KICK

Two Years Ago

I push Cindy, or Kim, or whatever the fuck her name is off of my dick the minute I finish coming and collapse on my bed beside her. She lets out a sexy little moan and crawls up the mattress, lying down flat on her stomach.

“God, the way you fuck is incredible, Daniel.”

I fucking hate this part. I mean, really? Could she come up with something any more unoriginal? Was it the four orgasms I just gave her that gave it away? I hate this part because all I want is for her to take her skanky-arsed pussy out of my room and away from my bed before she gets cum all over my fucking sheets. But I don’t kick her out; maybe it’s cause I’m lonely, or maybe I’m just too fucking lazy to point towards the door. Either way, the bitch is taking up space in my bed, and even though I hate it, I couldn’t be fucked doing shit about it.

 “It’s Kick,” I say, rolling onto my back and pulling a smoke from the bedside table. I light it up and take a deep drag, blowing out smoke rings. “Only my friends call me Daniel, and you are not my friend.”

“Well we seemed pretty friendly a moment ago,” the whore says. She snatches my cigarette and draws the smoke into her lungs. I don’t try and reclaim it. The butt has ruby red lipstick all over it, and I have no desire to have this whore’s mouth anywhere near mine. Instead, I close my eyes and let the pull of post-orgasmic bliss drag me under.

Seconds later, some arsehole is pounding on my door.

“What?” I shout, waking up the club whore next to me. She groans and buries her head beneath the pillow.

“Time for church, kid.”

Ah, fuck, my goddamned dad. I’m gonna get a fucking arse-rimming about the stunt I pulled at the rally. My dad, Robert Johnson, aka Juke, has never beaten around the bush about his desire for a better son. All my life he’s told me how inferior I am, how unworthy I am of the patch, and how Ethan has always shown more promise as a prospect than I ever did. But Ethan is a traitor, a rat—at least in the club’s eyes. They don’t know he never sold us out; he just traded his cut for his freedom, and by the looks of the girl he was shacking up with, I’d say it was the smartest move he ever made. The club don’t know about any of that, though. If they did, I’d be dead because I shot my VP in the back to save the friend who abandoned me and I took a beating to help the bastard escape. I guess I really am unworthy of the patch I wear because I chose a civilian over the brotherhood. I chose Ethan, and I’d do it again because he is more family to me than the rest of the brotherhood has ever been.

“Sometime today, arsehole,” Juke hollers, banging on the door.

“I’m comin’,” I shout back, bolting out of bed and sliding into a pair of stained jeans, a black T-shirt, and my cut. “Hold your fucking horses, Dad. Jesus.”

I slap the club whore on the arse. “Get up. I got business.”

“Go sort your business. I’ll be here waiting when you get back.” She gyrates against the mattress, and yeah, her arse is tempting, but been there, done that, probably got the fucking clap to prove it.

I take hold of her arm and yank her upright.

“Ow, you’re hurting me.” She claws at my hand, attempting to free her wrist. I stalk towards the door and open it, depositing her arse in the hallway, buck naked. “Jeez, you’re an arsehole, Kick.”

“I learned everything I know from dear old dad here,” I say, folding my arms and setting my gaze on my father. He looks just like me, but older: blue eyes, dirty blond hair, full sleeves, blond scruff, and like he’s spent twenty years doing hard time. He didn’t, of course. My father’s too smart to be caught by the boys in blue, and he’ll tell you, too. Every fucking chance he gets.

 I step into the hall and pull my keys out of my jeans, locking the door behind me.

“Can I at least get my clothes?” she whines, standing now and covering herself from our eyes like she’s the Virgin fucking Mary.

“Door’s locked, sweetheart,” I say and fold my arms over my chest again. This is sort of a defence mechanism when my dad’s around. I’ve done it since I was a kid, and try as I might, I’ve never been able to stop.

Juke chuckles at the club whore—or maybe he’s chuckling at me. I don’t know. I don’t fucking care. My father pulls the whore at my door towards him, mauling the face off of the bitch I just fucked. He’s such a fucktard. Everything is a goddamned competition with him, and he bests me every fucking time. He makes sure of it.

When he pulls away, the bitch is gasping for breath. Her nipples are hard, and her eyes are hungry, not for me, but for my old man. My stomach roils.

