by Leah Wilde
“Don’t worry about her, Brodie. Rogue wouldn’t have come out here for her if he didn’t see some kind of toughness in her,” the second one said to the first, giving me a way to identify the member who had been worried about me.
“Just making sure she doesn’t need anything,” Brodie said.
“You need anything?” the second asked in his harsh tone. Somehow, in that moment, I trusted the nameless one more than Brodie. I knew that if I had told him anything, he would have gone out of his way to make it happen.
Instead, I just shook my head.
“See, Brodie, she doesn’t need anything. I told you, she’s tough,” he barked before patting my shoulder and walking back with the other men.
“If you need anything,” Brodie said.
“I’m okay,” I assured him, nodding. Apparently, I was handling the situation better than he was.
I listened to the gruff one and the other members behind me as they laughed and checked on each other. They told jokes about the men they had killed, men who had worked for my brother. I didn’t understand how they could have done that, how they could have made light of so much death, especially when their president was still in there with Titus. Both men, it was well-known, wanted each other dead.
Well, they could have joked about it as they were, or they could have stood around worrying about it like I was, I figured. And like Brodie was. He stood next to me, watching the building for some sign of what was going on inside.
I chuckled. He seemed so soft compared to the others. Even Rogue, who had a very prominent sensitive side, was harder than Brodie seemed at that moment.
“I’m just making sure you’re alright. I’m keeping an eye on you. That’s what Rogue would want me to do,” he said, talking like he knew Rogue wasn’t walking out of the warehouse once it was all said and done.
“Don’t talk like he’s not coming out,” I told him. “Any moment now, he’s going to pull the trigger again and put my brother down.” It was a harsh reality to face, but I knew I was going to lose Titus in all of this.
It was like my childhood had to finally die off completely in order for me to really reach adulthood. My parents died shortly before I made the transition from elementary school to middle school, and even in our small town, the difference was striking. We shared middle schools and high schools with a neighboring town because we just didn’t have enough kids attending public school at that age to support our own schools.
As much as I liked to pretend my childhood was all fairytales and princess dresses, I went to school with kids who probably turned out like The Hellions. They scared me, which was part of why I had retreated into my shell. They were rough, violent children, and, yet, there I was being protected by rough, violent adults.
After my parents died, my brother left so I wouldn’t be distracted and could finish school. It made sense now. If I had been around him, I would have been sucked into this life at an early age with no choice in the matter.
Then, when I went off to college, my grandmother died. She was my last tie to that little town where we’d grown up. Getting out of that house and letting go of her was the only way to ensure I didn’t have any reasons to move back once I got my degree.
Now, I was about to lose my brother, and living in his shadow was the last thing holding me back. I might have been grasping at straws with those rationalizations, but it was the only way to make it all make sense for me. Once it was all said and done, I wasn’t going to have to worry about anyone else’s opinions of what I was doing, and that was what mattered.
Worrying about what my brother thought was going to hold me back forever if I let it, but I wasn’t going to let it. I wasn’t going to have to worry about it.
Gunshots rang out, and I jumped. It was only two shots, but it was enough to snap me out of my little daydream.
“Hold on.” A hand grabbed my shoulder as I started to step towards the building. It was the gruff member, the trustworthy, hard one.
“What was that?” I asked. Of course, I knew it was gunfire, but I wanted to know if it was Rogue’s gun or Titus’s. I wanted to know which one of them had shot the other. I knew no one could tell me for sure from outside, but I hoped someone had the foresight to lie to me just that once to comfort me.
“Sounds like Rogue just took Titus out,” the gruff one said in an almost jubilant, celebratory tone.
“Mason, we don’t know that,” Brodie almost whimpered. “That could have been Titus.”
“Boy, you’ve got a thing for him, don’t you? I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were working for him, but Titus has already proven he has higher standards than that,” Mason snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” If it had been anyone else, they probably would have raised their gun at that point, but Brodie holstered his.
“You saw the men he sent in with Vance and Drake, didn’t you? They would have eaten you alive, son. Now get your gun out. Something tells me we’re going back in,” Mason ordered.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You stay here,” Brodie said.
“Bullshit,” Mason scoffed. “You can follow, but you follow. That means stay behind us where it’s safe. We might need your help.” He said the last words in Brodie’s face.
“Guys, I don’t want to see any more fighting,” I cautioned them. “If we’re going, let’s go.”
They hesitated. It was like they were listening for more gunshots. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run ahead of them and see what the hell was going on.
Then we heard sirens in the distance, getting closer, and fast.
Mason looked up and pointed at the SUVs parked at the edge of the parking lot.
