by Blair Grey
And, I didn’t want the entire MC turned against me. Jett promised he was going to protect me, but he didn’t say what that would mean if I were to go against him and the rest of the MC.
Still, I was letting the anger I had get the best of me, and I wasn’t holding back as I told him how I really felt.
“Don’t talk to me about disrespect!” Jett continued. “How do you think I feel when I ask you something and you all but lie to my face?”
“I never lied,” I spat.
“You didn’t tell me the truth. In my world, holding back something is the same as telling on outright lie, and don’t you try to tell me otherwise!” he shot back.
I took a breath, still trying to get a hold of myself. I didn’t lie to him, but at the same time, I still had to be careful over how much I was sharing. He was getting angrier by the second, and that was only adding to my own fury.
“I don’t have to tell you about my past, and after what you did to my dad, you’re lucky I even talked to you, at all!” I shouted.
“What the Hell are you talking about?” Jett asked. “I didn’t do a thing to him!”
Rolling my eyes, I let Jett know how disgusted I was with him. “How dare you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about when you are the one who killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him!” he shouted, now getting nearly as angry as I myself was. “What the Hell makes you think I killed Doc?”
“Don’t call him that!” I spat again. “Your MC robbed and killed him last year, and don’t try to tell me otherwise! I know it was the Steel Wings, and since you are the president, you’re responsible for what the rest of them have done! I don’t care if you were there physically or not, you were there because you are the leader!”
There was a lump in my throat as I spoke, and I fought to maintain control over myself. I wasn’t going to break down and cry in front of Jett, not in the heat of the moment. I was angrier with him than I thought possible, and the look on his face only added to the fury that built up inside me.
I could see in his eyes he clearly didn’t know what I was talking about, and I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. I knew they had killed my father, there was no changing that. I knew they were responsible.
While I didn’t know if Jett was there or not, he had to be aware of what happened. Hell, for all I knew, he might have been the one to order it done. I didn’t know about that, but I knew that any president of the MC would be aware of such a thing, and to think that my father meant so little to them he would forget so easily made me want to stick to the plan and be there when he was arrested.
But, with the way the conversation was going, I knew better than to tell him my full plan. He clearly didn’t know everything about me, and I wasn’t going to give myself away already. I couldn’t. I had to be smart about this if I was going to bring them down.
And with the way he was looking at me right now, I knew I was doing the right thing. I still wanted to have that shot at justice, and I knew I had to be tough. It might be hard with the feelings I had for him, but that didn’t change the fact I knew what I was doing, and I would see him and the rest of the MC behind bars.
This might make my plan a little more difficult, but as I folded my arms and tensed my jaw, I wasn’t about to back down. Jett could be angry with me if he wanted, that wasn’t going to change my stance.
He wasn’t going to get away with this, and I wasn’t going to bend. He had to be held responsible for what he had done to my father, and I would be the one to make that happen. The cops would be on my side when they realized the truth.
It was just a matter of time.
But right now, in this moment, I didn’t care about anything but seeing Jett and the rest of the MC locked up. It would break my heart, but my heart was already broken.
I was broken.
Chapter 18
Jett
“You think we killed him?” I asked after a pause.
“I know you killed him!” Callie spat back.
I was speaking slowly, deliberately. I saw how upset she was, and with the wild look in her eye, I knew she truly thought she was in the right. That was part of the reason I was so angry with her – and the entire situation.
The entire MC had been torn up when Doc had been killed. We had nothing to do with it, and we were all very upset that it happened. We couldn’t fully wrap our minds around it. Doc had been a great guy to everyone. He was upstanding, and he always did things by the law.
It was difficult to find doctors who were willing to help people who were part of gangs of any kind, and though we referred to ourselves as a club, we were a gang. We weren’t much different than many of the other gangs scattered across the country, but Doc still helped us.
He didn’t look at us as criminals breaking the law. He didn’t look at the injuries we obtained and tell us we better go to the hospital or stop doing the things we were doing. No, he was right there with us – right there to help us no matter what.
And, this was his daughter.
Doc had never mentioned that he had kids. We knew he was married, only because of the time we saw the ring on his finger when he was stitching up one of the boys after a particularly bad fight. It was a delirious question that he answered quickly, only telling us he had a wife, but not going into it further.
We all knew better than to ask questions. That wasn’t something you did in our way of life. If someone had a family, that was good for them, but that was also the end of the discussion.
Unless they were actually part of the gang, there was no need to get too familiar, and that’s how Doc wanted it, too. He might want to help us for his own personal reasons, but that didn’t mean he was going to get his family involved in any way.
And, we all respected that. We never would have asked him anything about his family, we never would have even brought it up. There was no need to dig into that side of things.
