by Emma Creed
Squealer and Screwy roll up, and Tac quietly fills them in, their identical eyes stretching open with both shock and sadness at the same time.
Tommy pulls up, and when he hears what’s happened the kid’s devastated. So much that he gets back on his bike and rides off. Guess the kid has feelings after all. I don’t know how close he was to Carly, but she was his auntie, and probably the only female he’s ever really known in a motherly way.
I feel terrible for him that he’s lost her.
I feel terrible for all of us.
When Prez finally gets here he manages to talk Skid out of his cabin, and Tac uses Skid’s truck to drive them down to the club. I need Maddy close and I’m torn between comforting her and being there for Skid. So, I come up with only one option. Maddy will just have to come to the club with me. I’d spoken to Prez about us this morning, before she warned us about the feds. She’s a part of this fucked up little family too now, and now’s the chance for her to see that at times like this, family sticks together.
I don’t know what the fuck’s gone down while we’ve been panicking about the feds, but Carly’s death has proved that I’m gonna have to step up my game when it comes to protecting Maddy.
I relieve Nyx of his duties when I get back to my cabin, and drive Maddy down to the club in my truck still wrapped up in a blanket. She doesn’t speak a word, but then neither do I. What is there to be said? There ain’t no words for what’s happened these last couple of weeks.
Everyone sits in shock in the lounge bar. Skid slouched in the armchair that’s usually occupied by Prez, pale, and his eyes drained red raw. Prez seems to have kicked back into leader mode, pacing the room while speaking down the phone to Roswell. There’s no discussion to be had over what will happen to Carly, she’ll be treated the same as Hayley. Ain't no way she’s gonna be hidden and lost all trace of.
But we still have to be smart about it.
Maddy sits curled in a ball on my lap while we wait for Roswell to get here, hoping it’ll be before the feds do or we’re fucked. She’s still shaking, and I worry she might never pick herself back up from this. I’ve seen how close her and Carly have become in the short time she’s been here. Losing two people so close together is going to shatter her.
“This is your fault,” an angry voice snaps from across the room, and when I lift my head I see Skid’s finger pointing directly at Maddy.
“We should have let the Bastards fuckin’ take you. Then this wouldn’t have… She’d still be…” his words become less and less understandable as he breaks down. Maddy crumples in my arms, and I hold her tight, trying to protect her from Skid’s outbreak. At the same time wanting to strike him for even thinking this could be her fault.
“Hey come on, let's get you a drink.” Prez takes Skid by his shoulder and drags him towards the bar. Skid’s eyes still burn anger at Maddy, and if the guy hadn’t just lost his wife I’d scoop them out with a spoon and force them down his fucking throat for daring to look at her like it.
Maddy hides her face in my chest and sobs. I feel helpless. There’s nothing I can say to take her pain away. I still don’t know what’s happened. If she saw anything. All I do know, is that shit’s about to get real fucking serious around here.
“Roswell's here,” Thorne, who’s been keeping a look out for the feds, pokes his head around the door. The tired looking cop enters the room not long after. I’ve noticed his wrinkles deepening lately, and I hope he ain’t losing his sharpness ‘coz he’s a real handy person to have on side.
“What's happened now…?” He heads straight for the bar, then as soon as he sees the seriousness in all our faces, his expression changes.
“Bastards came onto the fucking compound. Killed Carly,” Tac explains, and the look on Roswell's face catches up with the rest of the room.
“Fuck.” He sinks his ass onto one of the barstools. “They came here?” he checks, in disbelief.
“I've just checked the CCTV, they didn’t use the gate, doubt they’d know about our trail through the woods so they must have been on foot and come through the trees,” Thorne informs us.
“But why? why would they risk coming here, especially on foot, it makes no sense.” Roswell knocks back the shot that Nyx pours him, and I try to ignore the way Skid’s eyes hatefully glare at Maddy before he empties the contents of his own glass down his throat, slamming it on the bar.