“Get in the cars,” he ordered everyone. “Brodie and I will take Violet inside. We’re getting out of here once we leave with Rogue. Pull up to the building and wait for us.”
Running with their guns drawn, the other members sounded like soldiers as they made their way to the SUVs and started loading themselves in.
“Alright, let’s go,” Mason said to us.
He started running, forcing Brodie to run to keep up, and I came running up behind.
“Come on. There’s only one guy to worry about, and that’s Titus. We’ve already taken everyone else out,” Mason said as we hurried up to the second floor.
He pulled out a flashlight as we reached the top of the stairs. He swept it around the room. There were bodies everywhere, mostly my brother’s men. I didn’t see anyone in a vest lying on the ground, so I assumed that all of Rogue’s men had made it out alive.
“Over here,” Brodie called out, and that was when I realized he had wondered off away from us to check on Rogue and Titus.
I noticed then how quiet it was upstairs. I had expected to hear Rogue and my brother fighting and arguing, but there was nothing. Titus wasn’t even taunting him anymore. Had they killed each other?
Mason and I ran over to where Brodie knelt over Rogue’s body. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand.
Rogue lay in a puddle of blood. He wasn’t moving.
“He’s got a weak pulse, and he’s breathing, so he’s still with us,” Brodie said.
“What about numb nuts over there?” Mason asked, shining a light on my brother. “Sorry, Violet,” he said.
“He seems to be fine. He’s just out. Looks like the trauma of being shot twice knocked him out,” Brodie said.
“Good. Let’s get Rogue out of here and let the police find Titus when they get here,” Mason said, slinging his assault rifle over his shoulder.
He handed me the flashlight, which I held up so they could see as they picked Rogue’s limp, soaked body up off the floor.
We hurried down the stairs to the first floor and loaded Rogue into the back of the car.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” I told the guys.
“No way,” Mason argued. “We can’t let the authorities find him. We’re taking him to Brodie’s.”
&n
bsp; “My place?” he asked. “How did I get volunteered for this?”
“Man, look.” Mason grabbed Brodie by his shirt. “You’re not going to deny your president room to recover, boy. And when he does get back on his feet, I’m going to suggest we review your position in the MC. You’ve been nothing but a little punk since all of this started. Rogue needs men he can count on. We’re taking him to your place because headquarters is little more than a pile of rubble now thanks you and your kind.” He shoved Brodie back.
“My kind?” Brodie asked.
“Yeah, cowards.” Mason spat the word out.
He pulled off his shirt and rolled it up. Then he handed it to me.
“Put this on the wound and apply pressure. We’ll be at Brodie’s in a few minutes. He’ll be alright.”
He closed the back of the SUV and climbed into the passenger seat. We were off immediately, and just in time.
As I watched the police cruisers storm the warehouse, I realized that as long as it felt like we had taken, we must have only been there for a few short minutes. Whoever alerted authorities would have done so when Rogue’s men started shooting at Titus’s men, which would have happened while I was blacked out.
My mind reeled as I realized just how quickly everything had gone down despite how long it felt like it had taken. And if it had happened that quickly, it could have easily gone differently. One wrong move from anyone involved could have ended in disaster.
I held the rolled shirt over the hole in Rogue’s side. I could feel his weak pulse and the slight heaving of his chest as he breathed.
“Come on, Rogue, don’t leave me here. You’ve probably taken my brother away from me now, so you can’t go anywhere. You’re stuck with me,” I whispered to him. “You owe me. You hear me? You owe me.”
“Can’t this blasted thing go any faster?” Brodie called out from the back, sitting across Rogue from me.
I wanted to push him out of the car. I couldn’t explain it, but I agreed with Mason. There was no place in The Hellions for people who didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done. As I watched Brodie fall apart, and as I sat there trying to hold Rogue together, knowing that my brother was probably lost to me for good, I could feel myself hardening just a little bit.
Maybe my brother wanted to keep me away from this life because he knew what it had done to him, and he wanted to keep it from doing the same to me. After all, he had insisted that I was the smart one, and that I could do better. Well, I was going to do better.
Chapter 31
I stood in the window and watched the scene unfolding at the warehouse from inside Brodie’s living room. I held a cup of coffee in my hand. It was no longer night. We were making our way into the dark hours of morning now. A new day was about to dawn on us while we were still cleaning up from the night before.
Brodie had avoided everyone from the time we made it to his house. He went off into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He sat at his dining room table, out of the way but close enough if anyone needed to know where something in his house was. I was glad he stayed out of the way.
