Rafe

 

When I stepped through the front door of the Devil's Nest, I almost jumped out of my skin as an entire room full of Reapers yelled, “Surprise!”

 

There were clusters of black balloons arranged at every table and a huge banner that read “Welcome Home, Rafe!” was strung from the ceiling. There was a large cake on the bar with chocolate and vanilla frosting arranged in the shape of the War Reapers symbol.

 

I made a show of clutching my chest like I was having a heart attack. “Jesus Christ, guys! I just spent the past seven years looking over my shoulder an' you jump out at me like that? I could've shivved the lot of you!” They laughed.

 

Bard stepped forward. He was a short man with neatly-trimmed gray hair and glasses. Most people would look at someone like him and assume he was some kind of accountant or store manager. But then, most people hadn't seen Bard kick ass like I had.

 

“Congratulations on your newfound liberation,” Bard said, embracing me quickly and slapping my back.

 

The others came forward too, hugging me and shaking my hand. There was the usual chorus of prison food jokes, prison shower jokes, and all the other corny stuff that dudes like me got to hear when they got out of the joint. I'd heard them all before, but it didn't matter. At least I was finally home and surrounded by the people who cared about me.

 

Nic came over and handed me a shot of whiskey. A curvy, dark-haired woman in a black cocktail dress was with him. “Good to see you again, man,” Nic said. “This is my wife Lauren.”

 

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Rafe,” Lauren said, smiling and shaking my hand. “Nic's told me so much about you. I hope you liked the cake and the banner. I made them myself. Nic tried doing the cake himself, but...”

 

“Yeah, that ended badly,” Nic said, grinning. “It turns out that mixing up cake batter requires a different skill set than repairing a bike transmission. Who knew, right?”

 

“Nice to meet you, Lauren,” I replied. I swallowed the shot and smacked Nic on the arm. “Holy fuck, Nic! You got married? Never thought I'd see that happen. What the hell else did I miss while I was inside?”

 

Before Nic could answer, Boomer put an arm around my shoulder and poked a cigarette between my lips. For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing the Sergeant-at-Arms patch that used to belong to Nic. “So Rafe, now that you're a free man, what's the first thing you're gonna do?” Boomer asked. “Get laid?”

 

“Yeah, with Sperm's mom!” one of the Reapers in the back called out. The others laughed.

 

“Pffft, seven years in the slammer an' even I wouldn't lay Sperm's mom,” I answered, prompting more laughter. I lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. The food at Potawatomi was shitty, but the worst part had been the fucking smoking ban.

 

“No,” I continued, blowing a smoke ring, “the first item on my fuckin' to-do list is settling up with Jester for the frame job he pulled on me and for the four times he paid people off to put the knife in me up there. For that, I'm gonna send him someplace where it's very hot and there's plenty of pitchforks to go around. That's all I've been able to think about since I went away. So until that's done, I figure everything else can wait.”

 

I noticed that Bard, Nic, and some of the others were starting to look uncomfortable. I looked around, confused. “What?” I asked. “That's not how we do things anymore? Did the Reapers turn into a goddamn ladies' sewing circle while I was gone or what?”

 

“Not quite,” Bard said softly. “But just to be clear, Jester's a capo for the Mancusos. You take him on, you take them all on. Is that really your intention?”

 

“Well, I wasn't gonna do it by myself,” I answered. “I mean, you guys have my back, right? You saw what that animal and his schizo niece did to me. These patches are more than just a fashion statement, last time I checked.”

 

“Of course, man,” Nic replied calmly. “You had seven years stolen from you over some bullshit, and it sucks. You want revenge and you deserve it. Any other year, we'd all be foaming at the mouth to help you get it, even if it meant going to war for it. But this ain't any other year.”

 

“You're fuckin'-A right it ain't,” I answered hotly, wondering what the hell I was hearing. “This is the year I can finally get payback. 'Cause guess what? The last seven weren't. And now you're telling me that if I want it, what, I'm on my own? Is that it?”

 

Bard put his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. That steely stare of his was always tough to read, and tougher to push back against. I realized how quiet the room had gotten.

