Maddox

“You did fucking what?”

“I hired a new live-in housekeeper and caregiver.” My Dad was sitting in his chair. The TV was on. Wheel of Fortune. It was his favorite fucking show. Hardened vet, MC founder, Wheel of Fortune fan. That was the progression.

“Why, what happened to, uh, Jeff?”

“Jared. You scared him off or pissed him off. Or haven’t you noticed there’s been a different temp here every day for the last week?” My Dad’s voice was gravel and grit after a lifetime of smoking.

“No.”

I’d moved into the big house with my Dad. There was really no other way, or so I’d thought, in the six months since Olivia’s shooting. My Dad couldn’t do it alone. I knew that.

But I kept to the third floor. I had an office and a suite of rooms up there. It was more than I needed or wanted. The rest of the house was too much of the past. It could rot for all I cared.

The past, that’s where we were stuck.

“That’s the sixth housekeeper in six months,” my Dad grumbled.

“I’m not fucking counting. Just make sure they stay out of my way.”

“I’ll let ‘em know you’re an asshole but that’s pretty self-explanatory.” My Dad leaned over to the TV tray next to his recliner and I knew he was struggling to get the water glass. He took a serious amount of medication. I had no idea until I’d moved back here how weak he’d gotten. I turned away and let him figure it out.

If it weren’t for him, and the life he’d started with the MC, Olivia wouldn’t have been shot. And he wasn’t going to get a pass from me just because he was fucking old now.

“I’m going upstairs.”

“You should go to the MC.”

I did my best to avoid my Dad. We always wound up arguing. He saw the MC as a way to help us, “get through.”

Bella, my bulldog, curled up next to my Dad. I should never have gotten that dog.

It was just another thing that kept me from my mission.

I was going to find out who shot Olivia and I was going to do the same fucking thing to them.

I wasn’t going to kill them; I was going find a way to make them live, like she had to.

I’d fulfilled my role at the MC, as treasurer. I made sure the money was tight. But the rest of it? Patrolling Port Az, running interference on heroin, and chasing low lives? They could have it.

Kade and Benz were my closest brothers in The Dark Saints but they hadn’t been able to give me what I wanted:

The name of The Devil’s Hawk who’d shot my sister. Or if it was a Texas chapter, them.

So I fulfilled my oath as an officer, but just barely. I had a higher oath now.

To find the fucking Hawk or whoever had sunk a bullet into the base of my sister’s brain. I’d made that oath when she lay bleeding in my arms.

I heard the bike but didn’t see the shooter. And it haunted my every single breath. I was supposed to protect Olivia. I was there to protect the whole fucking town. And I’d failed.

I sat in my den. There was a bulletin board on the wall. I had a set of 3/5 cards, one for each of The Hawks I had a name and face for. If I could score a picture, I did that too. Usually a mug shot.

I hated them all. My rage was directed and focused, like a white-hot laser, at the fucking asshole who shot my innocent sister. At the one no one could name.

My phone cell vibrated.

“Hey, brother.” It was Benz. He wanted me to ride tonight. I knew it.

“Come on, just a few hours.” I hated leaving Olivia. I hated going to the MC. I hated everyone and everything.

But this was the third time Benz had buzzed. The thought of my Dad and his TV tray made me want to get out and feel some air.

“Fine. Meet you outside Woody’s.”

“Shit man, we could go in and throw a few back?” Benz, Kade, all of them, were trying to get me to snap out of it, but they were wasting their time.

“No thanks. A ride, I’ll do that. Pool and shit. No.” I clicked off the phone. I looked up at the board again. MC Prez, VP, foot soldiers. I had over a dozen names on my wall of Hawks that could have been riding that bike. But none of them were the one, the triggerman. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I’d ride off some of my frustration. Maybe something new would come to me.

I grabbed my leather and walked out. I didn’t tell Dad.

Dad might be the one with emphysema, but I was the one who was suffocating.

I got on my bike and didn’t look back. Growing up in this house, it was almost a second MC. It was huge, old, and in my earliest memories, it was filled with bikers and their old ladies. The old ladies liked it at the house way better than the club. The club was about hard decisions, hard liquor, and the machines we rode. It wasn’t a place for women. Maybe for Josie, but that was it.

Which was why Mom convinced Dad to keep the house. She’d inherited it. It was her old, giant, family home outside of Port Az. There was access to the beach, acreage, a wooded area, and every fucking thing you would want if you were a kid or a Mom. Sarge would have been happy in a shack, as long as my Mom was with him. So he did what she asked and we lived in what could legitimately be called a mansion.

Most of Port Az called it The Castle. But The Castle was rotting from the inside. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was what we all deserved.

The old ladies, my sister, my Mom; they could pretend here. Maybe they could ignore the violence that surrounded all of us.

But those days were gone. There was no pretending that my family hadn’t paid a blood debt of The Dark Saints.

And I was so pissed at my Dad, and The Hawks, and even The Saints.

Olivia was the innocent one and she was the one suffering.

A ride was what I needed. Getting out of The Castle for a few hours sounded right.

Woody’s, on the North Side of Port Az, was about a fifteen-minute ride. When I got there, Benz was waiting.

“Glad you came out, brother,” he said.

“Yeah. Before we ride, anything on that last name I got you?”

Benz was trying to find out if The Hawks in Laredo had brought on any new probies.

“No, they have new guys but all of ‘em new in the last three months.”

“So another dead fucking end? I should just shoot up the entire goddamn chapter.”

“Yeah? And then who pays if you do that? You know that answer.”

“I know.”

“Come on. Let’s just ride,” Benz said. He’d talked me down off this ledge before.

“Fine, yeah.”

Benz and I revved up the bikes and rolled through the streets of Port Az, past the town borders, and through to the Old Highway Road.

The farther you got out of town, the more you could smell the salt of the water, and you could catch a little fetid smell too from the Port. I took a deep breath.

I held on to the worst smell, letting it mingle in my stomach with the anger I felt at not having a name or face to go with this shooter. It had happened right in front of me, yet I couldn’t ID who’d shot my sister.

I wanted revenge.

I’d get revenge.

My patience was running out and Benz knew it. He was doing all he could to distract me from the instinct that drove me.

We rode, all night, in aimless loops, until the sky turned pink with the dawn.

If I didn’t get a name soon, I was going to get my revenge on every Hawk I could, whether they’d pulled the trigger or not.

That thought turned over in my head as our rubber hit the pavement, over and over and over again.