I give my order and hang up, sliding the phone back in my pocket.
“It’s my fault, I killed Roman all because I had no patience and now, she’s dead, and he has your daughter.”
I can’t think of Harper right now. Sparky filled me in briefly over the phone about Harper making contact and while it looks like she is holding her own, Leo does not, and I concentrate on him for the moment.
“You warned me there would be consequences outside of my control and you were right.”
A strange mewl comes from him and then he’s a fucking mess trying to pull himself up to his feet. He knocks into the drawers and the shit on top falls to the floor.
“Leo, stay down, for fuck sake.”
He stumbles into the wall, knocking over his battered baseball bat. I don’t think he ever once used it to play the game. If I were any other dad, I might have questioned it, but I raised my son how I wanted and I had faith in him to never act on the offence, only the defence or protection.
He takes one last puff on his smoke and drops the butt in an old money tin.
It takes him four strides to cross the room and fall to his knees before me. He shoves the bottle at me, and I take it before he drops it.
I lean across and dump it on his nightstand and then I’m faced with his gun in his hand where the bottle had just been.
He flicks the safety off and presses it into my hands, he moulds my fingers around the trigger and my heart rate picks up at his actions.
“Leo?”
“Niall brought trouble to us over a woman, he was awaiting your punishment before he was taken out. I too brought trouble to the club over a woman. I got a brother’s daughter killed, I got the president’s daughter taken.”
“This isn’t fucking happening.” I grunt, trying to manoeuvre the gun from his grip over mine.
He raises our hands still clutching the gun and presses it against his forehead. There isn’t a shred of hesitation from him. His eyes, although glazed, are determined and set.
“Hold me accountable,” he roars so loud it rattles his voice box.
He drops his hands and leans further into the gun.
“Pull the trigger.”
“Leo…”
I drop the gun but even in his drunken state, he’s reflexes are quick, and he forces me to press the gun against his forehead again.
“Do it,” he yells, spit flying from his mouth.
“Let the fuck go, son,” I yell myself.
“India’s dead, Harper’s probably being raped and hurt, all because of me. Punish me.”
Heavy footfalls can be heard rushing up the stairs and I fight against my son for the gun.
“I’m talking to you as a Lost Soul, not your son. Punish me!”
I lean into him and wrap my free arm around him.
He screams against me and pushes his hardest to free himself. I don’t know where my strength is coming from, but I hold him close to me and drown with him. Sobs rack through him and I tighten my hold.
“Cut this talk out, or I’ll have you tied to this bed until you come to your senses.”
He doesn’t hear me and goes for the gun once again. In my weakened state, he gets the better of me and pushes away from me and volts back and kneels on the carpet. He puts the gun to his head and wobbles from the drink.
“Put it down, or so help me, boy, I will do something I will always regret,” I warn him.
“Do you know what I regret, dad?” he asks, his voice dropping to a whimper. “Killing Roman, he will always be my one regret because it took her from me.”
A knock at the door gets my attention and Leo uses it to move further away.
“If you won’t hold me accountable, I will put this bullet in my head myself. I can’t live with this…”
“Blame? You’re right, your actions played into what happened. But guess what, son, so did mine. You pull that trigger and you’ll be leaving your family behind, you’ll be leaving Rayna. She needs her daddy, now more than ever. Pull that trigger and you’ll be abandoning her, she’ll never understand shit like that, she’ll hate you.”
His face contorts into raw sadness and more tears stain his cheeks.
“She’ll hate me anyway, when she finds out her mom was killed because of me.”
“She was killed because of Ellis. He pulled the trigger, he chose to take her life.” I’m trying to get through to him but it’s not working. My hopes he’ll put the gun down go unfulfilled and it scares me when his tears dry up and the drink seems to have miraculously worn off.
He’s in control and I’ve never been so afraid of my own son. Nodding slowly and slightly, I stand up and take three steps until I’m standing over him. I lean down and press my lips to the top of his head.
“I understand you feel you can’t breathe without her; I can’t imagine how hard it must be to see a future without her. I just want you to know I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone before. You’re my son and I was there when you took your first breath, I will be here when you take your last.”
He tips his head back and my own misery in life reflects back at me. I could wrestle him again for the gun, but we know how that ended last time. I could take a chance and call out for help, they are only on the other side of the door, but that could spark a reaction from Leo I’d witness being this close to him before they made it over the threshold.
So, as his head drops and his chin hits his chest, I reach around him and pick up the baseball bat he stumbled into earlier.
Keeping one hand in his hair, I tighten my grip and inhale as deeply as I can.
“Nothing scares me in this world but your mom, you and Luca. For what I’m about to do, I’m so fucking sorry, son.”
He looks up at me with sunken eyes. Stepping back, one last tear rolls down his cheek and disappears into his beard.
This is for his own good I tell myself and swing the bat into his arm. The gun falls to the carpet and lands with a thud. He clutches his arm and growls out, lurching forward for me.
“What the fuck,” he spits out and a wall of whiskey hits my nose.
“I did apologise, and I’m not finished yet,” I tell him.