 

“You're a Reaper, Rafe,” said Bard. “Every man in this room is your brother. You never have to question their loyalty, or mine. If you want to go after Jester and the Mancusos and you want us to back your play, all you ever have to do is ask and we'll be right there with you, to the bitter end.”

 

“Well, that's good to fuckin' hear,” I said, finishing the cigarette and crushing it in the nearest ash tray. “You had me worried for a moment. Now let's grab the guns, find this asswipe, and...”

 

Bard held up a hand. “But before you ask for that, I want you to come to the back room. Growler wants to say hello.”

 

I followed Bard to the back room, confused. When I hadn't seen Growler standing with the others earlier, I'd assumed he must have been running late or sleeping off a hangover. The Nest had never quite seemed like the Nest unless the grizzled VP was standing behind the bar and pouring out whiskey shots. So why was he in the back?

 

Bard opened the door and gestured for me to walk in ahead of him. I did and looked at the figure sitting in a chair in the corner. For a moment, I couldn't understand who he was or why he was there instead of Growler.

 

Then I realized it actually was Growler and felt my knees go loose with shock. I reached out for a nearby chair to steady myself.

 

The last time I'd seen Growler, he'd been a huge and muscular man who'd always stood tall with a mischievous gleam in his eye. But now the muscles in his body had wasted away severely—at least, the parts of his body he still had left. His left eye was gone, along with the ear on that side. His right arm had been cut off at the shoulder. Both feet were missing and I could see they'd been replaced with weird prosthetics of sloping black metal.

 

In his lap, he held a small blackboard. In blue chalk, he'd written “Welcome back!”

 

“Jesus goddamn fuck, Growler,” I breathed. “What happened to you?” My brain couldn't make sense of what I was looking at. Every time I tried, it felt like cars crashing together in my skull.

 

The Reapers were a tough bunch, and we all knew that we might be killed in a fight someday, or maybe even have to live with being maimed in a crash. But I couldn't imagine what could have caused something so ugly to happen to a friend of mine.

 

Growler turned the blackboard around, erased the words on it, and wrote new ones. He turned the board around again to display them. “You think this is bad? Tongue, Balls, Cock = GONE!” Next to it, he'd drawn a smiley face.

 

I felt like I might throw up. Instead, I turned to Nic and Bard, trying to form the right words and failing. “How...what did...?”

 

“There's a lot you need to hear about what went down this past year,” Nic said.

 

“Then you'd better start talking,” I said. “But first, give me another fucking cigarette.”

 

Bard gave me a smoke and lit it while Nic told me what had happened. When Kong had gotten out of Joliet after a three-year stretch, the rest of the Reapers had thrown him a party, too. Except that Vole, a big-timer in the Bonaccorso crime family, had shown up and completely fucked up the party, resulting in a shoot-out that ended with two dead Bonaccorsos and one dead Kong.

 

Giovanni, the head of the Bonaccorso family, had demanded Nic's head since he was the one who'd killed one of the mob guys. When the Reapers told Giovanni to get fucked, he'd kidnapped Growler and spent six weeks torturing him.

 

“Why the fuck am I just hearing about this now?” I demanded. “They got phones in Potawatomi, you know. The goddamn mail still runs, last time I checked.”

 

“Phone calls and letters are monitored,” Nic pointed out patiently. “You know that, Rafe. Anything we said could have been intercepted by the cops. We hated that we couldn't tell you.”

 

“This isn't even all of the damage,” Bard said, pointing to Growler. “Bedbug got his spine shattered with baseball bats, and Tink and Panzer got stabbed up in Joliet.”

 

“All because of me,” Nic added. He couldn't hide the shame in his voice. “Because the Reapers went to war against the most powerful crime family in the city over one fuckin' guy.”

 

“But you won, right?” I asked. “I mean, you must have, or you wouldn't be here.”

 

“We won,” Bard agreed, “but barely. And it meant wiping out almost every Bonaccorso, plus calling in favors that can't be called in again. Plus, what happened with Lauren...”

