Vicious Cycle

by Katie Ashley

  Shaking my head, I growled, “Not about hers.”

  Bishop leaned back against the ropes. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t think she’s hot as fuck?”

  I closed the distance between us to where I was once again up in his face. “You got a hearing problem, little brother? I said don’t talk about her like that.” Shoving him, I said, “You got another thing coming if you think you’re going to turn on your sweet-boy charm to try and tap her ass. She’s fucking off-limits. Got it?”

  Bishop’s blue eyes widened. “Oh yeah, I think I got it.” He stood toe to toe with me. “I get it loud and clear. But maybe next time you should piss on her leg to mark her as yours.”

  I threw my head back and laughed. “That ain’t it.”

  “You sure? ’Cause I sure ain’t never seen you get this fucking twitchy over someone sniffing around Cheyenne.”

  My teeth ground together in frustration. “Doesn’t the old adage ‘don’t shit where you eat’ mean anything to you?”

  “Suppose so.”

  “For reasons I don’t even begin to fucking understand, that Miss Evans means a hell of a lot to Willow. If she gets scared off because some douche bag uses her, then that hurts Willow. Not to mention the fact that this bitch has me by the balls with CPS.”

  Bishop processed my words. “Okay, okay. I’ll keep Miss Evans for my spank bank.”

  Rolling my eyes, I cuffed the back of his head. “You’re a disgusting fuck.”

  Just as we were about to start running through a few more combinations, Archer, one of the prospects, came sprinting up to the ring. “Prez just called an emergency church meeting. Wants you guys there in ten minutes,” he said, his words coming in wheezing pants from his exertion.

  Snatching off the sparring mitts, I pushed away the feeling of overwhelming foreboding and hustled over to the ropes with Bishop on my heels. We slid underneath them and then hopped down. I thumped Archer on the back before heading outside to my waiting bike. I cut the usual ten-minute drive to the clubhouse into five. Bishop, followed by Archer, stayed on my tail.

  When I threw open the clubhouse door, I found the inside as silent as a tomb. None of the usual retirees were lounging around the bar, throwing back beers. The pool table balls were racked and ready to go, but no one was around to play. Prez must’ve put the word out that we were not to be disturbed.

  Off to the side of the main meeting area was the room where we held church—the name for our club meetings. When Bishop and I ducked inside, we found the others already assembled. Our meeting table was a true throwback to the old cotton-mill days. Most of the business decisions by the former cotton barons had been made around it when it was in the boardroom. Now we used it for slightly less than honorable business dealings.

  My still-sweat-soaked ass slid across the plush, leather-seated chair. My old man had insisted on spending a pretty penny on the chairs. “I ain’t scrimping on some piece of shit that breaks your back and pinches your nutsack. I don’t want anyone squirming around during church. Your attention should be fucking focused on the club and only the club,” he’d said. A smile tugged at my lips at the memory.

  At the head of the table sat our grim-faced president, Caisson, or Case, for short. His shrapnel-scarred neck, arms, and legs told some of the story of how he’d gotten his road name. He’d done two tours in Vietnam as part of the Third Infantry Division. It was on his second tour that the caisson he was manning got hit and almost killed him. As army proud as he was, it was only fitting he take a name associated with his service.

  He and Preacher Man had been part of the original charter members of the Georgia chapter of the Hells Raiders. They were barely twenty when they’d patched in. And even after Preach went AWOL on the MC lifestyle for many years, Case demanded that Preach take over the presidency of the Raiders when he returned. “Ain’t nobody better to lead than Preacher Man,” he had said.

  He once again had to take over for his best friend when Preacher Man was killed. I loved my old man, but I also loved Case. At his right was the new vice president—Rev. Leaning forward in his chair, he rapped his fingers over the hardback cover of the latest book he was reading. Rev constantly battled the angel and devil on his shoulder. If he’d been born to another father, I’m sure he would have ended up a doctor or lawyer or in some fancy shit profession like that. He sure as hell had the brains. He’d even used the money from his service with Uncle Sam to get a two-year degree from the community college. In the end, the pull of our world was too much for him, especially for his loyalty. For Rev, his tender heart was both his salvation and his undoing. All the best of Mama Beth had gone into Rev, but it was often overshadowed by Preacher Man’s dominating DNA.

