Slim disagreed. “You’re in the goddamn lion’s den. What better place to be when you’re tryin’ to catch a rat?”
I held up my left palm as far as the restraint would allow. “Better place? Look at me, Slim! I’m a fuckin’ mess of broken bones and torn ligaments. Even if I solved the entire goddamn thing, it don’t help anybody right now.”
He lifted his leg and rested his boot down near my feet. “If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead. As that ain’t the case, you gotta think like they are. What’s their goal?”
I closed my eyes to sort my jumbled thoughts.
Death is comin’ for you…
“Celia,” I croaked. “Saint wants Celia.”
“Why?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he said calmly. “Who do you know who would want to hurt her?”
“Betsy, but no way in hell is she behind this. No club would back a woman. There’s a chance it could be Celia’s parents. Norma took our girls… maybe she wasn’t plannin’ on stoppin’ until she’d taken everything…”
“And? Who else?” Slim pushed.
I shook my head, staring blankly up at the ceiling. “Nobody besides Cobra, but he ain’t the one in charge. That make any sense to you?”
He scratched at his long beard, lost in thought. “I feel like there’s somethin’ we’re missin’ here. Almost like we’re lookin’ at it the wrong way, ya know?”
I did because the idea that someone had orchestrated a war and taken me out just to get to her seemed like overkill. “I figured out the badge who was workin’ against us.”
“And?” Slim pushed. “Care to share that with the class?”
“I don’t exactly know the prick’s name, but I can tell you what he looked like. Maybe you can get it back to Mikey and the club.”
“And how exactly do you expect me to do that?”
I shrugged my good shoulder. “I don’t know… can’t you go haunt them or some shit? Turn off a few lights? Maybe write it in blood on the walls?”
“Think you and I both know I ain’t a ghost. I’m up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “When you wake up, I’m gone.”
I clenched my jaw. “Thought I was awake.”
“You really think after the beating your body just took that you’re awake?”
A scream echoed off the walls in another part of the building, and I lifted my head. “Was that a woman?”
Slim nodded. “Sure as fuck sounded like one.”
Celia.
I thrashed against the mattress, fighting to free my wrist from the restraints. “Help me get out of this, Slim. We gotta get out of this room.”
My vision blurred, and the ringing in my ears returned. “Shit… I can’t see. Give me a second to let this pass, and we’ll go, okay?”
When the room remained silent, I lifted my head, blinking until the fog cleared. The chair beside the bed sat empty, just as it had the entire time I’d been lying here.
A tear slipped free from the corner of my eye and ran into my ear.
I’d lost him again.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that I was tied up like an animal, life had decided to provide a cruel reminder that no matter the outcome here, my best friend was never coming back.
The woman screamed again, the sound piercing my skull in a thousand places. I no longer cared about breaking free to help her, I just wanted it to stop.
The ache in my neck intensified until all I could do was lie perfectly still, keeping my breathing shallow as I watched the blindingly white ceiling.
“Grey,” a voice shouted from nearby. “You’ve got company. Wake up.”
Cobra had done it; he’d gotten in my head, his voice ringing loud and clear through the empty room. I was going to die hearing him taunt me from somewhere above.
“J-Jamie?” The woman cried. “J-Jamie, h-help us!”
I closed my eyes and breathed a soft sigh of relief when I realized it wasn’t Celia or my girls.
Something brushed against the sole of my foot before an arc of electricity jumped through me, torquing my body like a pretzel. My legs curled up under my ass as my hips arched up toward the ceiling. The arm that I’d been careful not to move now jerked involuntarily out of the sling, forcing a low growl from my lips.
When I opened my eyes, the room was no longer empty. Cobra stood grinning near the foot of the bed, waving a cattle prod as if it were a flag. The screams that I’d heard in my head sounded again, this time much closer than they’d been before.
I panted through an agonizing breath before turning toward it. Norma sat against the wall; arms bound in chains against her chest.
“J-Jamie,” she moaned. “H-h-help him.” She pushed her chained hands away from her body. I lifted my head and followed the line to where Richard lay on the concrete. Blood poured from a wound on his head. If he wasn’t dead already, he would be soon enough. There was no way Saint planned on keeping all of us alive.
Cobra held up his arms, still gripping the cattle prod in one hand. “I thought you might be getting lonely and decided to bring you a couple of friends.”
Norma continued her sniffling from the corner, her eyes pleading for me to rescue them. It took every bit of strength I still possessed to laugh. “Friends? You and your buddy Saint ain’t been doin’ your research.”
Her eyes narrowed as they met mine, not realizing that I was doing the only thing I could to save her ass. I’d lost all respect for her and Dick when they stole my children from me. It didn’t mean I wanted to see them die, though.
Richard chose that moment to rejoin the land of the living, jerking up off the floor with a loud groan. “Norma,” he slurred, struggling to make his way toward her. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“What does Saint want with a couple of old fucks?” I bit out, my body still buzzing from the shock.
“Saint?” Cobra ran the handle of the prod under his chin. “Who said Saint had anything to do with this? You’re the one with the vendetta against them, are you not? Don’t they owe you some money?”