 

“Don't,” Nic said, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just don't even talk about it, okay? I don't like thinking about it.”

 

I looked at them both and for the first time, I noticed how exhausted they looked. At first I'd assumed it was just because I hadn't seen them in so long and they looked older. But it was more than that. Their faces reminded me of those before-and-after photos I'd seen in magazines of guys who'd been to war. The cocky look that used to be in Nic's eyes had been replaced with a thousand-yard stare.

 

“And it was all the result of a misunderstanding that got out of hand,” Bard said. “If you go gunning straight for Jester, this time, there's no way it can be seen as anything except a full-on declaration of war.”

 

“One the club wouldn't survive,” Nic added. “We took out one mob family, fine, it was a one-time beef. We start targeting others, and every mob outfit from coast to coast will come down on us. We'll never be able to ride free or do any business again without worrying when those fucks will decide to drop the hammer. Probably not just Reapers, either. Every MC will get a big bull's-eye painted on their backs so they can send a message: Bikers do not get to fuck with wiseguys, period.”

 

My head started to throb. I understood what they were saying and I knew they were probably right, but damn, it hurt like a motherfucker. All I'd been able to think about was putting a bullet between Jester's eyes when I got out. It never occurred to me that the other Reapers wouldn't be behind me when I did.

 

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. That's a lot to ask of you guys, especially after everything you've been through already. I don't wanna be the guy who sent the Reapers on a suicide mission. But what do you expect me to do? Forgive and forget? Send Jester a bouquet and a teddy bear with a card attached? 'Hope we're square, live and let live,' whatever?”

 

Growler chuckled in the corner, then nodded and see-sawed his hand in a “maybe, maybe not” gesture.

 

Bard held out a small rectangular patch to me. I took it and saw it had the words “Vice President” on it.

 

“Growler is a Reaper for life, but he's chosen to take a step back from active duty, as I'm sure you can imagine,” Bard said. “So has Nic, since he's got a family to take care of now. Boomer is our new Sergeant-at-Arms. But I kept the VP spot empty, Rafe. I was saving it so I could offer it to you when you got out today. You deserve it, and if you hadn't been sent upstate seven years ago, you'd have gotten it long before now. It's yours if you want it, but first you have to make a promise.”

 

I looked at the patch I'd wanted so badly ever since I joined the Reapers. It would be such an honor to finally know I'd earned it. But I knew what promise Bard wanted from me. “I have to drop the thing with Jester, is that it?” I asked.

 

Bard nodded. “You can't go to war with the Mancusos while you're wearing a Reaper patch unless you want to drag the rest of us into it with you. But if you're willing to let it go, you can be our VP and I can smooth things over with the Mancusos so Jester will leave you alone.”

 

I suddenly flashed back to all the times I'd seen Bard playing chess at a table at the back of the Nest before I got sent away. He was always eager to teach prospects how to play when they asked—and a lot of them did, just because they figured it was a way to get on his good side. He'd patiently remind them over and over to think about each move far in advance and plan for every possibility.

 

And I realized that he'd just check-mated me.

 

“You planned every part of this, didn't you?” I asked Bard. “You knew I'd come in here wanting Jester's blood, so you stashed Growler back here like some kind of fuckin' prop, and then had the VP patch ready to just hand over, too. The carrot and the stick, huh? I'd forgotten what a calculating motherfucker you were, Bard.”

 

Bard raised his eyebrows. “You can call me anything you like, as long as you tell me it worked.”

 

I sighed. “Yeah. It worked. It was a shitty way to use Growler, though.”

 

Growler shrugged and scribbled on the board again, holding it up. “Needed you to get the point. Don't let this happen to you!” Next to it, he'd drawn an arrow pointing to himself.

 

Nic put a hand on my shoulder. “No one's trying to fuck with you here, Rafe. Everyone here respects you and what you went through. We were just trying to put it to you in terms we'd have understood ourselves, if the situation were reversed.”

 

I thought about it. When I was at Potawatomi, I was worried that when I got out, I'd be running behind the pack for a while and waiting to catch up since I'd been out of the loop. Now I was looking at my chance to not just run with the pack again, but help lead it.

