The Rise of Ferryn

by Gadziala, Jessica

  Even as she would lie there with those thoughts swirling, even as she listened to Holden tearing through the gym, wrecking it once again, lost in his own memories, lost in his own mind; even when he turned that anger on her door that she had smartly reinforced with three giant planks of removable wood after the first night he almost got in, almost mistook her for some unknown man from his past, almost killed her; even as this new life bent and broke and remolded her both inside and out, she knew she couldn't give up, she knew that all that mattered was the mission, was the difference she could make in the world.

  So she stayed.

  She stayed.

  Until, one day, she didn't.

  Three

  Vance - Present Day

  West was getting his ass handed to him on a group chat with his sisters. It was maybe the highlight of my week—no, month—to see him pacing around the clubhouse, running a hand across through his blond hair, mumbling "Yeah, I know. You're right" over and over, until I was sure the words were burning a hole in his vocal cords.

  What can I say, it was a treat to see the club's resident ladies man get taken down a peg by the estrogen-dominant part of his family.

  With all but West and Colson—a single father and therefore not one inclined to partying it up—married and the club business relatively stable—as stable as an arms-dealing biker club in a town full of criminal empires could be—I was starved for any kind of entertainment.

  "Are you fucking blushing?" I asked, watching as he turned to me, confirming my suspicions but also giving me a look that said if I dared repeat that phrase again—especially in front of our brothers—he would drag me out back and shoot me like a rabid dog.

  I was almost desperate enough for some action to take him up on the offer.

  Almost.

  Let's face it, when it came to a fight, West had a good decade of ass-kicking under his belt while I was busy touring with my band. While there was always the occasional fight when it came to the music scene, I was in no way equipped to take on a furious and embarrassed West.

  Sometimes, you had to accept your weaknesses in life.

  I'd made my peace with mine.

  For the most part.

  After all, West had been living a criminal lifestyle, scraping by, scuffling and smacking down, for years while I had been writing songs and playing tiny gigs that slowly but surely led to larger gigs that actually made us more than gas money and pocket change.

  I never planned on becoming a biker.

  For most of my life, all I could think about was getting out of my oppressively religious household, rebelling, making a name for myself doing what I was passionate about.

  Then, well, things changed.

  It all started so innocently. Taking my sister and her best friend to a shopping center after they cut school.

  Then it all went to hell.

  Iggy's best friend was taken.

  Imprisoned.

  Irreparably changed.

  Then she disappeared again.

  There had been cracks in me then that afternoon. The literal ones. From trying to fight off the abductors. Those ones healed relatively easily, leaving no lasting marks.

  The others, though, I had no idea they were there. At least not after the shock wore off. I thought I had gone back to normal. Or to what had always passed as normal for me.

  I couldn't have been more wrong.

  It took a while for my foundations to settle.

  That was when the cracks started to show.

  Little by little over time.

  Until they could no longer be denied.

  Until everyone else could see them too.

  That was where everything changed once again.

  And how I ended up at the doors of an outlaw biker club, demanding the president—the father of the girl I had once tried to save from kidnapping human traffickers—to let me prospect, to let me become a brother.

  I could never be sure if Reign actually wanted me in his club, or if he was simply letting me in because he felt obligated, because he knew I had once tried to save his little girl.

  I would likely never know.

  But I was grateful, nonetheless.

  The Henchmen MC wasn't exactly where I had planned on landing, but I found security in the clubhouse, in the brotherhood.

  Even the pain in the ass West who took it upon himself to be my personal nag, always insisting I was in a dark mood, that I needed to get out more, that the surefire cure for my bad moods was hitting the bar, drinking to near oblivion, finding a hot, willing woman, and taking her to bed.

  Sometimes, I placated him. Sometimes, I thought that maybe he had a point, maybe the root of my problem was being on my own too much, getting lost inside my own head too often.

  Maybe the cure was time out with friends. Maybe some pretty woman who wanted me was what I needed to replace some of the other thoughts in my head.

  Just as often, though, West ended up going home with one or more of the girls while I headed back to the clubhouse to chase a couple ibuprofen with a gallon of water in the hopes that I avoided a hangover.

  "So, which of your sisters is now wearing your balls for earrings?" I asked when he threw down his phone on the couch, sitting, cradling his head in his tattooed hands like it was pounding. Hell, it probably was. At the beginning of the conversation, I could hear his sister's raised voices from clear across the room.

  All I got from him was a grumbling, pained sound.

  In a rare surge of sympathy for the poor bastard, I grabbed a bottle of booze from the back bar, dropping it down on the table in front of him, watching as he grabbed for it greedily, chugging down the contents.

  "What are you in the shithouse for?"

  "Not coming home for my mom's birthday last week."

  "We were doing a drop," I said, brow furrowing. We'd been down in North Carolina for the better part of the week before, dealing with some cheap-ass low-level Irish mob guys who suddenly decided Reign was gouging them on the guns.

  "And I sent gifts. And one of those fucking fruit arrangement things. The expensive ones."

  "Did you tell her ahead of time that you couldn't make it?"

