“Hey, you okay?” Levi looked at Grant. He was sick of that question. It had been almost four weeks since his Dad and Krissy died and if he had a dollar for every time someone asked if he was okay, he’d be a very rich man. It wasn’t his friend’s fault though, so he was doing his best not to lose patience with them. Nodding, he said:

“Yeah, I was just thinking about what Zack and Hash were saying last night.”

Grant cocked an eyebrow and looked at the silver heart Levi was turning over in his fingers. He’d done it so often for the past three weeks that he almost forgot when he had it in his hands sometimes. He stopped playing with it and stuck it in his pocket as Grant said, “Are you seriously thinking about changing clubs?” Grant whispered his question even though they were the only two in the great room at that moment. Changing clubs was a big deal. It was an even bigger deal to the Defenders, whose numbers had dwindled greatly over the past year. They had gotten into a turf war with a street gang who at first seemed like a minor annoyance. But after one of their SAAs had gone off the deep end and blown up their major source of income…a meth lab…things began to spiral out of control even faster.

“I’m tired of the killing,” Levi said. He had been the one to pull the trigger on the bullet that had killed one of his own brothers. Spider had gone off the deep end after becoming addicted to the meth their own club was cooking. Levi had killed him to spare the lives of his new friend Zack and Spider’s ex-girlfriend, Nicole. Since then, even before Krissy died, Levi had been thinking about his future. He’d known the club cooked meth and that was where the bulk of their funds came from. But he’d never really thought of the impact they were making on the community because of it. After watching Spider’s spiral into psychosis, it had made him think about all the kids and young adults whose lives were being ruined because of it. “And the drugs,” he said.

“Cheney won’t just sit back and let you leave, man. You know he doesn’t even like you hanging out with Zack and Hashtag.” Grant was looking around the room and still whispering. It was another thing that Levi had come to dislike about their club. When he was a kid, he had looked up to his father and the other men in part because of their incredible bond and respect for one another. After Cheney’s father, the club president, was killed, Cheney took over. He was young and he had a lot of radical ideas about how the club could make money. One of those ideas was the meth labs. Levi’s dad was a lieutenant and he voiced his objections to getting into the meth business, loudly. Cheney managed to convince the younger guys on the voting board that it was a solid business venture by showing them how much money was to be made. Levi’s father had held firm in his objections and because he’d been with the club so long and he was so well-respected, his objections had bled over into a large part of the club and caused major dissension. After Spider, those voices got louder with his father the ringleader of the group. But now that his dad was gone, Levi didn’t doubt Cheney would go right back to trying to build some kind of drug empire, and he didn’t want to be a part of that.

“Cheney wanted Dad out for a long time. Now that Dad is gone, why not me too?”

“It’s different with you. Your dad pissed him off, especially once he quit drinking and focused more on cleaning up the club and he might have eventually taken that out on you…but then you killed Spider. You saved him a hell of a lot of trouble by doing that, and you earned his respect. I just don’t honestly think he’d let you just walk away.”

Levi stood up and paced along the edge of the table. “He can’t keep me a prisoner.”

“No.” Grant sighed. “But you can bet that he can make your life a living hell.”

Levi laughed, but not happily. “I’m already in hell,” he said. “All I’m looking to do is survive…for what, I’m not sure.”

* * *

Levi wasn’t surprised that Grant wanted to talk him out of leaving the Defenders. He and Grant had grown up together with their fathers in the club. Grant’s dad had arthritis that prevented him from riding any longer, but he was still an active participant in decision-making. Despite not agreeing with most of Cheney’s radical ideas, Grant’s father was old-school, and loyalty and respect were the two main things in his life. He’d tried to talk Levi’s dad out of being so openly oppositional, but Levi’s old man wasn’t about to roll over and take it in the ass from anyone, much less a “kid” half his age. Despite Grant’s objections, Levi almost looked at his own desire to change as a way to show respect for his father. There was one person whose opinion mattered more than anyone’s, however, and after he left Grant, he went to find out what they thought.

“Hi, Mom.” Levi walked into his mother’s little house through the back door. She was in the kitchen, making their lunch.

“Hey, handsome.” She had her back to him, and he saw her reach up and touch her face. He got the feeling every time he saw her lately that she just finished crying, but she wouldn’t admit it. He almost wished that she’d fall apart in front of him; it would make her seem more human and him less of the wimp he felt like since he lost Krissy and his father. He went over and kissed her on the cheek; it was wet.