I used my fingers to try to loosen the bindings around my wrist. If I managed to break free, I could distract Cobra long enough for them to escape. Maybe they could get a message to Celia.
“Forgave the debt. Look at ‘em. What threat do they pose to me? I can always make more money—”
Cobra caught Richard by the hair and jerked his head back. The old man’s eyes widened in fear. “You could make the money back, but it’d take a while. I mean, they’d been stealing from your kids for years, right?”
“You got a point to your ramblin’?”
He nodded. “Since when has the leader of Silent Phoenix ever let anyone off without paying?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I panted, trying to adjust the positioning of my arm. “I ain’t the leader of shit right now.”
“Maybe not, but that didn’t stop you from going after your enemies. One.” He dropped the prod and pulled his gun from the holster.
“By.” With a grin, he pulled back the hammer and pressed the barrel against Richard’s skull as Norma began to scream again, begging me to stop him.
“Cobra, we both know you ain’t ever been Saint’s bitch. Don’t do his dirty work for him.” My voice was steady and even as if his actions were of no consequence to me.
“One.” He pulled the trigger, sending a spray of blood onto the opposite wall. Richard’s body slumped forward, no longer recognizable from the neck up as anything other than a mass of tissue and brain matter.
Norma’s screams turned to hyperventilating until her eyes rolled back in her head, her brain protecting her the only way it knew how.
Cobra straightened and placed his gun back into the holster on his dress pants with a sigh. “Tsk, tsk. Why’d you do it, Grey—going after your wife’s elderly parents like that? It’s unimaginable.”
“You wanted to prove somethin’, you’ve done it. Now, let her go.” I ground my teeth and flexed the f
ingers on my left hand, testing the strength of the restraint.
He continued talking as if I hadn’t said a word. “Even after they worked so hard to pay back every cent, you showed them no mercy.”
“What are you talking about? They never paid me back. I forgave the debt. What part of that ain’t stuck yet?”
“They texted Celia to tell her they had the money. I wonder what she thought when she got to the house and saw the cash but no sign of her parents. Well,” he paused. “I take that back. She would’ve seen the blood. How long do you think it’ll be before she realizes it was you?”
I shook my head. “If that was Saint’s big plan, tell him he failed. Celia ain’t gonna fall for it—”
“Won’t she? You promised to never leave her again, yet all the evidence points to you having done just that. How many lives will it take before she sees you for what you’ve always been? A monster. You turned your back on her and your kids. Do you know what that did to your son?”
My blood ran cold, and I stopped fighting against the restraint. “Mikey? What the fuck did you do to him?”
“He OD’ed, Grey. All we did was give him a nudge in the right direction. Took away his job and any chance of him patching into the club. The rest was all him. Trust me,” he added with a somber look. “That was never our plan. We were convinced he’d turn on you, but all he did was destroy himself.”
I saw him face down on his bedroom floor, surrounded by empty bottles of tequila and his own puke. The same fear I’d felt that night as I pounded my fist against his chest coursed through my veins again.
The sheer panic as I’d breathed for him and done sternum rubs came back full force.
Only this time, I hadn’t been there to save him.
“Is he?” Bile rose up in my throat at the image of him being all alone, thinking that I’d abandoned him. What had been running through his mind?
Cobra quickly shook his head. “The doctor your daughter married was able to save him. His wife left, though. I guess she didn’t want to raise a baby with a junkie. Makes sense, you know?”
“Lauren’s knocked up?” The words seemed to lodge in my throat. It was the same feeling I’d had when Celia told me that Dakota was pregnant.
Every joyous moment in my life had always been overshadowed by the knowledge that it could all be ripped away from me in an instant.
Now, more than ever, I saw the danger.
If Mikey was using again, it meant there was no one to protect Lauren. I wondered if Bear was keeping an eye on my family, or if the rumors were true and he’d only ever been concerned with ruling.
“She’s pregnant,” Cobra carefully answered. “For now. How long it’ll last remains to be seen. She tends to search for danger, poking her nose where it doesn’t belong. It seems she’s even convinced your youngest to help.”
They were going to go after the Sons without the club backing them.
My heart beat unsteadily against my chest. There was only one person who knew the exact danger they were in and could warn them. Unfortunately, the Sons’ actions against her parents had all but guaranteed that Celia wouldn’t stop the girls.
If anything, she was going to join them.
Chapter Eight
Mike
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I looked around at the large group, loudly reciting the serenity prayer at entirely different paces like grade-schoolers who’d memorized the Preamble to the United States Constitution. A few even nodded after each word.
The coffee in my hand tasted like sludge, and I still wasn’t sure how I’d let the old man talk me into coming. It was clear that these people had real problems, not like me.
I’d made a mistake, one that had cost me everything I loved, but I wasn’t as bad as they were.
“Am I gonna have to get up and recite some bullshit about being an alcoholic and drug addict?” I leaned over to whisper to Angel.
He shook his head. “That ain’t a requirement, kid.”