Mustering all my energy, I pull my fist back and for the first time in my life, I smash my fist into my son’s head.
The skin over my knuckles split open, but the sting will never feel as bad as my conscious. His body slumps to the carpet and I kick the gun away from his reach.
Fucked up times call for fucked up measures and when he wakes, we’ll be having words because I never want to be put in that position again.
I cross the room and throw open the door. Sparky and Zachery are waiting, leaning against the hall wall and Sparky raises an eyebrow when he sees my knuckles and Leo unconscious on the floor.
“He isn’t to be left on his own,” I tell them and catch Alannah sitting on our bed through our slightly open bedroom door.
“Zach, pick him up and put him on his bed. Go through his shit and remove anything he can use to hurt himself.” Giving out orders settles me, and he nods once and disappears into Leo’s old room.
“I’ve called in Pope, once he’s here we’ll sort shit out.”
Sparky nods and heads downstairs, and I close the door behind me as I walk into my room.
Still, she has no tears, but the sorrow radiates from her and hits me like a blast of fire.
“I heard him, every word. What did you do to him to make it go quiet?” she asks, knowing I’ll always tell her the truth.
“I think you know, babe.”
Nodding, she says, “Say it.”
“I hit him in the arm with his bat, and then I knocked him out.”
“With the bat?” She gasps and her fingers dig into the bed sheets.
“Fucking hell, babe. With my fist, I’m not a fucking monster.”
Exhaling deeply, she lifts her hands and winds her fingers into her hair and rests her elbows on her thighs as she hunches over.
“Wh
en I gave birth to him, I never worried about something taking him away from me. You remember when Danny’s brother and sister were here, and Leo was up in his room while they had you tied up?”
How could I forget? It’s just another reminder of a time I was incapable of protecting my family.
“Not likely to forget, babe.”
“I’ve never said this before because I could never think of a way to word it so I didn’t sound crazy, but I wasn’t scared for Leo that night, I knew he would be fine. I was fucking scared for you, but not him. Now here you are, the possibility of this cancer taking you from me and I’m not scared, but I am for him.”
“I hear you.”
“Do you think he would have pulled the trigger?”
I vowed never to lie to her, even if it meant it would save her some pain.
“I do. He’s holding a lot of guilt and it’s not even set in properly yet. I’ve called Pope in, when he gets here, I’m going to have him and the prospects watch his every move.”
“We’re still going to the club?” she asks.
“Yes,” I answer. “My brothers need me, Leo’s not here mentally and he needs space. I’ll have him safe, but we have shit to do. We’re going to need cash; can you get ten thousand from the wardrobe stash and I’ll go talk to the brothers downstairs.”
“Sure.”
She leans in and presses her mouth to mine, it’s all over before anything could ever begin, but if I could kiss her forever, it still wouldn’t be long enough.
“I hope we survive this, Jackson.”
“Me too, Mrs Jackson.”
She gets up to walk over to the wardrobe and I leave her to it, listening to Zach rifle through Leo’s room as instructed as I pass by to go downstairs.
My brothers are still around the table and Zachery joins us soon after and walks straight out the back door, probably to get high. I don’t blame the kid. Kristen’s always had a problem with the shit he puts in his lungs, and because I don’t particularly like my brother’s old lady, I didn’t put a stop to him smoking it when she asked me to.
He’s his own man and he isn’t hurting anyone. If anything, while everyone was out drinking too much and getting into fights, he was spaced out in his room causing me no trouble or giving me headaches.
I pull out the pack of smokes from the drawers next to the stove and pull one out and roll it between my lips.
I have no interest in lighting it, I just need to feel my old friend again.
“Pope’s a couple of minutes out,” Ricky tells me, and I nod.
“When he gets here, you’ll all leave this house and you will not return until my daughter is found and Ellis is brought to me.”
No one has a problem with this, and I carry on.
“Leo isn’t good for anything right about now and he won’t be leaving this house until I say so. Tal has kept the club locked down, but he’ll be coming here and staying with Leo when I leave. I’ll be at the club and I want you all checking in every hour. I want him found, for the sanity of my son and this club.”
Heads nod around the table and the front door opens.
I crane my neck to look down the hall and Alannah is hugging Pope as he steps over the threshold.
The one thing I love most about Pope is his ability to keep emotionally detached from painful situations.
“Right, get my daughter found. Sparky call in our chapter brothers and let them know there is a ten grand pay out to anyone who finds them first.”
Whistles pierce the air and the kitchen becomes a blur of movement. Cash is always a good incentive to get what you want.
Leo says he doesn’t want to drown in blood, but I’d put every dollar I have on him needing Ellis’s dead body at his feet for some level of closure.
Pope joins me at the table and he’s looking younger lately, I think it’s the impending violence causing it.
“Leo tried to shoot himself,” I begin but he cuts me off.
“Nah, he’s hurting. He wouldn’t have done it.”
“He looked me straight in the eye, I know when a man cuts himself off. I had to knock him out to keep him alive.”