“Go wait in my room, Clara. Get that pussy warmed up and ready for me, baby. I’m gonna pull out all the shit I didn’t teach junior, here.” Juke smacks her arse, and she giggles as she traipses down the hall. Fuckin’ trollop.

My father turns to me with a smug smile. If I could bury my fingers in his eye sockets and still keep my kidneys intact, I would, but attacking another member unprovoked and without a club vote is suicide.

“So what’s the prez need help with now? Wiping his fuckin’ arse?”

Juke sucker punches me, right in the gut, no holds barred. The fucker hits me as hard as he would anyone. I bend double, coughing up my guts as he towers over me. “Show some fuckin’ respect.”

“Fuck you,” I wheeze, squeezing my eyes tightly closed in preparation for a knee to the face. It doesn’t come, and when I’m done hacking up my insides I straighten.

“What the fuck is taking you two so long?” Prez’s voice rings out from the end of the hall. Juke and I both turn to him.

“Just teaching the boy some manners, Prez.”

Prez smirks. “Seems like he should be old enough to have that shit down already. Now come the fuck on, I got a job for you.”

“You need me, Prez?” Daddy douche asks. I don’t know how my dad got his road name. I don’t much care either, but mine is a constant source of embarrassment for him. A kid with bikes in his blood, a third generation Angel who couldn’t remember to put up the fucking kickstand before taking off in front of a couple of insanely hot chicks is as much of an embarrassment to my old man as if I’d been born mongoloid, or black, or gay.

Dear old dad is a raving racist, homophobic bigot.

“You got someplace else you need to be?” Prez asks.

“Yeah, eatin’ out my sloppy seconds,” I say to Prez with a smirk. The next thing I know I’m shoved up against the wall, Juke has his hand wrapped around my throat, and oxygen is in very limited supply. He tightens his grasp and gets all up in my face as I claw and buck against his hands. I might be half his age, but my father is stronger than me; he makes sure of it. He’s stronger in every way, and he never misses a chance to make sure I know it, either.

“Put the kid down.”

Juke doesn’t listen. Instead, he squeezes harder. His gaze is unrelenting and intent. If he thought he could get away with squeezing the life out of me right here in front of our prez, he would. I can see it written all over his face. I’ve felt it since the day I was born.

“That’s a fucking order, Juke.” My father drops me, and I slide down the wall, gasping for each precious breath. I shoot daggers up at him, but it makes no difference. Juke Johnson has never been afraid of a bug he could squash so easily under his boot.

 “Round up the rest of the brothers and head on up to church. I need Kick’s help on something.”

“You do?” Juke asks, his brow pinched tightly with unease.

“I just said I did, didn’t I? Now get the fuck outta here.”

Juke shoots me a black look and wanders off up the hall, slamming his fist against every bedroom door on the way and calling the brothers to church.

“You alright?” Prez asks, holding out a hand and helping me to my feet.

“Yeah, nothing I haven’t seen, heard, and felt before,” I mutter. I follow Prez down the empty hall in the opposite direction from my father. Unease pricks at my skin as we walk out of the back entrance and down a flight of stairs that lead to a locked door. My heart pounds as he punches in a key code and we enter the dimly lit room. It’s a small entryway, barely big enough for the two of us, but it’s not the confined space that has the hair standing on the back of my head—it’s what the dark hallway beckoning before us represents. All four rooms have their doors closed, but only one has its light on. I can see through the crack beneath the door. I throw Prez a panicked look over my shoulder. I’ve seen these rooms only one other time, when Ethan’s dad Tiny betrayed the club. He was trussed up like a fucking Christmas ham, had his Angels tat burned clean off of his back. And then he was gutted like an animal, his stomach and intestines spilling out over the concrete floor as he writhed and gasped like a fish on the hook. It was brutal, by far the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed, and when you grow up inside the MC you know brutal, inside out and back to fucking front.

He knows.

He knows I betrayed the brotherhood. He knows I shot Rocker in the back to save Ethan. 

I take a step back and barrel into him, but his arms wrap around me like a vice. “Hey, hey, hey, where you goin’, kid?”

He’s going to kill me, though it wouldn’t be a quick and painless death. The president of the Angels doesn’t do quick and painless. No. He likes to stretch that shit out, savour his revenge. My heart pounds against my chest, seeking a way out of its meat and bone cage.  