  Barry “Boone” Michaels, our treasurer, sat across from me at the table, twirling a skull-and-crossbones cigarette lighter between his fingers. He was just a few years older than me, although his salt-and-pepper hair and beard made him appear even older. We’d both gone through our prospecting period together, and we’d been patched in the same night. He liked to give me shit that as the president’s son, I’d had it a lot easier. The truth was Preacher Man had them go twice as hard on me to prove my worth. He wasn’t going to let any son of his get by just on who he was.

  Next to Boone sat our secretary, Steve “Mac” McDonald. His tattooed hand sat poised over a notepad, ready to document everything that happened. He was forty-five. He’d patched into the Raiders twenty years ago. He was a good bridge between the two distinct generations in the club.

  A tense silence choked off the air in the room. Something heavier than we had faced in a long time had gone down or was about to go down. Unable to stand the quiet any longer, I demanded, “So what’s shaking, Prez?”

  Case shifted in his seat like he was physically affected by the news he had. “Nordic Knights are stirring shit. Again.”

  A low, united growl came from all my brothers. It was an unwritten rule that clubs would have beef with one another from time to time over territory disputes and business dealings. But there was no club we despised more than the Nordic Knights. Regardless of all the alliances we had made with other clubs, we would never have peace with the Knights. There was too much bad blood between us.

  “What are those bastards up to now?” Boone asked.

  “We heard this from one of our insiders in the Atlanta PD. It seems the Feds reopened a case on the Knights. There was a big drug shake-up four months ago. An informant had brought them lots of information about the inner workings of the Knights drug ring in trade for immunity.” Case paused to run a hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. I sucked in a harsh breath because it was one of the tics he had before unloading some really heavy shit on us. His gaze cut over to mine. “This informant had been playing as a courier for her boyfriend, Jamey Ericson, one of the Knights. Before she could testify in court, she and Jamey were murdered execution style in their apartment.”

  As the pieces of the puzzle slowly fit together, all the breath left my body, and I momentarily wheezed before I could speak. “Lacey.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, what was she thinking?” I murmured. Since the day Willow had been brought to my door, I’d been searching for information about who could have killed Lacey. I knew she had been involved in some deep shit, considering how no one connected to her would talk, regardless of the amount of money I offered them. The person closest to her, Willow, sure as hell wasn’t talking, and even if she could, she was too young to understand who the people were in her mother’s world. In the end, I’d been led to believe it was a drug deal gone bad—she or her boyfriend hadn’t coughed up the money they owed.

  “Deacon, there’s more,” Case said.

  “More than finding out the mother of my child took up with some Knights scum and then turned rat?”

  Rev shook his head. “Maybe she needed immunity to stay out of jail for Willow’s sake.”

  “Knowing Lacey, I have a hard time believing she was thinking of anyone but
herself,” I argued. Feeling Case’s intense gaze on me, I glanced from Rev to him. “What?”

  “He said there were a lot of mentions of a guy named ‘Seagal.’”

  I bolted forward in my chair as Rev sucked in a harsh breath. “He just overheard all this shit, right? What if what he’s hearing as Seagal is really Sigel?” Rev asked.

  Case grimaced. “Yeah, it is. He’s out. Been out for five months for copping a deal.”

  “How the fuck are we just now hearing he’s out? I thought we had eyes and ears all over the jailhouse,” Bishop demanded.

  A tense silence fell over the table. Just the mention of the name “Sigel” hit me, Rev, and Bishop especially hard. Frederich “Freddy” Spears, or Sigel, as he called himself now, was the president of the Nordic Knights. Sigel gave the Raiders far too many fucking reasons to want him six feet under. There was the racist bullshit he spewed about being the son of an actual former Nazi soldier, but there was also the fact he was once one of our own.

