Chapter 1
Lila
My hands were covered in grease when I slid myself out from under the car I had been working on for the past hour. My overalls were covered in grease too and my hair smelled like engine oil.
I must have been lost in thought, thinking about something inconsequential, about the foster care center maybe and the kids I was going to meet soon. Working in an auto body shop was obviously the kind of job that nobody could have pictured me doing. For a petite girl with golden blond hair and light blue eyes, I was the kind of woman who everyone would have expected to lead a life of leisure. It was definitely the kind of life my dad expected me to have but I couldn’t just sit around the house and do nothing.
I had always wanted to work with my hands, and growing up around the auto shop, watching my father and his friends work on automobiles had taught me everything I wanted to know.
I just wasn’t sure if I would ever get a job in any other shop like this if I decided to leave the family business and work somewhere else. Not that it was going to happen anytime soon.
I’d gotten into the habit of tying my long blond hair in a fishtail braid when I worked at the auto body shop. I also had to keep up a regular routine of manicures so that my hands remained soft and well maintained. I was aware of the damage working on cars could do to my hands and nails if I didn’t look after them.
I stood up from the ground and wiped my hands with the rag stuffed inside my overalls’ pocket. My dad and the boys; Rodeo, Abe and Fred were sitting on their usual chairs drinking beer.
I rolled my eyes when I walked towards them.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” I quipped and Abe raised his can of beer to me.
“You know you didn’t have to spend all that time on her,” Dad said. He was sitting in the middle of the group as always, and I stood over him with my hands on my hips.
“We run an auto body shop. It’s our job to fix the cars that come in!” I said, with a laugh in my voice. We’d had this conversation over and over again in the past two years that I’d started working here. Dad waved his can in the air.
“Our job isn’t to fix cars, Lila,” Abe said wisely. Abe was the real gearhead in the group. The only one in the MC who really knew how cars and engines worked. I’d learnt everything I knew from him, but even Abe had given up working on the cars these days.
Rodeo cracked open a can of beer and held it up to me, but I shooed it away. It was four in the afternoon. I’d be damned if I was going to allow myself to turn into one of them!
“Why do we run an auto body shop then?” I snapped at Abe, and Fred exchanged a knowing smile with my dad.
“Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it,” I said and shook my head. I didn’t even know why I was having this conversation with them again. I knew what the real deal was. The shop was a front, for the vehicles that the MC stole and sold. Clearly there was big money in it, because dad paid me more money than any mechanic made in the country.
The others at the MC got paid big bucks too, for doing nothing. In fact, I wasn’t expected to work on any of these cars and I’d still get paid. However, I couldn’t just sit back and drink all day and make thousands of dollars a month for doing nothing.
“Lila, mouse, don’t be like this sweetheart,” dad teased me, calling me by the nickname he used when I was little. He was trying to appease me. He knew how strongly I disapproved of what went on at the shop behind my back. In fact, I strongly disapproved of their whole lifestyle.
They were bikers, members of the Marked Skulls MC, of which dad was the leader. I’d known this ever since I was a child, ever since mom passed away and dad was the only family I had left. He’d tried to keep me shielded from his lifestyle while I was growing up, but now I was twenty-three. I could see it for myself.
I rolled my eyes at him again and crossed my arms over my breasts.
“I’m the only one who gets any work done around here,” I complained and dad only smiled at me. He’d gotten used to my complaining.
“You don’t have to do nothing, sweetheart. You’ll still get paid,” he said and Fred nodded in agreement. Fred was dad’s second in command, muscular like my dad but with silver hair and light grey eyes. He was like an uncle to me, and I loved each of these guys. They were family. But it didn’t mean that I had to approve of their life choices.
“I’ll do the work if I’m getting paid, dad, you know that,” I said and breathed in deeply.
“And then you’ll spend all that money on your little foster care project,” dad said, still jokingly, but he was making a point too. He wanted me to know he knew where all my money was going. I stuck my chin up in the air proudly.
“Those kids need help. That center is doing good work and I want to support them,” I said and dad shrugged his shoulders and took a large sip of his beer.
“I’m not complaining, sweetheart,” he said and I knew he was. He wanted me to spend my money on nice things like clothes and jewelry instead.
“Okay, leave her alone, c’mon, get out of here, you’ve worked long enough now,” Fred interjected and with a glare at my father, I turned from them and walked into the little office at the back of the garage.
I could hear their loud voices, talking and laughing out in the front where they were still sitting and drinking.
I changed out of my overalls, while I wondered if things would ever change around here. Would my dad and his friends ever get tired of living this life? Would my dad ever go legit with his business? Chances were that they wouldn’t.