  “Start walkin’,” Prez commands. For a moment I just stand there, anticipating his next move, marking mine. And then slowly I take a step forward, and another, and another until I’m standing before the closed door of the only room in this underground torture chamber to not be sitting in complete darkness.

In the past when a brother has betrayed us, the entire club has been present. They stand guard and watch on stone-faced as the brother is stripped of their patch, their tattoos, and their dignity.

I don’t know why he’s doing this alone, unless they’re not planning on telling the club anything. Unless he wants my death to be as quick and unmemorable as taking out the fucking garbage. A part of me doesn’t blame him. If I were in his shoes, I’d annihilate me too.

“Quit fuckin’ around and open the door, Kick,” Prez says. Despite the pounding in my head and heart, despite the synapses firing a warning to every single cell in my damn body, I reach for the handle and turn it. Unsurprisingly the door is unlocked, and I’m met with no resistance. I push into the space, with fear and hatred and so much loathing for myself; for my dad being the one to indoctrinate me into this fucked-up family; for Ethan for getting me into this mess; and even for my prez, for getting to be the fucker to end my life with a single bullet to the back of the head and then go home to his loving wife and children.

My life doesn’t so much flash before my eyes as it becomes a slowly spinning cycle of images—my dad’s disappointment, the whore who birthed me lying dead in a pool of her own vomit after ODing, my six-year-old self not giving enough of a crap about her to even pick up the phone and try calling my father. When he’d come to see us three days later I was passed out on the lounge room floor, the remnants of a box of Cocoa Pops littered all around and cartoons blaring. My mother had never liked the TV; not because she thought it would rot my brain, like most other mums, but because she was never sober long enough to understand that what was playing out before her wasn’t real. The first time I’d met Ethan and given him shit about his mum’s prim and proper outfit, I’d copped a blow to the face for that one, and a broken nose. The truth was, I was jealous. I saw how his dad doted on him, how his whole family was this perfect well put-together—albeit mostly outlaw—package that I had never had, and I hated him for it. I’d been looking to stir shit, and stir shit I had. He’d smacked me out in front of everyone at an Angels’ barbeque; I’d repaid the favour. Our fathers had thought it was fucking hilarious, and after the rest of the families had gone home Ethan and I were pulled aside and pitted against one another time after time, the promise of Harley’s and the brotherhood dangled before us like bait on a hook. After that it was flashes of various club whores, stealing shit with Ethan, crashing cars and running riot in a town that held endless possibilities for two wannabe outlaw teenage thugs.

Prez pushes me forward into the room, and I’m met with the wall of muscle that is Tank, my brother, the only brother who knows me the way Ethan once did. The only friend I have left in the world, and the only man Prez calls in to do the shit that others won’t. I guess if it has to be anyone, it should be him. Him or Moose. Maybe even both.

Tank stares down at me sympathetically, pressing his lips together, his massive arms folded in front of his chest, he looks hesitant, and goddamn it, this may just be the only time I’ve ever seen him show remorse.

Beyond Tank, I can hear a muffled cry, and I glare up at him then behind me at Prez, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Both glare back, stone-faced, unrelenting in their fucking crypticness. For a half second, I fear the noises might be coming from Ethan. Perhaps they’ve captured him and have him tied up down here too, ready to dish out as much pain to him as to me.

 At least I can say assuredly that my dear old dad’s loyalty would never waver. For him it’s always been the club; he could give two fucks about his bastard son. I give a smug nod of satisfaction when I realise this is the one thing my father has wanted since the day I was born—to snuff out the life of his arsehole, good-for-nothing son, to erase all trace of me and his ties to the stupid junkie whore I called a mother. I smile up at Tank because I know that as much as my father has always wanted this, he’ll never be the one to get to do it. And that fills me with a sense of joy and courage that I’ve never felt in my twenty-seven years.

“Well, move out of the fuckin’ way and let the kid into the room, arsehole,” Prez barks, and Tank steps aside to let me see the room beyond him.

In the corner is a girl, definitely not Ethan, but not unfamiliar either. Her long legs are wrapped in leather, she’s barefoot and gagged, and her face is a little banged up, but she still looks every bit as fuckable as she did when I was handcuffed and beaten with a baton by police at her feet last night.

She glares up at me and screams a long line of profanities—at least, I think that’s what she’s shouting behind her gag.

I spin around and glare at Prez. “What the fuck is she doing here? Are you insane?”