“How are you?”

She put down the knife she was using to chop tomatoes and turned toward him. She was at least a foot shorter than him and when she reached up to touch his face she had to stand on her toes. “I’m good. How are you?”

He nodded. “I’m okay.” He kissed her other cheek and said, “You know, it’s okay to be sad.”

She rolled her eyes at him and picked her knife back up. “Of course I know that. Get me the cucumbers out of the fridge.”

Levi smiled and went to do as he was told. His mother and father never married officially, but she’d been his old lady since she was eighteen years old. She was fifty-four now and just as tough, if not tougher than she’d ever been. When she was with Levi, she was at her softest, but even then, she had an edge to her that could cut steel.

“You want help?”

“Nope, get a soda and go watch TV with Dad. I’ll be finished in a minute.” Levi grabbed a soda out of the fridge and she said, “Take your Pop a Pepsi.”

His mother’s father lived with her and his dad for the past ten years. He was a brittle diabetic and had already had one foot amputated before he came to live with them. Levi’s mom made sure he took his meds and ate well. But his big addiction was the sugary sweet cola that he’d been drinking since he was a kid. He refused to drink diet soda and if she didn’t let him have his Pepsi, he refused to drink anything else for the rest of the day. They’d battled it out for a while, with him getting dehydrated and almost dying at one point. Finally, they came to the agreement that he could have one Pepsi a day, as long as his blood sugars were stable. Levi grabbed the other soda and headed into the living room. His papa was sitting in his favorite chair with the television on. “Hey, Pops, what are you watching?”

Levi handed him the Pepsi and the old man smiled up at him. “Now there’s a boy after my heart.” He looked back at the TV and said, “Barnaby Jones or some bullshit. You can change it.” Levi smiled. His papa had been watching Barnaby Jones since he was a kid. He always said Levi could change the channel, but Levi never did.

“Nah, this is good. How you feeling?”

“Like I could conquer the world,” he said. “If not for that nagging-ass daughter of mine and this missing foot, I’d be running that MC of yours.”

Levi chuckled. “I bet you would, Pops. Can I ask you something?” Without thinking about it, Levi slid the pendant out of his pocket and started rubbing it between his fingers.

“Shoot, kid.” His grandfather muted the television and popped the tab on his soda.

“Did Dad talk to you much about what was going on in the club?”

Papa took a long swig of his soda, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, and said, “He was unhappy, for a long time. You know, back when I first started riding with the Defenders, they were a respectable bunch. Old Hacksaw formed that club from a group of soldiers he met in Vietnam, and each one of us that joined afterwards was somehow affiliated with the military. We bought toys for kids at Christmas and kept a neighborhood watch. It was all about the community and our country back then. Then, these youngsters started coming along and changing things. Your daddy was one of ’em.”

Levi knew that his papa and his dad hadn’t gotten along at first, but from the stories he’d heard over the years, his mother had insisted they find some kind of common ground. By the time his dad died, Papa was his biggest confidante. “I know Dad was one of the first to come up with the idea of selling the old military-style weapons.”

Papa chuckled and for a second his brown eyes went somewhere else. Then he said, “He was the first to come up with the idea of stealing them. That boy had more balls than he had sense, and once they were stolen, he had no idea what to do with them. A guy named Inky had a cousin that was involved with one of those gang-banger clubs, you know, the ones that wore red and thought they were all badass in the 80s?”

“The Bloods.”

“Yeah, that was it. Anyhow, Inky set up a meeting with them and as far as I’m concerned that day was the day the club began its downward spiral.”

“Those guns made the club a lot of money.”

“And a lot of enemies. And that money is like any other drug…the more you have the more you need to get that same high. They didn’t stop with guns. They moved on to drugs. Thankfully, by that time I lost my foot and I didn’t have to be a part of any of that. I wish your daddy had left years ago. He didn’t want any part of the drug trade, but he kept sticking it out, thinking he could change things.”

“So, if I told you that I was thinking about leaving, what would you say?”

“I’d say hallelujah. Boy, after all that mess with the meth lab blowing up, that club might never be able to get back on its feet. The police are watching y’all now and the men that financed that operation in the first place are looking to get paid back for what that lunatic destroyed. I say good riddance to it all, but Cheney’s going to be looking for a fast buck to set things back right and I don’t think that boy has the scruples God gave a Saigon whore.”