I had decided that Mason must have had some sort of military background. He seemed to love his weapons, and he patched Rogue up like it was nothing. He also seemed to have a much harder, sterner attitude than everyone else. He took charge from the moment we arrived.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to stay, you can go home and we’ll keep you posted,” he told the guys once they got Rogue inside and bandaged up. Then, turning to Brodie, he added, “If you want to stay, I’m sure our host will be more than accommodating.” His tone did nothing to hide the fact that he was done with the weaker member.
“Really, there’s no shame in leaving,” Brodie said nervously. “We understand if you have to go. Plus, I only have so much room.”
That last part was a lie. His house was massive. He had a large, spacious patio in the back overlooking the river. It had a wall around the edge so that guests couldn’t see too much of the river from out there.
His living room was larger than my apartment, and it was open. He had created cozy space within it by positioning his couches close to the fireplace. I hadn’t even seen what was off in the wings of the house on either side of the living room.
By saying that he didn’t have room, he was basically letting everyone know that he wasn’t interested in having them around, lending credence to Mason’s accusations that he wasn’t fit for his position within the MC. I didn’t know what that position was, but I assumed it was a pretty high position to hold.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked Mason while everyone decided if they wanted to stay or go.
“Just hang around in case he wakes up and decides he needs you,” Mason told me.
That was what I was doing. And I was watching as the police roped off the warehouse to let the investigation begin. As ambulances arrived, more police showed up. The uniforms already on the scene were probably requesting backup due to the sheer enormity of what had gone down earlier.
I ran the scene in my head over and over again, replaying what I could remember from it. I wondered what all had gone down before I came to in my brother’s arms. I wondered how the conversation had gone between Titus and Rogue. Those two sure loved to talk. I wondered if Rogue would talk to me as much as he talked to my brother once he woke up and started recovering.
Of course, I wanted him to say better things to me than he did to Titus, but it was hard to deny that those two had a special bond between them. They must have had a pretty intense relationship leading up to Rogue’s prison sentence. Then, for my brother to continue setting him up even after he went behind bars? That took some serious commitment on his part.
“How are you holding up?” Mason asked, walking up next to me with a beer in his hand.
“Not as well as you,” I said, eyeing his beer.
“Oh, this?” He laughed. “Yeah, I love having a nice cold one after we finish a job.”
“Is it finished?” I asked. “I mean, Rogue is in there unconscious. When we found him, he was mere moments away from death. Can we say that the job is over?”
“Rogue? Rogue’s fine,” he insisted. “He’s just sleeping it off, which is something we should all think about doing right about now.” He looked at my coffee.
“Hey, I want to be awake when he wakes up,” I said, justifying my drink.
“I wouldn’t count on him waking up too soon. He’s got five years of this crap to sleep off. Revenge has been on his mind since the day they picked him up at the pawn shop,” Mason said. “He’s going to be down for a while. You should get some sleep.”
He walked off with his beer, chugging the last little bit of it. I heard the bottle clang in the sink as he walked past Brodie, still brooding over the dining room table. He jumped at the noise in his kitchen and shot Mason a nasty look.
“What are you going to do, boy?” Mason asked as he got another beer and opened it. He flicked the bottle cap at Brodie.
“That’s it, I’m going to bed,” Brodie pouted as he got up from the table. “Let me know if you need anything.” He stormed off to his room and slammed the door, like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
“He’s not going to last much longer,” Mason contemplated as he took a long sip from his bottle.
I watched him, turning my attention away from the scene across the river. I was fascinated by the relationship these men had with each other. Everyone in the MC seemed to have his own distinct personality, and each member played a particular role in the group dynamic. It was amazing to me.
In my mind, I had always just imagined a bunch of rowdy, drunk street thugs who cursed and spat and rode loud motorcycles. They would go out every night, get drunk, and start fights. I always imagined them like the fat old-timers I saw on TV, the guys who had been riding since before color television. They raised a lot of hell and got in a lot of trouble, but they were harmless in the grand scheme of things. There was a kind of simplicity to them that ma
de them endearing.
The Hellions were not those bikers. These men were fit, in great shape. They were all wide and packed with muscle. A few of them seemed skittish, like Brodie, but they all seemed to be able to man-up when necessary, like Rogue. They were organized behind some sort of intelligent plan.
And for the most part, they were fiercely loyal, but not just to Rogue or the MC as a whole. They were loyal to each other as well. All except for Brodie, it seemed. It seemed that Brodie was done. I wondered if he had been like that before Rogue went to prison or if it was something that happened to him while the MC was out here on their own in the real world without their leader.
Hell, they had a natural born leader among them already in Mason. He would have been a great second in command, or whatever they called that position, probably vice president. Something told me that was Brodie’s position. What a joke! Brodie wasn’t a leader. He was barely even a follower.