed teardrops from Charlie’s skin, he turned in his patch to Jack and went off the grid.
Judging by Riggs’ new title, he’s still not ready to come home to the scene of the crime.
I can’t say that I blame him.
I don’t know how I’m expected to go back to worshiping the reaper when I’m still so bitter.
“I heard,” I say finally. “I didn’t know they voted you to take his place,” I explain as he steps around me and pushes my chair to the edge of the curb.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he says, pulling open the back door. “We’ll catch you up to speed on the way to Wolf’s.”
At the mention of his name, I turn my attention to him and I watch as he rolls the window up.
“What’s his problem?” Riggs questions. Thinking better of it, he holds up a hand and shakes his head. “Don’t answer that. He’s grumpier than usual because he had to give up the salami and mortadella.”
“The what?”
“How do you think he dropped all that weight? He’s been on a low salt diet since the heart attack. The crazy fuck has us all eating vegetables and shit. He’s even got a garden at Pipe’s garage. You know, in case you need a bushel of basil with your tune-up.”
Maybe I didn’t wake up from the coma.
“Arms up,” Riggs orders. In one swift move, he lifts me from the chair and ushers me into the back of the SUV. Leaning back, he flips his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and points a finger at me. “Buckle up, it’s the law.”
Yeah, this can’t be real life.
“Quit your yapping and get the fuck in the car,” Wolf orders as Riggs slams the door shut. Jogging around the front of the truck, he slides into the driver seat and quickly peels away from the hospital.
It’s at that moment, riding through the streets of Brooklyn, that I’m hit by an onslaught of emotions. It’s the stark realization that life as I know it has changed. No stranger to tragedy, one might argue I’ve suffered worse. That I should be happy to be alive. Especially since Pipe’s wife died in the same explosion I survived. What no one realizes is that I’m a prisoner. It’s not concrete walls and iron bars that keep me confined. My prison is my body. It’s these legs and that motherfucking chair.
I’ve been stripped of my rights, unable to do all the things I love. The things that make the journey worth the struggle.
I can’t ride.
I can’t fuck.
I’m helpless and that…that ain’t livin’.
I bet you anything, my father felt the same way. I’ll even wager it’s the reason he took his own life. It gave him an advantage over all the things he no longer could control. If I close my eyes, I can picture him standing in front of the mirror, searching his reflection for the courage to reclaim his manhood.
“Earth to Linc,” Riggs calls from the front seat. Bleaching the image of my father from my mind, I shake my head and meet Riggs’ eyes in the rearview mirror. “You weren’t listening to a thing I said, were you?”
Wolf turns in his seat and pierces me with a glare.
“Pay attention,” he orders. “I know you think everything is about you but, maybe you can stop feeling sorry for yourself long enough to understand you’re not the only one who has been living in hell.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” I growl, balling my fists.
“You’re not the only one suffering and it’s about time you realized that shit,” Wolf replies. “Your legs are fucked but the doctors are optimistic you’ll walk again. You just gotta put the work in and make it happen. However, there are some of us that can’t fix what’s broken. Pipe won’t ever hold his wife again and the last fucking memory he has is watching her being wheeled into the morgue. Jack lost his hearing and his wife went into premature labor. We lost two fucking prospects too. Then, there is Blackie who was just recently informed by a bunch of pigs they’re going to exhume his wife’s dead body.”
“Don’t forget Yankovich,” Riggs interjects, hissing the name. “I’m going to take a shit on that motherfucker.”
Ignoring Riggs, Wolf continues to lay into me, introducing me to the ultimate villain. The faceless man behind every single act of terror to hit our club.
Vladimir Yankovich.
The elusive gangster whose torment knows no bounds.
The man who they now believe is responsible for sending that sick fuck into the clubhouse with the bomb. He didn’t stop there though. As I underwent surgery after surgery, he wreaked havoc on the club every chance he got. Starting with Stryker and his girl, Gina—who also happened to be the niece of the late Victor Pastore.