My heart is racing now for a different reason. What in the fuck is he thinking, abducting the fuckin’ princess of the Severed Sons and stowing her on Angel property?

Prez shoots me a hard glare and steps out around me, heading for the girl. She shakes her head and yanks on the restraints binding her arms behind her back. Prez pulls his blade from the sheath on his buckle as he approaches her. The girl whimpers.

“Your daddy’s been fuckin’ shit up for me for a long time, sweetheart. Think it’s time I pay back the favour.”

“Prez,” I venture. “She’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“But she does, Kick. See, Slayer’s been fuckin’ my shit up for too long.”

“She’s innocent.”

Prez stands and whirls around to face me. “This is why I wanted you here, boy, because you’re too fuckin’ innocent. You wanna be worthy of that patch I gave you, then you gotta be willin’ to do whatever it takes to prove you’re an Angel. And Angels don’t let the scourge of the fuckin’ earth dictate what deals they can and can’t make. Angels rise above all those other fuckers.” He smiles at me, and dread creeps its way up my spine. “It’s time to spread your wings, kid. Time to show Slayer what happens when you fuck with Angels. This pretty little bitch is gonna be my plaything, and you and Tank here are gonna watch her for me. Make sure she doesn’t fly the fuckin’ coop.”

Prez hooks two fingers in around her gag and yanks it out of her mouth. She screams, and the bitch has to have the biggest set of lungs on her I’ve ever heard, but it won’t do her any good, not down here.

“Scream all you want, little darlin’. Ain’t no one gonna hear you down here. Except Kick and Tank, that is. Hell, if he’s a good dog, I might even let little lover boy over there have a piece of this fine, sweet arse.” Prez shoves his hand under her arse and squeezes hard. She tries jerking free, but he’s not letting her go far.

“My father’s going to find me, and then he’s going to come fuck you up,” she says, and fuck me if I’m not fucking rock-hard by the determined look in her eyes already.

“Hear that, boys? Slayer’s gonna fuck our shit up for hurtin’ his little girl.” Prez grins, and then turns back to the woman. “I’m counting on it, sweet girl.”

He leans in, getting up in her face. I can’t hear what he’s whispering, but I know it’s not good. The girl rears back and head-butts the president of the Angels. The blow makes them both sway. Her eyes gleam with tears. Prez reels back, shaking his head free of the pain, I imagine. For a half-second he just blinks at her, eyes wide, mouth slackened with surprise, and then the tension in the room explodes as he comes up on his knees and backhands her across the cheek. Her head rocks back into the wall so hard that the sound of her skull hitting the brick is audible.

I don’t think; just act.

I lurch forward, but I’m stopped by a wall of muscle. Tank. Tank is standing between me and my prez, between him and the blade in my hand that I have no recollection of pulling. Beyond him, I hear her. The sound of a struggle, muffled grunts, the sick sound of flesh pounding flesh, and the terrified shrieks that follow as he lays into her with his fists. The scuffle as she fights to get away from him, and the sobbing that bores through my head like a fucking drill.

Tank eyes the knife in my hand. “You gonna use that thing, brother?” He doesn’t bother to whisper. Prez is otherwise occupied, and her cries prove it.

“Get out of the way,” I whisper, trying to sum up in my head all the ways I could take down the man in front of me. Truth is, if it were anyone else I probably could, but not Tank. No one takes down Tank.

“Think about this, man,” he whispers. “You gonna go up against the prez over some bitch you don’t know?”

I don’t answer, I lunge instead, but Tank is a better fighter than me—he always has been. He’s bigger and better in every way, and I’m caught up in his huge arms as he holds me back and forces me to watch my prez, the man who is supposed to lead us, the man who has been a better father to me than my own, shoving himself inside an innocent girl. A girl I wanted, a girl I had—no, a girl I have to have.

Struggling in Tank’s hold, I scream, and I fight, but I’m as useless as tits on a fucking bull, just like my father told me I was all these years.

I can’t see her face. Her cheek is shoved against the filthy concrete, facing the wall as Prez holds her down and fucks her from behind. I’ve fucked plenty of women this way before, hog-tied them and ignored their pleas when they begged me to stop, but it wasn’t real. Their cries were met with harder thrusts, and their bodies betrayed their protests by coming harder and faster than they had with anyone else. Those bitches left with breathy thanks and promises on their lips to return.