“Come on I’ll take you up to the cabin,” Troj says, prompting Roswell to stand up and follow him out with a sympathetic look to Skid as he leaves. I need to get Maddy out of here too. The atmosphere in the room must be unbearable for her. Gently I shift her off my lap, take her hand into mine, and head out after them.
“That’s right, you take her the fuck out of here. Your new fuck toy’s caused enough trouble for this club, Jessie.” Skid’s harsh voice hits on every one of my nerves. Releasing Maddy's hand, I launch across the room at him, and luckily for him Screwy is there, his humungous arm slamming across my chest and blocking me from getting to him, his brother comes next, wrapping himself around my shoulders.
“Skid, I get you’re hurting man, but you speak about my bitch like that again, and I swear you’ll be hurting a whole lot more,” I growl through my teeth, my jaw too tight with rage to unwind.
“Just take her home, Jess.” Prez pats my shoulder in an attempt to calm me down. I reconnect with her, my anger calming slightly when I feel her fingers slide between mine. She manages to hold off until we get outside to the yard before she falls to pieces. Loud sobs and wet tears hitting my chest as her hands grip my T-shirt, she clings at me like I’m all she has left.
It dawns on me that right now I probably am, and that makes me tense my arms and hold her tighter.
I drive us up to the cabins, and when we get there Roswell’s cop car is parked outside Skid’s. Troj is leaning against a pillar on the cabin porch, and I give him a nod as I pass him taking Maddy inside and straight to my bedroom.
I take off my cut and the rest of my clothes, and she watches me in a confused silence. Then I lift up her arms and strip her of hers too. Pulling back the covers, I slide in and tuck her in beside me. It’s just me and her, skin against skin, away from all the evil outside. I got her wrapped up in a world where I can protect her, and I want to keep her there forever.
I haven’t seen or spoken to anyone other than Jessie in three days. Grimm dropped my laptop off the night everything happened, but he hadn’t said a word, and it still remains untouched on the kitchen table where he placed it.
Jessie makes sure Nyx is here to guard the door whenever he has to go down to the club, but he’s never away from me for long. We still haven’t spoken about what happened, we haven’t really spoken at all. We watch TV, we eat when I could stomach to, but mainly we fuck. We fuck as if that alone is the cure to the pain. But it never takes very long for the pain to come back.
Today, Jessie is trying a new approach, the let’s just pretend two innocent women never got killed because of you, kind of approach. When I get up, I take the blanket with me and head straight out onto the deck. Settling in a chair that overlooks the lake, I listen to birds chirp, watching the water on the lake rock and the sunlight dancing on its surface. Nature is still going about its business despite all that’s wrong in the world. It has no choice but to carry on.
Jessie brings me out a coffee and places it on the table. Then bends down to kiss the top of my head.
“Mornin’ darlin’, what you want for breakfast?” he asks stretching his arms over his head. I know he’s not getting much sleep at night because neither am I. Sleep is impossible when there’s so much going on in your head.
“I’m not hungry,” I answer, waiting for the lecture I know is sure to follow, the same one I’ve gotten from him every morning since Carly’s been gone.
“Come on you haven’t eaten properly in days, I could try and make pancakes,” he offers.
“What did you do with her?” I ask, ignoring his last sentence. It
’s all I’ve been thinking about the past few days, and it’s driving me crazy.
“Mads. I don’t think…”
“Tell me,” I interrupt. I need to hear it. Nothing can be worse than the image I have of her laid out on the floor when I’d found her.
“Okay.” He shrugs, defeated. “We want her to have a funeral same as Hayley did. We couldn’t have the body found here because it would bring too much heat on the club. So Grimm took her to a motel out of town and called it in, Roswell made sure he was the first officer on the scene. It’ll go down as suicide.”
I look up at him in shock. Carly had family, it would destroy them to think that’s what happened. Surely Skid couldn’t be okay with this.
“But…”
“We already have the feds on our backs, we had to think fast. Things would have been a damn sight worse when they showed up here yesterday if they were investigating a body too. Yeah, it’s shit, but it’s the only way we could guarantee a proper funeral,” Jessie explains.
