Blood starts to pound in my ears. Adrenaline shoots through my body. Before I know it, I’m out of my chair so fast that Jewel almost falls out of my lap.
“What the fuck?” I hear my voice boom through the clubhouse almost like it belongs to someone else. I cross the room in three strides. Anger and fury flood my senses.
Why is he here? He knows fucking better! What the fuck is he trying to do, get himself killed — again?
Someone has the fuckin’ decency to turn down the music that’s blaring in my goddamn ears.
Then I’m standing face to face with Abe Abbott. My fists clench. I want to punch him, to throttle him. To wring his neck and send him back to the past, where he fucking belongs.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I grit through clenched teeth.
But Abe Abbott barely reacts to my anger.
“I’m tired of hiding, Angel,” he responds, loudly enough that anyone close can hear. His voice quavers a little from age. He draws his old man’s frame up to its full height. “I’ve come back to Tanner Springs. For good.”
Around me, everyone seems frozen in time. The Lords who’ve been with the club for years look fucking shocked. The ones who haven’t are frowning in confusion. The old ladies are looking from face to face, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on.
But there’s one face that’s different from all the others. One face that doesn’t look surprised like the rest of them. One set of eyes that flickers away when I look at her, before coming back to rest on mine.
Jenna’s.
My sister gives me a silent, pleading look. In an instant, I know she was aware Abe was coming here tonight.
She didn’t tell me. She fucking let this happen, without giving me a heads up first.
Hell. Maybe she’s the one responsible for it.
Jesus fuck, Jenna. You may have just sealed our father’s death warrant, for real this time. And blown up the club in the process.
Dragging my gaze back to my father, I bite out the only words I can say with any sort of fucking control of myself.
“Outside, old man. Now.”
In spite of the fuckin’ music, it feels like you could hear a pin drop in the room. With a single, ducking nod, Abe Abbott turns and walks back out the front door. I can feel every eye in the place locked on me as I follow him a few seconds later, wrenching the door open on its hinges as I storm out into the cold.
“What. The. Fuck?” I roar at Abe as soon as I’m outside. “Are you goddamn crazy? Do you realize what you’ve just done?”
My father lifts an age-spotted hand and runs it over his sparsely-populated scalp. I’m fuckin’ furious, loaded for bear, lookin’ for any excuse to let my rage out through my fists.
But unlike me, Abe is calm. So calm that I’m sure he has no idea how fucked he is, how goddamn stupid it was to come back here.
When he speaks, there’s a calm that fuckin’ floors me. Calm, and resignation.
“I’m tired of hiding, Gabriel,” he sighs, shaking his head. His watery eyes — their color a faded version of my own — look exhausted, but unafraid. “I’m tired of not being around anyone who means anything to me. I’m tired of not being here for my grandbabies’ lives. To watch them grow up.” He pauses. “I know you have a little boy now. Timothy, isn’t it?”
I open my mouth to snarl at him. “That’s none of your fucking business!”
Abe swallows and nods, his eyes growing sad. “Okay. I guess that’s your choice. But I’ve made my choice as well, son. I’m back. For good.” He raises a vague hand, sweeps it shakily in an arc, looking around. “There’s nothing out there for me. The life I’ve been living these past years — it’s no life at all. Just having a heartbeat isn’t worth it. I want to be home. And this is home.” He pulls in a shaky breath. “I’ll take whatever comes next. But I’m not hiding anymore.”
“Jenna,” I spit out. “She knew. She knew you were coming. Didn’t she?”
“Yes,” he acknowledges. “But don’t blame her. She tried to talk me out of it.”
My mind is fucking reeling. Abe can’t have any idea what he’s done. He doesn’t care what he blows up, as long as he gets what he wants. Selfish to the goddamn last, my father.
“This is fuckin’ unbelievable,” I mutter in disgust. My fist clenches again, tighter, the urge to punch him — or fuck, anyone handy — still almost too strong to resist. The only thing that stops me is that it won’t solve a goddamn thing. He’ll still be here, dropped in the middle of all our lives like a fuckin’ time bomb.
