Love Hard

by Hazel Parker

  I just hoped it didn’t come to that.

  “You know, at some point, they’re going to want a speech,” Sword said. “We may be feeling good about Trace, but many of them have only heard the news. They have no idea how he’s doing or how the club is doing as a whole. It might be good for the sanity of the men to hear everything and get a little confidence.”

  “Shit, really?” I said with a sigh. “You know I hate speaking to big groups. Hall is about as big as I can get before I start to feel uncomfortable.”

  Except you’ve become better at dealing with uncomfortable conversations in the last few days. You want to let talking to men who all support you be the spot where you say “no, this is too much?” Don’t be crazy.

  “But,” I said, speaking up before Sword could give me more needless encouragement. “I think I got it.”

  I waited a couple more minutes until I was sure everyone had their weapons and was just waiting for the official signal. I whistled as loudly as I could, and the room fell silent.

  “Good evening,” I said. “It’s about ten o’clock right now, and with any luck, by the time the clock strikes midnight, the Mercs will be no more. You all know what the mission is. You all know that what we’re doing is risky. We could be walking into a stream of bullets, or we could be walking into nothing but a bunch of men ready and hungry to surrender. But I want to tell you why I believe this is what we have to do.”

  No one was so much as coughing right now. I had all eyes on me. Prove to them that you’re the wise one, Sensei. Regain that title as the leader of the group.

  “The whole reason I am speaking to you here right now is that Trace Cole is in the hospital from an attack by Zane, the self-appointed leader of what remains of the Mercs,” I said. “For those of you who do not know, Trace is now healing and is expected to make a full recovery.”

  I paused briefly as some applause came from the Saints who didn’t know yet.

  “However, with that said, this is just a continuation of the cycle of violence we’ve had for the last two decades,” I said. “Look to the brother to your left. Think of your loved ones, whether they be your wives, your children, your parents, whomever. Think about how they would suffer if you were gone. It’s terrible, right?”

  For some reason, my mind flashed to Courtney at that moment. It was odd considering we’d only slept together the one day, never mind going so far as to say we loved each other… but I knew how she looked at me on that second visit to her room. I knew there was something there, and while I might have fucked up badly, I hadn’t lost it yet.

  “That will forever remain a possibility if we don’t change our approach to the Mercs.”

  I let the words hang for a few seconds to let the implication settle in.

  “The last two decades have seen us take an approach of fighting fire with fire. All that it has done was let the founder of our club get killed, prospects killed, and many loved ones put in serious danger. That cannot continue to happen. Frankly, I’m too old to deal with this shit, and many of you are too young to have to face a lifetime of this.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “So remember that what you’re fighting for tonight isn’t just to end the Mercs. It’s to end a cycle of death and violence that does nothing but bring grief and sadness to our loved ones and to us. Yes, we will have to remain vigilant with whomever we bring into the fold. What we’re doing is not giving people a free pass in. But we are giving them a chance to end all of this. To bring an end to the madness. To bring peace and victory to the Saints!”

  I wasn’t really into theatrics, but I knew a good fist raised would get the crowd riled up. Sure enough, the roar of applause broke out, and the men cheered and bellowed as they got fired up.

  “Now let’s go! Let’s roll out!”

  The men barreled past me as Sword came up to my side, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  “Not bad for someone who didn’t even want to be president,” he said.

  “No,” I corrected. “Someone who didn’t even want to be an officer. But I’m here now, and I’m not turning my back on anything.”

  Outside, a symphony of motorcycles sounded, their engines revving to the heavens. I got on mine, with BK and Sword staggered just behind me. Krispy and Mafia were behind them as well, and I motioned for us to roll out. Together, as one massive unit, in what would be one of the largest runs we had ever done, we headed out to end the threat of the Mercs once and for all.

  * * *

  I’m sure that the sight of a few dozen bikes on the road at ten o’clock at night on a Sunday was something to behold. I’m sure more than one officer probably shit themselves when they saw us and wondered what was about to go down.

  In the short term? Quite possibly a lot of violence and a lot of problems.

  But in the long term? If everything went according to plan, complete peace and the elimination of the town’s greatest problem this side of the Bloods and the Crips. Even if there was only a ten percent chance of that happening, it was worth it. Everything else we had tried, thus far, had had a zero percent chance of succeeding in the long run.

  The only risk we had in making this happen was drawing attention to ourselves, but the Mercs would know we were coming anyway. The outside authorities would be concerned, but when they arrived, if all went well, they would just see that the shooting and gun fighting had ended.

  We pulled off the highway and headed toward their warehouse. I held back the prospects and members while BK, Sword, Mafia, Krispy, and I rolled up nearby. BK handed me a pair of binoculars he had brought, and I looked out.

  Sure enough, in that same warehouse, I could see Zane and a few other Mercs hanging out. It looked even better than I had hoped for, actually; Zane looked pissed off, while the rest of the Mercs looked passive and stoic. Maybe that was just their normal state, but it was certainly better than seeing them looking angry and fired up.

  “How should we do this, Sensei?” Sword said. “Overwhelm them?”

  I thought about it for a second. Had we really brought a force of forty bikers just to sit back and cheer us on?