  "Of course I did."

  For all of West's faults, he was a good son, a great brother. He had a deep-seated respect for the fairer sex even if he didn't always appear that way from the outside.

  "I don't see the problem."

  To that, he snorted.

  "Man, you know women. They don't want gifts. They want your presence."

  Well, that was sage advice if I ever heard it. Even if, in this situation, it was irrational. Work was work sometimes. Everyone had to make a living, even if it meant missing a birthday or holiday here or there.

  "I somehow got talked into taking all of them on a long weekend."

  "Sounds kinda nice."

  "At a meditation retreat."

  "Oh, for fuck's sake."

  "Yeah," he agreed, tipping the bottle once again.

  If there was one place I could not picture West, it was someplace he was supposed to be silent and still.

  "Hell, maybe there will be a hot yoga teacher there or something. Imagine the positions you could get her into."

  Yep.

  There was the West I knew.

  "Wanna hit Chaz's tonight? Daddy Reign is away, the kids got to play and all that shit."

  He just wanted to be able to bring a couple chicks back to the clubhouse to impress them, and he knew Cash—Reign's brother, the vice president–was left in charge and was a hell of a lot more lenient about that kind of thing.

  I'd turned him down a lot lately, finding my mood darker than usual, not able to muster even the smallest bit of interest in going out, and pretending to be into something when all I wanted to do was get back to my room at the clubhouse, play a little guitar.

  It had been over a month since I had hit the bar with him. Which I was pretty sure made me a shit friend. Especially since he'd been more tolerant than u
sual, going off on his own or even hanging back at the club, playing pool with me or initiating a poker game and stealing untold amounts of money from the rest of us.

  It was time to get back out there.

  Even if I had to try to force the interest at first.

  "I think..." I started, hearing the low rumble of a bike coming closer, wondering who was coming back.

  Lately, well, the clubhouse had been all but abandoned save for West and me. The other guys dropped in occasionally, but usually not later at night when they had wives or kids to be home with. They left us to do the rounds during the undesirable hours, making sure we kept the clubhouse secure.

  It wasn't common for anyone to be heading back to the club after nightfall.

  "Uncle Cash checking in on us?" West asked, shrugging.

  If anyone were to be heading in, it likely would be Cash. He didn't have any young kids. And his wife was in charge of Hailstorm, which meant she sometimes took off at a moment's notice, leaving him alone and bored.

  But from what I understood, Lo didn't do a lot of trips anymore, choosing to stay back, to spend time with Cash, to spend time with her adopted daughter Chris.

  Chris who had spent time in a basement, had been horribly abused, who likely would have still been in that basement if not for...

  "Something's wrong," West said, already off the couch, making his way toward the door, grabbing a gun out from a drawer under the bar on his way.

  He was right.

  If it was Cash, he would have been inside the gates and cutting the engine by now.

  From the sound of things, whoever was on the bike was stuck at the gates, held up by one of Hailstorm's guards who still stood sentry at the gates for a reason I didn't understand and didn't feel I had the right to question.

  If they knew who it was, they would have waved them right through.

  "Probably someone who wants to prospect," West concluded as we made our way into the yard, finding someone on a bike in a leather jacket and a helmet, the light on the street casting his face in shadow.

  It had been a long while since we got a new member. A part of me was thinking that maybe Reign was having a sort of hiring freeze because in a few short years, his sons, and the sons of the other older OG brothers would be aging up enough to prospect themselves, and he wanted to make sure they would have a place should they want it.

  It seemed unlikely there simply weren't any people out there who wanted to join.

  We would need to call in Cash after all, neither of us being senior enough to make any kind of decisions on prospects. While Reign generally took into account everyone's thoughts and opinions on things that impacted the whole club, ultimately, we all knew decisions like prospects were made by him, Cash, and our road captain, Wolf.

  The engine cut as the rider, clearly frustrated by the obstruction of the guards, climbed off, stomping combat boots on the ground, kicking up dry dirt with the motion.

  "What's going on?" West called as we got closer.

  "Got someone who says they need to talk to Reign," one of the guards, some young guy I had only seen a handful of times, likely new to Hailstorm, told us.

  "Well, they'll have to settle for us," West declared, having a somewhat impressively authoritative voice when he needed to for someone who was usually a lot of light and laughter.

  The rider reached upward, unclasping their helmet, pulling it off their head.

  Without the shadows cast by the helmet, their face was in perfect view.

  A very familiar face.

  "Jesus Christ," my voice hissed out of me as my body jolted with awareness, with recognition, with the absolute impossibility of this reality.

  "What am I missing?" West asked, and I could feel his gaze on my profile, could hear the understanding that something had just changed, and he was completely unaware.

  Because all of this, well, it went down before West was a member of the MC, before West was even in Navesink Bank.

  He knew the stories.

  But he'd never seen the girl.

  No.

  Not the girl.

  She was most definitely not a girl anymore.

  She had the same face, sure, the same up-and-down sort of body type. If anything, she was even thinner than she had been when I had last seen her, possessed fewer curves.

