Cole
“Where should we put her?” Tyler snapped, holding the front door open for Jax. Clearly, their ride in together had not gone well.
“Kitchen?” Adam frowned. “We don’t even know what the problem is yet, or how bad it is.”
Jax didn’t wait for our discussion to continue; instead, he walked clean past us with Amber in his arms, and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Biting my tongue, I followed him. Jax put his back to the door and gently swung it open. Using more force than needed, I slammed my fist against the other door to open. This only caused a shooting pain up my arm; my injuries from yesterday, still taking a toll on my body.
Adam spread out a few clean towels across the stainless steel bench and then Jax lowered Amber’s body onto them. It really bugged me, the way he was being so gentle with her; he never looked at a woman the way he kept looking at Amber.
Grabbing a pair of scissors from the counter, I shouldered Jax out of the way. I ignored his tight posture and his glare. Reaching for the hem of Amber’s top, I waited for Jax to remove the jumper he was holding to her stomach. “Move it,” I snapped at him.
Troy and Tyler stormed in; Tyler holding the case Amber had used a few weeks ago on me. When Tyler placed the case on the bench next to me, Jax finally decided to pull the jumper away. As soon as he did, blood began to spurt from her wound and stain the white towel underneath her.
Slowly, I cut the fabric up the middle and then along the base of her bra; leaving the fabric covering her chest. Dropping the scissors to my side, I slowly peeled the fabric from her body, which was now stuck to her stomach because of the blood. I peeled away the other side as well, frowning until her entire midriff was exposed. I let out a gruff of rage, and my brothers joined me.
“They’re dead!” Troy spat, bringing a fist down on the bench. “They’re FU-”
“ENOUGH!” I yelled at him. Amber was bleeding out right now; we could deal with the threats and killing later. “Get me the threads and needles.”
My eyes drifted to the large wound on Amber’s stomach. Two lines ran from each hip bone and then met in the middle of her abdomen, to make an arrow, pointing up. To most people, this wound wouldn’t have been symbolic, but to us, it immediately spelt ‘enemy’.
The mark of a warring bikie group, it was the biggest form of insult, to mark someone with this; especially when their blood and loyalty lay elsewhere. Exhaling sharply, I realized this was going to scar, and for the rest of Amber’s life, she would be marked with their sign.
“Move,” Jax hissed at me, “I’ll do it.” He reached for the needle in my hand. I turned to glare at him and narrowed my eyes.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Cole, give me the needle. You can’t sew for shit. I’m covered with scars to prove it.” He snapped at me.
Curling my free hand into a fist, I retorted, “You never sew.”
“Yeah, because I don’t give a shit if you guys are covered in scars.”
“But you care if Amber is?” I arched an eyebrow to make my point.
“Cole, just give him the needle.” Troy snapped. “If Jax can do a better job, then let him. We don’t want to make Amber’s scar any worse than it needs to be.”
Grumbling, I handed him the needle and stepped back. I never said I was the master of sewing; it’s just that I was usually the one who got stuck with the job.
I watched as Jax took in Amber’s cold, limp body, before he exhaled sharply and began to thread the needle through her skin. Adam was on the opposite side of the bench, holding a towel on the wound and moving it down as Jax sewed.
Crossing my arms, I watched how delicately he was threading the needle through her. Jackson Johnston, the leader of Satan’s Sons, the Head MC, had a crush on my sister.
I had to suppress the growl growing inside me and clenched my fists, stopping myself from charging at him and slamming him across the kitchen, away from her. If he thought we were going to let him be with her, he had another thing coming.
We were here to get her back on track, not to hook her up with our bikies’ leader MC. I scoffed, inviting glares from Troy and Tyler. The other two were too focused on Amber to care about anything else.
I took Amber in. Sleeping with his brother was one thing, but Amber was never getting close to Jax, and he definitely was not getting in her pants, I decided. Jax is a good guy sure, and one of my closest friends. That’s why I wouldn’t stop or think twice before cutting his penis off to keep him away from my sister.
Because I knew him, and knew what he was capable of.
***
“Is he still in there?” Tyler whispered to me, as I rolled my eyes.
“Go in if you are interested,” I shot back, lighting up a cigarette outside Amber’s door. I didn’t give a toss about what dad thought about smoking in the house right now.
“You will set the alarms off again,” Adam said, frowning at my cigarette. I gave him a ‘shut the hell up’ look.
I pulled my phone out. It was nearly three in the morning! It took Jax over an hour to sew her up. When he was done, he had carried her up to her bedroom, which had been hours ago.
I glanced at the closed door. He had another thing coming if he believed we would just leave him in there with her.
And I had known Jax for a long time. So it was fair to say I knew most of his expressions. But the expression on his face as he sewed Amber up – well, it was new.
Turning around, I pushed the door open. The room was in darkness, and then my eyes adjusted. Jax was sitting in a chair he had pulled up to Amber’s bed side. Sitting there with his arms crossed, his eyes were narrowed as I strolled into the room.
Adam and Tyler were on my tail, like scared puppies or something. Walking to Amber’s balcony door, I cracked it open, tossed the cigarette to the ground, and then stomped on it. Closing the door behind me, I walked back to Amber’s bed. Her face was pale, and if it wasn’t for the slow rising and falling of her chest, she could pass for a corpse.
Tyler kneeled at the opposite side of the bed from Jax, and took Amber’s hand in his.
“What are we going to do?” He whispered, stroking the back of Amber’s hand.
“We do nothing,” Jax grunted. “I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault.”
“Your fault?” I arched an eyebrow.
Jax didn’t look at me; he just kept his eyes on Amber. “They saw me with her at the mall. Clearly, they made a connection between the two of us, and after what we did the other night, Amber got serviced with my payback.”
“That was a club vote,” I pointed out. “We all made that choice.”
“And we will all be dealing with this,” Adam huffed. “She’s our sister Jax. Our flesh and blood has taken the hit. This is personal.”
Running my hand through my short hair, I took a deep breath. “He’s right. We all deal with this together. As a club.”
“Amber has been scarred because of us. She is probably going to wear that mark for the rest of her life,” Troy piped in from the door. I hadn’t even noticed him come in. I watched him step out of the shadows. “She has been marked; we all know what that means for her.”
My lips tightened as I attempted to suppress the rage within. “So what do we do?” I spoke up to the room.
“We take a club vote, pull the boys in.” Troy said firmly “Then decide on payback.”
“There won’t be payback.”
I snapped my head around to look at Jax, and stared in disbelief. He was kidding right? Us Shields wouldn’t just sit back and take this; not when one of our family had been hurt.
“We show a united front. Call all MC’s and pull in our alliances. I’m declaring a war.” Jax’s voice echoed around the room.
War. A full bloody bikie war? Over this?
“Over this?” I choked out, not meaning to speak out loud. “Why?”
“It’s been coming for a while. I had chosen to ignore the threat but have been invading our runs, stealing business from us. It’s time they were dealt with.”
Jax was high up enough to declare a war, and all brothering clubs would have to follow his orders.
Everything Jax had just said was the truth, but we wanted to call this what it really was. Jax was ticked off because someone he cared about had got hurt because, for the first time, Jax actually had someone to care about, and, as luck would have it, it was our sister.