I hadn’t chosen the MC life, I was born into it and as much as I loved my dad and the other guys, I couldn’t just accept this life. I had no reason to.
I threw the overalls into the washing machine in the office and looked down at my jeans. I was going to go to the foster care center after this, but I couldn’t go looking like this! I decided to go back home first, to shower and change.
***
I hadn’t known any other home other than Orlando. The sun suited me, I loved the palm trees that danced in the sea breeze and there was always a saltiness in the air. I couldn’t imagine how people lived in the gloom of the East Coast, but these days, I had started daydreaming about a life in New York, or Boston or Chicago. Away from the MC.
I knew it would be hard, starting afresh. I’d have to get a part time job at some grocery store, maybe several part time jobs. I wasn’t an expert with cars, not like Abe was, but maybe I could get a job at an auto body shop somewhere out there too? As an apprentice?
I was aware that I didn’t really look like an able mechanic. For starters, I was a girl and secondly, the first impression I made was that of being a dainty petite flower. I got my looks from my mom; of a slim figure and delicate shoulders and pouty arched lips. My dad on the other hand was gruff with a long silver beard. I knew that if I walked into any auto shop looking for a job, I’d get a whole lot of laughter and be shown the door. Unless someone gave me a car and paid attention to the work I was doing.
I was fairly good with cars and I knew I’d get better with the right guidance. The MC’s auto shop was just not the place for me to learn and grow. However, leaving Orlando and moving anywhere else would be impossible under dad’s watch. I was his precious little daughter, his only child. He wanted to keep me as close to himself as he possibly could.
So, these days, my only real escape was working with the kids. I’d started visiting the foster care center on a whim and very soon, I realized that I liked spending time with the kids. They needed to be looked after with patience, they needed someone to hear them out while they waited to go into foster care. These were kids who were in the system through no fault of their own, and I wanted to do my best to help them.
In the past four months, I’d saved enough money to help the center install better heating in the building. My next project was going to be to renovate the girls’ toilets. It was a communal toilet for the whole center, but it could do with a lot of repair and I was saving money for that now.
I looked at my watch as I hurried down the road towards the center. I’d promised the kids that I’d get there by five-thirty and we could go out for ice cream. I’d never been responsible for children before, but the matron had approved this outing. So it would be me and eleven kids ranging between the ages of eight to thirteen and we were all looking forward to our ice cream trip.
I had a smile on my face as I walked hurriedly towards the center. Spending time with the kids calmed me down. They distracted me from the troubled thoughts I had about working at the auto shop. They helped me forget about my fantasies about leaving Orlando and moving somewhere nobody knew me. Something that my dad would never allow.
I was thinking about New York again. I’d allowed my mind to wander. A tall concrete jungle, away from the Marked Skulls, where nobody knew me. How liberating would that be? What kind of a life could I lead there? It would mean leaving the kids too, but I would still send money to the center. I’d still get the bathrooms repaired.
I shook my head and smiled at the thought. That was never going to happen. Dad would never let me go.
I heard the raging roar of a bike behind me as I walked. I was used to that sound, it was the kind that my dad and the other guys at the MC rode. So, I didn’t turn to look, I kept walking in a rush.
It was only when I heard the tires screeching to a halt and the gasps of pedestrians around me that I stopped in my tracks and turned to look.
The bike had come to a stop in the middle of the road, several feet away from me. There was one man riding the bike, without a helmet on so that I could his face.
I knew instantly that he was part of an MC, but he didn’t have the Marked Skulls patch on his leather jacket. It was something else, I squinted my eyes to read the patch’s logo while he glared at me directly. I knew he wanted something from me, and I was confused.
I stood there while other people hurried past me. I was frozen to the spot till I saw him extract a gun from his jacket pocket.
He was pulling out a gun! I saw the black metal glint in the harsh Orlando sun, as he pointed it straight at me. Cars whizzed past him and he didn’t move from that spot. He aimed the gun at me and I ducked.
I might have screamed, but I couldn’t hear my voice any more. It was an unreal moment. I had never been shot at, nobody had ever pointed a gun at me. This was in broad daylight, surrounded by traffic and people and everything seemed to be taking place in slow motion.
The bullet grazed past me and struck the wall of the shop behind me. People screamed around me and ducked.
I covered my ears instinctually, with tears gushing down my cheeks and fell forward on the pavement. I was so sure that the man was going to take another shot, but instead I heard the sound of tires screeching again. The biker was riding away. The place was too crowded, too exposed for him to take another shot.
I could hear myself screaming now. I was lying on the pavement, screaming and crying, with my ears still covered. How was this happening to me?