22.

Beau

It’s been a week since the meet at the clubhouse. Early this morning, I got a call from Sneak askin’ me to come down to my house. All Sneak’s sneakin’ brought him to a lockbox inside Dave and Lenore’s home, Dave and Lenore being Logan’s parents. The lockbox had been hidden on the top shelf inside the closet in Logan’s room. I’d totally forgotten about the thing until he reminded me.

Although he wanted to just bust the thing open, the room as a whole, even inside the closet looked spotless. No dust or cobwebs, meaning Aunt Lenore frequented the space. So she’d notice a busted lock on a lockbox which hadn’t previously been busted. As I said though, I remembered that lockbox because before his world began to unravel, he’d given me the spare key to that box. A key I know ended up in my junk drawer inside my kitchen.

My little bungalow, the one I’d painstakin’ly restored with my own two hands, remains a bombed out, third-world massacre as we ain’t had time since gettin’ the okay to start renovations to actually find a contractor to renovate. With Elise here now, I ain’t gonna bother with the repairs. I need a real home for my woman, and I need it fast. We’re lucky the bulk of the damage stayed to the front portions of the house—the living, dining, and master bedrooms.

So now we’re at Dave and Lenore’s home inside Logan’s old room while they’re at work. We went in through the back. And as I spent most of my life comin’ and goin’ from this place, I actually knew exactly where they keep the spare key. Nice to not have to break in.

Sneak pulls the box down handing it off to me. As I twist the key in the lock, Sneak shoots me a look, one that I know means he’s hoping as much as I am that there are some answers locked inside to help Elise, Liv and any other woman who might have crossed paths with my cousin.

Logan wasn’t always the asshole he’d become. As I open the box, the first thing we see is compartments. In the top compartments, he’d kept mementoes reminding me of that time before he became the supreme asshole when we were best friends, and had our whole lives ahead of us. I didn’t have it in me to look too closely at those memories. The second thing we see, well, it means my cousin was seriously fucked up. I realize it just as Sneak realizes it, when we pull out a bag with probably two grams of coke, a rolled bill, straight blade, and a mirror.

He had a full ride to UK, why would he have risked it by gettin’ into this shit? And that ain’t the worst of it. Sneak’s look—like he’s not sure if he wants to punch someone or vomit—says the same as mine, that he wishes it had been the worst of it, too. But no, the worst comes in the form of pictures, at least fifty or sixty pictures of naked women who seem completely unaware they were having naked pictures taken.

The coke could stay, the pictures, unfortunately, have to make their way back to the compound with us. While I stack them into a more manageable pile, Sneak closes and locks the lockbox, placin’ it back up to its home inside the closet. Then we turn to leave.

After we lock up and walk back to my bungalow where we kept our bikes parked, only then do I turn to Sneak, rub my had down my face and mutter, “Sheeit.”

Sneak doesn’t reply. There is no reply. He throws his leg over his bike, and I do the same with mine. We head back to the compound.

Once Sneak and I have returned to Lords soil, we walk in wearing matching grim faces as I send him to round up the boys while I unload on Duke.

Duke predictably leans his head out of his office. “Brothers, rally.”

Some clubs call it church. We don’t hold church, we rally to discuss club business. When the club president calls rally, you don’t hesitate to rally. Which is why as I turn to head into the rally room, I see Blood shovin’ some piece from his crotch where she’d previously had his cock, suckin’ him off just moments before. He might not be happy about it, but he don’t complain either. It’s just the way it is.

When we’re all seated inside the rally room, me to his right and Chaos to his left, Duke calls the group to order. “They found some shit.”

My brothers understandably grumble.

Still he continues, “We’re giving Boss the chance to look first, seeing as his old lady might be in one of these.”

They wait somewhat less than patiently as I move through the stack, flippin’ each one over as I pass it until they hear my first low grumble. I’m sure they expect me to stop lookin’. I’m sure they expect it to be Elise.

It ain’t Elise.

Who it is, is Livvy. A very naked, unaware Livvy. Chaos’ll lose his shit when he sees, so I make sure he don’t see, not yet.

I continue turnin’ pictures over until my growl fills the room, then they know. There’s my Elise, probably the last time they were together, her face as troubled as she was naked. And she was extremely naked. That picture, I slip into my jean pocket then flip the rest of the pictures naked women side up along the table for the rest of my brothers to see. All forty-eight of them (there had been fifty).

“Apparently when my shithead, and surprisingly cokehead cousin decided to cheat on Elise, he went all out. We collected these pictures from the bottom of a lockbox in Logan’s room. Not one of these women look to know they’ve been made in print. Look closely brothers, it’s worse than we thought. But…” I look to Sneak. “Trisha thankfully ain’t one of ‘em.”

“Yeah, I talked to her. Good to not see the proof, though.”

Nodding, I wholeheartedly agree with him as it sure as shit would’ve been good not to see the proof of Elise and that jackhole together.

“Cokehead?” Chaos asks.

“We found the shit in the box,” I respond.

He scowls. Grunts of disapproval move around the table because the Lords ain’t down with that shit. That shit would be the reason Duke found all his brothers dead, and thus being thrust into the presidency, havin’ to take on newly patched in men and recruits patched in early at his back as his lieutenants. Some of the brothers might like to partake in the ganja every-so-often, and not a one of us here don’t love his booze, but you touch any harder, you’re out. Just like that, no warnin’. We take your cut, black out your tat and send you on your way.

Back to the task at hand, Shayla’s picture becomes the first to be singled out. Next as we feared, Hadley did have a fling with Logan, the naked, hard-nippled proof stares back at us. We also single out Candy, one of our hot mamas, a couple of pieces who’ve been hanging around for years, and at least one wife of one of our hanger-ons. The rest of the women we couldn’t identify yet.

“Round ‘em up,” Duke orders.

Chairs scrape across the floor as the men take off to hunt down the newly identified potential victims.

“Chaos, a word.” I pull him to my side but wait for Duke to leave before startin’ back up. Instead of talkin’ right away, I reach inside my pocket to pull the picture of Liv out. “You didn’t ask but…” I hand him the photo.

He closes his eyes and sucks in a long breath. Temper in check, then he grabs it and chances a look. “When you didn’t say anything…was really hoping she wasn’t in there, you know?”

“Didn’t say anything because I knew Blood would want the picture to keep the other brothers from seein’ his baby sister naked. But it ain’t right for Blood to be seein’ his baby sister naked, either. Not when, well, you know. Anyway, didn’t want you blowin’ it in front of him. Too much work to do. We ain’t got time for that drama.”

“You’re being cool about the Livvy situation. Don’t think it’s a betrayal?”

“She’s not a brother’s old lady. That I’d beat the shit outta you for. But this. Can’t help who you fall in love with. Not a brother’s sister or say…your cousin’s girl. Make me kind of a hypocrite, don’t ya think?”

“She won’t have me.”

“Gonna let that stop you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lack of female company since you reconnected in Chicago. This woman means somethin’ to you, you do what ya gotta do to see it through. Yeah?”

Chaos crumples the picture in his hand. “Yeah, brother. Yeah.”

“Good. Let’s go catch this fucker so you can get on that.”