This is nothing like that, and still as I stand, rendered immobile by Tank, and unable to free myself, I can’t look away, because I’m rock-fucking-hard inside my jeans, and a part of me wishes more than anything that I could trade places with Prez. I wish that I was the one filling her, and tearing her up from the inside. That’s the really sick thing about it; that I’m just as hard as he is right now, watching this woman get raped.

Guilt consumes me, twisting my guts like a slab of rotten meat full of hungry maggots. I close my eyes, but I see the two of them burned into the inside of my lids: Prez on top of her, holding her down, his dick slick with blood and spit as he thrusts inside her, again and again, while the woman kicks and bucks her hips, trying to unseat him.

I’ve seen violence. I’ve lived and breathed it since I was a baby. I’ve been shrouded in hurt, and pain, and other people’s anguish for the longest time that I dared to think I was immune.

I’d thought I was safe from it. But no one in the club is ever safe; no one ever would be. Because the second you let your guard down, some motherfucker’s gonna seize the opportunity to fuck you over. Especially those closest to you. Especially those you trusted.

Prez gives one final thrust, groaning as he rides out his orgasm, and sags on top of her. Beneath his bulky frame, the girl trembles. Her breathing is too shallow, too stunted. Prez rolls off of her and stands, zipping up his leathers. He pulls a pack of smokes from his pocket and lights up. The acrid stench of tar and nicotine burns my nostrils. The contents of my stomach threaten to make a reappearance.

Prez takes the few short steps towards me and glances down at my unsheathed knife that had fallen on the floor during the scuffle with Tank. He bends down and scoops it up, turning it over in his palm, testing its weight. He thrusts it towards me, just missing my arm. I don’t flinch; of course I don’t. Flinching would make me a pussy, and I am a lot of things, but a pussy isn’t one of them.

“You got some geriatric condition I don’t know about, kid?” he asks.

I don’t respond because I know there’s more coming, and truth be told I don’t know if I can speak without losing my shit altogether.

“’Cause I can’t figure how your knife came to be on the floor, at my back.”

He holds the blade out, and I gingerly take it from his outstretched hand. It would be so easy just to flip it around in my hand and drive it into his stomach, but with Tank here I’d be dead within seconds. You don’t betray your brotherhood, and you sure as shit don’t fucking drive a knife through the belly of your prez for a bitch you hardly know. I sheath the knife and glare at him. He pulls the cigarette from his lips, and a long cylinder of ash falls away to nothing, dispersing into the air around us. Prez grabs hold of my arm, yanking me towards him and pinning my elbow in a lock that could see him breaking it if I were to try and twist free. He watches my face, grinning like a madman as he pushes the lit cigarette into my flesh at the crook of my elbow and drags it upward. White-hot pain sluices up my arm. I grit my teeth, my rage rising, building inside me like a tsunami tide, begging to be unleashed on this motherfucker. I suck in a deep breath through my nostrils, my hands clenched tightly into fists and my skin on fire as Prez draws the lit cigarette up my arm, leaving perfect circular little weals of burnt skin behind before finally stubbing it out in the centre of my bicep, destroying the thick black shading of my eight-ball tat.

Prez releases me. I’m filled with fury and hate and hot, searing pain. Inside, there’s a beast raging in its cage, beating its fists against my meat and bones, demanding to be unleashed, but I stand stock-still, arms fisted loosely at my sides.

“Pull a knife on me again, and I will fuck up every inch of that pretty-boy face of yours,” Prez says. “I won’t leave so much as a centimetre unscarred, you got me, kid?”

“Yeah,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Yeah fuckin’ what?”

“Yeah, Prez. I fuckin’ got you.”

“Good boy.” He slaps my arm in a brotherly gesture, applying pressure over the burning flesh he just mutilated. It hurts like a motherfucker, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that pain reflected on my face. “Now get this bitch cleaned up for round fuckin’ two. It’s time you showed me where your loyalties lie.”

He brushes past me, out through the door, followed closely by Tank. The door slams closed. The sound echoes through the small unfurnished room, and I stare at the trembling girl my prez left broken on the concrete floor, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to pick up the fucking pieces, knowing all the while that I’d prefer her broken down and bleeding before me, because that’s who I am, the harbinger of torment. Just like my president, just like every other worthless piece-of-shit motherfucker in the world. I am no different from them; I’m just better at playing pretend.