by Sara Crest
“One more chance with Emma and I’ll never let her go again…”
Chapter Thirty-Four
(Emma)
We couldn’t even find a hotel or a motel to stay in. We were so tired that we pulled over on the side of the highway and put down the seats in the back of our minivan so we could sleep. Not exactly ideal but then again nothing about this situation was ideal.
I kept calling him and calling him to no response, I was holding back tears thinking about all the reasons why he wouldn’t respond to me after he just called me.
The sounds of trucks and cars whizzing by us unsettled me as I laid next to my sister in the back of that car.
“I’m sure he’s fine” Milly said trying to console me.
I knew that couldn’t be the case, something had to be wrong, I don’t know if he was dead or not but I knew something was wrong. I was starting to regret not answering, I just wanted to be with him why did he have to go?
“I want to fight for him but how can I even do that?”
Just then we heard the sound of a car pulling off the side of the road near us. I looked out of the window to see an all black car parked behind us with its high beams shining right into our car.
“Is it the cops?” Milly asked as she sat up alongside me.
“I’m not sure” I replied as I saw the car door open.
We opened up the doors and stepped out, I reached down to make sure I still have Sven’s gun in my pocket. With the way his high beams were shining into my eyes I could only see the outline of a man.
“Sven? Is that you?” I called out, hoping that he had changed his mind and somehow found me.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark but once they did I recognized it as the man in the white shirt from the diner, my happiness from thinking it was Sven quickly turned into fear once I realized that this man had followed us.
“You girls look like you might have some car trouble” he said as he stood by his car.
I walked a little closer, noticing that he had Massachusetts license plates. Yeah we had a ton of them in Vermont but if he was from Boston then he might be a part of the Freedom Riders, I did notice at the diner he had some tattoos but I couldn’t make out what they were. Oh god what if he was here to take me away?
“Nope, no car trouble here. We just stopped to rest” I announced to him. I looked over at Milly and could see that she saw the worry in my face, if she saw it then the guy definitely did.
“You sure? I could come and help you out?” He said walking closer.
I looked at the way he walked, he had his hand unnaturally close to his right side and seemed to walk awkwardly with his right leg. Judging from the way both of his hands were moving he was nervous. He had a gun on him, he had one and he was trying to conceal it.
“We’re positive, you can get going now.” I sounded rude but I was afraid by the fact that he was still walking towards us.
I knew I had to do something or I would regret it.
I pulled out Sven’s gun and pointed it right at him, he practically shit himself.
“Hands up in the air right now!” I called out, I could already feel my palms getting sweaty. I wish Sven was here, he would know how to handle this.
He kept his hands to his side but it looked like he was trying to inch his right hand towards his pocket as if I couldn’t see.
“Emma what are you doing?” Milly said, she saw I was nervous but I doubt she expected this.
“I said keep your hands up” I called out with a shaky voice, cocking my gun to show I was being serious.
He sighed and put his hands up above his head, causing his sleeves to begin to roll down, even in the dark I could just barely make out some of the same initiate tattoo that Sven had.
“Milly, empty out his right pocket.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“He’s a Freedom Rider Milly, he didn’t pull over to help us he was following us.”
She slowly walked over to him, reaching into his right pocket and pulling out a handgun.
“You got me” he said annoyed.
“What are we gonna do with him?” Milly asked. “If we run off he’s just gonna follow us.”
I took his gun from her hands and walked over to the man’s car. Without hesitation I shot two of his tires, and threw the gun as hard as I could into the nearby woods. It gave me a rush I never had before, was this what Sven felt like when he did something like this?
“Good luck trying to catch us with no car, asshole.”
“You’re Sven’s girl aren’t you… he’s dead you know.”
I stopped in my track and looked at him.
“You’re lying, I can tell it in your voice.”
“He might as well be dead, we gave him up to the Empire State Rollers just a few hours ago. He’s probably dead right now.”
I felt a feeling of dread and anger that I hadn’t ever felt before, I squeezed the handle of Sven’s gun and pointed it back at him.
“Take that back.”
“What? Little girlie doesn’t like hearing the truth?”
“I said take that back! He’s not dead! If I can handle you them I’m sure he could handle a hundred men like you!”
I could feel myself seething with anger, how dare he even suggest that Sven was dead. I wanted to pull that trigger, I wanted to hurt him, but I knew it would be something I would regret for the rest of my life.
I turned and shot his car in anger, putting two bullets in his hood before remembering that I only had three shots total from when that man came to the cabin when Sven left me alone.
“Milly get back in the car” I said to her as I glared at the man standing in front of us. She slowly walked back into the driver’s seat.
I walked over to the man and reached into his other pocket, pulling out his wallet. I opened it and found his driver’s license.
“Frederick Romano.” I said reading it out loud. “I’m taking this Fred, and if Sven is dead I’m coming to Boston and I’m going to make you regret giving up a man you used to call your brother!”