  Of course, he was just Freddy back then. Most of the time he was known as Fucked-Up Freddy because of his heroin addiction. Like the legendary Hells Angels, the Raiders had a bylaw about no needles in the club. You might snort crank or smoke some crack, but shooting up rained a whole different type of shit down on you and your brothers.

  Preacher Man tried to intervene to help Freddy, but he finally had to kick him out of the club and take his cut. It wasn’t too long before Freddy adopted a new road name, Sigel, after some sun bullshit in German mythology. It was a nod to his ties with the Aryan Brotherhood. He then formed his own club, the Nordic Knights, and did everything he could to fuck with us, including trying to move drugs in our territory. Regardless of some of our less-than-legal business dealings, we never dealt in drugs or women. Preacher Man worked tirelessly to push Sigel and his Knights out of Raiders territory.

  Our true hatred of Sigel came from the fact he had our father’s blood on his hands. And not metaphorically from some hit he’d put out. He’d pumped Preacher Man full of holes at point-blank range when the two were meeting under a truce flag. My fists curled in rage as I remembered cradling my father’s dying body. As his sergeant, I had gone with him to the meeting.

  Growing up on the streets had hardened me to where the death of a man could be swatted from your memory the same way as ridding an annoying fly from your face. The quicker you desensitized yourself, the better. I’d witnessed all manner of ugly deaths—torture scenes with bodies flayed open like cadavers on a med-school table, the charred, blackened flesh of burned bodies, the cross still wrapped around the neck of a decapitated head that had been blown off in a car bomb.

  But no matter how hard you’ve worked to turn yourself off, nothing compares to the death of someone you love—someone who was your savior. Those emotions you’ve buried so fucking deep in the ground come bursting out of their grave like it’s the Second Coming. In a way it is—it’s the Armageddon of your soul. As the emotional torment claws at your skin, you wish for your own death. Anything would be better than the agony consuming you. If only you could find atonement by switching places—their life for your own. But instead, you find an emotional immortality that places you in a private hell on earth.

  Almost three years had passed since the night we’d lost Preacher Man. I’d tried to put as much space and distance as I could between me and the memories that haunted me in the dead of night, the ones that woke me in a fit of screaming and clawing at the sheets. But just hearing the name Nordic Knights ricocheted me from the present back into that night. Like a movie reel on repeat, I watched Preacher Man’s body contort as the bullets entered his chest and gut. I’d made it to his side just in time to grab his collapsing body before it hit the grimy pavement.

  I shook my head to try to rid myself of the memories. But no matter how hard I tried, the harsh, metallic smell of blood entered my nose. My hands tightened on the armrests of the chair—the muscles felt stretched and weighed down the same as that night. Like a flash of lightning cutting across the night sky, I was once again back in that alley with my father dying before my eyes.

  I’d struggled to keep my hold on him as the blood, mixed with pieces of flesh and intestines, made him slippery. Each time I tried to get a better hold on him, he screamed from the pain. Finally, we had gone down on the pavement together. Flailing, I had scrambled to my knees, cradling Preach’s head in my lap. Trying to channel my fear, I’d focused my eyes on Preach’s. The acceptance in his gaze told me that death was close. All the words of gratitude and love that I wanted to express wouldn’t come from my mouth, no matter how hard I tried to speak.

  As if he sensed my turmoil, Preacher Man brought a trembling, blood-soaked hand to my cheek. “I know, son,” he wheezed. And then he said something on his dying breath that I still longed to understand. “Angels … beautiful angels with dark hair are coming for you. They are your only salvation.”

  With his eyes fixed above us on the sky, he exhaled a long, painful breath. And then he was gone. The realization lit every molecule in my body on fire like flipping the switch on the electric chair. I shot off the pavement with my arms and legs twitching with rage and resentment. As I lunged for the man who had taken my father’s life, a gun’s muzzle met me in the face.

  “My beef was with your pops. Bad blood from years past. You get to live. For tonight, at least.”

  “You might as well end me right now, motherfucker. ’Cause if you let me walk away, I’ll rain a fucking firestorm down on you!”

  A smile had curled at his lips. “I’d love to see you try. When morning comes and word spreads how I took down Preacher Man without a fight, you and your Raiders won’t have a fucking ally anywhere. Me and the Knights will run you into the ground.”