“You could have gone legit on this one, it’s obvious who did it. That cop knows you, he would have explained. The people who did this need to be in prison,” I argue, feeling my anger multiplying.
“The people who did this need to be dead,” Jessie snaps back at me, instantly looking guilty for the sharpness in his tone. “Look, things don’t work like that around here. If they get put away, Prez and Skid don’t get their retaliation, and right now that’s the only thing keeping them both going.”
“And what about you? Is that what you want too? Retaliation?” I ask, hearing the harshness in my voice.
“Yeah, Mads, I do,” he answers without any shame, a stark reminder of the guy he can be when he isn’t trying to feed me and cradling me in his bed.
“Do her family know the truth?” I change the subject hoping that at least Carly’s family are in on the cover-up.
“Yeah, Skid told them,” Jessie assures me, and I nod, taking a small comfort at the same time as feeling devastated that there are now even more people on the planet that hate me.
I fix my eyes back onto the lake. I’d sat out here with Carly almost every day since I’d been here. We’d talk and laugh, having her with me was helping me deal with losing Hayley. Now I didn’t have her, all that pain’s back too.
“It should have been me… I wish it had been.”
I must say my thoughts out loud because Jessie flips.
“Don’t you fuckin’ say that.” He crouches down in front of me, the tone of his voice full of anger but the expression on his face hurt. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ say that. Hayley gave up her life for you. You can’t think like that.” He grabs my face in his palms and forces me to look into his ice-blue eyes.
“Listen to me, Mads. You got to fight those demons out your head, fight ‘em away or you might as well be dead too, and that can’t happen ‘coz I fuckin’ need you.” He shakes me. “You hear me? I need you!” When he forces my head into his chest, I’m relieved that I don’t have to see the worry on his face anymore. I feel his heartbeat thudding against my cheek while his hands stroke my hair.
“She was pregnant,” the words tumble from my mouth and muffle against his skin. I don’t know why I say them now, maybe I want him to understand why I wish I could have taken Carly's place, or perhaps it’s because the burden of being the only person who knew just how much Skid’s really lost is dragging me into the ground.
“What?” Jessie pulls back, his face pleading me to tell him that he’s heard me wrong.
“Carly was pregnant, she was gonna tell Skid that night, had this whole amazing idea planned out.” Jessie's head falls as he listens. His head shaking slightly as he tries to absorb what I’m telling him.
“This is gonna finish him.” He slumps onto his ass, his back resting against the railings, and his arms hanging over his knees.
“The autopsy will discover it, he’ll know soon enough.”
“Doc’s got a connection down at the mortuary, we have the paperwork, but an autopsy was never done. It couldn’t have been, or it would have been found that cause of death wasn’t suicide,” Jessie explains, scrubbing his face with his hand, like he’s ashamed of what he’s telling me.
“Someone’s got to tell him,” I whisper, Skid has to know, Carly would have wanted him to.
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Jessie stands up and turns his back to me, squeezing the ledge of the wooden rails in his fists and looking out on the lake as he thinks.
“How can I tell him he lost a fuckin’ kid as well as a wife?” His boot slams hard into the wood.
“Fuckin’ Bastards,” he huffs, and then I remember something.
“Maybe Carly could tell him herself,” I stand up, throwing the blanket off my shoulders and leaving Jessie confused. I rush to my laptop. Taking a seat at the table and powering it up.
Jessie follows me inside and watches over my shoulder as I click onto the cd drive and a file begins to load. I sit back on the chair and take hold of the hand Jessie’s placed on my shoulder.
Pain digs like tiny shards of glass into my heart when Carly's face appears on the screen. Her perfectly structured cheekbones risen up by the widest smile.
“What is this?” Jessie asks, and I ssshh him, leaving it to Carly to explain.
“Suprissseee. It’s not Scarface…” her sweet, excited voice comes out of the speakers. “But it’s not like you don’t know how that turns out.” She rolls her eyes.
“You're probably looking at me now like I’ve completely lost it, and I’ll be hiding behind a cushion, because, well… no one likes the sound of their own voice. So, I guess I should tell you what this is all about.” Her eyes blink and she looks a little shy before she continues.