After his death, he was remembered, and we all vowed we would always keep our eye out in case we were to find who was responsible. But, we never looked into it further. Doc had made it clear he didn’t want his family involved in any of this, so while we would have checked up on them after he passed, there was no one for us to check in on.
It was just one of those things.
Life went on, we went on with our business, and we knew if the chance ever came, we would get our revenge for him.
But, I never thought I would be having a discussion like this with his daughter.
“We never would have hurt him,” I said slowly. “Doc was there for us through everything. More than once he saved our asses. Hell, I think every man in the MC owes him his life in one way or another. To suggest that we might have killed him – or had anything to do with his death – comes as a real slap in the face.”
I didn’t want Callie to know just how much it hurt for her to suggest such a thing. I wasn’t going to go into that with her.
“The fact you can’t tell me straight up what you did only makes me think you’re a coward,” she spat. “If you really are the leader you claim to be, why can’t you just tell me what you did and why you did it? Don’t you think my father deserves at least that much?”
“I think your father deserves justice,” I told her. “I think he deserves to be avenged. I think it’s terrible what happened to him, and I can promise you, we’ve all been keeping our eyes open for the one who did it. If we ever find him, God help him.”
“Come on, you can drop the act,” she shot back. “I know for a fact you are the ones who did it. I might not have names, and I might not have been there to see it with my own eyes, but the police are the ones who said it was the Steel Wings, and they aren’t going to just pin this on you for no good reason. You had to have something to do with it!”
She threw her hands down to her sides as she spoke, and I sighed, shaking my head.
“The police were able to determine that he had been robbed, and they were able to say that it looked li
ke it was an act of gang violence, but they weren’t able to say that it was us because we weren’t the responsible party,” I told her.
“The cops aren’t just going to pick a name out of the air and say they are the ones responsible!” Callie snapped. “They are talking about murder!”
“Then why didn’t they arrest anyone?” I asked. “If they were so sure we were the ones who did it, why didn’t anyone get questioned or arrested?”
“That’s what I want to know, too!” she said without even missing a beat. I knew she meant business. She truly thought that we were the responsible party, and she wanted to know why we did what we did.
But, that lead to the problem of the truth: we weren’t the ones who did it, and no matter what she had heard, I wasn’t going to tell her we were. I wanted to know who was really responsible. I wanted more than anything to bring that good man justice and peace in his rest, but I wasn’t going to go around and claim I knew who did it when I had no idea.
I wasn’t going to go starting fights with anyone, either. The facts were the facts, and while we knew he had been killed, we didn’t know who did it – or why.
And suddenly, I had the idea to challenge her with that. If she was so convinced we were the ones who did it, then she ought to also have an idea as to why we would want him dead.
“So, why would we kill the one man who had been so willing to help us all that time?” I asked.
Callie looked at me in surprise, but only shifted uncomfortably in her shoes.
“Why would we go to the one person who had been there for us through so much and kill him? He was the one person we could go to when we were bleeding out; he would stitch any one of us back up, write us a prescription, and then send us on our way. We never had to worry about the cops being called or anything,” I told her.
“And, that’s why I think you’re lying,” she muttered. “My father never would have done anything illegal.”
“It’s not illegal to help someone who’s been injured, no matter how they got that injury,” I told her. “He wrote us legitimate prescriptions that we had to go fill out at the pharmacy. There wasn’t anything illegal going on.”
“But his prescriptions were stolen, as were a lot of the prescription pads. Why would you want to keep going to the middle man if you could just take his things and get all the drugs yourself?” she challenged me.
The look on her face told me she felt she had found the answer with this one. She truly thought that would be the reason why we would kill her father – to steal his prescriptions and have the ability to write our own. But, she didn’t stop think too clearly.
“We used his services as a doctor far more than we used him to get any sort of medications,” I told her. “And, don’t you think if we were going to get hooked on drugs, we would want to use the cocaine we already have access to? Trust me, no one is going to take a man’s life for just a paper pad and the ability to go to the pharmacy and hope to God they don’t get caught filling their own prescriptions.”
It was hard for me not to be overly condescending toward her, but I was furious. It pissed me off to think even after all the time she and I had spent together, she would still think of me as the kind of person who would kill a man for something like that.
It was as though she hadn’t gotten to know me at all. And, I still had so many thoughts running through my mind. I couldn’t believe she would think such a thing about me and still want to spend the time with me that we’d been spending together.
We’d been sleeping together. We’d been spending a lot of time together – both at her work and whenever she was off. She was under the protection of the MC. But, why would she go through with all this and not ever mention she thought we were the ones who were responsible for the death of her father?