A woman stood up and began reading from a pamphlet in a monotone, and I lost interest again, letting my eyes wander over the filled seats. One man, who couldn’t have been much older than twenty, picked obsessively at his fingernails while staring longingly at the door. Another woman bounced her legs up and down against the carpet, her exposed skin riddled with meth scars.
A man in a suit, not much older than me, sat in the middle of the semi-circle of chairs. He waited until the woman finished speaking before standing up and introducing himself. It was clear that almost every person belonged here, except him.
I found myself wondering if he was a member of the clergy who’d been unlucky enough to have gotten roped into leading a 12-step meeting in the fellowship hall.
“I’ve got fifty dollars that says he was forced to be here,” I whispered, earning myself a sharp look from Angel.
“Everybody here’s addicted to somethin’. If you’d sit back and keep your damn mouth shut, you might learn somethin’.”
“Are there any first-timers here tonight who’d like to introduce themselves by their first name?” The man asked.
I slid down in my chair and chugged the shitty coffee, reverting back to the scared eleven-year-old kid who hoped no one noticed him.
I tried to do what Angel had asked, but with every sob story, I found myself bored to tears and fighting the urge to nod off. It was a twisted show and tell of who had it worse.
They were either pressured into using by a boyfriend or had fallen into it as a way of rebelling against their parents. Not a single one had gotten their girlfriend’s mom killed or found out that their dad had faked his death for the second time.
If Angel had dragged my ass here hoping I’d relate to their stories, he was failing miserably.
I snuck a quick glance down at my watch, praying they were getting close to wrapping up. I didn’t know how much more of it I’d be able to take before I jumped up and told them all to go fuck themselves.
When Angel stood, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank fuck.
He was going to get us the hell out of here.
I leaned over and placed the mostly full cup of coffee under my chair. As I straightened, it became apparent that Angel wasn’t moving toward the door but preparing to speak.
“Hello, I’m Charlie, and I’m an alcoholic.”
There was a low murmur of, “Hello, Charlie,” from around the room.
It struck me at that moment how little I actually knew about the man next to me. Angel hadn’t been around when I was growing up, I would’ve remembered, and Grey had always been tight-lipped when it came to the older biker.
“I grew up around drugs and booze… never had much use for them, though. I was busy tryin’ to impress the girl next door.” He paused to smile before continuing. “She was real religious, so I dragged my ass down to mass with her, hopin’ she’d be impressed.”
His expression turned wistful, and I wasn’t sure if it was the fluorescent lights overhead or if Angel was getting misty-eyed on me.
“We both moved on but reconnected down the road. Whatever it was we’d had between us had only gotten stronger over the years, and the second time around, I knew I was willin’ to do whatever it took to keep her.”
Thoughts of Lauren filtered in, and how she’d stuck with me after one night on the beach in Galveston. No one else had ever managed to get under my skin quite like she had. I might not have recognized it at the time, but when I saw her again in David and Elizabeth’s living room, that was it for me.
Instead of falling into the bottle or numbing my brain with blow, I should’ve spent every day showing her how much she meant to me. Maybe if I had, even with all the mistakes I’d made, she’d still be mine.
“We, uh, we got pregnant… but she lost the baby. Six years later, I lost her too.” He rushed out, running the back of his hand under hi
s eyes. There were no sounds of creaking chairs or whispering, the room was utterly silent, with everyone watching Angel in rapt attention.
“Suddenly, the booze was the only way to make it stop hurting, you know. It numbed the pain enough for me to function—made it so I could get out of bed in the morning.” His voice cracked again, but he held it together.
Without thinking twice, I reached up and gripped the old man’s hand in mine. I’d come here convinced that no one could understand why I’d relapsed, certain that I wouldn’t get shit out of any meeting that didn’t involve an open bar. The man next to me had lost everyone he loved but was still standing.
Not only that, but it was clear he’d beaten his addictions.
It left me with a strange feeling in my chest.
Hope.
“I decided that I was gonna stay in that fucked up state until it killed me. Death didn’t scare me because if I died, I knew that I’d get to be with her again. Maybe I would’ve gone through with drinking myself to death, had it not been for her son, Jamie.”
My head jerked up at the mention of my father’s name, and Angel gave me a short nod before turning back to the room. “I’d known him since he was just a little boy. He might not have been my flesh and blood, but I loved him like he was my own. He would’ve done anything for his mama, and she seemed to come to life when he was with her.”
He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger while staring into the past. “When she… passed away, he was sixteen. I could’ve told myself that he was damn near an adult and left it, but the kid was all alone in the world, and I knew that she’d have wanted me to watch out for him.
It struck me that I might’ve known next to nothing about Angel, but I knew even less about Grey. Minus an arrest in 1994 for assault on a police officer and a forged death certificate from 1996, there was nothing. No record of death for his parents… it was as if they never even existed.
I tried to imagine being orphaned at the age of sixteen, forced out into the world to survive before graduation. Grey had not only survived but build an empire. With as mouthy as I’d been, I would’ve ended up as shark bait.
Savior: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Five Page 10