I walked back to the car and got in, Milly quickly hit the gas and we sped away from the scene.
As soon as we were out of sight I felt a few tears run down my face. I prayed to god the Sven wasn’t dead, I prayed to god that he’d find a way out, somehow. I don’t know how I could move on from him.
I looked down on my lap to see the gun and Frederick’s driver’s license. I couldn’t believe I actually just did all of that, I never thought I would be able to act like that yet I somehow found the strength in me to assert myself. I guess now that John’s death was really sinking in I was feeling less afraid about life in general, I had Sven to thank for that, not only for freeing me but for empowering me with his own attitude.
If I ever got to see him again, I would never let him go.
“You’ve come a long way Emma” Milly said giving me a tired smile.
I smiled back, rolling down the window and chucking Fred’s driver’s license out into the wind. I actually felt like a badass, I just wish I could enjoy it.
“Please be ok Sven” I said picking my phone up and dialing his number. “I love you too much for you not to be.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
(Sven)
The men took me up the stairs towards the same room that John was hiding in just days before, the same room where he took his last breath, the same room where I killed him and set the love of my life free.
My skin felt like it was one fire, I had road rash on my thighs and left arm. It could have been much worse but I was able to get my feet under me and let my boots take a lot of the damage, they were torn to shit now though.
There were hundreds of men all over the motel, it looked just like a Freedom Rider get together. Some men working on their bikes, some fighting, some passed out drunk, some fucking prostitutes right there in the open. I used to think that was all just a part of the biker life, now that my brotherhood betrayed
me I wanted nothing to do with any of it… not the lifestyle, not the club, hell it even felt like my tattoos were burning on my skin, even with the road rash.
They brought me to the room and pushed me inside to the ground before slamming the door behind me. My hands were still tied but they didn’t even check me for weapons, I still had the pistol with one shot loaded. Looked like that bullet had Clay’s name on it, I was tired of killing but I knew I wouldn’t regret shooting him any more than I regret shooting John.
I looked up to see Clay sitting on the bed, polishing a large knife as he looked down at me with disgust.
I used my bound hands and pushed myself up to my feet, if he thought I was going to grovel and beg for my life he had another thing coming.
I looked over at the wall, there was red all over where John’s body once was, I could only assume that they took him away for the funeral.
“So, finally we really meet… I mean we met earlier but I’d say that wasn’t on the best of terms.”
“Better terms than now.”
He chuckled “might have been better for you. That’s how things work around here though, I always get what I want.”
“I know that feeling” I replied.
“Oh really? Is this what you want?”
“I’m here because of my own choices so yeah, in some funny cosmic way this is what I want.”
“You’re a smartass aren’t you” he said looking up from his seat on the bed. He looked into my eyes and seemed taken back, like he had seen me before. Or maybe he just swung that way, who knows.
“Can’t be too smart Clay. In the end, you got me.”
“Hmpf, I got you but not that bitch of yours. My guys turned that goddamn house upside down and couldn’t find her, so tell me, where is she? Where’s the stupid bitch that got my brother killed?”
“She didn’t get your brother killed, I killed him. I pulled the trigger that splattered his blood all over that wall there and even if I knew where she was I wouldn’t tell you, I would never let you kill her.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter anyway, at least for now. We’ll find her eventually, and when we do I’ll kill her personally. Or maybe I’ll let her entertain me for her life, you’ve been with her, how is she in bed?”
I wanted to break out of these cuffs, I wanted him to pay for ever threatening her like that. But as I stood there all I could think about was how I had left her for a brotherhood that immediately sold me out. I should have listened to her, at the time part of my thought she was right but I just didn’t want to believe it. This club had been my life and they sold me out just to save their own skin. I didn’t even get a chance to redeem myself, and now I was going to die unredeemed and without the love of the greatest woman to ever walk into my life.
“Why can’t you just accept my death and not go after her? What about the crystal meth game? Is my life and the money from that not enough? Is that not a good enough deal for you?”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money from that shit drug, we make so much off of the protection game and weed that we don’t need to sell any of the hard shit. You lose the support of your fucking city and the police stop looking the other way, Walsh needs to fucking learn that. So tell me, why would I waste my time with that garbage you’re peddling in Boston?”
“You tell me, I can hear it in your voice you’re obviously from Boston. I’d recognize that accent anywhere, I grew up around it.”
“So what?” he said digging his knife into his finger. “I may be from Boston but that doesn’t mean I have to give a fuck about what’s actually going on in the city.”
“You care enough to fuck with our meth production. If you don’t sell meth yourself then why else would you pay our head cook up here to start making it for you instead of us?”
“Pfft, head cook? There is no head cook, not anymore, hasn’t been one for months. Your production dropped off because I killed all the old cooks and replaced them with nothing but the meth heads that plagued my territory, the meth heads from New York that your gang caused. If they figured out how to actually make the shit they smoke then kudos to them but I just sent them there for you to shoot them.”