  When I had lunged at him, the barrel of the gun smashed across my cheek, breaking my nose. As tears blinded my eyes from the hit and blood poured down my face, I’d been forced to watch as Sigel had spat on Preacher Man’s body.

  But what Sigel couldn’t have imagined, nor any of us Raiders, was that Preacher Man had been two steps ahead of him. All of our allies stayed firmly in place based on last-minute peace offerings Preacher Man had made. The greatest of his last-hour deals included cashing in a favor owed by one of the Atlanta PD—a somewhat-crooked cop who was willing to falsify a warrant that took the drug task force straight to Sigel’s door. With his arrest history, he would be behind bars for at least five to ten, and I would be forced to sit on any revenge plans. Sure, I could’ve put out a hit for Sigel’s throat to be slit or for him to be shanked. But I wanted full-on justice, an eye for an eye, with his blood on my own two hands.

  By hiding his brokered deals, Preacher Man had gone against all the charter rules that forced a vote by the officers. Like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, he had selflessly worked to ensure the safety of the club, even if all along it was going to cost him his life. Deep down, I knew that he had instigated Sigel’s imprisonment to keep me from any revenge that would come from his probable death. He must’ve feared I would be killed or imprisoned and wanted to protect me. He never would have fathomed my next move.

  “Deacon,” a voice implored, jerking me out of the past and into the present.

  “What?” I croaked. Staring down at my hands, I thought of a movie Rev had made me watch. Some bullshit Shakespeare stuff that I had slept through back in high school. Like the deranged chick, I rubbed my hands furiously together, trying not to see the blood I imagined on them—the blood of Sigel’s only son.

  The son I had strung up and then proceeded to torture like something out of medieval times. The son who bore the wrath of the bottomless quicksand of grief for Preacher Man that I found myself trapped in. The son I’d left to bleed out on his apartment floor after I did a final act of degradation—I stripped him of his cut and took it with me.

  Over the years, I’m sure Preacher Man and Case had rendered the same kind of revenge as I did. I’m not sure if they outdid my level of violence. Grief
can bring a man who refuses to acknowledge emotion to his knees. It warps you into a shadow of your former self. It manipulates you into succumbing to the mental anguish you try so hard to escape from. It makes an emotional cripple out of even the strongest man around.

  That was the intensity of my loss for Preacher Man. Salvation out of hell was rarely granted, but Preacher Man had been mine. So far I’d lived three lifetimes—the life before Preacher Man and the Raiders, my life with him, and now my life without him.

  What I didn’t want to acknowledge then or now was that the grief I had brought to Sigel would have a price. He’d left me alive once, but when he was free, would he do it again? Now that he was out, I was staring down the barrel of a gun.

  The deep baritone of Case’s voice once again dragged me from my thoughts. “Sigel killed Lacey,” he said.

  “Did he know who she was?”

  Case shook his head. Then with a grimace, he added, “But he knows who Willow is.”

  My heart twisted as if a giant’s hands had clenched around it. “He’s the threat.”

  What I hadn’t told the nosy-ass Miss Evans was a week ago I’d received a package. Within it were pictures of Willow on the school playground, eating lunch in the cafeteria, and skipping out to Mama Beth’s car. While there had been no note, the message was clear—someone was after my daughter. That’s when I had put Willow on lockdown within the compound. She didn’t go anywhere outside, and even when she was inside, a prospect was on her ass every moment.

  Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined Sigel was behind it. But now that I knew who it was and his involvement in Lacey’s murder, the why wasn’t adding up. Not from Willow herself, but from the school psychologist, we knew what Willow had seen. She’d drawn pictures with a “Mean Man” who had hurt her mommy. She had been within Sigel’s reach of revenge, yet he’d let her go. I didn’t understand.

  As if he sensed my confusion, Rev said, “He let her live because he realized you didn’t know anything about her.” When I flicked my gaze to his, Rev sighed raggedly. “He wanted to wait until you could have feelings for her. Then it could be personal.”