The thought alone made me sick to my stomach, and I wanted to ask. But, in the heat of the moment, I didn’t want to bring up that side of the argument. I wanted to know why she was so convinced I was the one who had done it.
Or, at the very least, why she was going to hold me responsible to such an extent when she didn’t have much proof, at all. I could see how passionate she was in her belief, but she was only going on what she had heard from the cops.
Or, even more than that, what she had thought she had heard. There was so little proof, that I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. And, that was also hard for me to wrap my mind around.
But, Callie wasn’t in the mood to talk about any of this rationally. Clearly, she felt what she felt, and she wasn’t going to give me the time of day to think about the fact she could be wrong.
Her father was dead, and she was certain we were the people responsible for it. She wasn’t going to entertain the idea she could be wrong, and she wasn’t going to let me convince her of my side of the story, either. That was clear from the beginning, and she was going to maintain her stance on the entire situation.
“Get out,” she said with a shake of her head.
“You aren’t going to talk about this? At least, give me the chance to tell you what really happened?” I challenged her. But, her eyes snapped up to mine, and she pointed to the door.
“I told you to get out! Get out of my apartment right now!” she shouted. Her voice cracked with emotion, but she fought to maintain control over herself. She wasn’t going to break down in tears in front of me, that was clear. She wasn’t going to show that side of herself to me.
Not now, not in the heat of the moment and the height of her vulnerability. She wanted me gone and gave the order on impulse.
I hesitated. I wanted her to be rational about this, but it was clear to me she had made up her mind. She wasn’t going to listen to anything I had to say. She refused to reason with what she thought she already knew.
So, with a shrug, I dropped the photos I’d had in my hand on the end table and headed for the door, pulling it closed behind me with a thud.
Chapter 19
Callie
As soon as Jett left, I burst into tears.
There were so many thoughts and emotions running through my mind, it was difficult for me to follow any train of thought with any real clarity. It was difficult for me to really keep myself together.
Coming into this plan, I had told myself I was going to stay calm and collected throughout the entire process. I would be like an agent undercover, and I would bring my father justice. I knew these men were responsible for the death of my father.
The police weren’t going to just pick a name and claim that was who had done it. There had to be more to it than that. Sure, I knew there wasn’t a lot for the police to go on, and I knew there was still a lot that was left to be wanted, but didn’t change the fact that it was clearly someone targeting him for his access to prescriptions.
Why else would someone steal what little they were able to get their hands on there at the pharmacy, then steal his notepad as well? It didn’t make sense, I had to admit.
Anyone would want to take as much from the scene as they could, especially if they were after the drugs. But, the only people who appeared to have any sort of connection to my father was the Steel Wings MC.
Sure, Jett could try to convince me my father wanted to help him – and the rest of them for that matter. He could try to tell me that they didn’t do anything wrong, but who else would have gone after my father like that?
There were bigger pharmacies that could have been robbed. There were plenty of other doctors who could have been a target. But no, it happened to be the one man who was involved with an MC. Sure, Jett might say that they respected my father and there wasn’t anything they would ever do to hurt him.
But the facts were the facts – and to me, the facts were pretty clear.
He was dead. Gone. Robbed and shot. Not only did they take his life, but they took his prescriptions, as well. It was a low crime, and the people who had done it had gotten away with it, too.
The cops could speculate as to who they thought it was, but the lack of
evidence allowed whoever was guilty to get away with it, and that made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe they had gotten off so easy, and I couldn’t believe no one was doing anything about it.
And, it was time for that to come to an end. I had enough of spending my days with the guilt and pain sweeping through me. The pain of losing my father, and the guilt that whoever had done it had gotten off without having to pay anything for their crimes.
Law enforcement had failed my family, but I wasn’t going to let them fail my father. I would take these people down myself if I had to, and that’s what I was doing. So why did this have to be so hard? I wondered. I thought I had the upper hand in all of this, but as it turned out, I didn’t.
In fact, thanks to the way I had gone about doing this, I was now in a worse situation than I had been if I had just left the whole thing alone.
With a sigh, I headed back to the bedroom and grabbed my cell phone. I didn’t expect to have anything from Jett, and I was almost relieved when I saw that he hadn’t texted. I didn’t want to talk to him, and while it was unlike me to just kick someone out of my apartment like that, I didn’t want to talk about that, either.
I just wanted him to go away.
But is that what you really want? Is that what you would be happy with? After all, you keep saying you’re going to get this guy locked up in prison for life.
But, at the end of the day, is that what really makes you happy? How many times have you fallen asleep thinking about him? How many times have you woken up and checked your phone before you even got out of bed to see if he sent you a text?
How many times have you woken up from a dream with him on your mind? With that smile on your face because the dream was about him, and all the things you want to do to him? And, never mind all the things you actually have done with him.