  I usually favored subtlety, but this was one spot where I wasn’t going to do that.

  “Nope,” I said. “Tell everyone we’re going to run in. If you see Zane or anyone who tries to protect him, shoot them. Everyone else, hold them up and don’t fire unless they shoot back. We do that, we can minimize casualties.’

  That’s the idea, at least. No guarantees, though.

  “You got it,” Sword said.

  The four officers went down the rows of bikes, telling them the plan. They all held their rifles near, a few of them double-checking to make sure they were still handy. They also all patted their hips and their chests, doing the last second check to make sure the pistol and the body armor hadn’t vanished. I waited at the front, staring straight ahead through my binoculars.

  They weren’t any the wiser yet. But the longer we sat here, the more likely—

  “We’re ready,” Sword said.

  I didn’t need a moment more. Bringing my engine to full force and charging ahead, I whipped off my machine gun off of my back, aimed it at the window, and waited until I was in range.

  Just seconds before I got in firing range, I thought of all that I had fought for. Trace. Paul. The Saints. Courtney, even. Alyssa.

  Family.

  Love.

  Most of all, I fought to end this. I fought so that I could finally, truly allow myself to know that my little girl and the town of Green Hills wouldn’t have to worry about violence anymore. Evil would always exist, but evil of this magnitude needed to be stopped now before it went any further. If that took the greatest sacrifice on my part…

  So be it.

  I was ready to do whatever it took to end the threat in Green Hills forever. I would fight like hell to live, but if I had to die, well, I trusted the Saints to take care of Alyssa for me.

  And then I was in range. I lifted my machine gun. Zan
e was still in view through the window.

  And I fired.

  I held my finger on the machine gun for several seconds as the other bikes roared in behind me, also landing machine gun fire near Zane and his crew. No one had fired back at us yet, but that was just a matter of time. And if it wasn’t, then that just gave us many more to assume into the club.

  Sure enough, in a brief interlude while people pulled up their bikes for cover about a dozen feet from the house, Zane and the rest returned fire, using shotguns and rifles to try and take us out. I ducked and slammed myself against my bike, even as it took bullets. I cursed out the Devil’s Mercs as they rained bullets upon us, but I knew this would be the end.

  I wouldn’t let it be any other way.

  “Get into the building!” I yelled. “We get inside and take whoever you can hostage!”

  Hostage wasn’t quite the word I wanted to use since we were going to give the enemy many chances to turn to us, but it was perhaps the word that would get the men to act with the most conviction.

  The only problem was the Mercs were relentless with their fire. It was like they had known that we were coming and had stocked their warehouse with enough ammo to take down an entire police force. We had plenty of ammo ourselves, but certainly not an entire warehouse’s worth.

  I realized within just a few minutes that our bikes wouldn’t hold forever. We had to be bold and get in there. We had to take charge.

  I had to take charge. I couldn’t avoid it.

  “BK!” I yelled. “Krispy! Come with me! Sword! Mafia! Give us some goddamn cover fire!”

  BK, to my left, and Krispy, to my right, both nodded. Sword and Mafia counted down from three and then provided an unending torrent of bullets upon the Mercs, giving us the chance to head toward the nearest door. We shoved our way inside and came to a single man on the inside, standing patrol. I held my gun aloft right at him, and he immediately raised his hands.

  With the high of battle, I came seconds away from pulling the trigger, falling into old habits, and killing him.

  But then the entire mission would be rendered moot, and all of my ideas would have been ignored. No one would have followed my word if I couldn’t.

  “You want to be with these fucking assholes?” I said. “You want to live?”

  He looked around, checking to see if any other Mercs were nearby. We could all hear the gunfire, but there didn’t seem to be anyone who could see us. He nodded that he wanted to live.

  “Give us all your weapons, now!”

  He immediately put out his gun and his knife, handing them over to BK.

  “We’re bringing in new members into the Saints,” I growled. “If you want to be saved, if you want to get away from this, then you run the fuck away and come and find us later, unarmed. You got it?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Th-thank you.”

  With that, he then broke out into a full sprint away from the bullets, fleeing to what I could only hope was nearby safety.

  “I hope you know what you just did, Sensei,” Krispy said. “That fucker could come back to bite us in the ass.”

  “Or he could come back to kiss it,” I said. “Come on, let’s go. It proved something for me anyway.”

  “What?”

  “That many of these guys don’t even believe in the Mercs. They just feel like they have no choice.”

  But that’s not true for Zane, which is why he’s got to be killed.

  We moved through the warehouse, sneaking up on Mercs and either allowing them to surrender or get shot. I’d like to say that all of them surrendered, but a few tried to fight back and met quick deaths at the hands of BK and Krispy. Our bullets echoed throughout, but we didn’t seem to attract any extra attention largely because of the efforts of Sword, Mafia, and the rest of the club outside.

  By the time we got to the catwalk above the main floor, where Zane and some of his men were firing, we’d let go about eight Mercs and had to kill three. We stayed busy, but so did the men outside. We did a quick count of what we saw.