A rush of breath escapes him and the severity of what I’m telling him sinks in. It takes a lot to shock Pope and it hasn’t happened often in the past.
“What do you need me to do?”
“You’ve been around Tal, what do you think of him patching in?”
I told him if he kept the club tight, he’d get the patch, but I still need the brother’s votes.
“I’d give him my vote.”
“I’m going to the club and I won’t get the chance to come home until this is over. I don’t want Leo anywhere near the place yet, not until we have Ellis.”
“Understandable,” he grunts.
“Will you stay here and watch over him when he wakes? The prospect will have their own orders, but I want someone who has known him his own life with him, he respects you, he won’t…”
“Kill himself while I’m here?” he finishes for me, not that I was going to word it in that way. “Keep my twins safe and I’ll keep your boy safe.”
Shaking his hand over the table, I head out and Tal is leaning against the porch rail.
“Prospect,” I grunt, and he straightens up quickly.
“I heard you did well at the club, I’m sure you understand that at the moment we don’t have the fucking time to vote you in, but I hope you know that it will be first on my agenda when this shit is over.”
“Of course,” he says, failing to hide his joy.
“Leo’s sparko upstairs, he knows where every gun is hidden in this house. Comb through it without going through my shit and find them all, then hide them. If he wants drink, get him it. If he wants to smoke until his lungs bleed with nicotine, so be it. Just don’t let any harm come to him. Yeah?”
“I got you,” he promises, and I trust him to keep his word.
I smell her perfume before I see her, and before I can turn around, Tal is leaping forward and taking the holdall from Alannah.
“You want this in the car?” he asks her, and she nods.
“Do you know what?” I ask her, winding my arm around her waist and pulling her against me.
“What?”
“This is the first time the smell of your perfume hasn’t made me want to vomit.”
“Why didn’t you say something? I would’ve changed it, or not worn any.”
“I love this smell on you, the cancer isn’t going to take everything from me. Not yet anyway.”
It doesn’t matter how old we become, she rests her head against my chest, and we stand there for a short few moments just being together before heading into the shit storm.
* * *
Tense grief assaults me the second I walk into the bar. Slade is sitting by himself at the table we always sit at and everyone is giving him a wide berth.
“You should get some rest,” Alannah says quietly beside me.
“Later. I need to speak to Slade.”
Rest doesn’t come with the President’s patch and even if I didn’t wear it, I’d still put my brothers before it.
I push through the nausea and fatigue and ignore everyone as I join my brother. The scruff on his jaw casts shadows over his normally clean shaved jaw. He doesn’t look across at me, he doesn’t acknowledge me, I don’t think he’s here with us.
I move from the chair I’m sitting on to the one next to him and put my hand on his, just to get a reaction from him.
He slowly lifts his head and nods, and then pulls his hands from mine. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling, or what’s going through his head, but I have pretty good idea of what he wants to do to vent an inch of the pain he’s holding.
“We’re going to find him, brother, I fucking promise you that.”
Water pools in his eyes but not one tear falls. He focuses on me and holds his stare; it seeps into me like no other look has done before. He opens his mouth and I think he’s going to finally say som
ething but only a tired sigh leaves him.
“I know no words will ever fill the void, but I am the sorriest I’ve ever been and believe me, when we find him, we’re going to cause him a world of hurt.”
His head drops and his empty gaze falls on the table once again. It kills me that I can’t fix this for him. When someone has been taken too soon, we’ve always found a level of peace in putting the people responsible in the ground, but it’s not going to be enough this time, not with India being the one who lost her life.
Leo
The darkness seeps into me before I’ve opened my eyes. Six seconds is all I get before everything crashes back at a mile a minute. India, the blood, death, my dad, the gun.
My arm throbs and as I lift my sleeve, half my bicep is a purple blob. The fuck? Oh yeah, my dad, the bat. It’s blurry but I remember.
Moving my lower jaw from side to side, it aches to shit and the last image of dad swinging his fist at me comes back.
Who the fuck cares anymore? I spy the bottle of whiskey I brought up with me and it’s empty. Rolling out of bed, not that I remember lying down, my legs tingle with a heavy numbness as I walk downstairs.
The house is empty as I walk towards the kitchen and then I stop when I hear voices I’m not too sure I recognise.
“Did you see it?” I hear someone ask.
“Yeah, she hit the ground slow, like in a movie or some shit. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I’m about to lose my shit when I hear Tal speak up.
“Show some fucking respect and shut your mouths. We’re down to one bottle of whiskey and half a pack of smokes. Make yourselves useful and head into town and stock up, Cas said to keep him here and we’re going to do just that, but he isn’t going to want to be sober, not for a long while. Go on, get gone,” he snaps, and I shove open the door to the kitchen.
They all shut up and one prospect moves out the way as I head for the last bottle of liquor.
I don’t talk to any of them, I barely look at them. Before leaving them to it, I snatch the smokes from the counter and my dad’s old stash from the drawer by the stove.
No one says a word to me, and I climb the stairs and nearly bump into Pope coming out of the bathroom.
His One Regret: Sons Of Lost Souls MC Book Four Page 11