Chapter 6

Ladies, just a reminder. There’s always another man out there with an extra inch more than the one who’s fucking you over.

-Fact of Life

Truth

“Were you in the military?”

Was I in the military?

Hundreds of things swirled through my mind at her question.

I should lie, because if I told the truth, then she’d want to know more.

Especially knowing that her favorite branch was the Navy.

But it wasn’t the Navy that was the hard part of this discussion, it was what I did after the Navy.

A killer for hire wasn’t something that most women wanted to see on the resume of the man they were interested in. Though, I guess I wasn’t exactly a killer for hire, but I did a lot of killing and got paid for it.

But that was what happened in the black ops unit called Crow.

A unit I would still belong to had I not had one really bad experience that changed my life and forced me to slow down.

Though, Crow did do right by me. However, that had a lot to do with Sean, aka Seanshine, another biker and member of The Dixie Wardens. Sean had been a member of Crow with me, and after I’d nearly died, I’d gotten out, and he immediately introduced me to the Dixie Wardens.

The Dixie Wardens had taken me in, made me whole again, and in the process, had saved my life.

“Yes,” I finally answered, bracing myself for the next question.

I was sure she could feel the tenseness that had slid throughout my body, but the woman was curious by nature. She was going to ask, and I prepared myself for the onslaught of questions.

“What branch?”

My belly tightened.

“The Navy.”

Her gasp of surprise and delight didn’t send warm flurries of excitement through me like it would’ve once done.

Instead, it sent dread and fear through me.

Because it was inevitable now.

She’d want to know everything.

When I got out. Why I got out. Where I went after that. What I did.

And those were all questions she asked, and I answered each and every one until the last one.

“I…it’s hard to talk about.” I finally settled on as an answer for her question about what I did once I got out. “I’ll eventually tell you, but right now…at night…it’s neither the time nor the place.”

She frowned, and opened her mouth to say something, and irrational anger surged through me.

“I gotta go,” I mumbled.

Then I stood up, ignoring her cry to wait, and marched through her fancy-ass house as fast as my booted feet would take me without actually running.

Because Truth Reacher didn’t run.

Not from anyone or anything.

Not even a half-pint sized woman with the ass of an angel who scared the absolute shit out of me.

I got on my bike and looked at the house one last time before leaving, not surprised to see her in the window that overlooked the carport.

She had no clue that the subject she’d touched on wasn’t just a sensitive one. I’d almost lost my life.

Multiple times.

Knowing that I needed to talk to someone who knew the situation but wouldn’t give me biased opinions, I rode straight to my pop’s place.

And it gave me the perfect excuse to go there, because I knew he didn’t want me bringing up the incident that’d taken place the last time I’d been there.

I’d meant to ask him about the incident at the bar a few days ago, but I’d been so busy with work and classes that it fell onto the back burner.

Now, though, I was done with my current work in progress, class was canceled for the night due to no electricity, and my pop’s pub was closed.

It was open every single day except for Tuesdays, which was the night my Grams went to bingo.

And she would walk if she had to, but Pop never let her.

In fact, Pop loved Grams so much that he closed down his pub on Tuesdays just so he could take her. Then he went there and sat in his empty bar and waited for ten o’clock to roll around so he could go to get her.

Arriving in a matter of minutes, I parked in my usual spot right beside the door and used my key to get inside.

“Pop!” I bellowed from the entrance of the empty bar.

Pop didn’t answer.

“Pop!” I called loudly. “Are you in here?”

The pub was empty, the lights were on and the jukebox was playing, but the only person in the entire place was obviously me.

Because had he been here, my pop would’ve answered with his usual bellow.

But when none was forthcoming, I headed out the back entrance to check to see if his car was here, and frowned when I saw that it was.

Maybe he was in the walk-in freezer.

But when I didn’t see him in there, either, I started to worry.

Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I dialed his number and waited.

Dread slithered through me as I heard his phone going off on the bar.

He would’ve never left that here.

Not when Grams might call him early, because she did that sometimes. When her arthritis would start acting up, and she’d need to leave because she just couldn’t hack sitting up anymore.

Walking over to the phone, I picked it up and stared at it like it was a snake about to strike.

The movement placed me close to the bar, and I could just barely see over the top to the floor behind the bar.

That’s when I saw the shoe.

And the blood.

So much blood.

Too much blood.

***

“What happened?”

I turned to Big Papa and Aaron, who were staring at me like I was about to lose it, and they were there to prevent it.

“I was at my girl, Verity’s, place. Then I left there and headed over here. I wanted to talk to Pop about a few things, found him like that.”

My voice cracked on the word ‘that’ and both men chose not to notice my near breakdown.

“Anything out of place when you came in?” Big Papa pushed.

I shook my head.

“No,” I denied. “Everything was normal when I first came in. Nothing out of place. Lights all on, jukebox playing softly in the corner just like Pop liked it when he was by himself. I called out his name, and he didn’t answer, so I went through the back to see if I could find his car behind the building, and did. So I pulled my phone out to call, and his phone rang on top of the bar.”

Big Papa’s eyes looked haunted as he peered over the bar at where my grandfather’s dead body lay, curled up and broken.

“Chief.”

I turned to see Officer Stephanie come in, a worried look on her face.

“Yeah?” Big Papa grunted.

It was still weird to hear Big Papa called Chief, I thought numbly.

It’d been nearly a year since the old chief, and the president of The Dixie Wardens MC Alabama Chapter, Stone, was killed by a gang member.

To this day, I still found myself dialing his number only to hang up before it rang.

It was such a habit to call the man when I had problems that I didn’t even realize I was doing it until it was nearly too late.

Stone had been the one to take me under his wing when I’d come home broken. He’d been the one to bring me into his life, into his home with his wife and child, giving me the time I needed to heal from my wounds—both physical and emotional.

So to hear Big Papa, Stone’s VP, called ‘Chief’ was hard.

He still refused to go by ‘President’ of The Dixie Wardens. Though he technically was the president, we still called him the VP.

“Would you mind stepping outside for a moment?” Officer Stephanie asked.

I was surprised with the officer’s polite demeanor.

Normally she was a ball buster, but tonight I supposed she was being nice in deference to my grandfather’s murder.

She and I didn’t see eye-to-eye.

She was also an instructor at the police academy, and we taught differently.

Though, that was just because she was a woman and I was a man. We had different perspectives on certain things law enforcement wise, and that would never change.

“Okay,” Big Papa said. “I’ll be back. Aaron, finish up here, yeah?”

Aaron nodded and turned to stare at me.

“You’re going to be okay?”

I stared at the new guy, and nodded my head.

Aaron was a good man. He was the newest member of the club and was fast becoming one of my friends.

“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” I finally settled on. “I see him there, see his body…but I feel numb.”

A loud curse had me looking toward the door where Stephanie had pulled Big Papa to the side.

He was staring down at her with pure rage on his face.

She continued to talk, and I stopped listening to what Aaron was saying and started focusing in on what they were discussing.

“Shit,” Big Papa groaned. “Fuck.”

And that’s when I knew.

Stephanie had been the one to be assigned to go check on my grandmother.

And by the look on Stephanie’s face, my grandmother had likely received the same fate as my grandfather.

Having it confirmed moments later was pure torture.

And that’s when it finally sank in.