  The last time I saw her, her shining black hair had been freshly buzzed for the first time. Now, it was cropped short at the sides, but longer on top, an edgy look that somehow fit her very delicate, almost doll-like face, made her gray eyes pop.

  The eyes, though, the eyes were so different from the last time I had seen them, from how I thought of them in my memories.

  See, when your little sister had a best friend, and you were your little sister's chauffeur, you got to know her friends really fucking well. Whether you wanted to or not.

  But she had always been different. Not vapid or catty. She was a reader, a music connoisseur, a bit of a philosopher even at age sixteen.

  I didn't mind that she tagged along, that she was always trying to get my attention, always trying to engage me in conversation. Because, quite frankly, the things she had to talk about were usually a lot deeper than the shit my bandmates wanted to talk about. Which usually just had to do with sex positions and which mainstream bands had made it big because they sold out their sound.

  She'd always had interesting eyes. Ones that showed everything from excitement to annoyance.

  But those eyes, those gray eyes I had been so familiar with all those years ago, yeah, they were completely fucking unreadable.

  "Oh, shit. Is this some fucking meet-cute moment?" West asked, voice losing all its authority, going light and fun and sarcastic as was more his nature. "Where is the harp music? Let me guess, she is some big city girl, coming to slum it in our little town to pursue her dreams of making artisanal cupcakes in the shape of sloths. And she just so happens to stop here for directions. And the two of you lock eyes and live happily ever after. Am I right?" he asked, looking between the two of us, both of us seemingly unable to believe what we were seeing when we looked at each other.

  "Who are you, beautiful?" he asked, and there was still a smile in his voice.

  "Ferryn." The name rushed out of my lips, as airless and unsure as I was feeling at that very moment, the entire world seemingly thrown off its axis, knocking everything sideways.

  In what world was Ferryn here, now?

  How the hell was I the one to first see her?

  Why was she back after all this time?

  When her parents were out of town?

  "Whoa, fuck. Hold up. Ferryn. As in the Ferryn? Little runaway Ferryn?"

  To that, those lifeless eyes of hers shifted from my face, letting me snap out of the stupor I had been stuck in—time and life and my damn heartbeat standing still.

  "And who the hell are you?" she asked.

  Again, I knew that voice.

  But it lacked something.

  It seemed colder.

  It shivered over my skin.

  It left goosebumps in its wake.

  "West," he supplied, seemingly unaffected by her tone, by her dead eyes. But, then again, he hadn't known her when her voice was honey sweet, when her eyes danced and smiled. "I was starting to think you were just a girl from a story. Just a tale the old guys told."

  "Well, that girl is just a story now," Ferryn supplied, making West's brow quirk up.

  "Yeah, I think I am getting that, pretty lady," West agreed.

  Ferryn was someone discussed often. They'd share old anecdotes, tales of her escapades, always followed by a collective solemnness from all those who had known her, those who had missed her, those who felt acutely the hole her absence had left behind.

  In those stories, Ferryn was often painted as a little girl by her aunts. One who was loud and opinionated and who did shit like put dinosaur heads on her Barbie dolls and bossed all the boys around like her little minions.

  From her uncles, the men I now
called brothers, they often talked of her as a rebellious teen, someone who could kick a little ass, who could win every debate, who once kicked a guy in the nuts because he cat-called one of the other club's daughters when she was all of twelve years old.

  Ferryn was always a larger than life personality, someone full of life, someone who always had something to say, some story to tell, someone both fiercely independent, yet incredibly loyal, someone badass, but also sweet and soft.

  There was no sweet or soft in the woman standing before us.

  This woman was not full of life.

  If anything, she almost vibed of death.

  If that made any sense at all.

  "Hey, man, didn't you know her?" West asked, breaking the crushing silence.

  "Back in the day, yeah, you could say I knew her," I agreed, watching as her gaze slid back over toward me.

  "Yeah, yeah, it's coming back. You tried to save her, didn't you? Got your face all busted in doing it."

  "Yeah, that's the way it went," I agreed, looking for something in Ferryn's face. Some emotion. Hell, even just a little acknowledgement would be enough.

  "That was the last time you saw her, right?"

  No.

  No, that was not the last time I saw her.

  The last time I saw her was several days after she had been taken. I had been on my way to pick up my sister from our parents' house, knowing she had been as big a wreck as I had been about Ferryn's abduction, about her unknown whereabouts. And then I saw my sister walking out of the house with someone that, with their shaved head, I momentarily mistook for a boy.

  I remembered even feeling a swelling of pride. Because our parents were strict fucking nut jobs, having lived it wild and free—maybe even a little too wild and free, hence naming their children Vance and Iggy—for a long time before becoming born again and shunning everything they had once loved and prided themselves on. And Iggy had found herself wholly inept at proper rebellion, no matter the very clear path I had blazed for her to walk in. I figured she had maybe gotten the balls to have a boy over the house.

  But then I got a closer look.

  It wasn't a boy at all.

  It was Ferryn with a shaved head and bruised face and odd eyes.