“Goddamnit!” I roar. “Fuck this, I’m outta here.” I reach in my pocket for the keys to my truck. “And fuck you, old man,” I spit out, shoving a finger in his face. “Fuck you for figurin’ out yet another way to drop a giant, steaming turd into the middle of everyone’s lives.”
I’m in my truck and peeling out of the parking lot so fast he’s still standing there gaping at me as I leave. Fuck! I pound on the steering wheel with my left hand until the heel is fucking sore as shit. That son of a bitch barely got out of Tanner Springs the last time. The only reason he escaped with his life was because everyone thought he was dead. The Lords would have taken him out otherwise, at Rock Anthony’s command.
My father betrayed the club. He betrayed our past president.
I helped him slip away. I pretended I assumed he was dead, like everyone else.
For years, Jenna, Ghost, and I have kept the secret.
Now?
I’m the president.
And the secrets and lies my father just revealed could mean the end of my presidency.
And more. So fucking much more.
My father, Abe Abbott, used to be the mayor of Tanner Springs. He was a big, powerful man in town, and had been for as long as my sister Jenna and I could remember.
As mayor, he was busy pretty much all the time — at his office in city hall until all hours, and on the phone at home whenever he wasn’t. When our mom died in a car crash under suspicious circumstances that were never proven, her death drove my dad even further into his work, and away from Jenna and me.
I was a teenager when all that happened. Angry at everything, and everyone. Especially my father. I guess I was looking for something or someone to turn to. A family to replace the one that had fallen apart around me. I started hanging around the Lords of Carnage MC, with my buddy Cas.
Over the years, the two of us went from being hangarounds, to prospects. Eventually, we got patched into the Lords of Carnage. Cas became Ghost.
I, Gabriel, became Angel.
The president of the Lords, Rock Anthony, had a good working relationship with my dad the mayor. It started out as a kind of peaceful coexistence: Rock kept the obvious crimes of our club out of sight of the good citizens of Tanner Springs. And in exchange, Abe left the Lords alone to do their business. Over the years, that relationship got tighter and more friendly. Soon, Abe Abbott was cutting deals with the Lords, and using his muscle and influence to pave the way for the MC’s business. With Abe as mayor, and the Lords backing him, both the mayor and the MC were making a beautiful fuckin’ profit.
I watched the whole thing happen in real time. I saw the relationship grow between my biological father and the man who had become my father figure in the MC. More than once over the years, someone or other would question my allegiance to the club. As the son of the mayor and eventually, the VP of the MC, that wasn’t too surprising, but I still hated it. I’d taken an oath to the Lords of Carnage, and I took that oath seriously. My club had my back. The men of the Lords of Carnage MC never once let me down. And I would never let them down, either. I couldn’t say the same of Abe Abbott. To me, the choice was clear.
And yet, somehow I still knew that one day, I’d be called on to prove my loyalty to one or the other. My father, or my club.
Shit worked okay for years, while the MC and the mayor were pulling in the same direction.
But then, my father got greedy.
I never kn
ew all the details, exactly. But somewhere along the line, Abe got contacted by the Iron Spiders — a rival MC who was lookin’ to make headroads into our territory. I guess he figured that if he could make money workin’ with one MC, maybe he could make twice as much money workin’ with two of them. Playing them off each other, in the background.
It worked for a while. How long, I don’t know. Until Abe got a little too greedy. He took out a loan from the Spiders he couldn’t repay. And when they demanded payment, he got desperate, and brokered a deal with them where he’d pay them back in intel on the Lords of Carnage.
But Abe never managed to get anything on us to satisfy his debt. Meantime, Rock got tipped off that Abe was double-dealin’ with the Spiders.
So they came for him. And so did we.
The Lords went over to Abe’s house to find it tossed, like someone had taken him by force. And Abe was gone.
Rock figured the Spiders got to him before we did. It seemed that would be the last anyone ever saw of him.
And it was.
But the Spiders didn’t get him.