  Zane, along with the two guys who had come to the Italian restaurant, plus about six others, were perched right by the window, firing upon our men. They had no idea that we were here, and we had the cleanest of shots.

  “Let’s not waste any time,” I said. “Let me kill Zane.”

  I raised my rifle. It wasn’t a sniper rifle, so there was no guarantee that my aim would be true, but we only had one chance to surprise them, and the more our boots clanged on the catwalk, the less likely it was that we’d have the element of surprise. And if that happened, we lost a major advantage we had.

  I held true.

  “For Trace,” I mumbled.

  And I fired.

  My bullets flew through the air and made contact… but not with Zane.

  I did drop one of his bodyguards, and BK and Krispy, picking up the slack, also fired on the other bodyguard and Zane. One of them hit the president in the shoulder, drawing a sharp cry as he fell to the ground. The other men nearby looked up at us in surprise, taking their attention away from the rest of our members outside.

  “Take those assholes out!” Zane said.

  “But Boss, the—”

  “Did I fucking stutter?” Zane said, raising his gun and shooting it at the man who had questioned him.

  “We will take you in!” I shouted. “We will take you in! Don’t shoot us! Turn on him and we will kill him and let you live!”

  “Don’t you fucking believe them for a second!” Zane said. “You are fucking Mercenaries! Don’t tell me all of you sorry asses are going to quit now!”

  The men didn’t raise their guns at us, but they didn’t turn them at Zane yet. The Saints outside, thankfully, had had the good sense not to fire on the Mercs not firing at them. If Sword and Mafia had any sense, right now, they were also moving the men in so we could overwhelm the Mercs and prevent them from changing their mind.

  “Goddamnit! Diablo and Jose would be fucking ashamed of all of you!” Zane said. “I am your president, and you will do as I say!”

  “None of you want this violence,” I said, projecting my voice out. “None of us do! We all have family we care about. None of this is what we want. Let’s end this. Let’s put Zane away, let’s—”

  “Fuck!” Zane roared, raising his gun to the catwalk.

  The three of us just barely dodged his bullets, but then a single one rang out from down below. I looked down to see Zane, eyes wide, slumping to the ground, dead.

  I then looked over to his right and saw a Merc had put a single bullet in his head.

  I smiled.

  The rest of the Mercs made a show of raising their hands, putting their weapons on the ground, and moving forward. A few cursed and said they would never join the Savage Saints as long as they lived, but that was fine. I wasn’t interested in forcing people who hated us to join us, and they were in the minority anyway.

  “Nothing funny,” I said as I moved down the catwalk, my rifle still aloft. “No games. We will help you, but you will earn our trust.”

  Seconds later, from the other side of the hall, the rest of the Saints came in, surrounding the Mercs. I approached the one who had shot Zane and nodded to him.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Marcus,” he said.

  Marcus had dark, Mediterranean-colored skin, a black mustache, and dark, brown eyes. He did not look like the kind of man who was easily given to relaxing, but he had been the one to end this all. He had been the first to listen to me.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you kill him?”

  Marcus snorted.

  “I don’t like you. I’m not going to join you. But I have a son at home. I don’t need to be living this life as I have for over a decade now. I’m tired of it all. You take whoever you can. I’m just going home.”

  I nodded. I extended my hand.

  “Marcus, I don’t blame you in the least,” I said. “Thank you for what you did.”

&
nbsp; He looked at me with suspicion, then quickly and firmly grabbed my hand.

  “Thank you for ending this,” he said. “Thank you for making the first move.”

  Chapter 20: Courtney

  The Savage Saints didn’t kill my husband.

  The Savage Saints fought to protect my husband.

  Three days later, sitting at an outdoor eatery by myself, with all of the day ahead of me thanks to my administrative leave, I still found my eyes welling up at the truth that had come to light that Sunday. I’d had to read the report on Monday when the hangover had left just to make sure I had read what I thought I had read, but the content hadn’t changed in the slightest.

  My husband had been volunteering in the area when the Devil’s Mercenaries came through to complete a drug deal. Some Saints were there and had attempted to break it up, but all it had resulted in was multiple members of both sides coming in, trying to kill the others. My husband had been caught in the crossfire, and a member of the Mercs had grabbed him and tried to use him as a human shield.

  The Saints… the Saints had tried to stop their fire, and they had succeeded. But when the Mercs realized that he was a witness to everything, they had killed him.

  At the time, all I had done was seen “shootout between Saints and Mercs” and the fact that my husband was one of a few casualties and had immediately grown to hate the Saints and the Mercs. It had become as much a part of me as my identity as a teacher and a producer of high school plays. It was the single biggest reason I had become an alcoholic and had developed depression.

  But…

  I had never given myself the chance to realize what the truth was. I had never taken the time to take a step back and think about what had happened. I never let myself read the report.

  Until Vance had given it to me.

  And now, because of it, I found myself uncertain about so much with Vance and the Saints that I didn’t even know where to start. I had to build my knowledge of everything from the ground up just to make sense of this crazy, crazy world.

  So I did something that may have seemed a little crazy Saturday night but now just felt right on this late Wednesday morning, something that I had done in the early morning fog but had long anticipated I was doing as far back as Sunday afternoon.