“Dad, I asked you not to talk about Saigon whores to my son.” Levi’s mother walked in from the kitchen, carrying a tray that she sat on the TV tray in front of her father. The old man looked at his grandson and said:

“That’s right, I forgot that we’re still supposed to pretend your mama’s baby is a virgin.” He rolled his eyes and looked at his daughter and said, “Thank God he became a man before his daddy died. You might have had him in pigtails and patent leather shoes.”

Levi’s Mom laughed as she got out another TV tray and set it up in front of where Levi was sitting. He saw her eyes go to the pendant between his fingers, but she didn’t say anything about it. By the time she came back with his lunch, he’d put the pendant back in his pocket and the three of them ate silently and stared at the TV. It was times like that when Levi’s father’s absence was felt the most—family time. His father was one of the biggest badasses the Memphis Defenders had ever seen back in his day, but no matter what, his family always came first. Everything Levi knew about love and relationships, he’d learned from his parents. He had hoped that someday he and Krissy would be celebrating thirty-five years together the way his parents had not long before his father died.

After lunch was over, Pops fell asleep in his chair and Levi went into the kitchen to help his mother clean up. She elbowed him out of the way of the sink, so he sat down at the kitchen table and got lost in his thoughts for a while. He was brought out of them by the sound of his mother’s voice asking:

“Where did you get that little heart? Was it Krissy’s?”

Levi stopped twirling it between his fingers. He hadn’t even realized he’d pulled it out again. He held it in his palm and the inscription stared up at him. Once again he wondered who Zoe was. “No, at least I don’t think so. They found it at the scene of the accident. The cop said that it was under her phone.”

His mother sat down in the chair opposite him. “It may have been in the street already.”

He nodded. “Yeah, maybe. They told me that they don’t think Krissy called 911, so maybe it belongs to the girl that did. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling I was supposed to end up with it. Is that weird?”

She covered his hand with hers and said, “No, honey. It’s your mind and your heart looking for ways to heal. If that pendant helps you do that, then don’t let anyone tell you that feeling is wrong. It brings you close to the person who was with Krissy in the end and that’s not weird at all.”

“Do you believe in soulmates, Mom?”

“Yes. Your father was mine and I believe Krissy was yours.” Levi started to speak and she held up her palm. “Let me finish. I believe Krissy was your soulmate, but that doesn’t mean I believe there was only one woman on this earth who could make you happy. One day I believe you’ll find someone else to love and when you do, she’ll be the luckiest girl on the planet.”

“Right,” he said. “Because I didn’t send my soulmate and my father straight into their deaths.”

“Levi Garrett Rogers! That accident was not your fault. There’s a reason they call it an accident. I don’t want to hear any more talk like that. Besides, I got a call from one of the state policemen involved in investigating the accident, yesterday. He said they finished the investigation and concluded that your father’s bike had faulty brakes and the other guy came around that corner way too sharp and fast. You couldn’t have known the brakes would go out. Your father always took such good care…” His mother’s face went pale and she stopped talking. Levi got the feeling they were both suddenly thinking the same thing.

“He always took such good care of his bike,” he finished for her. If that bike was an inch of a quart low on oil, his father knew about it. He never ran out of gas, he never broke down, and he would never put Krissy on the back of the bike unless he knew everything was in working order, especially the brakes. “Mom, were the brakes working on the way to the party that night?”

“Of course. I didn’t notice your father having any trouble with them at all.”

“Where is the bike now?”

“It’s still at the impound lot. The policeman said we could pick it up tomorrow if we wanted it.”

“You told him we wanted it, right?”

She nodded and her eyes filled with tears. “Of course. Your father loved that bike almost as much as he loved us. Wrecked or not, it’s a part of him.”

Levi suddenly had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He thought about the last church meeting he’d attended. It was after Spider was dead and like Pop said, Cheney was looking for ways to get the meth lab back up and running. He even mentioned using a house the club owned out in the country, but just a mile from an elementary school. Levi remembered his father voicing his opinions about that very loudly. There was an argument among the men of the executive board, right there in front of everyone. That rarely happened, and Levi could tell that Cheney was really pissed off at his dad. If that wasn’t bad enough, when Levi’s dad said, “I refuse to be a part of this any longer. I don’t want to support my family on money made off other family’s misery,” the V.P., a guy named Jackie D, said, “What are you going to do, Hotshot…call the cops?” Levi remembered holding his breath that day as he watched his father’s face. He could see the wheels turning there before he finally said, “Maybe somebody ought to.”