What happened was, Abe figured out what was coming, and took off before anyone could nab him. He left town in the dead of night. He was greedy, but he wasn’t an idiot. My father knew that if the Spiders didn’t get him, the Lords would. He knew he had no future in Tanner Springs. No future that ended up with him alive, anyway.
I know this because I managed to track my father down. I went in search of him to drag him back to Tanner Springs — to make him answer to the Lords for what he’d done. I found the fuckin’ rat hole where he was hiding out. When I told him why I’d come, he begged me to let him just disappear. He begged me for it, begged me to let him pay for his betrayal by losing everything he’d ever known: his wealth, his status, his power. Everything that ever fuckin’ mattered to him, other than my mother, who he’d already lost years ago.
It was one of the hardest fuckin’ decisions I’ve ever made in my life. But in the end, I agreed.
Not for Abe. Fuck my piece of shit father.
But for Jenna.
I knew it would destroy my sister to know Abe was dead. And it would destroy her even more to know that the club — that I — had been the ones to kill him.
Even though the son of a bitch deserved to die, I let Abe go. When I went back to the clubhouse, I told Rock I didn’t know where he was. Technically, that part was true — I made Abe promise to vanish, and not to contact me again. I told Rock I assumed the Spiders had ended him. That was a lie, of course. A lie I’ve had to live with ever since.
In the years since then, the Lords destroyed the Iron Spiders. They’re nothin’ but a fuckin’ memory now.
Ghost, Jenna, and I have kept the secret about Abe still being out there somewhere. It was a pact we made with each other. But it was based on Abe’s promise that he’d remain gone forever.
I know Jenna goes to see him from time to time, wherever the fuck he’s been. She’s known better than to tell me anything about it. I haven’t seen him in years.
Outside the clubhouse just now, Abe said he knew I have a son. He knew Timothy’s name. Which means Jenna told him. Abe must know Jewel and I are together, too.
Jenna knew Abe was coming back. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know the second Abe walked into that fucking clubhouse.
She knew, and she didn’t fucking tell me.
“Goddamnit, Jenna!” I yell, pounding the steering wheel again with my fist.
I wonder if she has any idea what she’s done. How can she not know that she may have just sealed her father’s death warrant?
Swearing again, loudly, I turn the truck around and head back toward Tanner Springs. There’s no running away from this. It’s time to go back.
It’s time to confront the past.
3
Jewel
I can’t believe it.
Abe Abbott is alive.
He’s been gone for seven years. More than seven years, in fact. All this time, the only thing that trickled down to me about his disappearance was that he had run afoul of a rival MC, who had hunted him down and taken him out as payback.
His words echo through my head as I stare at all of the others standing around in the clubhouse in the wake of Angel dragging Abe outside.
I’m tired of hiding, Angel. I’ve come back to Tanner Springs. For good.
I’m tired of hiding.
Hiding.
Jenna looked guilty as sin when Abe stepped through the door. She clearly knew her father was coming.
The look of anger that Angel flashed her was unmistakeable. The rage that erupted from him at seeing his father was here, at the clubhouse.
But there’s something that wasn’t there in my husband’s face.
Shock.
Surprise, yes. Disbelief, yes.
But not shock.
It comes to me all at once — hitting me like a tidal wave.
Angel knew his father wasn’t dead.
I look down at my hands. One of them, my left, is gripping my thigh tightly. The diamond on my wedding ring glints in the light.
My right hand, still holding my glass of rum and Coke, is trembling a little.
I lift it up and chug until my drink is gone.
The silence in the room slowly dissipates, replaced with murmurs of shock and confusion. I hear Abe’s name repeated, and Angel’s, too. Moving through the buzz of conversation feels like I’m walking through water. I go back to the bar and ask the prospect to fill me up again. As I’m trying to figure out what to do next, Brooke comes up beside me. Her normally clear eyes are dark, concerned.
“Who was that?” she half-whispers to me. Dimly, I realize Brooke hasn’t been with the club long enough to know about Abe. Or recognize him.