“What did you have to gain from all of that? Why would you replace our cooks?” I asked.
“Because I got sick and tired of dealing with you Freedom Rider shits ruining the city I grew up in. Then you all crossed the line when that son of a bitch Walsh started pumping your crystal into my territory in NYC. I traced all the meth in our city back to him, he got too fucking greedy.”
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down before continuing.
“I followed the trail back to Walsh and up here to Vermont. I know who you minutemen are, I knew that if I killed your real cooks and replaced them with my own that they wouldn’t be able to keep up with your demand and things would start falling apart.”
He stood up off the bed and walked towards me.
“They never once supplied me with even a gram of crystal to sell in my territory, but I made you believe that they were giving me more than they were giving you. That's when you minutemen come in, you all got false info that I was hoarding your rightful stash and you came up and killed my fake cooks to bring in your own guys. Then I'd tell all my men what you were doing to our crystal production, the production they all think is real because they assumed the shit on our streets was our own when it was actually yours. I told them how you killed all our guys that we put there. I thought that'd be enough to start the gang war I wanted but somehow it still didn’t kickstart it. When I told them what happened they didn’t think it was a big enough deal to go war over, I needed something fast to really help escalate things.”
“So you sent your brother” I said glaring at him.
“Heh, thank God for my younger retard of a brother. I didn’t even have to send him, hell before I even knew what was going on he was up here. He decided that he wanted meth the straight from “our” source, fucking junkie, he came up here to get some crystal and to make sure that it really was you minutemen fucking with our fake production.”
Clay ran his knife lightly across my neck, not nearly enough to hurt but just enough to draw some light blood.
“When you killed my brother, after killing those cooks, it was enough for me to justify this little war. It’s all working out. I don’t care about avenging my brother, you think I care about that little horny shitstain? The man was in his 50s and was still obsessed with that young piece of pussy that draped herself around you. I set all of this in motion so I could justify a gang war with the Freedom Riders to my men. Sorry buddy, you and your little girl just got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“So you never cared about your brother’s death? You don’t care that I put a half a pound of lead into him?”
“Fuck no. Hell if you didn’t do it I would have myself and just framed you all, I was getting sick of all the bullshit he was bringing into my club. The club I built up with my own two hands... If it makes you feel any better, none of this is your fault, it was gonna happen one way or another. I may not give a shit about Boston but I want it under my control and you all were in my way. This was inevitable.”
“Why make the deal for me then? Why make a deal with Walsh for me and for Emma? You have your war, just let me go and do whatever it is that you want to do.”
“Like I said, I gotta show them that I took care of the guy and gal that supposedly kickstarted this war. It’s nothing personal, it’s all just for show. Not to mention Walsh will let his guard down and think everything will be alright because he handed you over to me, he’s probably on his way back to Boston right now feeling smug about how he sold you out to avoid this war. He doesn’t even know I’ll be right on his ass in a day to come and take back MY city. Everything's finally falling into place and it feels so goddamn good.”
He had a huge grin across his face, like he had been holding in that plan for months if not years and I was the first person he ever t
old. It was an itch he couldn’t scratch for so long, now with everything going better than he ever could have hoped he was able to say it was all his idea.
He put the knife back to my neck, pressing against me hard with the sharp blade, I was ready to push him away and threaten to shoot him at a moment’s notice. Maybe if I held him hostage I could find away out of here.
“Sorry about this buddy, it’s just how things work around here.”
“That’s how it is? It’s all just a business to you?”
“Oh what you want to make it personal? Fine I can make it personal. What’s your name? I don’t even know the name of the man that shot my own brother. I’ll make sure we write it on your forehead in permanent marker so the town knows what to put on your tombstone.”
“It’s Sven, don’t you ever forget it.”
He loosened the pressure on my neck a little bit, looking at me completely dumbstruck. He stared into my eyes and then looked at me up and down.
“You… you meant Steven right?”
“I told you not to forget it old man, my name is Sven. You want me to spell it out for you.”
He dropped the knife on the ground, practically stumbling back and catching himself on the edge of the bed.
“Is there any other Sven in your club? Are you-”
“Yes I’m the only one, what the hell is wrong with you?”
I tried to reach into my pocket to get my gun but I had trouble fishing it out. I couldn’t get a good grip on it.
“Sven, I never in my life thought I’d see you again.”
I stopped trying to get my gun and looked at the old man sitting in front of me, completely dumbstruck.
“You- you know me? Are you playing a game with me right now?”
He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a Freedom Rider initiate tattoo, just like mine.
“Sven, I knew you when you were a boy. I was a part of the Freedom Riders years ago.”
“A lot of people were old man, that just means you betrayed the brotherhood like the men who put me in this situation.”