Victor was the notorious gangster who ran the eastern seaboard and partnered with Jack after my old man died. Together, the powerful duo kept the streets of New York clean. If you tried to sell drugs under their thumb, you found yourself and your stash floating in the Hudson. After Victor died, Jack decided the club was done making nice with the mob and Gina’s brother Rocco took over their late uncle’s empire.
Shortly after the transfer of power, Gina was brutally raped. Being she wasn’t just Rocco’s sister but, also Stryker’s old lady the club couldn’t ignore it and just like that the Satan’s Knights were back in bed with the mob.
The more they uncovered about Yankovich, the bigger a monster he turned out to be. A monster who didn’t just show up out of nowhere, one who had been committing crime after crime for over fourteen years.
A monster who preyed on innocent girls.
Once they had connected Yankovich to Gina’s rape, Cobra dropped another bomb on them. Turns out, Yankovich was also the man who kidnapped Cobra’s twin sister, Ally, when they were fourteen. With no body, their parents refused to give up hope that she was still alive and hired a bounty hunter after the cops closed the case on her disappearance.
The bounty hunter was the one who named Yankovich responsible for Ally’s disappearance but before Cobra’s parents could get their revenge, he murdered them. As the only living survivor, Cobra has been hunting this motherfucker by himself.
Well, not no more.
He brought the bounty hunter to Jack, and he revealed everything he knew about the Russian menace to the club. Including a connection to the president of our Albany charter, Rush.
“We sent Deuce to Albany to sniff around,” Wolf says.
“Why not Stryker if he was originally from that charter?” I question, trying to make sense of everything they were unloading on me.
“He was too busy mending Gina and Cobra had just found out he had a daughter,” Riggs offers. “That don’t matter though because Deuce found more than we could’ve ever imagined,” he adds.
“Rush kidnapped Cobra’s kid and took Deuce too,” Wolf continues.
“Wait—what?”
“Follow me, kid, or we’ll be here until Christmas,” Wolf hisses, drawing out a deep breath. “Anyway, once we figured out Rush took them, we rode up to Albany and brought the mayhem.”
“We fucked shit up is what he means,” Riggs corrects.
“Right,” Wolf mutters, rolling his eyes. “We got there and, the place was already in shambles. Rush’s club turned on him when they realized he took the kid and they led us straight to Rush’s safe house.”
“So, Deuce and the kid are okay?”
“Deuce, the kid, and Cobra’s sister,” Wolf reveals.
Sure I heard him wrong, my eyes narrow in disbelief. Riggs tears his eyes from the road and glances over his shoulder at me.
“Yeah, man, it was crazy shit. Blackie almost blew her head off.”
“Would you watch where you’re going?” Wolf growls, smacking him upside the head.
“She’s alive?” I ask trying to recall if anyone had mentioned this during their visits.
“Yankovich sold her to Rush,” Wolf supplies. “Deuce has been watching over her, getting her re-acclimated to life but, the poor girl is all sorts of fucked in the head. God knows what she’s really been through.”
“Like I said, I’m going to shit on this motherfucker so bad,” Riggs grunts.
“Why is he still breathing?” I sneer.
“Because the son of a bitch keeps ghosting us,” Riggs offers.
Wolf reaches over the back of his seat and cups my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. Once he’s sure he has my undivided attention, he lowers his hand and levels me with his beady eyes.
“When you think you’re fucked, when you want to use that chair as an excuse, I want you to look at Gina. Watch her smile and remember every time she closes her eyes she relives the rape. Then look at Cobra and think about how he must’ve felt when he stood on a pier and sacrificed himself to a bunch of fucks because he thought his daughter suffered the same fate as his sister. Lastly, I want you to look at Ally. Look at the woman who lost fourteen years of her life being a prisoner. Think about her as a frightened child taken from her family. Picture the young girl who was likely raped and tortured for over a decade. Look at her and then look at yourself.”
There are no words for me say.
“You don’t got it so bad, do you?”
No words at all.