 

Still, seven years was seven fucking years. Seven years of food that tasted like cardboard and a cell that was a freezer in winter and a goddamn oven in the summer. Seven years of no music, no pussy, no TV, and wondering when the next guy would try to come at me with a sharpened toothbrush. Seven years without showering or shitting alone, and without riding my bike down the highway with the wind in my face and feeling truly alive.

 

All that, plus a bogus fucking drug charge that'd be pinned to my record for the rest of my life. And maybe even worse than that, a rep on the street as some kind of goddamn rapist, all thanks to the lies of a crazy bitch with a soul sculpted from dried-up dogshit.

 

“What if I can't let it go?” I asked.

 

“Then you go and do what you need to do,” Bard said, “but you leave your vest here. If you do this thing and you manage to make it out alive and with no heat on you, your cut and the VP patch will still be here waiting for you.”

 

I nodded. “Let me think it over,” I said.

 

“Absolutely,” Bard said. “Now come on, let's enjoy the party.”

 

There was cake and dancing and laughing, not to mention the obligatory parade of girls in tube tops and miniskirts that the Reapers wanted to introduce me to. I wanted to relax, but I couldn't stop thinking about what I was going to do. I'd missed these guys so much. Part of me wanted to make sure this moment never ended by accepting the VP patch and forgetting my rage.

 

But that's the thing about rage, when it's real.

 

Anger isn't real rage. Anger's what happens when some dude gets cut off in traffic or gets a drink spilled on him in a bar by a guy who acts like a dick about it instead of apologizing. Anger can happen many times a day. The average person can probably drink the anger away quickly enough, or smoke it away, or even fight it away if it comes to that.

 

Real rage is something different. It only happens when something important is taken away from a person, and they know that no matter what they do, they'll never get it back. Rage is the name for the hole that leaves inside. Nothing can ever fill that hole again because it's the exact shape of what was lost, but the only thing that will come close is revenge.

 

Rage was what I'd felt as a kid when my parents' house caught fire and they'd died. I'd had to spend the next seven years of my life getting passed around from one foster home to another. Some of the families I was given to were violent, some were perverts, and some just didn't give a fuck. By the time I was eighteen and on my own, I'd have given anything to get my hands on God for ripping my whole childhood away from me in some stupid, senseless accident. I'd had to deal with the fact that I'd never be able to get revenge for that.

 

But I could get revenge for this. And the idea of just letting it go felt about as realistic as deciding to detach my own head and carry it around under my arm.

 

Boomer tapped me on the shoulder and gestured for me to follow him to a corner. When I did, he leaned in urgently. “Bard gave you the speech, right? About not going after Jester?”

 

“Yeah,” I said.

 

Boomer nodded. “Sure he did. Well, I just want to say that he's absolutely right. You can't go after the Mancusos, and if you did, the rest of us Reapers sure as fuck couldn't help you.”

 

“I got that, thanks,” I replied. What the fuck was this about?

 

“So for instance,” Boomer continued, licking his scarred lips, “if I happened to know that Jester's pal Angelo always hangs out at a pizza joint called Maggia's, then I certainly wouldn't be in a position to tell you something like that. Otherwise, you might be tempted to follow him to Jester and stick a blowtorch in his ear until his brains roast.”

 

I raised my eyebrows. “And we couldn't have that,” I said.

 

“No, we couldn't,” Boomer agreed. “One more thing. Chicago's become a major shithole since you left. Crime everywhere. I blame the schools. Anyway, I figured you might need this.” He reached behind him, taking a 9mm Glock from the waistband of his jeans and handing it over. Before I could thank him, he held up a finger and dug into his pockets, producing two extra clips of ammunition.

 

I smiled and gave Boomer a bear hug. “Thanks, man,” I whispered in his ear. “I owe you big-time. Congrats on being Sergeant-at-Arms.”

 

“Hey, congrats on the VP patch,” he answered. “Just make sure you live long enough to sew it on, okay?”

 

I told him I'd do my best.

 

I didn't realize that might not be good enough until it was too late.

 

 

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