“Skid, the moment you first stepped inside that health hazard diner I used to work at, I knew you were who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It’s a true story. I told Patsy when you left that I was gonna marry you.
Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?
You asked me to smile.
I was having the shittiest day and didn’t feel like smiling, ‘come on,’ you said, ‘I’ll bet that face is even prettier wearing a smile.’” Carly attempts to make her voice low like Skid’s, and I can’t help smiling at the screen.
“I gave in, and I smiled because who wouldn’t? The totally hot biker who’d been coming in every day for two weeks straight, just called me pretty. When I gave you your check, you told me that if I were yours, you’d give me a reason to smile every day for the rest of my life.
I took that chance, and as it turns out, you were right.
You’ve made me smile every day since. You have the biggest heart Skid, so big and full of love that I feel kinda selfish taking it all for myself.” Tears fill her eyes, as the smile on her face spreads even further.
“You’re gonna be a Daddy.” She laughs and cries at the same time. Her hand covering her mouth as if she’s hearing the news for the first time herself.
“And you’re gonna be so great. Our kid is gonna be the luckiest kid in the world because you’re gonna be there every day making us smile and…” Her speech is interrupted by a loud bang in the background that takes her attention away from the screen and towards the door.
“Oh… hey.” Her bright smile quickly morphs to a fake one, and her voice feigns enthusiasm.
“Skid will be back soon,” she tells whoever is standing just out of view of the camera, and I detect the sound of panic starting in her throat.
“Where is it?” a low rasp comes from behind the screen, and I feel Jessie’s hand tighten on my shoulder. This voice belongs to the person that’s killed her, and if the dreadful intuition I feel is accurate. The whole thing has been caught on camera.
Carly stands up from the chair, walking towards the voice and disappearing from the screen.
“Where’s what?” I hear her ask the intruder.
“Don’t play clueless fuckin’ bitch with me. You k
now what I mean.” The silence that follows seems to go on for ages, and fumbles and shuffles can be heard for a while until a loud sound cracks in the background and Carly stumbles back into view. She backs up against the living room wall holding her left cheek in her hand, and we both lean forward when the tall figure moves into view and looms over her.
“Fuck,” Jessie whispers when the face of the man comes into full view. I know the face too. I’ve seen it before, and it doesn’t belong to a Bastard. This man is a Dirty Soul. One of their own.
Tobias Saunders’ face is full of evil as he wraps his hand around Carly’s throat and pins her to the wall she cowers against. She tries to fight back, kicking her legs and clawing at his wrists, gasping for air against his grip.
“Skid always did land on his feet.” Tobias laughs, watching as she struggles and fights to unwrap his fingers from her neck. “The perfect fuckin’ brother, the perfect fuckin’ son, lucky cunt even found himself the perfect bitch to worship the fuckin’ ground he walks on too.” He pushes his face tight into hers, and with a grunt so loud even the laptop microphone picks it up, he slides his tongue over her cheek. “You ever wonder if you picked the wrong brother, sweet cheeks?”
“Please, Chop,” Carly cries, as his free hand lifts her skirt above her hips, and he frees himself from his jeans. “No. please…” she sobs, her beautiful eyes drowning now with terror. “Skid will be back soon. He’ll kill you. Don’t Chop… please.” Both her hands pull at his arm trying to free her neck, but he doesn’t budge.
Tears prickle my eyes as I watch him roughly hook her panties over to one side. It’s too much, I can’t watch anymore. I turn and bury my head into Jessie’s torso, listening to grunts and sobs combined, and Carly’s cries become weaker and weaker until eventually, they vanish.
Shock forces me to carry on watching what’s happening on the screen. Chop, one of my old man’s best friends forcing himself on his own brother’s wife. Carly pinned helplessly against the wall, crying as he thrusts his cock inside her over and over again. She fights against him to start with, but the cocky grin on his face only indicates how much he fucking enjoys her resistance. It doesn’t take long for her energy to give in to exhaustion and her fight fades to nothing.