“Angel and Jenna’s dad,” I stammer. “He’s been… well, long story, and I don’t know very much of it, apparently. But pretty much everyone around here thought he was dead.”
Except my husband. Who didn’t have enough trust in me to tell me otherwise.
Her eyes widen. “That’s what I sort of thought, but… wow. What’s the story behind this?”
“Why he’s back?” I shake my head once, hard, trying to push away the sense of betrayal welling up inside me. “No idea. I guess it’s like he said. He’s tired of running. As for why he left in the first place, and where he’s been all this time?” My voice turns bitter. “I guess you’d have to ask one of his children.”
The loud roar of an engine from outside cuts me off, followed by the squeal of tires. A few seconds later, the clubhouse door opens, and Abe Abbott steps back inside, looking sheepish. Jenna rushes to him, asks him if he’s okay.
“I’m fine,” he sighs, rubbing a hand over his tired-looking face. “Angel took off. I guess he needs some time. Can’t blame him, I guess.”
Jenna swallows, and puts her arm around him, leading him to one of the tables. Around the room, eyes follow them both as Abe sits down heavily in one of the chairs. Jenna rushes over to the bar and asks the prospect for a glass of water. She glances at me. Her cheeks redden.
“I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing here, Jewel,” she confesses to me.
“What have you done, Jenna?” I ask, a little sharply.
She flinches, then lowers her gaze. “Dad was going to come back here whether I agreed with him or not,” she says. “He was bound and determined to do it, no matter the consequences. At first I thought maybe I should tell Angel he was coming. Warn him, I guess, to give him time to prepare. But I don’t think it would have made the landing any softer.”
Even as frustrated as I am at my sister-in-law right now, deep down I have to admit she might be right about that. Warning Angel that his father was coming back wouldn’t have calmed him down any. If anything, it might have just given him more time to work up a bigger head of steam.
“Do you want to come over? Talk to Abe?” Jenna gives me a tremulous smile and nods toward her father. “He’s been wanting to offi
cially meet you for a long time, as Angel’s wife. He’s so excited to have a new grandbaby, Jewel.”
A surge of nausea hits me like a gut punch. I can’t imagine doing this right now. I know for a fact that if Angel came back and saw me sitting there with his father, chatting away, he’d take it as a betrayal.
Like the way he betrayed you by not confiding in you?
“I… I can’t,” I manage to choke out. “I’m sorry. Not right now.”
Jenna looks crestfallen. “Okay. I understand.”
She turns and goes back to her father. I grip my second rum and Coke like a security blanket and scan the room, looking for anyone I can talk to who might calm my jangling nerves. I pick out Stacia and Kylie off in one corner, and quickly cross the room to take an empty chair next to them. Neither of the two of them will understand what just happened between Abe and Angel. They’re both fairly new to the club, as Bullet and Hale’s old ladies. But one look at my ashen face and all their questions die on their lips, thank God.
“Hey,” I say, flopping down on the chair so hard my drink sloshes. “So, how about these decorations, huh?”
After the exchange of a couple of silent glances between them, I manage to get the two women talking hesitantly about their own Christmas preparations, and the presents they’re getting for their men. This will be Stacia and Bullet’s first Christmas together, and eventually she confides that she’s nervous as all get-out about trying to find the perfect gift for him.
Kylie and Hale have only been together for a year or so, so she obviously remembers what that’s like. “Stace, you know you can always just give him an awesome tattoo, and he’ll be thrilled with it,” Kylie chides, nudging her with an elbow. Stacia is a tattoo artist at Rebel Ink, the shop where the Lords get their ink done. That’s how Stacia — who used to go by Six — and Bullet met in the first place.
“Yeah, but… I dunno,” Stacia sighs. “I wanted to do something special. Trouble is, Bullet doesn’t really care about material stuff that much. Other than his bike, he’s just not that into anything. It’s not like I can wrap up an air filter and put a bow on it.”
Forgiveness: A Lords of Carnage MC Christmas Page 2